Some Rhea questions

[dandy]

I'm strongly considering getting a Rhea the next time preorders go live.  I have some questions for anyone who has one.

1) Is an HST-3200 guaranteed to be a VA0, unless someone went in and swapped out all the internals before I owned it?  I just really don't want to remove my Backup RAM to take the thing apart.

2) My intention would be to take my collection (all retail discs, I don't use CD-Rs) and make them into images that the Rhea can use.  What program is the best for this?  I've read of a few that people use.  

4) Is there any one compatible image format that works better than the rest?

5) There are a handful of cases where there are games I would really like to play that I simply won't pay the crazy price for (cough hyperduelbattlegaregga cough).  That benefits no one but resellers.  Is it possible to take a bin/cue file or iso+mp3 and turn it into the format that works with the Rhea?  There are only a handful of games I would do this with.  In most cases, I would continue to buy retail discs and make them into images.

6) Are the people here who have a Rhea happy with it?  I'm a bit torn between getting one of those or waiting and seeing what comes of that cart that works through the rear expansion port.  They both have pros and cons.  The Rhea seems like it works really well, but requires some disassembly and may not allow me to "try before I buy".  The expansion port cart looks really promising and doesn't require me to remove anything from my Saturn, but I don't like the idea of being reliant on the rear expansion port since it has the same weak pins as the cart slot.  Does anyone know if that other option is ever going to see production?  I'd love it if the guy who created it struck a deal with krikkz for him to manufacture them.

[zyrobs]

1. Yes, and VA0 machines use completely different internal designs from other Saturns, that probably wouldn't even fit the case if it was swapped out.

2. I use CD Manipulator, it's an old but useful open source app. It can read games in its own "CDM" format, which is identical to CloneCD and works on Rhea.

3. Maybe.

4. as far as Rhea is concerned, CloneCD and CDI should work equally well. ISO also works, but its a single track, so useless for anything but homebrew.

5. Mount them in an older version of daemon tools lite and rip them from the virtual drive. But if the image you are converting is trash (ie. all iso+mp3), then it might not work.

6. Rhea is easier to install than the simplest modchip. All you need is a screwdriver. The MPEG cart solution may be some time away, and it is primarily for development, but can run games as a side effect. Rhea is strictly a CD Drive "emulator" / replacement.

[dandy]

Thanks zyrobs. I may just wait for when he opens preorders again. I'd rather get a hold of one sooner than later.

[Sonnington]

Yeah the Rhea is GREAT! I have a rather old version before he added a GUI and it works for every game I've probably tried except for Rayman, Contra Legacy of War, and Bug!. I've tried over a hundred games, all the biggest names on the system, and those three were the only ones I had an issue with. But this was over a year and a half ago and he's updated the Rhea and the firmware, so I'm not sure what the improved compatibility is like now.

1. Why do you need to mess about with the ram to check compatibility? IIRC, it had to be a model 1 and you absolutely had to take the ribbon out of the optical drive to count the number of pins. Some of the newer model 1s had more pins and there was no way to tell without opening it up and counting.

2. You could, but it would be a lot easier to just download them though.

4. Discjuggler is the best. Apparently it was the format the Rhea was originally designed to play, but I've had no more success with discjuggler than cloneCD, and cloneCD is free. So that's what I use.

5. Oh, yeah, absolutely, that's exactly what I did. I just downloaded the bin/cue files from the websites and converted them to CCD in cloneCD.

[dandy]

How hard is it to actually get a rhea or any of that guy's products? I've been reading the comments on his website and there are a ton of frustrated people who've been trying to get that or a phoebe or a gdemu for years with no success. I subscribed to his RSS on every device I use and have it open on a tab all day at work, so I don't think I'll miss any updates. How long are the orders usually open for once they go live? Are we talking a couple hours or a couple minutes?

[zyrobs]

Bug is working now by the last firmware. I remember playing Contra and Rayman on it as well last year.

Feb 28, 2017 7:25:58 GMT Sonnington said:

1. Why do you need to mess about with the ram to check compatibility? IIRC, it had to be a model 1 and you absolutely had to take the ribbon out of the optical drive to count the number of pins. Some of the newer model 1s had more pins and there was no way to tell without opening it up and counting.

Nah, HST-3200 models are guaranteed to use 20pin drives.
HST-3210 and usa/pal model 1s can be either.
You can also tell from the serial number.

[atolm]

Bug! works with the newer firmware.  Rayman works (maybe a bad rip there son) probably the same with contra.

5) Handful of cases? Lol, the Rhea I bought has paid for itself dozens of times over by now. Let's see what's on my SD card?.... Tempo 2, Hyper Duel, pyrotechnic assassin tamagotchi, batsugun, blast wind etc.. you should be able to find all bin/cue at this point. I don't recall dealing with mp3, those were in the days of ancient times when bandwidths were crappy. There's quite a few with WAV files, but daemon tools will load and convert those over no problem.

orders are open probably a couple hours, but the more sales you miss the more folks find out about it. That other saturn card (the VCD slot one) isn't ready for release yet, the dude just opened a Patreon... so for now the Rhea/Phoebe is it.