Would you like a "Dreamcast Classic Mini"?

[Verderame]

So, Nintendo announced today the Nintendo Classic Mini, a mini-replica of the Nes, with an hdmi port and 30 classic games built in (unfortunately, no orignal game cartridges and controllers supported, no sd port).



Would you like a Dreamcast Classic Mini? Imagine that: a reproduction of the original console with an hdmi port and a selection of old classics. I would even like some kind of online store. What else would you like to see in it?

Do you think it would be tecnically feasible? Is it too early for 3d consoles mini reproductions? Would it be too expensive?

Honestly, my actual dream would be a Saturn one, but i know, almost nobody cares about the SS and barely anyone would buy it.

[Ziming]

There is someone at assemblergames redesigning the Dreamcast motherboard. The same person responsible for making the new hdmi cable for the Dreamcast. Found this comment about it in one of his videos:

It's not specifically due to the patents expiring. It just so happened that I'd already started on the pinout for the Holly chip a few years ago when I did those tests on the NAOMI...

http://assemblergames.com/l/threads/nao ... ect.48293/

We already had the VA0 schematics that "l_oliveira" so kindly uploaded many years ago, but I was trying to confirm every pin on the Holly chip against the real NAOMI board (because it's quite hard to read some of the numbers on the VA0 schematic.)

I started looking at that stuff again the other day for whatever reason, mentioned it to Mr [RDC], and it turns out that he'd already done a fair bit of work on it too. lol

So, in only a matter of days, he has already stripped down the VA0, VA1, and even the VA2.1 DC motherboards, and made completely re-drawn PDF schematics for each version, including all of the passive components. :o (that was while he was still working on some stuff for the HDMI boards btw - he's a machine. lol)

The new DC motherboard will have to use the Holly chip, as I haven't seen anywhere which sells new-old stock chips that still have the BGA balls etc.

You can buy the SH4 "new" on AliExpress etc. but since we'd be pinching the Holly chip off an original board anyway, we might as well use the whole lot. That does mean getting the chips re-balled, or doing that ourselves, but it will be worth it.

We're looking to get the first board made as a "stock" spec one, just so we're sure that everything is working 100%, and then we can move on to making designs with added features.

I believe [RDC] has already added the footprints for the extra RAM chips though, so that will introduce the possibility of future NAOMI cart / "GD" emulation on a separate add-on board (kind of like the GD-Emu, but the games will likely get loaded from SD / USB into a chunk of SDRAM first.)

Most NAOMI carts do have some "encryption", but all of that seems to have been cracked now, and the info is in the MAME sources.

I never actually tried running a cart from the FPGA when I had it hooked up that time, as I'd moved on to the HDMI project and other things by then.

It did at least let me figure out some of the basic address decoding and connector pinouts on the NAOMI though, and [RDC] will be stripping down a NAOMI board soon to do the full schematic for that as well. :o

With the new DC board, we should be able to put faster RAMs on there too, so may get a little bit more of an overclock out of it. The thought of doing the widescreen / 60 FPS patches on many games, and patching them for slightly higher-res video output will be great.

(if that's doable? - I know KallistiOS has a working "800x600" code example, so that will at least give a bit of a boost to the output resolution compared to 640x480.)

I did do most of the schematics and PCB layout for a new N64 motherboard too, but I never finished it 100%, nor actually sent of for any PCBs to be made. It would be funny to stack the boards in the same system, and then have a console that could play DC, N64, and NAOMI games loaded from SD card, and with up-scaling HDMI / Component output. lol

It does all sound a bit crazy atm, but I'm confident that [RDC] will have the new motherboard PCB layout done within the coming weeks. Right now though, we're absolutely determined to get these HDMI boards released this year.

http://assemblergames.com/l/threads/seg ... ost-884648

[Sonikku]

For $60 this is a good deal considering the games included and what the big N price gouges for in the eshop. The problem is I suspect the emulation will be shit. I'll keep my top loader.

[Verderame]

I bet it will be some kind of modified Wii hardware that will just run already available Virtual Console games.

It probably cost less to buy this thing than all the 30 games on eshop, i think, so it's a decent deal at least.

[BlueMue]

A great idea from Nintendo. This thing will probably sell like hot cakes. I've been saying to myself for a long some time that Nintendo (and Sega) should do something like this. I personally thought more of a "rebuilt" system that takes the original cartridges and controllers but this is still a nice thing. I'll probably get one if the emulation is allright.

Sega should start with a Mega Drive Mini. I don't see the possibility for a Dreamcast like this yet. The emulation still takes too much processing power and is too glitchy. Also putting something like 30 games on it would take a lot of memory and while that is not so costly it still seems unreasonable to have that much used storage on there.

A rebuilt system with games on locked SD cards would make more sense but it could be expensive to copy the specific hardware of the Dreamcast. I'm anxious to see how that costum designed board is going to turn out but I bet it would cost around 100 alone, not to mention the work you gotta put in to transfer everything from you Dreamcast over there... a soldering nightmare. An already outfitted board would probably be like 200.

[RyoHazuki84]

For Dreamcast (and/or Saturn), I just want to play games that I already own.

[Verderame]

Well, this is actually nothing new, and we already had more than one "Megadrive Mini" (even portable ones if i recall) in the past years, with cartridge support, old controllers and an sd card reader, too bad the compatibility list was incomplete and the emulation's quality wasn't great.




The principal difference is that those were just cheaply made licensed products, while the NES Mini will be a full fledged official Nintendo machine, with presumably better build quality (i wouldn't be so sure about it tho ).

[BlueMue]

The principal difference is that those were just cheaply made licensed products, while the NES Mini will be a full fledged official Nintendo machine, with presumably better build quality (i wouldn't be so sure about it tho ).

Excatly. A "real" one has the be made by Sega or at least sold directly under their brand. Those cheap mini systems are pretty awful and dimensions away from having HDMI.