genesisknight
Saturn Player
Joined: September 2007
Posts: 52
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Post by genesisknight on Jun 29, 2011 22:32:45 GMT
Agreed. I would guess custom BIOS would theoretically lead to basically anything one could wish for, including new save game storage possibilities (SD cards?), booting games off external storage, etc. Could be awesome.
I would think the number of people out there with the time + skill + interest would be very few though.
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Post by Yart on Jun 29, 2011 22:47:43 GMT
I vote MP3 playback.
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genesisknight
Saturn Player
Joined: September 2007
Posts: 52
Location:
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Post by genesisknight on Jun 29, 2011 23:53:21 GMT
I wonder if the Saturn has the processing power needed to decode MP3s.
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Post by Yart on Jun 30, 2011 0:00:46 GMT
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Post by zyrobs on Jun 30, 2011 2:03:41 GMT
That microcontroller does not decode mp3s, it just "manages" the mp3 player itself. The mp3 decoding is done by an external MPEG decoder chip. Clockrate alone does not indicate cpu power - my old 486 at 100mhz can't decode mp3s at realtime speeds (the only mp3 I could get it to play was 64kbit mono). I believe the Saturn is ill equipped to play back a "modern" encoding format such as MP3.
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Post by Yart on Jun 30, 2011 2:12:31 GMT
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Post by zyrobs on Jun 30, 2011 3:14:41 GMT
Those are dedicated mp3 hardware decoders, not general purpose processors. You push an mp3 stream to them and they output a decoded pcm stream, but if you try to do a 2 + 3 operation, you get "lolwut" as the result.
On the Saturn, you'd need to decode the MP3s in software with the SH2 / SCU DSP, and they may have insufficient power for the task.
Unless you are suggesting the creation of an add-on cart with specific mp3 decoding hardware on it?
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genesisknight
Saturn Player
Joined: September 2007
Posts: 52
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Post by genesisknight on Jun 30, 2011 4:25:29 GMT
See I thought it was a pretty big deal when the Dreamcast did MP3s with Blaze. Saturn doing it should be out of the realm of possibility.
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Post by buckoa51 on Jun 30, 2011 8:40:03 GMT
The Saturn could easily decode an mp3, I used to decode them on the Amiga using an 030. Lord knows why your 486 could not handle it.
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Post by zyrobs on Jun 30, 2011 12:14:42 GMT
The Saturn could easily decode an mp3, I used to decode them on the Amiga using an 030. Lord knows why your 486 could not handle it. Care to give some details on that? With what player, and what quality mp3s? The only Amiga mp3 I could find was this: www.amigaamp.de/... and it states that it needs a 50mhz 68040 for half quality playback, and a 68060 for full quality. Note that both of those cpus have onboard FPU, something the Saturn lacks entirely.
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Post by buckoa51 on Jun 30, 2011 13:23:02 GMT
I would if I could remember, probably was at reduced quality. Not even sure a FPU would help with MPEG decoding. The 040 is ancient, the Saturn's CPU is way in excess of that.
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syn
There can be only one. Not eternal spamnation
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Post by syn on Jul 3, 2011 23:54:02 GMT
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Post by Yart on Jul 6, 2011 6:16:25 GMT
Awesome. Maybe in a week or two I'll be able to order mine!
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EverestX
Saturn Player
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Post by EverestX on Oct 3, 2011 15:40:08 GMT
This is *HOT* Kind of sad it doesn't successfully remove the CD checks. When/if it is, I'll be flashing proms' by the dozen!
I saw a few guys mention the gnarly wire-laden image of the "installed bios" Understand that this guy is prototyping, perhaps hard to tell but he's soldered in a socket for the bios to easily remove. It's ugly, but if you've ever done any prototyping, you need to be able to quickly do things, ugly or not.
He's also (so far as I'm aware) the only person to pull this off, doesn't matter if it looks like crap, he's #1.
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syn
There can be only one. Not eternal spamnation
Joined: June 2009
Posts: 1,883
Location:
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Post by syn on Oct 3, 2011 19:24:09 GMT
This is *HOT* Kind of sad it doesn't successfully remove the CD checks. When/if it is, I'll be flashing proms' by the dozen! I saw a few guys mention the gnarly wire-laden image of the "installed bios" Understand that this guy is prototyping, perhaps hard to tell but he's soldered in a socket for the bios to easily remove. It's ugly, but if you've ever done any prototyping, you need to be able to quickly do things, ugly or not. He's also (so far as I'm aware) the only person to pull this off, doesn't matter if it looks like crap, he's #1. These have come a long way in the short time since this thread was made There are much cleaner pics of the mod out there now.
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