Wonder if it would be possibly to host some kind of fan-made games on demand service for the megadrive these days? Although such a thing would probably be considered illegal >_>
Fangames are illegal, but if they're brand new IPs then it shouldn't, really. The problem is who's going to provide the signal... If we're going that route it'd be much easier to try new hardware for the matter (e.g. a cartridge that allows Internet connection).
Its just as illegal to host thousands of roms to other users who most likely sold their carts just to get fallout 3 or just get by, we do it anyways by distributed hacked versions of an ESA protected game and its just dust in the wind. Tells you how much they care. Although if someone makes a cart that can detect and connect to these, rom servers. not only do we have our new sega channel, be we also have a way of preserving it through the internet, unlike the cable company which shoved our childhood in the closet for the saturn.
I also still have my sega channel transcoder thing, just taking up space and gathering dust. Completely useless, but it only cost me around $10.
Is that the same thing as the this cart or something different? If its different, could you be able to send any pics?
No, it looks kind of like this, but bigger: I just don't feel like taking a picture right now. Not sure if it even works anymore, it has vents on the top and I have nothing keeping cat hair and dust out of it.
I think that might just be a cable box in that case, it probably has even less use than a sega channel does on real hardware. If you can, would you be able to make a topic about this over at hidden palace? It won't let me register over there and I would like to get this out in the open.
Not really a cable box, it's something that was kept at the cable company. I was told that it was likely used to decode the satellite signals.
OK, well. From what I read and saw over at DevSter's website, it is possible to attatch an ISA bus and successfully operating a NE2000 network card. Furthermore, building some simple network adapter for the Sega CD-Connector on the righthand-side shouldn't be too big of a problem. The problem would be replacing current data receiving code with a TCP/IP stack and some other stuff. By the way, after all, they made a 10mbit/s ethernet card for the roughly 7 years older Commodore 64 home computer, complete with webbrowser, IRC client and TCP/IP stack.
Yeah, but they did that by putting a faster processor in the add-on and some extra memory if I recall correctly, and the 6502 told it what to do in a similar fashion to the 68k telling what to do to the VDP. Actually, that would be a good idea, especially considering that the maximum speed of the normal I/O ports in serial mode is 4800 bps (parallel may be able to achieve more, but still the 68k would be too slow to provide much speed really). Improved router for the Mega Drive, anyone? We'd need something to make use of it though. Maybe a browser? Imagine posting on Retro from your Mega Drive. Try to get classier than that :P I guess I'm going off-topic...
If it requires new hardware, the benefit is lost in my view. The cool part of getting it to connect to something like hacktube would be the ease of getting hacks running on hardware. Are there any PCI cards with with coaxial TV out ports? If there are, would it be practical to get it to send the kind of data the Sega channel uses? A quick search reveals that there probably isn't anything like that, I guess the computer companies aren't interested in such a low quality video stream. Wait, satellite internet modems have coaxial out ports on them intended for data, thought that's probably getting into the realm of less than practical hardware.
If a mega drive keyboard was more accessible to the world, I wouldn't mind this. It may only be just text though, as the mega drive wouldn't display all those colors or the pictures at all. I have Verizon fios and the router they gave us comes with a coaxial port. but even if that is properly set up it needs to be able to send those *most likely* embedded transmissions over a satellite via old school cable tv, I doubt the FCC would like that. I just though maybe we could turn that rom into something different as like I said in my first post. Getting it to work as it was intended to isn't going to work unless reverse engineered to look else where for the roms. anyways, has someone checked the rom via a graphics editor?
Does anybody have the Sega CD connector pinout? Also, it could be possible to connect the MegaDrive to PC through the Serial(Printer) port to the controller port so it could use the internet. The router version would make the MD just look like a network printer but with custom drivers (the browser app), but I'm very sure that this method wouldn't be able to display more than just plain text, but it should work!
Yes, there's some pieces of Sonic sprites near the end, if I remember correctly. I think it was brought up in an earlier "SEGA Channel" topic at these boards.
You'd need new hardware for this to work on a Megadrive in any case. If you could make a piece of hardware that would sit between the regular Sega Channel cart and a normal router/switch that let the Sega Channel operate as it did back in the day, I'd be all over this.
Does anyone know where the BIOS ROM is? I'd like to disassemble it to see how the cable protocol works. I was thinking, if the protocol was purely digital, we could mod the coaxial cable into another connector (maybe a serial port), and run a Sega Channel simulator on the computer, that looks up a server, or a file directory, to play games. It probably won't work, but I mostly want to know how this works to see if it's possible.
The rom is in fact the bios, as from what I see it is just the skeleton of the entire service, without menu graphics, music and of course the roms. They're may be more info if someone dumped the scientific atlanta adapter as the general instruments rom is a bit skimpy on info. Aside from that, Once the rom has been disassembled it could be reverse engineered as it might have been coded to check from a specific place *a different cable company but a duplicate server so it reads all the same* but may be too much coding to force it to check an internet connection.
lol, I meant sega is at fault. I was going to sleep when I posted that. :v: I'll remember not to post when I take my meds.
