Breakthrough in the Saturn Dev Scene!

[IceDigger]

In another breakthrough for the dev scene, congrats to VBT for releasing the Saturn's first working Boot Loader. What does this mean for Saturn community? It means we'll soon have the ability to put multiple programs or even full games on one CD. At the moment you can burn his release, and select between three different programs, his SMS emu, GT24, and his pic viewer.

Check it out here

Thanks to Slinga for the news.

 

[Ammut]

Wow- that is great news

Excellent work VBT! I can't wait to see where this leads... I think everyone was waiting for something like this to finally happen.

Keep up the great work

---Ammut

 

[tsumake]

Hmm, don't mean to sound too newbie-ish, but does that mean people are closer to creating a "boot disc" for the saturn, one that will allow one to play backups without a mod chip?? For me, being a complete noob and solder-phobe, that would be heaven on earth!

 

[Ammut]

Originally posted by tsumake@Jun 28, 2003 @ 09:47 PM

Hmm, don't mean to sound too newbie-ish, but does that mean people are closer to creating a "boot disc" for the saturn, one that will allow one to play backups without a mod chip?? For me, being a complete noob and solder-phobe, that would be heaven on earth!

This is not the case at all. A boot disc sure would be nice though...

This breakthrough allows for multiple games & programs to be stored and read from the same cd. Simply, it means more stuff on one cd with a nifty menu to boot.

Edit: I forgot to mention that you don't need a mod chip or a boot disc, just use the good 'ol trusty swap method

works great for me.

---Ammut

 

[vbt]

A little precision, it's only the menu of my SMS emu I need to recompile it and used a single CPU to let SMS Emu working on a real Saturn.

 

[tsumake]

Originally posted by Ammut+Jun 29, 2003 @ 09:18 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ammut @ Jun 29, 2003 @ 09:18 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'> <!--QuoteBegin-tsumake@Jun 28, 2003 @ 09:47 PM

Hmm, don't mean to sound too newbie-ish, but does that mean people are closer to creating a "boot disc" for the saturn, one that will allow one to play backups without a mod chip?? For me, being a complete noob and solder-phobe, that would be heaven on earth!

This is not the case at all. A boot disc sure would be nice though...

This breakthrough allows for multiple games & programs to be stored and read from the same cd. Simply, it means more stuff on one cd with a nifty menu to boot.

Edit: I forgot to mention that you don't need a mod chip or a boot disc, just use the good 'ol trusty swap method

works great for me.

---Ammut [/b][/quote]

Just for interest's sake, what makes it so difficult to create a boot disc for the Saturn? Ones have been made for the Dreamcast and PSX, and while I can see the relative ease of DC hacking, the PSX would strike me a bit harder. What keeps the diligent coder at bay from Sega's 32-bit wonder??

 

[Mr. Moustache]

The big difference between the PSX, DC and Saturn is where the boot process is stored. On the PSX and DC it's stored in the systems BIOS, and on the Saturn it's stored on the CD-Rom controller(I think, I know it's not in the BIOS, though). So noone knows what exactly the saturn does to boot up the disc, we know the security ring has something to do with it, but we don't know whether it's data in the ring itself, or just the code on the ring.

 

[Arakon]

dc has a bug that allows you to completely skip the copy protection.

psx boot cds are always pressed.. you CAN'T burn them.

same with saturn, no way to reproduce the copy protection ring with a burner.