[Andlabs]

Great news from the People's Republic! XCKDIY, a group of mainland-China hardware hackers, have come up with not one but two ways to play games on your Dreamcast through SD cards; that is, without the need to turn CDs.

First up is this adapter that plugs in to the back of the Dreamcast, at 35 yuan — US$5.


Second is this heavily modified Dreamcast, which, aside from the SD card port on the front, also has built-in VGA and RCA port output. 300 yuan — US$45.12, but you're going to need a PAL TV if you're in the US.


If one of you brave souls can figure out how to actually order one, since the site is in Chinese only, please let the good guys at DCemu who broke the news of the adapter know! Thanks to grap3fruitman for linking these to us in IRC.

[Tanks]

The inability to put the modded one to use makes me one sad panda...
(Yea, I know you saw what I did there. So what? You want a trophy or something?)

[Polygon Jim]

The inability to put the modded one to use makes me one sad panda...
(Yea, I know you saw what I did there. So what? You want a trophy or something?)

http://ntsc-uk.domino.org/showthread.php?t=70904


That method should still work perfectly to change it to an NTSC-U console.

[OKei]

Neato rido.

Hopefully they make something like this for PS consoles. That'd make my day.

[Elratauru]

Oh crap, I'd buy this...but my snowy one doesnt powers up anymore D: ...I don't know what causes it yet :P...but I was kinda trying to fix my non-working lens thing. I believe I broke the thing that connects the lens with the main board xD

[Eviltaco64]

I'm a moderator on DCEmu, so you can inform me if you must. :P

Taobao requires you to do transactions with the Bank of China, so you can't purchase it yourself. You can, however, get an agent to purchase one for you and ship it out.

I bought something off of there once through Yoybuy.com. You pretty much order a product and an agent talks to you through e-mail. The product ships from wherever it's being sold to Yoybuy's offices in Beijing. From there, they ship it to you.

Just one word of wisdom, though. Shipping's expensive.

EDIT: You can also find some awesome video game stuff on there (japanese consoles, devkits, etc).

This post has been edited by Eviltaco64: 21 October 2010 - 11:29 PM

[Aerosol]

Interesting...looking forward to a reverse engineered version that can be produced outside of china one of these days. My poor DC's lens can't take much more of a battering from burnt cds.

This post has been edited by AerosolSP: 21 October 2010 - 11:49 PM

[Eviltaco64]

Google Translated text from the description on Taobao:

Perfect version of the DC bare metal headphone jack with a VGA S AV AV interface before the plug is easy on the cat the cat is now upgraded to a full pull-out back in DC with the front SD card interface also can be put into the SD card is DC to play the game saves head to read the disk bootable SD card to send a particular play FC MD SFC N64 NEOCD MAME GBA emulator and some dials are perfectly save DC is also integrated development of the local machine BIOS chip without the need to guide the region to be genuine so do not ask direct reading What is the host of this version has no restrictions other color version, please contact the owner DIY host

BIOS startup screen developing machine

Hmm, they replaced the 56k modem with S-Video and Audio out. I wonder if it's still removable or not.

It also sounds like they modded the BIOS to start with the cooler Katana boot. Dammit, I'm probably going to buy one now.

EDIT (again!): Since these appear to be European Dreamcasts, could you swap out the power supply with an American one?

This post has been edited by Eviltaco64: 22 October 2010 - 12:43 AM

[Andlabs]

BIOS chip without the need to guide the region to be genuine

So I guess the PAL TV isn't necessary after all, assuming this means "no region lockout?" Though I wonder if the TV output will be borked or not...

[Lanzer]

Interesting...looking forward to a reverse engineered version that can be produced outside of china one of these days. My poor DC's lens can't take much more of a battering from burnt cds.

Battering? what do you mean?

Man, what awesome tech. I would totally buy one of those SD card slots but that whole "ask an agent to buy it" sounds shady.

This post has been edited by Lanzer: 22 October 2010 - 12:50 AM

[Eviltaco64]

Man, what awesome tech. I would totally buy one of those SD card slots but that whole "ask an agent to buy it" sounds shady.

Nah, dude. It's totally legit. I've done transactions with Yoybuy before so I can definitely vouch for them (though their English is a little broken at times).

[Mad Echidna]

I for one am very interesting in buying one of those modded Dreamcasts. Maybe we can band together and do one big order? I volunteer to receive the order as I do shipping and receiving all day and work and it would be relatively easy for me to just have them sen there and then mail them out to everyone.

Also that Chinese site has some AWESOME shit. Did you guys see that xbox that's modded into a Saturn case? As if that's not badass enough they also included USB ports, which the original xbox didn't even have.

This post has been edited by Mad Echidna: 22 October 2010 - 02:14 AM

[doc eggfan]

That would mean you would get the full 1GB of data to load right? rather than the 700MB limited to burnt CDs? That's freaking awesome.

If I'm understanding this right, if I've already got a Dreamcast, I just need the $5 doohickey that plugs in the back? If we're doing a group order, sign me up for one.

This post has been edited by doc eggfan: 22 October 2010 - 07:44 AM

[Mr. Mash]

oh god this is awesome, once I'm paid I may indeed get one of the modded DCs. It's not like dreamcast piracy was difficult in the first place, but I'd love one of these.

[Max Firestorm]

I missed outon the Dreamcast... I jumped from Mega Drive to PS1 to GameCube XD

I wouldn't mind one of those modded DCs to be honest... I mean that's what.... about £25ish?