/vr/ - Retro Games

>>9961336
Get 2 MODEs

GDEMU clones used to be cheap. They definitely aren't worth the prices they go for now. I'd say go with a MODE since I own two and have had zero issues on Saturn or Dreamcast.

>>9961343
GDEMU clones aren't all that expensive now. Are there any major issues with the v5.20.5 ones?

>>9961348
They used to be around 60 bucks now they go for 130. That's way too much for a Chinese knockoff.

>>9961352
I can get a v5.20.5 one for $90

Hmm, I get it, but I also don't get it. At the point you're ripping out the disc drive, why not just emulate or get a Mister? Is it more comfy because its OG hardware or is it just cheaper? Or is it a CRT thing?

>>9961392
I have autism.

Put a hard drive in your Dreamcast instead

>>9961405
Too much of a brainlet for that.

>>9961348
>GDEMU clones aren't all that expensive now
allegedly they were 20-40 bucks on aliexpress not too long ago.
Now they're 120-160.
Granted the value is what you're willing to spend in a way but still annoying as fuck to see.

>>9961336
get a gdemu for the DC and use burned discs + a pseudo saturn kai on the other

>>9961392
>Or is it a CRT thing
Real Dreamcast hardware is redundant even for that purpose when you can connect your PC to a CRT TV

>>9961336
GDEMU is complete trash, clones doubly. Mode is very nice but also a bit over priced. If you’re patient there seems to be a Pico solution in the works, but who knows how that will turn out.
Even if you go for a Mode, consider how much of a pain in the ass it will be to switch it between the Dreamcast and Saturn each time. Fenrir and Satiator are both very good alternatives.

>>9961392
>Is it more comfy because its OG hardware or is it just cheaper? Or is it a CRT thing?
DC is where there's kind of no point in not emulating when there are great shaders for any CRT and it's got nearly perfect emulation on anything these days.
BUT the novelty of the OG hardware is great. Those little virtual memory cards are fun to mess around with and having VGA out in 480p still looks amazing even on new flat panels.

Fenrir is better for Saturn, MODE is better for DC.

>>9961336
I have a MODE for both and they're pretty awesome. For the Saturn make sure to turn off fast boot and in game reset cause those can cause compatibility issues with some games.

>Burned CDs for Dreamcast
>PSK cart and burned CDs for Saturn
It's that easy

>>9962213
Not all of us are thirdies.

>>9962216
If you weren't a poorfag you'd be buying the games

>>9962213
the burned discs for dreamcast is a poor solution
>missing audio
>compressed assets
>not GDi (cdr instead)

the file size limitations are different brother
>>9961336
get a clone gdemu
however be prepared to fiddle with it
mine is pretty finnicky but so far has worked

>>9961336
The MODE works but it's fucking expensive and you'd constantly have to physically swap it between consoles if you only have one. That's why everybody recommends fenrir and GD clone, cheaper for the same practical functionality.

>>9962243
No one wants to have to deal with dying laser on already old consoles. Your real games are going to be pointless when it dies.

>>9962695
Replacement lasers aren't expensive or hard to come by

>>9962703
Still way more of a hassle to deal with. Together with the shorter loading times and zero cdrom noise, ODEs are still a better idea overall.

What size SD card will I need for the 15 games I will be playing between the two consoles? I might have to throw my consoles and burned disks into the trash if the lasers stop working

>>9962843
With MODE it supports either sata hard drives or SD card. So if you have an older HD you can put it in there.

>>9962848
Oh sweet I got one of those in the closet. Should do the job ez. Thanks

>>9961336
For Saturn get a Fenrir or Satiator. MODE is just overpriced and it really brings nothing of value to the Saturn. The Saturn's power supply was never intended to power a HDD so putting one in it can actually lead to damaging it over time. The menu is slow and clunky because again it was made more with the Dreamcast in mind and it takes a lot longer for the Saturn to load those kinds of assets in and it doesn't have enough RAM to cache a bunch of them either. Throw in that it isn't 100% compatible as TerraOnion loves to claim and you have an ODE that really isn't all that great for the price.

Satiator and Fenrir aren't 100% compatible either but their devs are actively working to improve that and are more open to bug reports than TerraOnion is. At this point both Satiator and Fenrir are able to play most of the library without issues.

Anyone who supports terraonion is a nigger

>>9962909
Before Krizz made his own Turbo Everdrive PRO, terraonion's Super SD System 3 was the only way to play PC engine CD/Turbografx CD games on an ODE.

>>9962915
It was the same for TO Mega SD and Krizz's
Mega EverDrive PRO for Sega CD games. Terraonion was always one step ahead of Krizz.

>>9961336
I've got the rhea for the saturn, it works fine but you have to use cdi files while the complete and most accurate saturn set is in chd format. I haven't been able to easily convert the files, I have to resort to using 20 year old win xp computer to use a couple of programs. I think I only paid $100 for the rhea while the mode and satiator are around $250.

Satiator and mode seem to be the same price.

for ps1 they are using the pi, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9N3wWR7rV8

I'm not going to bother with DC, I only wanted to try metal slug 5.

>>9962909
I like terraonion a lot better. Who cares if you have to sign in to download updates. Go on be a krikkz beta tester then, terraonion stuff is always finished.

You just know krikkz has a cart with a built in 32x ready to go but he's just waiting to sell enough mega everdrives first.

>>996297
For saturn the new fenir duo supports all models of saturn making it the best price/performance ratio at $110.
https://shop.fenrir-ode.fr/en/23-super-fenrir-duo.html

>>9962882
Which is why they recommend soldering a power source from the PSU directly for using a hard drive with saturn for MODE.

>>9961336
There's a newer ODE releasing soon which is compatible with multiple consoles including all revisions of the Dreamcast. I say wait for that.

>>9962971
>Go on be a krikkz beta tester then, terraonion stuff is always finished.
TerraOnion's stuff isn't finished either. It's full of bugs and compatibility issues too. The difference is TerraOnion lies and says it's 100% compatible and their fanboys eat it up. Krikkz, Dr. Abrasive, and Ced are at least honest and actually respond and fix bugs when they're reported instead of trying to blame the user like TerraOnion.

>>9963042
Which even that still isn't good. The Saturn's power supply really isn't designed to provide that kind of power. The best solution is to put a replacement power supply in it that's actually designed to provide that kind of power on top of the rest of the system's needs. Which at that point that's another hidden cost that you need, when you could just get a Fenrir for half the price of a MODE or get a Satiator for about the same price and have something truly plug and play.

>>9963054
For MODE with dreamcast theres a few games that require extra patches in order to make them work that you can find on their discord. Otherwise I never had any compatibility issues with my MODE with dreamcast/saturn or with my SHDS3 for PC engine/cd games. Their only product that is definitely lacking is their PS1 support for the MODE.

>>9961336
I have a MODE on the way arriving next monday, if this thread is still alive I can give you my thoughts on it. Nevertheless I also have a Saturn and I went with a Fenrir with it. Works flawlessly, as far as I know the only issue are games that require swap without saves but even those can be handled now, so it isn't a big issue. Installation was a breeze, would recommend, bought from Castlemania, took quite some time to process my order.

>>9963076
IMO if you're looking for an ODE solution for the PS1 you're better off with an xStation if you have a compatible model or waiting for the PI solution. The installation isn't thaaat difficult as some people make it out to be, so just have to have the right tools and not be a retard when soldering/lifting the pins.

>>9963076
With Saturn they didn't actually test the entire library. They just arrogantly assumed their implementation was perfect and just worked. The problem is they took a lot of short cuts with things like the Security Ring check, not cleaning up after themselves in RAM, etc. which lead to some problems with certain games and translation patches. You can go look through their firmware updates and see there's been quite a few fixes over the years for things that didn't work, many of which didn't have an issue on any other ODE or when played from a disc.

Which if they cut corners there, I'd imagine there's more cut corners that simply haven't surfaced yet. For something priced and presented as a premium product I'd expect a lot better. Which is why I suggest getting either a Fenrir or a Satiator. Both are just as good if not better compatibility wise at this point and they're overall better products for the price you pay for them.

>>9963119
>I'd imagine there's more cut corners that simply haven't surfaced yet
It's been out for three years now dude. It's fine.

>>9963119
Which is why everything works with their latest firmware for saturn. It was only a problem with the initial one.

MODE is clearly the superior product with the most compatibility. It can go in both consoles and it just wer

>>9961336
get a satiator and a GDE clone, then tell terrasoi niggers and their shitty overpriced buggy closed firmware update trash to fuck off
or better yet wait for any of the several better DC ODEs being worked on and burn a few discs while you wait, or dare I say it, finish a game or two on the saturn

>>9963167
GDEmu still doesnt support every version of Dreamcast like MODE. Becareful what you buy.

>>9963176
And satiator is still $200 so is not much cheaper than MODE.

MODE will work in both your Saturn and your dc so it's the budget option. Who cares if some Chinese game you can't understand doesn't work due to some minor fluke or limitation.

>>9961352
>>9961430
You guys need to search better for gdemu clones. I just grabbed one a few weeks ago for $75.

>>9961526
Ignore this retard OP. Mode and GDEMU are identical and you would never know what is used if you booted a game up without saying for a retard like I am calling out here.

>>9961336
get GDEMU clone and Satiator. Fenrir had too many games it had issues loading and working with.

I'm going with a gdemu clone desu, I'll deal with the saturn ode when I get a saturn

>>9961336
Gdemu clone and fenrir is good
It’s what I have and I have zero issues

>>9963226
>Fenrir had too many games it had issues loading and working with.
Nah, you just use the proper file types and everything works
Cue/bin with tracks

>>9963204
MODE working in both is one of the dumbest gimmicks imaginable. It's just terraniggers streamlining their manufacturing process by having one SKU for two consoles and then marking up the price by pretending that this benefits the customer in any way.
As if any reasonable person is going to keep their dreamcast and saturn disassembled and swap out power and ribbon cables every time they want to go from playing one to the other. It's ridiculous.

>>9961336
Avoid TerraOnion's products, they're a bad business.

>>9963712
Yeah and the aliexpress china businesses are saints.
Look man I'm a NEET, I could hardly care less about the business practices of some western nerds.
I avoid Terraonion because their stuff is overpriced, overhyped normiebait.

>>9961526
>there seems to be a Pico solution in the works
source?

>>9963775
>Yeah and the aliexpress china businesses are saints.
both of them sell you a device to pirate games with, but the chinks aren't insecure fucks that put anti-piracy measures in their piracy device. they also don't whine about their competitors online.

>>9963794
https://hackaday.io/project/190347

i have satiator on the way
gdemu, jus bought 1/4 fuses to keep it from shorting
also have everdrive for n64 and omega flash for gba

no sf6, no ff16
jus real gamez

>>9963125
>It's been out for three years now dude. It's fine.
Have you played the entire Saturn library on it and actually played for longer than just seeing the title screen? There's new issues that get reported regularly.

It's become an annoyance to a lot of homebrew and translation patch developers because bugs will get reported that only happen on MODE and can't be reproduced on any other ODE or on a stock console booting from a disc.
>>9963141
>It was only a problem with the initial one.
One of their later firmwares broke other games because they didn't clean up after themselves in RAM. Instead of cleaning up after themselves in RAM their solution was to implement a game specific patch. So who knows what other games are impacted by things being in RAM that the game isn't expecting to be there.

>>9964776
>There's new issues that get reported regularly.
No there isn't. I've asked you before for proof when you lied about this previously and you refused to post any. Not sure why you've decided to make it your mission to lie about this ODE on /vr/ so transparently but okay.

>>9964791
>I've asked you before for proof when you lied about this previously and you refused to post any
Crash reported with latest firmware with Dracula X patch:
https://segaxtreme.net/threads/dracula-x-extended-mod-patch-by-paul_met.25022/page-7#post-182194
Issues with Grandia and the Reset Switch:
https://segaxtreme.net/threads/translating-grandia.24330/page-45#post-181104
Grandia Translation crashing at the title screen and requiring an SRAM clear:
https://segaxtreme.net/threads/translating-grandia.24330/page-47#post-183395

These were all reported after the latest firmware was released and are all MODE specific. Also this line from the firmware updates should raise a red flag:
>[SAT] Update fastboot/boot to cd game database
>[SAT] Add more games incompatible with fastboot to the internal game list

This is basically a list of games that have issues with them not cleaning up after themselves in RAM. Instead of fixing the root cause of the issue, they keep a list of games with issues and try to hack around it. So again, who knows what else is impacted by that and hasn't been reported yet.

>>9963226
Wrong. Fucking moron. Depending on the clone board it’s got issues with games like Code Veronica, Skies of Arcadia, and the Atomiswave ports. MODE doesn’t have any of these issues.
Furthermore a majority of the complaints aren’t based on how the game plays but rather the user experience of getting it set up and adding games to it. The GDEMU experience is abysmal. The only way to add games to it is to download third party software.

>>9964881
Just turn off fast boot.

>>9964898
>Just turn off fast boot.
And in doing so you're admitting that MODE is buggy and has issues. Secondly the bugs reported in the translation patch threads are not fast boot related, nor are they related to the patches since they only happen on MODE.

>>9964925
Fast boot is never a reliable feature on anything. Those threads are full of unreliable reporting too.

>>9964945
>Fast boot is never a reliable feature on anything.
The issue isn't fast booting, the issue is that TerraOnion didn't think to clear out their garbage in RAM.
>Those threads are full of unreliable reporting too.
When a user is having an issue that can only be reproduced on MODE and doesn't happen on any other ODE or when burned to an actual disc, the issue is MODE.

I'm sorry you're unable to accept you overpaid for a product that's not as good as it was advertised.

>>9964956
>When a user is having an issue that can only be reproduced on MODE and doesn't happen on any other ODE or when burned to an actual disc, the issue is MODE.
Not conclusively when they aren't even posting any checksums of the patched files they're trying to load.

>>9964963
>Not conclusively when they aren't even posting any checksums of the patched files they're trying to load.
The Grandia issues happen after the switch to the SSP format. That patcher doesn't really rely on specific rips anymore because it properly rebuilds the image from the files on the disc. If it's patching a file instead of doing a replacement, it does it's own checksum check on the specific file. If the checksum fails, the patching fails.

So if the patcher successfully patched the image, the image you got from it is good.

Secondly, in most cases they did send images or checksums to the devs through private messages and the devs were able to confirm the image was good. In other cases they tested the same image on another ODE, burnt it to a disc, or loaded it up in an emulator and again the image proved to be fine. The issues were MODE specific.

Poastin' in the Dreamcast thread
What's the easiest way to get my PAL DC connected to the internet?

>>9964980
>The issues were MODE specific
Well they're resolved now. You even use the past tense to refer to them.

>>9964987
>Well they're resolved now.
They weren't. They happened on the latest firmware.
>You even use the past tense to refer to them.
Because they were reported in the past. But they were reported after the latest firmware and were confirmed to be happening on the latest firmware. The solution given was "Go ask TerraOnion" or "Don't use MODE."

There's a reason why no one in the major Saturn communities recommends MODE. They all recommend Satiator or Fenrir instead.

>>9964986
The only way

>>9964992
>They weren't
The latest Grandia English patch specifically resolves the issue the person was having. Notably that was an issue only introduced in later versions of the patch. That Dracula X patch could be any number of things too.

>>9965013
>The latest Grandia English patch specifically resolves the issue the person was having.
No it doesn't. It addresses a completely different issue that was discovered with how the Saturn identifies bad sectors in SRAM. The issue resulted in your Saturn thinking it had less blocks available than it actually had. It wouldn't cause the game to crash or fail to get past the title screen.
>Notably that was an issue only introduced in later versions of the patch.
Again, the issue reported by the MODE user of it crashing at the title screen only happened on MODE. It didn't happen on Fenrir, Satiator, or when burnt to a disc.
>That Dracula X patch could be any number of things too.
Sure, but it's only happened on MODE so far.

Just transplanted my MODE from the Saturn to the Dreamcast. Won't need to play Saturn for at least a year and it takes 5 minutes anyway

>>9965040
>It addresses a completely different issue that was discovered with how the Saturn identifies bad sectors in SRAM
Considering the guy in the same thread fixed the crashing by clearing the systems memory it sounds like the same issue to me. How do you know it was unrelated?
>Sure, but it's only happened on MODE so far
In one instance with one of those aftermarket 4MB cards known for instability.

>>9965054
>Considering the guy in the same thread fixed the crashing by clearing the systems memory it sounds like the same issue to me.
Well it's not. The issue addressed in the later patch version is one that would have only impacted how much space your Saturn thinks it has in SRAM. It didn't cause any stability issues with the game itself. If the user was having a problem related to that issue the game wouldn't have crashed at the title screen. If anything it would have shown a screen saying "This game requires X blocks to save, you will need to free up space to save your game, do you wish to continue?".
>How do you know it was unrelated?
Because I know how that code works and what it does.
>In one instance with one of those aftermarket 4MB cards known for instability.
The person who made that patch uses one of those as his only 4MB cart, he didn't have the issue.

>>9965068
>Because I know how that code works and what it does.
Sure you do, Dunning Kruger.
>The person who made that patch uses one of those as his only 4MB cart
That doesn't make them any more reliable.

>>9965074
>Sure you do, Dunning Kruger.
The game at boot has a SegaXtreme splash screen that gets displayed. A checksum was implemented to make sure the screen's tile data wasn't altered. On the first boot it would save this to what was thought to be an unused part of SRAM, this way it could then verify in future boots if the checksum itself had been altered. If the checksum check failed, the game would reset to the CD Player, otherwise it would boot normally.

So if that process was the issue happening in that bug report, the game wouldn't get past the "Licensed by Sega" screen and would be resetting to the CD player, not crashing the system. But it was getting past that and all the way to the title screen and then crashing.

Now, the issue addressed in the later patch is related to saving the checksum in SRAM. The area that was thought to be unused was actually discovered to be used to identify bad sectors in SRAM. This was discovered by people currently decompiling the BIOS. So what writing the checksum there did was make the Saturn think certain sectors were bad, and would result in having less blocks available to save to in your total SRAM space. It wouldn't cause the game to crash, it just made the Saturn think it had less SRAM blocks than it actually had. The fix made it so that checksum no longer got written to SRAM.

If the user was having that issue, they either wouldn't have noticed unless they added up all the blocks used vs available in the Memory Manager. If it caused them to not have enough space available to save, they would have seen the screen in pic related when selecting a new game. If the issue resulted in an existing save file being marked as a bad sector, it would show up as "Save file is corrupt" in the load game screen. It would NOT have resulted in the game crashing at the title screen.

So no, it wasn't the same issue.

>That doesn't make them any more reliable.
But it also proves the cart is not the problem.

>>9965110
>So no, it wasn't the same issue
Then why did their update fix both issues?
>But it also proves the cart is not the problem
You don't know that.

You seem to be making an awful lot of assumptions about a relatively niche product based on a few forum posts.

>>9961405
How does that work, is it still Dreamshell? Does it work better now 15 years later?

>>9965121
>Then why did their update fix both issues?
It didn't. After they had to erase their SRAM to get it to stop crashing they were still running 1.1.0, not 1.1.1. If the issue was the checksum check reading something bad from SRAM it wouldn't have gotten past the "Licensed by Sega" screen and would have instead reset to the CD Player. The issue was MODE related.

>You seem to be making an awful lot of assumptions about a relatively niche product based on a few forum posts.
I help out on a lot of Saturn translation projects. I've lost count on the amount of times we've had bugs reported by MODE users that can't be reproduced by anyone else on another ODE, a burnt disc, etc. They only happen on MODE. It's gotten to the point where if a MODE user reports an odd bug that doesn't happen on a real disc, we immediately direct them to TerraOnion as it's not worth wasting our time on it.

>>9965148
>I help out on a lot of Saturn translation projects
Now I know this is 100% pure LARP.

>>9965186
>L-LARP!
Homebrew devs and translation devs shitpost on 4chan too.

MODE is the most pointless ODE for Saturn. It's not plug and play like Satiator, and everything it does Fenrir does for less money without having to remove the disc drive anymore.

>>9965223
>Homebrew devs and translation devs shitpost on 4chan too
And you're clearly not one of them.

>>9965224
And your evidence of that is?

>>9965309
I'm sure you mr. hotshot homebrew developer who has seen countless bug reports related to MODE would just so happen to only have three random public forum posts as proof of compatibility issues.

>>9965315
Most of them are posted in the SegaXtreme discord these days along with coming in through PMs. You can search that discord if you like and see quite a few bugs being reported for various translation patches and homebrew games. You can also see most of the devs being less than pleased about the device and voicing their frustrations about it.

>>9965345
I already knew you were some loser who hangs out in Discord and contributes absolutely nothing. You didn't need to confirm it further.

>>9965349
Homebrew devs and translation devs use discord too.

>>9965389
>inserts text into a game someone else reverse engineered on a public forum
I'm a developer now.

I got errors on my MODE all the damn time. I threw it in the trash and went for a cheaper solution

>>9965394

>>9965405
>does it twice
Now I'm really a developer.

>>9965407
Did you not notice the VWF?

>>9965410
Already posted in the forum thread.

>>9965417
But not the code, the build, or how to do it.

>>9965419
That's what the Discord is for. Forums are dead these days.

>>9965420
The only people in possession of the build with VWF are the devs...

>>9965423
And anyone who might be in the Discord LARPing as one of them.

>>9965428
The build hasn't been shared in the discord...

Retarded question about the saturn here:
If I'm playing like a 4M Ram cart game using one of those Pseudo kai carts, I won't be able to save directly to the cart and can only save to the internal system memory, right?
Same thing about loading saves?

>>9966337
Correct
You can only do one at a time

>>9966351
I wish we could save/load directly to a SD card using something like pic related.
But I guess it can only function the same way as Dreamshell for backing up save files.

>>9964714
sick.
should I pick up two picos for this while I can?

>>9961336
All of terraonion's shit requires bullshit DRM to function. Don't bother. Get the gdemu out of principle.

>>9966636
Not true. It ships with the latest firmware and works out of the box without any kind of registration. Updating it requires registration and the serial key though. It’s not ideal, but don’t say it’s unusable without it.

>>9966651
Don't care. DRM on a pirate device is retarded and I don't trust Spanish mongoloids

>>9966651
>Updating it requires registration and the serial key though.
That's completely retarded considering the amount of money it costs.

>>9967364
I’m pretty sure it was for protection against Chinese copies

>>9967368
That does nothing to protect against that. If someone gets their hands on one there's nothing stopping them from dumping the firmware and reverse engineering the board.

There's also the fact that Satiator's creator actively wants to avoid that happening and his solution is to just have it made entirely in the US. He doesn't lock down his firmware updates behind DRM.

>>9967432
>there's nothing stopping them from dumping the firmware and reverse engineering the board
Dunno about that, the firmware is hardware locked
Satiator isn’t copied because it’s Saturn and that’s not profitable
It’s a shitty practice but it works

>>9967512
>Dunno about that, the firmware is hardware locked
Nothing stopping you from dumping it and then reverse engineering it.
>Satiator isn’t copied because it’s Saturn and that’s not profitable
Both Saturn and Dreamcast sold the same amount of systems worldwide. If anything Saturn is more profitable in Asia because the system overall was more popular there than the Dreamcast was.

Stop making shit up to try and defend TerraOnions shitty busniess practices.

>>9967523
Seems like you’re taking this personally
You need to step back a bit anon, if you don’t want it don’t buy it and buy an alternative
>Nothing stopping you from dumping it and then reverse engineering it.
Clearly there is, because it hasn’t happened

>>9967530
>Seems like you’re taking this personally
Seems like you're defending it personally. I'm simply pointing out the DRM'd firmware updates are dumb and have no meaningful purpose. You're the one who keeps trying to justify it with reasons you're making up on the spot.
>Clearly there is, because it hasn’t happened
Doesn't mean it's not possible. Could be that there's better and cheaper products that are more worth reverse engineering.

>>9967551
I just said the purpose
You’re using “it could” as an argument means nothing as I already said “it hasn’t”
There are plenty of people that would like the HDD use on Dreamcast so there is a market
And no, the Saturn console is not as popular now as the Dreamcast

>>9965126
It's still Dreamshell. Game compatibility has improved but still isn't 100%

>>9967580
>You’re using “it could” as an argument means nothing
And your using "it hasn't" as an argument means nothing.

>And no, the Saturn console is not as popular now as the Dreamcast
The Saturn and Dreamcast both sold about 9 Million systems give or take world wide. So rarity they're about the same. Currently Dreamcasts go for about $60-$100 on Ebay depending on the condition and what's all included. Saturn's go for about $75-$125 depending on the condition and what's all included. If that's anything to go off of that would tell me Saturn is slightly more popular at the moment.

Those prices are from completed/sold listings of both American and Japanese systems in the past month.

>>9967829
nvm seems like someone made a better GUI based on dreamshell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1htXeVll43Y
Seems to have pretty good compatibility too, if you're using a hard drive, but not on SD

>>9965405
I still kinda wish someone spliced the 3DS SH script into the Saturn version, even if it's a slower game overall. I wanna go full autistic immersion with it

How is the Super HD System3 Pro these days? I have one and wanna use it for analog output but see a lot of shit aboht them online

>>9968868
it's probably the best you're going to get with the PC engine
just make sure you use cue/bin files with tracks for maximum CD compatibility
You'll also probably get the best video output with it
My only real problems with it, is that it's ugly and the SD card is annoying to remove

>>9968882
Yeah, you need tweezers to get that shit out.

>>9968910
I use a spudger

Do I have to do any additional mods to a PAL Saturn to play foreign games on it via an ODE?

>>9969441
You need to do a region mod if you want them to play right

>>9961336
For the Saturn:

> MODE
+ Best build quality
+ Fewest issues
+ Most options for storage (USB, MicroSD, or SATA)
- $100 more than a Fenrir

> Fenrir
+ Cheapest ODE
- More people seem to have issues with certain games or rips

> Satiator
+ Easiest installation (literally plug and play)
- Is the most expensive
- Takes up the VCD card slot
- Installing an ODE is easy, so you're basically paying a retard tax

> PseudoSaturn Cartridge
+ Cheapest option
+ Can get combo carts that give you direct save and 1MB /4MB RAM
- Requires you to actually burn physical CDs in the year of our Lord 2+2020+1

Get a MODE if you want the best product for the Saturn. Get a Fenrir if you can't afford a MODE. Get a PSK cart (and a job) if you can't afford a Fenrir.

>>9961336
For the Dreamcast:
> Don't bother, all of the console's best games have been ported to other consoles or the PC

>>9969791
I have a Fenrir. I used to do the PseudoSaturn. That shit killed my laser. My only issue with the Fenrir is that some of the translations are meant to use the MPEG CARD like Lunar. None of the Lunar translations work. That is the only issue.

>>9969802
What are you talking about?
The games don’t need mpeg cart, it’s optional
No ODE uses an mpeg cart, if you want it buy one

>>9962213
>Burned CDs for Dreamcast
>All the inconvenience of a physical medium
>With worse, inauthentic quality due to compressed ISOs.
Big brain manuevers, watch out.

>>9969836
Not to mention how loud the DC is
I’m glad I use a gdemu and changed the fan
Shit is silent

>>9969791
>MODE
>Best build quality
Can you give specifics on this?
>Fewest issues
This thing causes the most headaches for homebrew and patch devs due to all the corners TerraOnion cut. So I doubt that.
>Most options for storage (USB, MicroSD, or SATA)
One of which will kill your Saturn's Power Supply over time unless you shell out for a new one. Did you factor that into your cost? What about the cost of international shipping? Also you forgot to mention the retarded firmware updates having DRM in your con list.

> Fenrir
You forgot to mention the other perks like being able to be installed and work along side the CD-ROM drive without removing it. As well as WiFi support to allow loading games over your network.

>Satiator:
> Takes up the VCD card slot
Only one game requires that thing and the translation patch made it a moot point.
> Installing an ODE is easy, so you're basically paying a retard tax
So wanting a simple plug and play solution that works in any stock Saturn is a retard tax but paying almost the same for an ODE that can fry your power supply unless you shell out more for a new one is intelligent?

>Get a MODE if you want the best product for the Saturn
No, only get a MODE if you're a TerraOnion shill. Everyone else should get a Satiator or Fenrir.

>>9969802
>None of the Lunar translations work.
The Cinepak version should work just fine.

>>9969857
>This thing causes the most headaches for homebrew and patch devs due to all the corners TerraOnion cut. So I doubt that.

Sigh, it wouldn't be an ODE thread without the turboautist loser who thinks he is a "developer" (you're not) shittalking terraonion for nebulous (and made up) reasons.

Stop haunting 4chan and get a life.

>>9969857
Everyone is really excited about the whole "with Fenrir you can have a disc drive AND and ode in the same console", but no one can ever actually give a good reason why you would need a disc drive and an ode in the same console. It feels like the kind of feature that was added to be used as a bullet point, not to actually be useful to anyone.

>>9969880
>You're not a developer because I said so!
You can keep saying that all you want, it wont change the fact that I've worked on Saturn translation patches and know first hand that MODE is the ODE we get the most issues reported with.
>shittalking terraonion for nebulous (and made up) reasons.
They're not made up. They're not nebulous either. I pointed out very specific things they did wrong and the corners they cut in their implementation. I've also pointed out issues that still get reported with it.

I'm not saying it just to shittalk TerraOnion. I'm bringing it up because fanboys like you try to put the thing on a pedestal as a perfect product when it's not a perfect product. It has it's flaws as well. If you're going to shit on the other two ODEs for even the most minor things, you need to be honest about MODE too.

>>9969893
>no one can ever actually give a good reason why you would need a disc drive and an ode in the same console.
It's nice to be able to still have the option to use a disc. It also makes it pretty easy to get the system back to stock if necessary.

>>9961336
I bought a gdemu clone before they were too expensive and it's been fine

>>9964886
>Depending on the clone board it’s got issues with games like Code Veronica, Skies of Arcadia, and the Atomiswave ports. MODE doesn’t have any of these issues.
And depending on the clone board it could just as well not have any of those issues at all.
>The only way to add games to it is to download third party software.
Which works just fine and you have a few options of different programs to use if you happen to dislike one. Also you don't need third party software to set it up at all. It's just drag and drop if you know the file structure. So if the user is retarded I could see GDemu SD setup being a problem.

>>9965394
>>9965389
lmao, I could edit text like that in games 25 fucking years ago.

>>9969936
if the original game works fine on the MODE and with your patch it does not, then it is your patch that sucks. That's all there is to it.

>>9970024
Now do the Soul Hackers one with the VWF system.
>>9970030
If the patch works fine on a stock Saturn playing off a disc, and on MODE it does not, then it is your ODE that sucks. That's all there is to it.

desu I've had a modchip and AR cart in my saturn for a long time before the first ODEs became a thing. Most of the stuff I'd ever want I already have burned to CD-Rs.

That said if I were to ever go for something else, I'd get a satiator. Having a simple plug-and-play that doesn't require removal of the disc drive itself is ideal.

>>9969936
1.) You will never be a real developer.
2.) You will never be a real woman.

>>9970223
>1.) You will never be a real developer.
Already am a real developer. Do embedded software for a living, do Saturn homebrew and hacks for fun.
>2.) You will never be a real woman.
Thank god. I'm quite happy being a man.

What other meme responses do you have?

>>9970272
Yet your only evidence against MODE is random public forum posts.

>>9970272
You're not a developer. You're a script kiddie at best.

>>9970276
Most of them are likely made by him. There's a guy who spends 20 hours a day on reddit and discord and literally all he ever talks about is how MODE is bad, but the only reasons he ever gives is "my shitty patches didn't work on it", even though like >>9970030 says the original games work fine on it. The guy has made optical drive emulators for a 30 year old console his entire personality, and it's absolutely equal parts pathetic and sad.

>>9970101
Plug and play is nice, but honestly dude installing an ODE is not difficult. If you can follow basic instructions you can install a MODE or a Satiator. All you need is a room temperature IQ and a screwdriver and you're good to go.

I had a modchip in my first Saturn, it was one of those oldass Racketboy chips that were like $15 back in the day (this would have been like 2002 or 2004, somewhere in there I think). I didn't even solder the thing to the power supply, I just pressed the leads from the two wires into the right slots in the PSU and the pressure from the pins kept them in place lol. He was even nice enough to let me pay him an extra $8 to get a burned DVD with a bunch of .isos of Saturn games since my internet connection was shit back then. I remember there was all of this debate as to whether Alcohol 120% or Nero was the better burning program, whether or not it was important to burn at 2x, etc etc. I had an entire CD binder that was filled with games that were burned on shitty Memorex CDRs with their titles written in black sharpie. Good times.

>>9970276
>Yet your only evidence against MODE is random public forum posts.
Because that's where some of this shit gets reported? It also gets reported in public discords as well as in private messages. They were also getting reported on TerraOnions forums, but they went and shut those down for some reason...

When I get a bug report for an issue in a patch and I can't reproduce the issue at all using my Satiator or on a burned disc, I generally come to the conclusion that it's something with how the user is trying to play it. Majority of the time that boils down to either a bad burn, a Chinesium Pseudo Saturn Cart, or they're using MODE. I've yet to get one that was exclusive to Satiator or Fenrir. Those two generally reflect how the game plays on an actual disc.

>>9970338
>Y-You're not a developer!
You can keep saying that all you want. Won't make it true.
>Most of them are likely made by him.
No, but they do get reported to me
> but the only reasons he ever gives is "my shitty patches didn't work on it", even though like >>9970030 says the original games work fine on it.
And as >>9970071 stated, if the patch works when burned to a disc, but has issues on MODE, it's not the patch. It's MODE.

>>9970359
>Because that's where some of this shit gets reported?
You said "I've lost count on the amount of times we've had bugs reported by MODE users that can't be reproduced by anyone else on another ODE" yet your only evidence is a handful of rather benign forum posts. You suck at spreading FUD about a competing product or whatever you're trying to do.

>>9970359
>Those two generally reflect how the game plays on an actual disc.

Which is why plebbit is filled with people having problems with their satiator and fenrir, right? Give me a fuckin' break, dude. You're a script kiddie whose shitty fanpatch didn't work on a MODE one time two years ago and ever since then you have been eternally assblasted about it. Grow up already.

>>9970367
He's making shit up to try and not lose an argument after being btfo/presented with facts, he does this all the time. Literally every single ODE conversation I see on /vr/ or reddit it's the same guy popping in claiming to be a "developer" and talking shit about one of the ODEs for some reason. Literally every single one.

>>9961336
You beautiful bastard. I knew about gdemu on dreamcast (got one) but I didn't know about the Fenrir for Saturn.

>>9970367
>your only evidence is a handful of rather benign forum posts.
Those are the easiest ones to link here. There's plenty more in the SegaXtreme discord. We had about 2-3 people come in around September-October having issues with Grandia that were MODE specific.
>>9970379
>Which is why plebbit is filled with people having problems with their satiator and fenrir, right?
When it comes to the games I've done translation patches for those two do generally reflect how the games play on a disc.
>You're a script kiddie whose shitty fanpatch didn't work on a MODE one time two years ago and ever since then you have been eternally assblasted about it.
And what shitty fanpatch would that be? Because I've done quite a few different patches at this point and just about each one has had a MODE specific issue pop up at one point or another that didn't happen on an actual disc. Each time when it's been dug into it's ended up being something that MODE was doing wrong that needed fixed.

And I'm not the only one who's had that experience.
>Literally every single ODE conversation I see on /vr/ or reddit
Sounds like you spend more time on reddit than I do. I haven't really been on there for a while.

>>9970412
>We had about 2-3 people come in around September-October having issues with Grandia that were MODE specific
Stop the presses, a fan translation had a maximum of three reported issues almost a year ago. Supposedly, not like you can take screenshots or anything. Or describe the issue in any sort of detail.

>>9970412
>Because I've done quite a few different patches at this point

What patches have you "worked on"? Name them or shut the hell up you larper.

>>9970419
One person had the game crashing at the title screen, another had both the JP version and the Patched version having severe flickering issues when playing it on a MODE. Other games didn't have those issues, and the issues couldn't be recreated on anything but a MODE. One of them also posted it on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SegaSaturn/comments/x8egrr/is_this_graphical_glitch_supposed_to_happen_in/

>>9970425
I posted screenshots from two of them already.

>>9970445
Once again pure coincidence that your evidence is something anybody could find on a web search and not one of the countless messages you personally received while debugging your world famous homebrew.

>>9970454
Here's where he reported it in the discord server

>>9970454
>>9970457
Here's the crashing one.

>>9970457
>>9970460
Did you really make it your life's mission to seethe over MODE because your shitty translation had issues one year ago? Realistically what do you expect TerraOnion to do? Push out an update because your patch doesn't work? What kind of sense does that make?

>>9970493
>Did you really make it your life's mission to seethe over MODE
No, I simply pointed out the truth in this thread when I saw someone claiming it's perfect. It's not perfect, it has flaws like any other in development ODE.
>Realistically what do you expect TerraOnion to do?
I'd expect them to try and get their product to behave the same way an actual disc behaves. If issues are happening on their product that don't happen on an actual disc, the issue is their product.
>Push out an update because your patch doesn't work?
I'd expect them to put out a patch to fix a problem in their ODE if one is reported. That's basic product support.

>>9970509
>I'd expect them to put out a patch to fix a problem in their ODE if one is reported.
If it was an issue with a retail game I would agree but expecting someone to update their device to make your ghetto hack work is unreasonable.

>>9970517
>If it was an issue with a retail game I would agree
One of those issues was happening with the unpatched Japanese version.
>but expecting someone to update their device to make your ghetto hack work is unreasonable.
If the "ghetto" hack works when burned to an actual disc as well as running on other ODE's like the Satiator, the issue isn't in the "ghetto" hack.

>>9970521
>the issue isn't in the "ghetto" hack.
Yet the actual game works just fine, curious.

>>9970523
>Yet the actual game works just fine, curious
Yet other ODEs and running it from an actual disc works just fine, curious.

>>9970525
https://www.reddit.com/r/SegaSaturn/comments/wvdnx9/satiator_saturn_grandia_translation_not_booting/
Your hack is so ghetto you tell people to wipe their SRAM to make it work, even on the Satiator. I thought you said that was a MODE issue?

>>9970534
That's a completely different and unrelated issue which was explained here. >>9965110

>>9970541
How many issues is your ghetto patch going to have exactly? Seems like it's a miracle it works at all.

>>9970457
>>9970460
Holy shit, TWO people had problems? And you did zero troubleshooting whatsoever? You didn't ask where they got the .iso that they patched? You just blamed the hardware? LOL, how sad. If it truly was the MODE that was at fault than don't you think more than two people would have mentioned that they were having issues?

So which of these two dumbshits are you, trekkiesunite or knightofdragon? I want to make sure I know so I can make sure you get btfo on discord just like you're currently getting btfo on 4chan.

>>9970534
This "developer" is a total clown, he immediately jumps to it being a hardware issue even though it's clearly his "programming" skill (or, more accurately, complete lack thereof).

>>9970552
>How many issues is your ghetto patch going to have exactly?
At this point? None to my knowledge. If anything get's reported that's an actual issue with my code I'll take the time to fix it. That's what actual good devs do when bugs get reported.
>>9970556
>And you did zero troubleshooting whatsoever?
I did do troubleshooting.
>You didn't ask where they got the .iso that they patched?
That's no longer relevant with the SSP format.
>You just blamed the hardware?
I did because they confirmed they had patched it correctly using the patcher themselves.
>If it truly was the MODE that was at fault than don't you think more than two people would have mentioned that they were having issues?
Kind of hard to see how many people are reporting issues when none of that info is public.
>TELL ME WHO YOU ARE SO I CAN HARASS YOU!
lol
>he immediately jumps to it being a hardware issue even though it's clearly his "programming" skill
If that was the case the issue would be happening on an actual disc and other ODEs. Above all it would be reproducible on setups other than MODE.

If given the opportunity, would you guys agree to share a pizza and enjoy sonic adventure 2 multiplayer mode over a case of beers?

>>9970576
You claim they patched the disc image, but you didn't try and figure out where they got the disc image from? You just assumed they patched it correctly because they "confirmed" that they did? Wow, you're stupid and extremely defensive of your shoddy work. No wonder your fanpatches have so many problems with them. Maybe its time for you to admit that you're nowhere near as skilled as you think you are, eh?

>>9970576
>That's what actual good devs do when bugs get reported.
Do good devs also tell people to wipe SRAM to make their hack work?

>>9970585
I mean sure I guess, but you're gonna have to grab a case of Bud Light if trekkiesunite or knighofdragon are gonna be there

(just kidding, they're not old enough to drink, plus its a schoolnight)

>>9970587
>You claim they patched the disc image, but you didn't try and figure out where they got the disc image from?
Because that's not an issue anymore with the SSP format
>You just assumed they patched it correctly because they "confirmed" that they did?
The patcher is pretty much idiot proof.
> Wow, you're stupid and extremely defensive of your shoddy work.
Not as defensive as you are of TerraOnions shoddy work.
> No wonder your fanpatches have so many problems with them.
It works fine on an actual disc and on other ODEs.
>>9970593
>Do good devs also tell people to wipe SRAM to make their hack work?
When the issue is due to data in SRAM causing a checksum to fail, yes.

>>9965110
>The game at boot has a SegaXtreme splash screen that gets displayed. A checksum was implemented to make sure the screen's tile data wasn't altered. On the first boot it would save this to what was thought to be an unused part of SRAM, this way it could then verify in future boots if the checksum itself had been altered. If the checksum check failed, the game would reset to the CD Player, otherwise it would boot normally.

This was shitty amateur coding and you never should have done it in the first place. No wonder it caused problems.

>>9970602
>When the issue is due to data in SRAM causing a checksum to fail, yes.
The retard tier checksum you implemented btw.

>>9970604
Well the code itself was fine and worked. The issue was if something was in that area of SRAM it failed the check. As I said it was thought that area was unused so we figured it was an issue with SRAM not being properly formatted. It was only after people were decompiling the BIOS that we discovered that area was used for marking bad sectors in SRAM. So we immediately released an update that removed that part of the process.
>>9970615
Well, the checksum itself wasn't the issue. It was saving it to SRAM. Which I admit that was my bad and it's since been removed now that we know what that area is used for. At the time though we thought it was unused and formatting SRAM solved the issue because it cleared out that area.

>>9970639
So uh what exactly is your issue with MODE then? You admit the problem was entirely caused by your own genius programming decisions.

>>9970585
Honestly? I'd rather stay home and play a good game while drinking rum than waste gas money to go play an autist game and hang out with an adult who enjoys a children's cartoon of a game. I'm going to be 30 soon and at this age I'm done with manbaby friends.

>>9970639
> Well the code itself was fine and worked, the issue is it didn't work

Do you even think about what you are posting?

>>9970656
>I'm going to be 30 soon and at this age I'm done with manbaby friends.

>>9970653
>So uh what exactly is your issue with MODE then?
My issue is more with the fan base who goes around saying it's perfect when it's not.
>You admit the problem was entirely caused by your own genius programming decisions.
I admit to the specific issues related to my code. The MODE issues were not related to my code.
>>9970658
>Do you even think about what you are posting?
Do you understand what was being said? The code was fine, the flaw was the assumption that the area of SRAM was unused.

There's about 0x40 bytes at the top of SRAM before the actual first block of savable memory. The BIOS uses this to flag what it deems to be bad sectors in SRAM. This wasn't known until people started decompiling the BIOS. If your Saturn has no bad SRAM sectors, this area will be all 0s. Every Saturn we checked had 0s here so we assumed the area was unused. So the code was made with the assumption that a read from there should bring back 0s unless a checksum had been written there previously.

The issue wasn't the code, the issue was the assumption we had made about that region of memory.

>>9970676
>My issue is more with the fan base who goes around saying it's perfect when it's not
Quite a change in tone from "I've lost count on the amount of times we've had bugs reported by MODE users that can't be reproduced by anyone else on another ODE".
>I admit to the specific issues related to my code
I'm gonna have to doubt your ability to accurately assess the quality of your own or anyone else's programming after reading the other half of your post.

I've played translations on MODE that couldn't even boot. Mailed it back and went cheaper

>>9970691
>Quite a change in tone
How is that a change in tone? The fans claim it's perfect. Someone mentions it's not. Fans demand evidence, the evidence is the amount of times I've had bugs reported by MODE users.
>I'm gonna have to doubt your ability to accurately assess the quality of your own or anyone else's programming after reading the other half of your post.
When a crash happens that you can't reproduce on a burned copy, an emulator with a debugger, other ODEs, etc. and it's in a part of the game where nothing you changed is active, it's most likely not you're code or changes.

The checksum code happened after the Sega Screen before the Splash screen appears. If you saw the splash screen that code had already executed and was no longer active. After the splash screen that code got cleared out and was no longer in memory to impact anything else. So if you got to the logo screens, the FMV, the title screen, etc. that code is no longer in memory and can't be the cause of those issues.

>>9970676
> the code was fine, it just didn't work

lol, keep digging yourself deeper

>>9970715
>the evidence is the amount of times I've had bugs reported by MODE users.
All two times for your buggy ass hack that has plenty of reports from non MODE users too. The horror. With such a low sample size it's incredibly dumb to assume your programming is perfect and it's an issue with MODE.

>>9970715
So far it doesn't look like anyone is saying the MODE is "perfect", they're just calling you out on your very weird anti-mode bias and very unprofessional attitude regarding handling criticism of the shaky quality of your code (as has been evidenced multiple times so far).

>>9970715
>Fans demand evidence, the evidence is the amount of times I've had bugs reported by MODE users.

Two users have reported issues, and you did literally zero investigation, instead you immediately assumed your code wasn't the problem and blamed the hardware.

>>9970695
I bought a MODE for my Saturn a couple years back and have had zero issues with any of the translations I've played:

> Grandia
> Vandal Hearts
> Ninpen Manmaru
> Castle of Illusion (I didn't play Quack Shot)
> Policenauts
> Shining Force III
> Bulk Slash

All worked fine with a single exception: Literally the only time I ever ran into a problem was with the SotN English translation, but that was before the patch was finished and people were testing it (the game was crashing for everyone after beating Beezelbub). Once the translation was finished I beat the game again with Alucard, Richter, and got part of the way through with Mariah with zero problems.

The only issue I ever had with a non english patched game was Alien Trilogy, which wouldn't boot until I turned on auto region patching (that game has NTSC and PAL support in the same release, and you can switch between them).

I guess what I'm trying to say here is pic related.

>>9962909
N words don't have enough money to do that.

>>9962971
>I like terraonion a lot better. Who cares if you have to sign in to download updates.

The whole complaint about having to register your ode to get firmware updates is pretty dumb. They explain why they do it, it's because they don't want to have to waste time troubleshooting firmware issues for people who buy cheap Chinese clones (like what happened with the GDEMU guy).

It's not like firmware updates are something you have to do on a regular basis, it's a mature product and they ship each one with the latest firmware. I bought mine in September of 2020 and since then there have been two firmware updates total, one of which was entirely skippable for Saturn users unless you wanted to use a >2TB hard drive.

>>9965389
>>9965405
Holy shit this is cringe.

>>9969839
The DC's jet engine fan and manual transmission grinding noise disc drive are part of its charm. Honestly the biggest change I noticed when I put a GDEMU into my Dreamcast was how much lighter it felt without the GD-ROM drive in there. If I got one of those tiny replacement PSUs it would be even lighter.

fenrir and satiator stinks

>>9970676
>The issue wasn't the code, the issue was the assumption we had made about that region of memory.
Devil's advocate here. It's hard to make assumptions about code you can't examine. Just because it crashed MODE doesn't mean MODE has a bug. When you have bad data, all sorts of crazy can happen and let's say for the sake of argument the values you had in the block map do TWO things 1) mess with the free space count and 2) cause buffer overflows that cause writes to bad addresses
On Fenrir, Satiator, CD-R, those writes don't do anything but on MODE they are accessible hardware addresses for communication with the hardware. By putting bad data in the SRAM you inadvertently caused the block map manager in BIOS to write to MODE registers and crashed the system.
Now, I don't have a horse in this race, I don't have any of these ODEs, I don't care if MODE is godlike or dogshit, I just do failure analysis for a living and often have to tell juniors that just because A fails when B and C are fine doesn't mean A has a problem. You always have to check A isn't simply the canary in the coal mine indicating your testing method is flawed.

>>9961343
how much is a MODE?
>>9961353
>>9963226
That's still too expensive imo.

I'm not blowing $100+ on any of these until my disc laser dies.

>>9971113
That's fair, as long as you have some other method of playing backups. The only people who actually pay the grossly overinflated prices that physical Saturn games are going for these days are profoundly retarded retro "collectors" (consoomers) who don't actually play the games, they just buy them to decorate their shelves with (as well as a quick dopamine hit from getting a couple dozen updoots on r/segasaturn after posting their "hauls").

>>9970071
>Now do the Soul Hackers one with the VWF system.
the fuck for? I can just play it in japanese.

>>9971102
>On Fenrir, Satiator, CD-R, those writes don't do anything but on MODE they are accessible hardware addresses for communication with the hardware.

This sounds like when you do a C64 game, and then it doesn't work on the C128 because you did some undocumented hardware trick you weren't supposed to do.

And then you blame Commodore for it and tell people to get Commodore to fix the problem.

>>9970769
The code did work if that are of memory was clear as expected. Corrupt SRAM can cause issues for retail games too, it's why it was required to have error messages built into games to detect the issue and tell users to clear their SRAM.
>>9970770
>All two times for your buggy ass hack that has plenty of reports from non MODE users too.
Sure, but the other reports over the years were actually reproducible on things other than MODE and were things that could actually be fixed. The MODE ones only happen on MODE.
>>9970792
> very unprofessional attitude regarding handling criticism of the shaky quality of your code
Are we talking about MODE devs here? When they were called out on the shitty way they were handling the Security Ring by assuming any read beyond 650MB was the security ring they claimed it was the developers and users fault instead of their lazy Security Ring check. The correct way to do it is to look for the Security check command coming from the CD-ROM block at boot and handle the request then and only then, not every time the game requests data in a certain range.

What about when it was discovered that when given a large ISO file it bugs out because the thing isn't fast enough to generate ECC data on the fly? Again instead of addressing that issue they told users and developers it was their fault and they needed to make different images even though no other ODE has that problem and ISO is a format they claim to support.

>Two users have reported issues
Just the two examples I dug up.
>you did literally zero investigation
Look at the time stamps. Over the course of an hour and a half I booted the image up in multiple emulators, on multiple saturns using discs and the Satiator. Not once could I reproduce the issue.

>>9971102
> let's say for the sake of argument the values you had in the block map do TWO things 1) mess with the free space count and 2) cause buffer overflows that cause writes to bad addresses

We have decompiled that part of the BIOS now. We know exactly what it's used for. It's used to determine what blocks are bad in SRAM. It's not going to be used to tell the system what addresses to read or write to write to. All it does is read through that area and use it to increment the bad block list.

>>9971243
>Over the course of an hour and a half I booted the image up in multiple emulators, on multiple saturns using discs and the Satiator. Not once could I reproduce the issue.
This is retard tier problem solving. You didn't ask any questions of the person actually having the issue. It could have been something related to the storage medium he was using to load the game for all you know.

Which ode should I get for Saturn if I want to play the games without throwing money away. Any I should avoid?

>>9971378
literally read >>9969791

To be completely honest any one of the current three will do most people perfectly fine though.

>>9971243
>not every time the game requests data in a certain range
first of all NO retail Saturn games request data outside of the range available on a retail disc from that era, the only ones that are capable of doing so are fanpatches that have a larger filesize than the medium supported in 1995. Support for oversized disc images was added to the mode firmware quite a while ago

lol, this nigga is bitching because his script kiddie fan patch does not boot on a device made by people who reverse engineered the hardware to emulate the disc drive for TWO consoles.

you are giving your community a very bad reputation, kid.

I mean if it only doesn't work on the MODE then it's a problem with that device whether you like it or not. Not an important or interesting problem, but there you go.

>>9971518
It was never even narrowed down to be an issue caused by MODE. It could have been any number of things.

>>9971339
> You didn't ask any questions of the person actually having the issue.
I asked him whether he patched it himself or downloaded a prepatched version. He tried both so I downloaded a few prepatched ones from sites like CDRomance as well as doing a fresh patch myself. I tried those out on multiple Saturns through burned discs as well as with the Satitator. I also tried it on a few emulators. I couldn't reproduce it. I then asked him to try it in an emulator and his image worked in the emulator just fine. At that point there's not much else to test as it's clear the issue isn't the patch or the image. So I told him to reach out to TerraOnion.

> It could have been something related to the storage medium he was using to load the game for all you know.
Which that would be a MODE issue would it not? If the ODE is doing it's job properly the Saturn shouldn't care if you're on a CD, a HDD, USB device, or an SD card. All the Saturn (and the game for that matter) cares about is if the CD-ROM block gave it the data it expected in the location it expected at the speed it expected. If the issue is related to the storage media used by the ODE then that's no longer my issue to try and solve and figure out. I'm not TerraOnion's technical support.

>>9961336
>Terrasoi
Ez flash is still better.

>>9971417
>It was an oversized disc!
It's a standard CD-ROM image that works on every other ODE as well as when burned to a disc. TerraOnion in their infinite stupidity read an old spec document that mentioned 650MB as the size of a CD and thought that was the max the Saturn could address and never thought to test or ask if it could address more.
>Support for oversized disc images was added to the mode firmware
Which was PR spin for the situation. The reality is they were doing their security check lazily and were blindly sending the security ring data for any read beyond 650MB. Instead of doing it the correct way which is to intercept the Security Check command at boot and send the security ring data then, they were sending it any time there was a request for a sector beyond 650MB. The security ring should be sent when the CD-ROM block requests to do the security check, not when a game goes "Hey I want to load this file."

They tried to blame it on "oversized discs" and "developers breaking spec" when the reality is they broke the expected behavior of the CD-ROM drive by trying to take a shortcut.
>>9971450
> nigga is bitching because his script kiddie fan patch does not boot on a device made by people who reverse engineered the hardware to emulate the disc drive for TWO consoles.
If it boots from an actual disc and from other ODEs, then the issue isn't the patch. And TerraOnion didn't really reverse engineer anything. They just built off of other people's work along with old spec documents.
>>9971528
It was narrowed down to not being the fault of the patch, the image being used, etc. That just leaves the way it's getting delivered to the Saturn which in this case would be MODE.

>>9972270
> spends two days frantically defending his poor coding skills instead of taking five seconds to come to terms with the fact that he made a mistake

lol, lmao even

>>9972270
>That just leaves the way it's getting delivered to the Saturn which in this case would be MODE.
Or the motherboard revision. Or the storage medium being improperly setup. Or some transient bug that occurs under speisifc circumstances. Without knowing the actual cause you simply don't know and if this is your level of QA no wonder your shit barely works.

>>9972270
>TerraOnion didn't really reverse engineer anything. They just built off of other people's work along with old spec documents.

Okay, then if it is so simple, then where is the superior ODE you made that runs everything per spec?

>>9972243
do they even have a product that is comparable?

>>9971151
Yeah my method is just burning CDs like in the old days.

>>9969828
You got the Lunar translations to work on a fenrir?

>>9973217
don't use the mpeg only version?
and if it's not in track files, use the segasaturnpatcher to split cue/bin into them

>>9972436
I did admit the mistake. The mistake was not realizing that area of SRAM was used. The code did exactly what it was supposed to. The mistake was the assumption about that area of SRAM not being used.
>>9972441
>Or the motherboard revision.
I have 4 different Saturn's each with a different motherboard revision that I tested it on. It's been played at this point by thousands of people on different Saturn revisions. The motherboard revision isn't the issue.
>Or the storage medium being improperly setup.
Which would be a MODE issue.
>Or some transient bug that occurs under speisifc circumstances.
Except for where it was crashing was at the title screen. The only thing changed there is tile data being swapped out so it says "New Game" and "Load Game". No code changes are present in the game at that point.
> Without knowing the actual cause you simply don't know
Sure, but I know it wasn't an issue with the patch itself because where the crashing was happening had no actual changes from the Japanese version that would cause a crash. Beyond that it's not my problem.
>and if this is your level of QA
If I can't reproduce an issue even once after hours of trying on different Saturns using CDs, ODEs, as well as mulitple different emulators then it's most likely not the patch causing the issue. What more do you want me to do? Drive to your house with a Logic Analyzer and Hardware debugger and debug your Saturn personally.
>no wonder your shit barely works.
Considering it's been played causally and by speed running from start to finish multiple times by thousands of people at this point, I'd say it's working pretty well.

>>9972557
>Okay, then if it is so simple
I didn't say it was simple. I said TerraOnion didn't really reverse engineer it.
> where is the superior ODE you made that runs everything per spec?
While I didn't make them Pheobe and Rhea both work pretty well and to spec.

Of the ones currently on the market, Fenrir and Satiator are getting there with Satiator being the one with a lot of actual reverse engineering going on.

>>9974047
Genuinely how much of an egotistical asshole do you have to be to seethe like this for days on end because two people with the same ODE reported issues with your ghetto hack last year?

>>9974059
I don't know man these threads are pretty autistic. You guys just can't dump all your ISOs on an SD card and enjoy them like everyone else?

>>9974065
I don't really care how people play their games on Saturn. I'm just saying when people ask which ODE to go with, the MODE fanboys need to be a little more honest about the general issues with that ODE as well as TerraOnion itself.

>>9974070
>my shit hack had two people report issues with it last year
>general issue

>>9974074
Those were simply the ones I easily found searching the discord. And I pointed out those two in particular because I knew they were ones with the latest firmware since earlier people tried to write off issues as being solved with the latest firmware.

And I'm not the only one that's had issues with the thing. One really funny one is that when you give it a large ISO image it can actually start having issues because their code isn't fast enough to generate ECC data on the fly. So you need to build an image with that data built in for it to work. The hardware they have in it is more than fast enough to do it, it's their code that's sloppy. This comes out more when testing homebrew with it because most build tools for homebrew just spit out an ISO file.

What makes this funny is that they advertise that they support ISO/WAV/CUE format, and they clearly tried to make the thing able to do this since they wrote the code to try to generate the ECC data. It just isn't able to do it fast enough to do it's job as an ODE properly. Other ODEs like Satiator are able to do this just fine though.

>>9974087
>it's their code that's sloppy
Big words coming from the genius who has only made a barely functional English hack.

>>9974047
>It's been played at this point by thousands of people on different Saturn revisions.

And out of those thousands of people, you claim to have had a whopping two error reports from MODE owners? Two issues out of "thousands" of people? Even assuming you aren't full of shit that's a fraction of a rounding error, bud.

>>9974070
You need to be a little more honest yourself, since you for some reason show up in EVERY saturn ODE thread repeating the same old lies about how MODEs are shit because you can't program your way out of a paper bag. The only reason you don't like MODE is because you got called out on how shitty your code is and got defensive.

>>9974090
>who has only made a barely functional English hack.
Considering it's been played by thousands at this point I'd say it's functioning pretty well.

Secondly I never said my code was perfect, when something is pointed out that's actually wrong in the code on my part I admit to it and fix it, which is more than I can say for TerraOnion. I also don't charge over $200 for my patches.

>>9974094
>which is more than I can say for TerraOnion
The sheer audacity to expect someone else to make your ghetto hack work when the original game works just fine.

>>9974094
>I also don't charge over $200 for my patches.

You realize that software and actual physical hardware are different, right?

You can't be THIS dumb on accident.

>>9974094
>he's been sperging out over the mode for literally four days now
stop it
get some help

>>9974091
>And out of those thousands of people, you claim to have had a whopping two error reports from MODE owners?
I love how I pointed out others over the years earlier in this thread yet you like to only cling to the 2 that got posted from the discord.
>you for some reason show up in EVERY saturn ODE thread
And you show up in every ODE thread getting pissy when people point out issues with MODE claiming they're lies. I'm not the only one in this thread or others that points out issues with MODE.
>The only reason you don't like MODE is because you got called out on how shitty your code is and got defensive.
And what shitty code was I called out on related to a MODE issue? The first issue was with Lunar Silver Star Story. That wasn't an issue with code, that was an issue with MODE taking a short cut with the security ring and effectively violating the expected behavior of the CD-ROM drive without telling anyone that's what they did. Next issue was with Grandia, garbage was being displayed at the end of every line. This only happened on MODE and it was found that the issue was MODE wasn't cleaning up their menu from VRAM when they did a fast boot. So again that wasn't an issue with code, that was an issue with MODE.

Next I've had various one off issues reported by MODE users with Grandia and other patches over the years. Most of these again have turned out to not be related to the patch at all, as they can't be reproduced by others and in a lot of cases also happen for the user on the unpatched Japanese version. So again, that's not related to my changes or code.

The "shitty code" you keep pointing to with the checksum wasn't related to any issues reported with MODE. The reason I explained that code to you was because you were trying to claim that patch 1.1.1 fixed the issue that user was having with MODE. I was instead explaining that it was a separate unrelated issue, but since you need to defend TerraOnion at all costs you're clinging to it.

>>9974130
>I love how I pointed out others over the years earlier in this thread yet you like to only cling to the 2 that got posted from the discord
Those are the only ones you posted, genius. You didn't even narrow it down to being a MODE issue because you're a tard.

>>9974130
>I love how I pointed out others over the years earlier in this thread yet you like to only cling to the 2 that got posted from the discord.
You haven't "pointed out" anything, you've claimed that there were oh so many bug reports, but when pressed you came up with evidence for a whopping two.

> And you show up in every ODE thread getting pissy when people point out issues with MODE claiming they're lies. I'm not the only one in this thread or others that points out issues with MODE.
Not everyone who calls you out is the same person you schitzo

> Next I've had various one off issues reported by MODE users with Grandia and other patches over the years. Most of these again have turned out to not be related to the patch at all
If a game works on an ODE, and then you fuck with it, and it no longer works on said ODE, than it's not the ODE's fault, it's your fault. This is an extremely simple concept, so the fact that you can't wrap your head around it really says a lot about you. Do your friends know you act this way? Do you even have friends?

>>9974148
> but when pressed you came up with evidence for a whopping two.
Three other issues were pointed out here >>9964881

>Not everyone who calls you out is the same person you schitzo
Not everyone who points out issues with MODE is the same person you schitzo.

>If a game works on an ODE, and then you fuck with it, and it no longer works on said ODE, than it's not the ODE's fault, it's your fault.
If a patched game works on a disc playing off the official stock CD-ROM drive of the console, but then you throw away the drive and put in a shady ODE, and it no longer works on said ODE, then it's not the patch's fault, it's your ODE.

>>9974170
oh my god... three more issues... that plus the two you already mentioned...

holy shit, we're at FIVE issues!!!!! OH MY GOD, can you imagine how horrible this is if it can be determined that all FIVE problems were all caused by a MODE? Someone call terraonion, they need to enact a recall!

>>9974170
>Not everyone who points out issues with MODE is the same person you schitzo
It's blatantly obvious it's you every time.

>>9974181
>It's blatantly obvious it's you every time
And it's blatantly obvious it's you coming to the defense every time.

>>9974181
it's trekkiesunite, every single time. he is a grade a autist who is incapable of accepting criticism

>>9974192
Well yeah I'm not gonna let some Dunning-Kruger tard spread disinfo.

>>9974204
How is it disinfo if it actually happened?

>>9974206
What happened was you received a few bug reports and instantly blamed the ODE then made it your life's mission to make up bullshit about said ODE.

>>9974208
>you received a few bug reports and instantly blamed the ODE
I didn't instantly blame the ODE. I did direct the user to TerraOnion's support after I couldn't reproduce the issue after multiple attempts on different setups and confirmed it wasn't the patch.
>made it your life's mission to make up bullshit about said ODE.
How is it bullshit when it's what actually happened and in some cases lead to TerraOnion having to do a firmware update to fix it?

>>9974218
You say bullshit like "There's new issues that get reported regularly" and then link to isolated incidents with no clear cause from last year.

>>9974224
This. I've had a mode for around two years now and have never run into any issues with either standard games or the handful of translation patches I've played.

>>9974224
> isolated incidents with no clear cause from last year.
They were less than a year ago. The one in November on the forums is the last bug issue I've gotten reported at all with Grandia. Pretty much the last few issues I've gotten with Grandia are typically from MODE users and are these odd issues that can't be reproduced and aren't related to the patch. The ones I've linked are the last ones I've gotten.

There's also an unofficial bug tracker that's been started:
https://github.com/RevQuixo/MODE-Bugtracker/issues

The point is, there's odd issues that still pop up on MODE. And even worse it hasn't had a firmware update in over 2 years and there's no sign of these being addressed anytime soon. So saying "Oh it happened a year ago it doesn't matter" is kind of silly because there hasn't been an update to possibly address those issues in over 2 years.

>>9974356
>The point is, there's odd issues that still pop up on MODE
There's odd issues for everything. Isolated cases that can't be easily replicated are common with all ODEs or flash carts. One or two forum posts are not proof of widespread issues.

>>9961476
>>9961575
Really? I was seriously considering buying a DC but now im not so sure

>>9974362
> One or two forum posts are not proof of widespread issues.
But the bug tracker is. And that's being managed entirely by fans at this point as far as I'm aware. So if those issues are popping up and reproducible with retail games by MODE users, who's to say some of these issues with patches might not be a similar situation? in most cases after we direct them to TerraOnion we don't hear back so we don't know what was finally determined to be the issue.

>>9974398
https://github.com/satiator/compatibility/issues

>>9974410
I didn't say Satiator didn't have issues. The point is more that MODE also has them and they shouldn't be ignored or swept under the rug when people ask "Which ODE should I get?"

There's also the issue that Satiator is actively being worked on and getting updates. MODE hasn't had an update in over 2 years. And that's kind of an ongoing issue with TerraOnion as a whole right now across all their products.

>>9974425
>The point is more that MODE also has them and they shouldn't be ignored or swept under the rug when people ask "Which ODE should I get?"
Your reason someone shouldn't buy a MODE was "There's new issues that get reported regularly" which applies to Satiator more than MODE.
>There's also the issue that Satiator is actively being worked on and getting updates.
Its last update was a year ago.

>>9974432
>Your reason someone shouldn't buy a MODE was "There's new issues that get reported regularly" which applies to Satiator more than MODE.
No, my reason someone shouldn't buy it over a Fenrir or Satiator was that it's more style over substance and doesn't bring anything of value to the Saturn over the other options. Using a HDD in it probably isn't the best idea unless you put a replacement power supply in it. The fancy menu is slow and clunky on Saturn so you end up just using the list view anyways.

So you have all these fancy perks that don't really work well on Saturn to begin with, on top of some compatibility issues. Throw in that firmware updates have pretty much stalled for all TerraOnion products and when they do come out they have DRM in them, and it's really not something I see as worth spending about $220 on.

The point about issues getting reported to patch devs from MODE users was in response to people saying it didn't have any compatibility issues.

>Its last update was a year ago.
It's last update was in October. That's less than a year ago.

>>9974457
>and doesn't bring anything of value to the Saturn over the other options
It has better compatibility.

>>9974465
>It has better compatibility.
It has different compatibility issue.

>>9974465
>It has better compatibility.
It has different compatibility issues.

>>9974478
I'm seeing some minor bugs compared to Satiator just not working with several games. Objectively speaking MODE has the best compatibility.

>>9974481
>I'm seeing some minor bugs compared to Satiator just not working with several games
One of those Minor bugs is Digital Pictures FMV games crashing if you have a Backup RAM cart inserted. Another is the entire system hanging if you move too fast in the menu. I'd say those aren't minor.

Also if you read the comments in the Satiator ones a lot of them have workarounds or aren't able to be reproduced.

>>9974497
Does Professor Abrasive pay you to shill this hard?
https://github.com/satiator/compatibility/issues/20
https://github.com/satiator/compatibility/issues/34
Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara and Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter don't even work. That's a much bigger deal than some shitty FMV games not working if you have a backup RAM cart inserted.

>>9974465
>It has better compatibility.
if by compatibility you mean it uses more file types then sure

>>9974356
>And even worse it hasn't had a firmware update in over 2 years
Wrong, stop lying

>>9974425
>MODE hasn't had an update in over 2 years
Wrong, stop lying

>>9974527
>if by compatibility you mean it uses more file types then sure
That's... literally what compatibility means in this instance, yes.

>>9974543
>That's... literally what compatibility means in this instance, yes.
compatibility when talking about these things means games that work, not file types as that is a completely irrelevant factor

>>9974505
Again, did you read the actual ticket? The MSHvsSF one is saying the person tried it on their VA15 Saturn and it worked, but on their VA2 it didn't. But others haven't been able to reproduce it.

>>9974543
>Wrong, stop lying
Here's MODE's firmware list:
https://wiki.terraonion.com/index.php/MODE_firmware
The last one was added in May of 2021. It's now June of 2023.

>>9974558
>one is saying the person tried it on their VA15 Saturn and it worked, but on their VA2 it didn't. But others haven't been able to reproduce it
So I was right about different motherboards possibly introducing compatibility issues. The same thing could be true with your ghetto hack.

>>9974557
Supporting more filetypes is increased compatibility! Stop trying to make up problems.

>>9974573
literally no one talks about file types as compatibility when talking about flash carts and ODE's
they mean games that work without issues

>>9974582
Ok, how many games have reproduceable issues on MODE? What about Satiator? What about Fenrir?

kek

>>9974591
I don't have a MODE
but from the latest Fenrir firmware, it has 100% compatibility for Saturn games though it can't switch discs

>>9974602
> dodging the question

>>9974609
are you OK?
I just said fenrir has 100% compatibility as that's what I know
does the meaning of the word compatibility scare you?
What you should have said is MODE supports more formats

>>9974568
>So I was right about different motherboards possibly introducing compatibility issues
Except I have that revision and just tried it and the game works just fine on it. Got all the way through it.

>The same thing could be true with your ghetto hack.
The only known issue is on some boards that have the SCSP and M68k combined have an error with the 68K implementation causing issues with certain games. Space Harrier and Outrun are the only two known to have issues with this and have second pressings to fix it. Grandia doesn't have an issue with this board and I didn't touch the sound driver code.

>>9974624
So I was right about transient bugs that can occur with no clear reason that can't be replicated.

>>9974623
> still dodging the question

>>9974652
I can only assume you are a non native English speaker
I only argued the word you were using is incorrect to what you were talking about
you can't get more compatibility than 100%

>>9974660
You are refusing to admit that mkde has 100% compatibility and Satiator doesn't, because you are asspained about having gotten BTFO over and over again for the last FIVE DAYS

>>9974668
?
my first post to you was >>9974527
I literally said nothing other than you saying the mode has more compatibility is wrong because the Fenrir has 100% compatibility

This board is more than one person you know?

>>9974640
>So I was right about transient bugs that can occur with no clear reason that can't be replicated.
I didn't say you were wrong about transient bugs being a thing. I simply said that with Grandia it wasn't related to the patch since where the issue was happening there were no changes to the code from the Japanese version. The other issue was happening even with the Japanese version.

The issue with MSHvsSF seems more like a bad ticket to me.
>>9974668
The person you're replying to is talking about Fenrir...

>>9974690
Honestly trekkies it was such a colossally retarded post that I just assumed you had made it.

>>9974705
I don't know, it's pretty fucking retarded to keep replying to someone thinking they're talking about Satiator when they explicitly say Fenrir in each post.

>>9974705
you literally said it had more compatibility because it uses more file formats
you have no reason to call others retarded

Is there a difference in loading times between a fast SSD and fast SDXC Card with MODE for Dreamcast?

>>9974720
Having compatibility with more file formats is literally the definition of increased compatibility. Now you are being retarded on purpose.

>>9974708
> still dodging the question

I hope the segaxtreme discord server gets some kind of tax credit for letting someone as profoundly retarded as you continue to post there.

>>9974925
> still dodging the question
Which question am I dodging now? Going by the posting styles I'd say there's at least 4 different people involved in this conversation if not more. Are you sure I'm the one you were directing those questions at?

>>9974370
Yea a $10 converter from Amazon looks great, I played JSR this way and it was incredible

>>9974925
Having more supported formats is not what people use the term compatibility for
You were being deceptive on purpose, like you are some type of shill

>>9975078
Wait, he's actually arguing that MODE has better compatibility than Fenrir because it supports more file image types?

>>9975085
That is exactly what he’s saying

>>9975087
Some of those formats it doesn't even support all that well. As mentioned previously large ISO files it has trouble with as it can't generate the ECC data fast enough on the fly.

>>9975090
And that’s completely irrelevant to saying it has better compatibility

>>9975085
> wait, he's arguing that mode has better compatibility just because it has better compatibility?

>>9975090
>As mentioned previously large ISO files it has trouble with as it can't generate the ECC data fast enough on the fly.

Which is bullshit because it only needs to do that as fast as the drive is loading, which is max 300kb/s.