USB GDrom Thread

Anyone know where to order these from?
or what wait time/ETA is like on these?

 

What's the verdict on the newest firmware? Does the HDD file fix the errors people were having at first?

 

Newest firmware seems to break overclock compatibility in official games.

Other than that the firmware is working well with CDI and GDI images (The 20 or so that I have used).

 

I made a video showing the MNEMO board if anyone was wondering what it looked like, installed it and soldered the open lid switch to it.

 

I wanted to share my latest adventures in the USB GD-ROM install. I've been running it for some time now off a small USB Flash drive, but got tired of having to swap games on it due to limited space.
I had an old Hitachi 2.5" SATA hard drive from a macbook laying around with 100gig of space that I figured I'd use for this. This was perfect since there are only about 50gigs worth of games I'd actually want on my DC, and I wasn't interested in installing the entire library onto it.

Recently I picked up a Vantech USB 3.0 to 2.5" SATA Hard Drive Adapter to connect the drive to the USB GDROM. This is one of the passive ones that uses a single USB connection and powers through the 5v line.

First thing I did was wipe the drive clean, formatted it with the fat32format program people have linked here, and installed Soul Calibur on it as my test game.
At first, when I connected it to my DC and powered-up the system froze at the DC Logo screen. I thought "oh no, the drive is corrupted", but after removing the USB extension cord I was using, the console booted through the logo screen then onto a black screen with "No Fat32 File System Found".
I thought perhaps my drive wasn't properly formatted. So after a few attempts at re-formatting with different allocation sizes, and verifying it was a Primary drive, nothing seem to work. Then I noticed in my Disk Management that there was an EFI System partition that was a remnant of the Macbook install. Apparently it's a hidden drive separate from the main file system for the OS to use on boot-ups or firmware installing. Since it's the first sectors on the drive, I'm assuming the USB GDROM looked at it and failed to initialize because it wasn't the same file system.
Window's Disk Management program wasn't allowing me to remove this partition normally, so I had to look into a more hardcore solution. Luckily Windows comes with a command line program called `diskpart`, which allowed me to select and remove that partition.
After doing so, and reformatting one more time, I now have a working healthy 100gig harddrive installed into my Dreamcast. I couldn't be happier!
Hope this helps some people out. (sorry if it's already been covered in the thread. It's a pretty long one and i didn't read every single post to find this info)

 

Anybody have an interest of trading. I would like to have an internal USB connector. My has the external usb w/ lid switch installed.

 

Just wanted to let everyone know about a new Fat32 formatter I found. Perfect for Rhea, GDemu and USB-GDROM
MiniAide
http://www.miniaide.com/
There is a free version which has now replaced the programs suggested on GDemu, Rhea and USB-GDROM threads.
Fat32Formatter and GUIFormat are lacking and often work intermittently.
MiniAide really comes into its own when using SD cards above 32gb.

Just sharing the knowledge.

 

You managed to fit it inside your Dreamcast? can I see photos of how you accomplished this? my 2.5 HD won't fit. Cheers

 

I have always used Rufus, best format and boot tool available. Worked perfectly for me with GDEMU and USB-GDROM...

http://rufus.akeo.ie/

Ted.

 

For me the best version in the external USB.

 

Getting it to fit inside is going to be my next challenge.

 

Don't think it's so easy. Maybe with either a pico psu or cutting away at the top case. My next task is to install the lid switch or a button for reset and then trying to get the HDD to fit somehow. Thinking about a pico psu, but not sure I have he skill to do that.

 

looks like mnemo got more boards so there should be more changes to buy soon

 

Yeah, unfortunately I think the only way to do it is to cut away the top piece a bit so the drive sits on top of the USB-GDROM. It's the only way I could see it fit. I'm not opposed to modifying the case though, so I might try this out. This Dreamcast is never going back to the original GD-ROM, so there isn't a point of keeping the top piece under the hood intact for that original drive. I'll have to do some test measurements, but for now I'm enjoying playing games too much!