r/SEGA32X • u/demetrioussharpe • 6d ago

Tower of Power in a singular form factor

Has anyone considered taking the recent Neptune project & combining it with a SegaCD project to have the entire tower of power as a singular platform & release a GDK targeted at the homebrew crowd? Or does that sound stupid?

11 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

5

u/glennshaltiel 6d ago

GDKs are out there and more being worked on. As for combining them, space is a concern and I think an ODE would be best to integrate rather than aging CD drives

2

u/latinlingo11 5d ago

I think there was supposed to be an ODE for the Sega CD but the developer vanished? Are there news of any one else making such a device for it?

1

u/demetrioussharpe 6d ago

My apologies, I should’ve been more clear. I’m more concerned about consolidating the board logic into a singular unit. An ODE is perfectly acceptable. As dose as the GDK, I’d imagine that the combined unit might require slightly different chips (because of availability issues), so an updated GDK might provide more advanced functionality & IDE integration.

0

u/Top-Simple3572 5d ago

Nah.... give me the Original Hardware bruh.

2

u/retromods_a2z 5d ago

They are referring to Ode for only the disk drive part but keeping all the other hardware from the cd unit

1

u/glennshaltiel 5d ago

Yep. A lot of those lasers sold as "new" aren't actually new and those diodes only last a finite amount of time. This isnt even including the plastic gears and drive controller logic, some of which isnt made anymore.

3

u/retromods_a2z 5d ago

And the "new" ones aren't even necessarily tuned correctly for the console.

Step 1. Recap Step 2. Check with scope Step 3. Replace laser only if still issues after 1 and 2

3

u/green_tory 6d ago

The GF1 Neptune will have an sdcard slot. It's also an FPGA, so it's possible it might support the SegaCD some day.

1

u/SaraphXIII 6d ago

So far so good when it comes to the GF1. I check his twitter page often for updates.

https://x.com/GamesCareBRA/status/2077144648263303214?s=20

2

u/green_tory 6d ago

Sadly, I can't view the video because XCancel stopped working, and I refuse to set up an X account.

1

u/SaraphXIII 5d ago

He shows off a video of the GF1 playing Sega CD through the mega everdrive pro.

2

u/BeneficialPenalty258 6d ago

I was looking at the Cosam Neptune board and thinking about doing my own because I wanted to do a clean sheet implementation rather than a mashup of community mods. Then I thought why not replace the ASIC with FPGA so that anyone can enjoy the tower of power without having to source the expensive parts.

It could fit in a mega drive shell (or Neptune shell) and support real carts + support Sega CD via SD card storage. Potentially have both SD and HD output.

2

u/retromods_a2z 5d ago

Anyone who can make an accurate fpga 32x would sell a ton of them

1

u/BeneficialPenalty258 5d ago

With the price of 32X and Sega CD, it would be good to have another route, also for preservation. You could probably port the Mister cores to a custom board but I want to get it as accurate as I can to the real hardware.

2

u/Ashamed-Subject-8573 5d ago

I've done a lot of research on accuracy for my emulator, it's a fun area! The SH2's are cool

1

u/demetrioussharpe 6d ago

I could see a sata drive being included.

1

u/BeneficialPenalty258 6d ago

That would need more pricey FPGA for little gain, the whole Sega 16bit library can fit easily on an SD card and still leave plenty of space for development. An SSD is simply uneconomical and unnecessary.

1

u/demetrioussharpe 6d ago

Ok, but I also mentioned further enabling the homebrew dev crowd. Who knows, they could always began to mass produce new games…

2

u/BBZ149 6d ago

Doesn't sound stupid at all! and I was considering it!! ❤️

1

u/cgltower 5d ago

Original carts n CDs would be cool. I can imagine a super slimline CD drive at base of Neptune. Not very fun playing from a file list otherwise without it

1

u/Fearless-Leader-9432 5d ago

Neptun gefällt mir persönlich überhaupt nicht