Sega CD flashcart is now for sale!

[Kaide]

1 hour ago, phoenixdownita said:

I believe they stated to use Redump:

https://archive.org/details/redump.mcd

 

Still fair to point out that the ODE behavior of the Mega SD isn't forgiving, IMO, and may have glitches in otherwise "valid" dumps. 

 

It isn't like they can point folks at Redump in their official manuals. That gives more reason that they should document the ODE behavior in more detail somewhere official. Even if it is in the developer manual. If only for those of us who don't follow the "preservation" scene closely enough to download someone else's dumps and call it a day. Or in my case, I want to be able to dump my own library and develop a workflow for doing that (so many Windows-centric tools to work from, but I'm not on Windows), but it's a giant PITA if you have to go in blind trying to figure out what parts of the "spec" they support, and what parts they don't. 

[English Invader]

On 7/28/2019 at 3:22 AM, Flojomojo said:

But who is coming into SEGA CD cold in 2019? I would assume the vast majority of people who would care about the 25yo platform already have some of the gear. 

 

It does look like a neat thing, just a lot of money for what it can do. 

I am and I have had an interest in CD and 32X games but, in the end, it was more cost-effective to jump straight to the Saturn.

 

This device is definitely a step in the right direction but I would feel a lot more comfortable buying it if someone with a proven track record like Krikzz was behind it.  I know it's short-sighted to not encourage new development talent but it's a lot of money to drop on something that might have the compatibility level of a cheap Chinese Famiclone.  They are doing great things with FPGA these days though so I'll watch and wait for now.

 

 

[Dr Manhattan]

8 hours ago, English Invader said:

This device is definitely a step in the right direction but I would feel a lot more comfortable buying it if someone with a proven track record like Krikzz was behind it.  I know it's short-sighted to not encourage new development talent but it's a lot of money to drop on something that might have the compatibility level of a cheap Chinese Famiclone.  They are doing great things with FPGA these days though so I'll watch and wait for now.

 

That's an awfully disparaging remark. I thought these folks had already proven themselves with their Neo SD line of products? The only thing I worry about is that they might might a Mega SD Pro six months from now, similar to what they did with the Neo SD / Neo SD Pro.

 

They seem to have the support of Analogue Interactive, and their products are top notch. That alone is enough to make me have confidence in this device. 

[English Invader]

6 hours ago, Dr Manhattan said:

 

That's an awfully disparaging remark. I thought these folks had already proven themselves with their Neo SD line of products? The only thing I worry about is that they might might a Mega SD Pro six months from now, similar to what they did with the Neo SD / Neo SD Pro.

 

They seem to have the support of Analogue Interactive, and their products are top notch. That alone is enough to make me have confidence in this device. 

It wasn't intended to be disparaging.  I hadn't heard of them myself but they obviously have a good reputation with people who have bought from them.  I stand corrected.

[Greg2600]

Not sure Krikkz will ever achieve this functionality. 

[derFunkenstein]

On 8/12/2019 at 10:42 PM, Kaide said:

I received mine today, got to spend some time with it. I use my own backups, so I've been hitting some issues because TerraOnion's manual is very vague on what is expected to work. 

When did you preorder? I ordered mine on 7/31, still waiting for a shipping notification. Meanwhile their store says it's "in stock". If it's in stock, it should ship, but it can't ship because they moved somewhere that can't handle the load. We've hit peak stupidity. Is there a release that TerraOnion can't possibly screw up? Charge 18 Euro for "2-3 day shipping" and then don't ship for two to three weeks because the post office is backed up? Is that really how to run a business? 

 

The shipping snafu caused by moving out of the EU is ridiculous and I can't help but think it could have been avoided by researching before moving. Your shipping partner doesn't operate where you want to move? Don't move there. What a cluster. 

https://forums.terraonion.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1066

 

I mean, this whole Twitter thread is full of question marks. Alex from TerraOnion claimed to be surprised at what happened. 

 

 

Edited August 15, 2019 by derFunkenstein

[nick3092]

From what I've read on Discord the problem isn't necessarily with DHL. It's more with the customs in their country (Andorra). Apparently they can only process like 45 packages a day. And TO shipped well in excess of 600+ all at once. Or something like that. 

[derFunkenstein]

If DHL operated in Andorra, it wouldn't be an issue, at least that's what I got from that thread. Regardless, it's just another cocked up launch, just like the SSDS3. At least this time the product isn't faulty. 

[Kaide]

4 hours ago, derFunkenstein said:

When did you preorder? I ordered mine on 7/31, still waiting for a shipping notification. Meanwhile their store says it's "in stock". If it's in stock, it should ship, but it can't ship because they moved somewhere that can't handle the load. We've hit peak stupidity. Is there a release that TerraOnion can't possibly screw up? Charge 18 Euro for "2-3 day shipping" and then don't ship for two to three weeks because the post office is backed up? Is that really how to run a business? 

 

Ordered 6/19. "Shipped" 8/4. In DHL's System 8/8 (picked up in Andorra).

 

Being a small business reliant on shipping honestly sucks. If you have retail space, you can multi-purpose that for inventory/etc. If you want to have prime access to shipping, you need to either buy/lease warehouse space and staff it, or hire someone to do it for you. Analogue has demonstrated that hiring someone who has warehouses to manage inventory/shipping is a mixed bag. And if you are boutique enough, neither makes a ton of sense because your inventory could fill a small room.

 

I don't really have strong opinions either way about TerraOnion in particular, and I've obviously criticized their communication in this thread already (and think they could do better here as well). I do find it somewhat amusing that we've gotten so used to the advantages that owning warehouses or even whole shipping networks gives an online business that we are demanding it from small businesses where they don't operate on that kind of scale, and generally are niche enough that having to hand over 30-50% of the sales price to distributors/retailers can price the product out of the market.

 

10 minutes ago, derFunkenstein said:

If DHL operated in Andorra, it wouldn't be an issue, at least that's what I got from that thread. Regardless, it's just another cocked up launch, just like the SSDS3. At least this time the product isn't faulty. 

 

Probably a bit of both. DHL seems to be picking it up after the packages are cleared through customs (the bottleneck). I suspect these big shippers have customs agreements with many countries to help speed things along, that also aren't at play here because of the size of Andorra.

 

Edited August 15, 2019 by Kaide

[nick3092]

12 minutes ago, derFunkenstein said:

If DHL operated in Andorra, it wouldn't be an issue, at least that's what I got from that thread. Regardless, it's just another cocked up launch, just like the SSDS3. At least this time the product isn't faulty. 

If you are unhappy with TO and their product, feel free to buy from someone else. Oh, wait. No one else makes this. Well, you could always make your own. ?

 

10 minutes ago, Kaide said:

I do find it somewhat amusing that we've gotten so used to the advantages that owning warehouses or even whole shipping networks gives an online business that we are demanding it from small businesses where they don't operate on that kind of scale, and generally are niche enough that having to hand over 30-50% of the sales price to distributors/retailers can price the product out of the market.

 

This. TO is like 3-4 guys, each operating out of different countries. This isn't Amazon. They can't deliver product the same way. 

 

Plus they are making a very niche product for people's hobby. Hobby being the key word. This isn't life and death here. Just relax and everyone will get their order eventually.

[derFunkenstein]

TO having us over a barrel (which you correctly point out) is hardly reason to defend shitty practices (which you seem to be defending). I mean, it's just encouraging a monopoly. Making hobbyist stuff doesn't make their business somehow exempt from good customer service. This is a garbage argument. You give me $300 for something and see how quickly you get upset that I haven't fulfilled your order, then we'll talk.

 

Meanwhile, Analogue has a monopoly on cart-reading FPGA consoles and they seem to be able to ship stuff they have in stock in less than 3 weeks.

Edited August 15, 2019 by derFunkenstein

[derFunkenstein]

I just want to give my money to competent companies. I don't see why that's such a controversial stance. 

[nick3092]

4 minutes ago, derFunkenstein said:

TO having us over a barrel (which you correctly point out) is hardly reason to defend shitty practices (which you seem to be defending).

 

Meanwhile, Analogue has a monopoly on cart-reading FPGA consoles and they seem to be able to ship stuff they have in stock in less than 3 weeks.

Shitty practice? Again, it's *1* guy programming, testing, boxing, and shipping these. This isn't Microsoft or Sony mass producing this stuff with an army of workforce. And unfortunately he lives in a country with really crappy customs slowing things down.

 

Apparently you didn't pay too close to the MegaSG roll out. They hired a third party to ship everything out. And there were many complaints about people getting the wrong variant. So, clearly their shipping practices need some work too. 

 

 

[derFunkenstein]

This is such nonsense. Let's recount the some facts:

 

* He MOVED to Andorra recently. He hasn't always lived there or operated there. He chose that location, moving out of Spain.

* He MOVED to a place where he can't ship items quickly. 45 items a day means slow shipping all the time. If this is his livelihood, what the actual hell is he doing? He even told me in the Twitter thread I linked that he considered moving back to Spain. Talk about a dumb move. He wrote those words himself and they're on the internet for all to see in a freely open environment. Just go read them. This was to evade EU taxes, and he did a really poor job of it. 

* The Mega SD is listed as "in stock" on his site. If it has to be assembled, tested, and boxed before it's shipped, it should be a PREORDER. 

 

It's shady as hell, and if I could buy this from anybody else I would in a heartbeat. 

 

The Mega Sg launch wasn't perfect, but Analogue was responsive and got stuff solved. It's documented on the AA forums. They shipped from the US. They didn't wait WEEKS after order of something "in stock" to ship it out. I know that because I got my preorder right around the launch date. It was great. They shipped something when they said they would and didn't make excuses because they willingly moved to a country that can't handle its business. 

 

The thing is, everyone does this in retro gaming. The USBGDROM does this, the dope that makes GDEMU and Phoebe and Rhea does nonsense stuff. Everyone. It's not just this guy, but this is the guy who has my $300 right now. 

Edited August 15, 2019 by derFunkenstein

[Kaide]

21 hours ago, derFunkenstein said:

The Mega Sg launch wasn't perfect, but Analogue was responsive and got stuff solved. It's documented on the AA forums.

Yeah, don't remind me of the delays I dealt with on the Mega SG. In my case they kept tripping over their own feet. 1 week to get an RMA, 2 weeks to get the replacement (because they screwed up the shipping on the replacement unit and required ground shipping for the return). Yeah, I nearly waited a month from the start of shipping (don't forget the 1 week shipping of the wrong unit too) to get the unit I ordered when I ordered on day 1 based on their previous track record with the Super NT launch. That's not a great feeling. And I have called out their incredibly similar packaging for the different SKUs wondering if that might be part of the problems they faced with a new shipping partner.

 

I get your frustration here. I've been there. However, the way you are going after TerraOnion comes off as petty.

 

21 hours ago, derFunkenstein said:

* He MOVED to Andorra recently. He hasn't always lived there or operated there. He chose that location, moving out of Spain.

* He MOVED to a place where he can't ship items quickly. 45 items a day means slow shipping all the time. If this is his livelihood, what the actual hell is he doing? He even told me in the Twitter thread I linked that he considered moving back to Spain. Talk about a dumb move. He wrote those words himself and they're on the internet for all to see in a freely open environment. Just go read them. This was to evade EU taxes, and he did a really poor job of it.

Yes, sure, he moved. I don't really see how operating out of Andorra makes any difference, except in the context of getting bit by the speed of customs. This is really not the attack to make here, IMO. This comes across as one of those 20/20 hindsight issues where you lash out for the mistake, but at the same time, I would be surprised if anyone expected customs to be limited to 45 packages a day. If a single person handles all customs, that's still about 10 minutes/package for clearance. I honestly wouldn't have had it cross my mind that such a thing was possible in this day and age, even if dealing with a city state (which Andorra pretty much is).

 

21 hours ago, derFunkenstein said:

* The Mega SD is listed as "in stock" on his site. If it has to be assembled, tested, and boxed before it's shipped, it should be a PREORDER. 

You are reading too much into what was said here. It's clear that it is in stock, but even if he hands it over to customs, that bottleneck is still going to delay it leaving the country and reaching DHL. 

 

Here's the thing. If you were complaining that he should make sure there's a notice on the website about customs delays so people can make an informed choice, that's one thing. If you were complaining that he's not willing to help make things right by eating shipping costs for the delayed packages, or offer refunds for any packages that can be reclaimed from the customs queue, that's still a valid argument. Attacking where someone chooses to live and arguing over the meaning of "in stock" over a customs problem (i.e. something that happens during shipping) comes across as incredibly petty, IMO. 

Edited August 16, 2019 by Kaide

[Greg2600]

As with most of these flash cart products, I'll wait for Stone Age Gamer to carry it, and let them deal with the logistics for me.

[derFunkenstein]

That's what I should have done, but I got excited. :-/

[Kaide]

On 8/12/2019 at 8:42 PM, Kaide said:

Using cdrdao to make the copy, and then using toc2cue, I've hit the following issues:

• Some games which launch fine with my stock US Sega CD get recognized as EU disk images instead of US, and demand an EU BIOS. Not sure exactly what they are using.
• Games that rely on CD Audio are indexing into the wrong spot in the file. An example is Sonic CD where the first zone starts at the very end of the right track, and then plays into the next track instead of looping.  

 

I believe I have worked out what's going on here. I've got a couple rips I've made myself using cdrdao that work that I was having problems with before. So it looks like the MegaSD doesn't like 2048-byte sector rips. At least if you are including the audio tracks as part of a single bin file. When I finally got back to looking at this, I tried again using a raw rip and it works fine.

 

Possibly a bug/assumption in the code that calculates the audio track offset relying on 2352-byte sectors, along with how it reads the region from the image. It's really weird though, since the data track still loads/runs fine and doesn't seem to introduce bugs by using 2048-byte sectors. It just seems to trip up the region detection and audio track playback.

 

I've thrown together a simple shell script to make ripping my collection for the Mega SD less fiddly: CDRDAO SegaCD Rip Script for MegaSD on Mac

 

This script should be easy to convert to Linux, I just haven't made the changes needed, but I've made comments in the script about what needs to be considered.

[TheCoolDave]

On 8/13/2019 at 6:55 PM, Greg2600 said:

Not sure Krikkz will ever achieve this functionality. 

Interesting... I am sure he/they is looking closely at this project..  Maybe he/they will attempt it... 

 

Krikkz has the rep of being the king of these types of devices, so if they came up with one, and at a lower price point than this one... It would sell like crazy.

 

We need a 2nd group to make a device like this to drive the price down a little.... It's just too much for me where it is. No question, cool device.

[Greg2600]

55 minutes ago, TheCoolDave said:

Interesting... I am sure he/they is looking closely at this project..  Maybe he/they will attempt it... 

 

Krikkz has the rep of being the king of these types of devices, so if they came up with one, and at a lower price point than this one... It would sell like crazy.

 

We need a 2nd group to make a device like this to drive the price down a little.... It's just too much for me where it is. No question, cool device.

He's definitely aware.  For instance, TerraOnion announced they licensed the VDP FPGA code for Virtual Racing.   Krikzz replied that his Mega Everdrive in development would do the same.  The CD is another story.  Again, T.O. licensed an FPGA core implementation of the Motorola X68000 chip.  I'm not sure Krikzz will want to do so, but even if he does, it is not a trivial thing to incorporate it.  He may get there, but it won't be around the bend.

[nick3092]

45 minutes ago, TheCoolDave said:

Interesting... I am sure he/they is looking closely at this project..  Maybe he/they will attempt it... 

 

Krikkz has the rep of being the king of these types of devices, so if they came up with one, and at a lower price point than this one... It would sell like crazy.

 

We need a 2nd group to make a device like this to drive the price down a little.... It's just too much for me where it is. No question, cool device.

Calling him a king of this is a bit of a stretch. Yes, he has managed to crank out quite a few of them. But there are better alternatives to some of what he has designed (SD2SNES, MegaCD, some argue the 64Drive is better). And he has churned out newer versions, somewhat fracturing the customer base (although you can argue those versions give you price choices for features in some cases).

 

Plus his handling of SD carts is really archaic. Files have to be saved to the card in order to be alphabetized, firmware folder has to be first thing on the card, and in cases of some firmware you need to pray to some deity and hope for a full moon for it to work (N8 latest firmware). And I'm not even going to go down the 3.3/5v rabbit hole. Just going to say there are better designs out there. 

 

TO has set a fair price based on what hardware is in the cart, time invested, and still be able to make a profit. Waiting for a cheaper one (if it ever arrives) can lead to an inferior Chinese clone with issues/unable to update firmware, or something not as polished. That's generally the only way to get it cheaper. 

 

Granted, it's your money and how you spend it is up to you. If you want to hold out and wait for a cheaper (and potentially inferior) product, that's your call.

 

All that being said, I own several of his products. They meet my basic needs. But I would have gladly spent a little more for a better/more polished product if one was available at the time.

 

If anything, TO is going to force him to step up his game. But it may not cause prices to drop if he does. 

[5200Fanatic]

On 8/16/2019 at 2:57 PM, derFunkenstein said:

That's what I should have done, but I got excited. ?

Me too - still waiting. 

[Dr Manhattan]

I’m just monitoring this situation before I talk the plunge. Aside from the early reviewers, has anyone heard from users on other sites about receiving their product? For example Reddit or Digital Press? 

[derFunkenstein]

TerraOnion retweets every single person who posts a photo of one, and we're supposed to believe there's no problem as a result. They're completely ignoring their own forum thread about shipping delays now. Both the admin account and Todd have been silent for a week. https://forums.terraonion.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1066

 

Coming up on a month since I ordered when it said "in stock" on their website, and of course, it hasn't shipped. But they still have "in stock" on their website. I'm so soured on it I'm not even sure I want it any more. 

Edited August 26, 2019 by derFunkenstein

[Yakumo1975]

After waiting for weeks on end for the so called postal situation in Andorra to be sorted, my Mega SD has finally arrived. Is it worth the wait and asking price? Is the Master System FM core actually accurate? Watch on to find out.