Dreamcast Laptop Drive

[dudex77]

It seems what's preveting a lot of people from making a DC laptop is the GDROM Drive. You can't make a laptop properly if you use a top loading drive so I was wondering if anyone had figured out a way to use a laptop drive's or any diskdrives loading mechanism for the Dreamcast. I've really wanted to do this ever since I saw Benjamin's Atari Laptop and figured it wouldn't be too difficult to do and the main thing in my way is the disk drive. The Dreamcast supports VGA and keyboard and mouse so it seems like the perfect candidate for a laptop. So anyone have any ideas for the disk drive they could share? Also if I was to make a laptop I would want it to be that as soon as I plugged in a regular controller it would cancel out the keyboard plugged in and the same with the mouse, how would I do that? Also this one is probably impossible but is their anyway I could make a sensor bar type thing so I could use a lightgun on an lcd?

[nightwheel]

If you can find a working Disk Drive asembly from a Dreamcast DEV Kit. That might work. Because the DEV Kit looks like it used a disk drive with a tray.

[khaag]

When I was planning my DC laptop, I had the idea of making the keyboard on a hinge and fold up towards the screen exposing the GDROM drive. Kind of like a triple decker sandwich clamshell.

[dudex77]

When I was planning my DC laptop, I had the idea of making the keyboard on a hinge and fold up towards the screen exposing the GDROM drive. Kind of like a triple decker sandwich clamshell.

See that's what I was thinking but the idea would end up looking really awkward.
@Nightwheel I would never tear apart one of those 600 dollar beasts just for the drive but if someone has one maybe pictures of the drive would help.

[tom61]

If you can find a working Disk Drive asembly from a Dreamcast DEV Kit. That might work. Because the DEV Kit looks like it used a disk drive with a tray.

I believe the GDR drives on these were SCSI, which won't connect to a dreamcast. I also doubt the internals are compatible with the Dreamcast either.

It seems what's preveting a lot of people from making a DC laptop is the GDROM Drive. You can't make a laptop properly if you use a top loading drive so I was wondering if anyone had figured out a way to use a laptop drive's or any diskdrives loading mechanism for the Dreamcast. I've really wanted to do this ever since I saw Benjamin's Atari Laptop and figured it wouldn't be too difficult to do and the main thing in my way is the disk drive. The Dreamcast supports VGA and keyboard and mouse so it seems like the perfect candidate for a laptop. So anyone have any ideas for the disk drive they could share? Also if I was to make a laptop I would want it to be that as soon as I plugged in a regular controller it would cancel out the keyboard plugged in and the same with the mouse, how would I do that? Also this one is probably impossible but is their anyway I could make a sensor bar type thing so I could use a lightgun on an lcd?

You might want to check to see if the drive protocol has been documented yet. There still seems to be some development work on the Dreamcast, as I just stumbled upon a video of replacement BIOS that had a 3D screen when you don't have a disc inserted.

As long as you keep a disc inserted, there are a few options. You could use DCLoad serial and have a microcontroller respond over serial and read from a IDE harddisk to get files. You could use a Gumstix Verdix to read from a USB harddisk and communicate with the Dreamcast via serial or ethernet (if you have Broadband or LAN Adapter) to DCLoad. There was a rumor that you could load games from Linux, if it exists, and can be moddified to run on BSD, you could load games from a complicated adapter that plugs into the modem port connected to an IDE drive (may be too slow to be practical, though)

Why would you want to cancel out the mouse and keyboard? Most everything I encountered had no trouble working with the keyboard and mouse plugged into ports 3 and 4, which leaves the first two ports free. AFAIK, there's no easy way to auto-switch from one controller type to another. If you hot-swap controllers on the Dreamcast, it has the tendency to blow the fuse on the controller board. If for some reason you wanted some four-player action, you would have to turn off the DC and switch all pins from one controller to the other. I'm thinking that a simple disable grounds hack will not work either.

A sensor bar hack would require quite a bit of work, unless you're very into microcontroller programming, I doubt you'd find it worthwhile.

[dudex77]

As long as you keep a disc inserted, there are a few options. You could use DCLoad serial and have a microcontroller respond over serial and read from a IDE harddisk to get files. You could use a Gumstix Verdix to read from a USB harddisk and communicate with the Dreamcast via serial or ethernet (if you have Broadband or LAN Adapter) to DCLoad. There was a rumor that you could load games from Linux, if it exists, and can be moddified to run on BSD, you could load games from a complicated adapter that plugs into the modem port connected to an IDE drive (may be too slow to be practical, though)

Why would you want to cancel out the mouse and keyboard? Most everything I encountered had no trouble working with the keyboard and mouse plugged into ports 3 and 4, which leaves the first two ports free. AFAIK, there's no easy way to auto-switch from one controller type to another. If you hot-swap controllers on the Dreamcast, it has the tendency to blow the fuse on the controller board. If for some reason you wanted some four-player action, you would have to turn off the DC and switch all pins from one controller to the other. I'm thinking that a simple disable grounds hack will not work either.

A sensor bar hack would require quite a bit of work, unless you're very into microcontroller programming, I doubt you'd find it worthwhile.

None of that first bit will work since I actually would want a Dreamcast laptop for the sake of games not for like linux and stuff. I'm just looking for ideas of maybe changing the DC spindle with a regular cd drive one and then just hooking up the opening motors to a battery and a switch I'm not wording things properly but this idea makes sense to me and I think I'll try it.
Doesn't Typing of the Dead require the keyboard as the first or second controller? I know that for Rez you need the mouse pugged in as first controller and that's all I want the mouse for. Oh well maybe I'll just not include a mouse.
Yeah I figured the sensor bar idea was a bit over the top but that doesn't matter I'm good without it.

[nightwheel]

I got another idea. This one requires moding. Take a the disk drive and disk tray assembly out of a DVD player. Studie how the tray assembly works first. Then remove the DVD drve from the disk tray assembly. But leave the part that raises and lowers the DVD drive. You'll need it for this mod idea to might work. The Some how figure out how to attach the GD-ROM Drive to the DVD Player assembly. This is where the modding might come into play. After you do that replace the Spindle hub that on the GD-ROM drive with the spindle hub thats on the DVD Drive yoy took out. Test it to see if every thing is workiing alright. That my idea.

[dudex77]

I got another idea. This one requires moding. Take a the disk drive and disk tray assembly out of a DVD player. Studie how the tray assembly works first. Then remove the DVD drve from the disk tray assembly. But leave the part that raises and lowers the DVD drive. You'll need it for this mod idea to might work. The Some how figure out how to attach the GD-ROM Drive to the DVD Player assembly. This is where the modding might come into play. After you do that replace the Spindle hub that on the GD-ROM drive with the spindle hub thats on the DVD Drive yoy took out. Test it to see if every thing is workiing alright. That my idea.

That was what I was trying to say and failing at. Thanks for putting into wording that makes sense. Damn TV with it's making me lose focus

[nightwheel]

has my idea come in handy yet? Also I Just relized that you need to check if the open and close switch is directly wired to the open and close motor. If not, you might have to come up with another way to engage the motor.

[khaag]

Hmm, nightwheel, that is the first time I've seen you say anything mildly intelligent. Good job.

As for replacing the guts of a cd drive with the gd-rom guts, its going to be one hell of a task. I took a look at it. There is going to be no easy way to do it.

[dragonhead]

could do it up laptop style and have the whole laser assembly slide out on a tray

[khaag]

That's another option. You would have to extend the ribbon cable though, as its quite short as-is. I was searching around one day to figure out how to extend FFC cable without directly soldering to the cable or something like that... Needless to say, I couldn't find anything. One day however, I came
across a site that sells parts for building a DIY projector. And what do you know, they have FFC connector couplers so you can extend ribbon cable! http://www.diy-beamer.com/EN/store/come ... ategory=71

Buy one of those sets, depending on how many pins the GD-Rom cable has and there you go!

[nightwheel]

Hmm, nightwheel, that is the first time I've seen you say anything mildly intelligent. Good job.

From you, take that as a complement. If given the right moments (like this topic), I can surprise you guys with my intelligence.

Now, dragonhead's idea sounds like it could work out way better than my idea would. I would use his if i was making a Dreamcast Laptop. And with the link khagg provided. It should be very possible and much more easier to make that form of a slide out disk drive for a Dreamcast Laptop, than mine. And maybe save you some heart aches in the future.