Sega Saturn CD - Cracked after 20 years

[Dr. Zoidberg]

Last time I tried my Saturn the drive was crapping out, so this could come in handy if it ever comes out.

[Matisfaction]

Some awesome info there, the Saturn was a bit of a beast but you only got the best out of it by putting the time in. The PlayStation on the other hand had built in effects that developers could turn on like the flick of a switch. Also interesting that it has a DSP which was probably skipped a lot by third parties, much like the GC, Wii and Wii U which also have DSPs, as far as I know PlayStation and Xbox systems used their main CPUs to process audio.

[Big Boss Man]

Interesting video, seems the Saturn was very closed source which is why the guy found the encyrption on the CD drive. Not sure if I'm correct but didn't the Saturn have the hardware capability to port the Sega arcade game directly so essentially you got the arcade version of Daytona instead of the normal port. Also only downside of the replacement for the CD is that you won't be able to play the CD versions of the game unless you create a .bin file and also you won't be able to play audio CDs but apart from that, it's a big leap forward for Saturn emulation since essentially the card he's developed emulate the Saturn's CD drive.

[Matisfaction]

Considering that he's essentially bypassing the CD Rom unit, how is that going to effect load times and maybe even stuff like pop in?

[Skynet]

Considering that he's essentially bypassing the CD Rom unit, how is that going to effect load times and maybe even stuff like pop in?

Didn't he say that it loads at the same speed?

[melancholy]

Considering that he's essentially bypassing the CD Rom unit, how is that going to effect load times and maybe even stuff like pop in?

Didn't he say that it loads at the same speed?

Yes, to the point where he said he engineered it to run at the exact same speed to avoid breaking games that may depend on certain load speeds.

[Matisfaction]

I thought when he was talking about a turbo mode he was referencing overclocking which is usually used to increase frame rates etc. Not disc reading/accessing.

[melancholy]

I thought when he was talking about a turbo mode he was referencing overclocking which is usually used to increase frame rates etc. Not disc reading/accessing.

I watched that part of the video again. The 'turbo' mode he was referring to was specifically about how fast the game loads data from the USB, and that he wanted to avoid that due to the potential of breaking games.

[Big Boss Man]

Yea, from what I ascertained when he was looking at the coding of the rom he dumped he found that if the CD-Rom was sped up it had a domino affect on other things, so if he did develop a turbo mode, say the Saturn drive originally spun at 2x or 4x and somebody wanted it at 16x to load games faster etc. then in turn that might mean it would probably throw a lot of things out of wack, even the processor since it's essentially a form of over clocking which if its not hard coded to except a faster CD-Rom speed it would probably freeze the Saturn unit up.

[Matisfaction]

I thought when he was talking about a turbo mode he was referencing overclocking which is usually used to increase frame rates etc. Not disc reading/accessing.

I watched that part of the video again. The 'turbo' mode he was referring to was specifically about how fast the game loads data from the USB, and that he wanted to avoid that due to the potential of breaking games.

He talks about the CPUs after that which is probably what threw me a little , I missed some in between because someone was talking over the audio, I really should invest in a set of headphones.

[Calavera]

I may have went a little overboard here, but it is 7AM and I was bored!

So it has been nearly 4 years since that video was uploaded and still nothing. I notice the description of the video was updated in February 2017 to include his Patreon link.

www.patreon.com/prof_abrasive

If you go to his Patreon you will see he is one of those people who hides how much money he actually receives. I don't think Patreon should have ever allowed that option. To me that just says "I don't want you to see the large amount of money I'm getting because if you knew how much it was you'd be less willing to donate" He currently has 1,211 patrons. The membership levels are $1,$5 and $10. Lets say the donations average out to $5 (although it is probably higher than that) That would mean he is currently receiving about $6,000 per month. I went to graphtreon.com to look at his patron history since it was started. I ended making a list of how many patrons he had for each month since the beginning. Note I rounded the monthly numbers down to be conservative.

I said an average of $5 but lets be even more conservative. Lets say in 2017 the average was $3. 2018 was $4 then 2019 and 2020 is $5.

Here are the numbers if you are interested.
https://textuploader.com/14hkj

So adding all those very conservative numbers together brings up to $87,840 so lets just round that to $90,000. So at the very least this guy has received $90,000 to fund this project. Realistically it is probably over $100k. So almost 4 years and $100,000 later and there is still no finished product. Now I'm no expert in what it takes to produce something like this but in 2016 he already had a working prototype according to the video. I realize it probably still needed to be tweaked a bit before it was ready to go but 4 years of time and $100,000? That seems like more than enough time and way way more than enough money.

I see two things being possible.

1. The whole thing is a scam. The video is fake and he never had a VCD USB loader card for the Saturn and this whole thing was created because he knew retro gamers would throw money at it.

2. The cards are all finished and ready to be shipped out and have been for awhile. But he doesn't want to release it yet since he is getting such a large monthly payment from Patreon. Once the card is released the number of Patrons will most likely severely drop. So he is holding out on releasing them as long as he can. With him getting around $6,000 a month and the number seems to be increasing every month why release it? At this point he could probably give away a 100 or more of them and still be far ahead on profits. Now that he sees what a big interest there is and how much money people are throwing at him when/if it does finally release it will probably be pretty high priced. I'm thinking $150 minimum.

There is a third option but I find it unlikely. He is actually still working on the project and it somehow is taking a long time to finalize a working prototype and is costing much more then he expected. I don't see this being all that possible though unless he found out that the boards need to be made from gold to work properly!


So what do you think? Will this thing ever be released? Is he having trouble turning into a finished product? Or is he holding off on releasing it as long as the Patreon money is rolling in?

[Dr. Zoidberg]

It's coming.

[Calavera]

Good to see an update on it but why did it take 4 years and nearly $100k to get it to this "beta" model. This beta version seems no different than the prototype from almost 4 years ago! Maybe the circuit board is cleaned up but asides from the that it still runs the same menu software and is just now in a plastic shell. I think it will still be a long wait until this is released and it will be very expensive. If he is waiting to release to milk as much Patreon money as he can I don't blame him! I would too.

How much would you be willing to pay for one of these? There can't be much cost in the physical unit itself. I know he spent a lot of time cracking the system and figuring out how to build such a device but I'd say the $100k more than covers the cost of his time. I think $50 would be a pretty fair price but I'm not counting on it. It will probably be a minimum of $150 and will sell out immediately then go for $330+ on Ebay.

[ian]

I would pay a MAX of 100 AUD, and MAX 50 AUD shipping.
Any more than $150 AUD, and it’s a complete rip off and I may as well get a fake Rhea/Phoebes.

Of course that’s for the final product.

[Manoel]

Great analysis Calavera, but in some cases (obviously not this one), people don't want to disclose how much money they make because they actually don't receive anything.

When I tried running a Patreon for my engine work, I only got a single patron, who donated only a monthly US$ 4. I was so ashamed, that I deleted the page without receiving anything and never tried crowdfunding again.

[melancholy]

I’d pay $200 for it.

And I don’t care how much the guy is making, primarily because it’s voluntary. The guy throws up a Patreon page and people are free to donate whatever they want. There’s nothing that says ‘this project will get done only if you donate,’ it simply says that donating helps with development.

So what if a bunch of people want to throw some money at this guy? They know the same things you do Cal and still choose to donate. They know that this could all be snake oil and they still choose to donate. They even know that the money they are donating will not go to a finished product and guess what? They still choose to donate. Why is it his responsibility to stop people from giving him too much money?

[Manoel]

Not sure if I'm correct but didn't the Saturn have the hardware capability to port the Sega arcade game directly so essentially you got the arcade version of Daytona instead of the normal port.

You're thinking about the Dreamcast. The DC was developed alongside the Naomi arcade board, and uses nearly identical hardware.

The Saturn was very different from the Model 2 arcade boards that Sega used at the time, and the first Daytona port suffered as a result.

[Stormwatch]

The ST-V, on the other hand, was the arcadified Saturn.
http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=711