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Sega Dreamcast HDD Edition - Can you add games?

RetroRalph·video·14m 19s·analyzed·Jul 23, 2019
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.024

TL;DR

RetroRalph adds games to Dreamcast HDD Edition; most fail due to slow drive speed.

Summary

RetroRalph demonstrates adding games to a Sega Dreamcast HDD Edition purchased from AliExpress by extracting the IDE hard drive, copying game files (GDI/BIN format) to the root directory, and using the DreamShell ISO Loader to attempt playback. While some games load, most suffer from stuttering and poor performance due to the slow 4200 RPM drive; he plans to upgrade to a faster drive in a future episode to test if performance improves.

Key Claims

  • Games copied to the DreamShell pre-programmed folders don't appear in the menu system

    high confidence · Direct observation during attempted file organization in alphabetical order folders

  • The ISO Loader app can manually load games placed in the root directory of the drive

    high confidence · Successfully demonstrated loading Street Fighter 2X Japan, Ready 2 Rumble Boxing 2, and Smash Pack from root folders via ISO Loader

  • Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and most added games suffer severe stuttering and performance issues

    high confidence · Direct observation of gameplay; noticeable hard drive access light activity during play

  • The device uses a 120GB Hitachi Travelstar IDE drive spinning at 4200 RPM with no cache

    high confidence · Physical inspection and specification reading of the internal drive

  • The Smash Pack (Streets of Rage) runs well on the system

    high confidence · Successfully loaded and played without notable performance issues; audio quality praised

  • The device has game artwork/thumbnails in an internal database despite not being connected online

    medium confidence · Observation that game artwork appeared automatically for manually added games; exact mechanism unclear

  • Upgrading to a 5400 or 7200 RPM drive might improve performance

    medium confidence · Speculation based on hard drive speed analysis; planned as future experiment

Notable Quotes

  • “This is what you get with China products, I'm telling you. They develop stuff, and they go almost all the way there, and they just go, eh, it's good enough.”

    RetroRalph@ 8:35 — Commentary on QA and manufacturing practices of Chinese electronics; suggests intentional incomplete development cycle

  • “Well, we think it works. Let's see. What game should we play? I mean, obviously, you guys know what I would pick. I'm gonna pick Streets of Rage.”

    RetroRalph@ 7:24 — Introduces the Smash Pack game selection; personal preference for Streets of Rage

  • “It's clear that it doesn't play full speed. So, I don't know, there's really no point in sitting here and playing any more of it.”

    RetroRalph@ 11:01 — Conclusion about Marvel vs. Capcom 2 performance failure

  • “A 4200 RPM drive is damn slow. And I don't think these had any cache on them at all.”

    RetroRalph@ 11:51 — Technical diagnosis of root cause of performance issues

Entities

RetroRalphpersonSega Dreamcast HDD EditionproductDreamShellsoftwareISO LoadersoftwareMarvel vs. Capcom 2gameSmash PackgameReady 2 Rumble Boxing Round 2gameSuper Street Fighter 2gameStreet Fighter X Japan 2X JapangameHitachi TravelstarproductPapa DukepersonAliExpresscompany

Signals

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Chinese manufacturer intentionally ships incomplete/unoptimized products relying on iterative updates and consumer tolerance

    medium · RetroRalph's assessment: 'They go almost all the way there and then they just go eh it's good enough. People will buy it like this.' Notes QA as intentionally poor to maintain production volume

  • ?

    product_strategy: Planned hard drive upgrade (5400-7200 RPM) as solution to performance issues in future episode

    medium · Speaker plans to clone drive and upgrade to faster model; speculates this may resolve stuttering issues

  • ?

    product_concern: Dreamcast HDD Edition suffers from severe performance issues with most games; only pre-loaded games and Smash Pack function properly

    high · Multiple game load failures; stuttering during Marvel vs. Capcom 2 gameplay; hard drive light constantly active during play

  • ?

    technology_signal: 4200 RPM IDE drive identified as critical performance bottleneck limiting game playability

    high · Direct observation of drive specifications; repeated hard drive access during gameplay; speaker explicitly identifies slow drive speed as root cause

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.043

0:00
all right guys no fun intro today we're just going to get right to it i promised that i would show you if we could add games to the dreamcast uh hdd product that we bought from aliexpress so that's Exactly what I'm gonna do so I had to take cover off there in order to take the cover off You have to actually unscrew it from the bottom. So I had covered that in a prior episode So pretty easy to do though. Just unscrew the screws and the top comes off So we're gonna need to do is we're gonna need to remove This PCB and there's these three screws right here. We're gonna have to remove and then we can finally get the drive out There's actually two more screws that hold the drive in two from the bottom. So we're just gonna unscrew these real quick I'm gonna actually fast forward through this process so we can get the show on the road Alright, so let's get this PCB out so we can get this drive and hook it up to the computer and see what we're gonna Get your guess as good as mine So just remove it with those three screws and then we have these two underneath the PCB and then we can remove that hard drive So I am going to do that right now. So just remove these two screws and then after that we have the Drive just wiggle it out. Don't be too rough with it. And there it is So I'm gonna go downstairs because I have a connector for these older style IDE drives that I can then go and These IDE SATA drives and I can go and hook it up to my computer and we can see what we're gonna get I'm gonna record that so you guys can see what this thing comes up as and we'll try to figure out if we can add games of this thing Alright, so we're over on my PC. Now. I'm gonna go plug in the drive and we'll see what we're gonna get
1:49
All right, there it is Okay, let's see Okay, so here it is. It's showing up as the D drive, and it's got this funky lettering that almost looks like it's Russian or something. I have no idea what that is, but I had plugged this in earlier, so I do know kind of what this looks like, but basically how it's broken down is DS is all the files needed to run DreamShell, and then there's a folder here called Games. So it's broken down, which is kind of funny. It's broken down. It says retail. Clearly, yeah, there's nothing retail about this. But anyways, that says retail. And if you click in here, all the games are kind of separated. So actually, before I did this, I tried to add games directly into these folders by alphabetical order, and they don't show up in the menu. So I can't really figure out how to get games onto the menu. But I have a hunch that if we add the games to the root of the drive, we can use the ISO loader to load them manually. and I'll show you what I mean. So we're going to copy over a couple games. I didn't have a bunch of games to choose from, so in my downloads folder on my local machine, I had Marvel vs. Capcom 2, which I know was one you guys wanted to play. I just picked games that I knew were not on there. Ready to Rumble Boxing Part 2, the Smash Pack, if you haven't seen that before, it's got Streets of Rage, but it emulates like butt on Redream, so maybe on original hardware it won't, and Street Fighter X Japan, 2X Japan.
Wicked Gamer and Collector
person
Streets of Ragegame
3:15
So I'm gonna copy these things over. So as we copy these over, I just wanted to let you know, these are in their native format. I'm not changing them at all, so I'm not converting them to ISOs or anything. They're actually GDI files and bin files. So I just putting those right there in specific folders Now the one thing that I wanna explore later is I don know anything about DreamShell There may be files that you can edit to add games to that menu system that they have. For right now because it wasn't as simple as adding the games and they just showed up I would I'm going to explore that later but for purposes of this we're just going to see if we can get that ISO loader app that's on the DreamShell front end to maybe load these games. So we'll check it out as soon as this is done copying. We'll see what happens. Okay, so the copy is complete. So what I'm going to do now is you can see all those folders are there. I'm just going to take the drive out. I'm going to unmount it from the desktop. And then we're going to take it out and put it back into the Dreamcast and see what happens.
4:19
So it won't let me eject it. All right, I'm going to power it off then. I'm going to power it off. We'll throw it back into the Dreamcast.
4:27
And hopefully we can play these games. Okay, I'm going to fire up the Dreamcast and we'll see what we're going to get here. Cross your fingers.
4:36
Alright. So far, so good. Okay, that's a good sign. Alright, and we're back at the DreamShell front end. Okay, so IsoLoader is the app I was talking about. Let's go there.
4:50
And if we go to IDE, because this is actually a board that has an IDE connector on it. So it has a very old school 2.5 inch hard drive on it. And it is an IDE connection. So I'm going to go IDE.
5:05
All right. So now you do see the folders for the games I added. So I'm going to try Super Street Fighter 2 first.
5:14
Because, you know, we got to have some anticipation for Marvel vs. Capcom. So let's see how this works out. All right. I don't know how it grabbed the artwork. work. That's weird. All right, anyways, because it's not like this thing's connected online or anything. So maybe there's some sort of database on it that has like all the artwork on it already. Hmm. Okay. Anyways, that's weird. Let's pull it up and see if it works.
5:40
Well, I'm looking at the hard drive light and it's not doing anything. Oh, wait, I don't see anything. Yeah.
5:53
Okay. Well, we're going to say we're 0 for 1. Because that doesn't look right to me. Does it look right to you? That does not look right. That looks like an Atari game. And I definitely don't think we're playing Atari. So let's try the next one.
6:10
Alright, let's try... Ready to Rumble Boxing Round 2. Again, it pulls up the... They must have all the thumbnails of all the games. That's the only explanation for that one.
6:24
Alright. Cross your fingers. Okay, that looks better. That definitely looks better than the last one.
6:35
The question is, does it play? Or does it just sit on this menu? well this doesn't look good either maybe there's a reason why there's only a certain amount of games on it because they only put the games on it that work all right let's uh yeah it won't even let me it won't let me it won't let me do the little reset function okay i'm gonna reboot the console and we'll try we'll try one of the other games but let's do the smashback and then we see if that works And how the graphics Alright Let see what we get Ah
7:14
Oh-ho-ho! The Smash Pack! The Smash Pack works. Well, we think it works. Let's see. What game should we play? I mean, obviously, you guys know what I would pick. I'm gonna pick Streets of Rage.
7:30
Let's see. ooh listen to how awesome this sound track sounds i've never oh god come on uh it's ruined yeah this was how yuzo kishiro would be super stoked at this this is exactly how he intended It's a sound! I mean, come on! Listen to this! Mmm, sweet sounds! Let's just play a minute of it, because it's so good.
8:10
Oh my gosh, listen to the jump noise! Whoop! Whoop! That's so dumb! Okay, we'll do Marvel vs. Capcom 2. You know, I'm not going to lie. I was really excited about the opportunity to do this, thinking there'd be something really cool.
8:34
Ah, man. This is what you get with China products, I'm telling you. They develop stuff, and they go almost all the way there, and they just go, eh, it's good enough. People will buy it like this. It's cool. I think that's just what they do. They go almost all the way. And then they'll come out with a version, the next version, and some stuff will work and other stuff will break. It's just the way they do things. I don't know why.
8:59
It's just the way it is. I buy a lot of these China brand products and it just is like that. My buddy Wicked Gamer and Collector, him and I were talking about it. It's incredible. They fix something and break something else. They break something else, they fix other things. I think it's obviously the fact that they want to keep pumping out systems and things for people to buy. So I just feel like it's intentional in a way. Like the QA is intentionally not good. anyways Marvel vs. Capcom 2 let's give it a shot it's what you guys came here for anyway alright hmm a little stutter in there
9:42
Capcom Marvel vs. Capcom 2 new age of heroes gonna take you for a ride Alright, enough of that. Alright, let's do it. I'm not feeling like this is going to go well.
10:16
Now one thing I do notice is it's accessing the crap out of the hard drive and this is not a fast hard drive it's a 4.2 our 4200 rpm drive so if there is an opportunity to maybe upgrade that to a faster drive that may help some of the stuttering that we getting I don know it just an idea but yeah definitely not playing very well
10:55
Hey. Jeez. Anyways, well, I mean, it's clear that it doesn't play full speed. So, I don't know, there's really no point in sitting here and playing any more of it. But, I don't know. That's a bummer. But, you know, I'm still going to try. I think I'm going to try cloning the drive and putting, like, a faster drive in just to see if maybe that'll make a difference. And I don't know. Who knows? Maybe a clone drive won't even work, right? So, all right.
11:29
It's a bummer, guys, but it is what it is. So here's the internal drive. And like I said, this thing is a 120 gig ATA IDE drive. It's 4200 RPMs. Now, obviously, it did play Marvel versus Capcom, too, but it was all stuttery and kind of slow.
11:51
4200 RPM drive is pretty damn slow. And I don't think these had any cash on them at all. It doesn't look like it does. I think I'll go look up the model number. It's a Hitachi Travel Star, but I don't think it I don't think it has any cash on it. That would also help. So I'm going to see maybe if I can get for like $20 or something, 5,400 RPM or even like a 7,200 RPM. The thing is you need these pins on the back. The newer drives don't have that. The newer 2.5-inch drives, let me see if I have one here.
12:20
I don't actually have one here. Anyway, I'll flash a picture of it when I edit the video. So I can find these probably on Amazon pretty cheap or even eBay. So I'll give it a shot. I'll clone it, and I'll see what I can do. It's fun because, you know, on these older drives, you could do things like set the jumpers for what device ID it's going to be, and they have it on cable select, and they didn't put a jumper on it. They actually soldered it. They actually put a little solder point on it. It's like, come on, man. That's just dumb. They couldn't have put a little jumper on it? They soldered it? And so basically, you're stuck with it that way unless you desoldered it. But it's just kind of goofy. But anyways, I'm going to clone it. So I will do a part three where I'll investigate a little bit further. But so far, I'm kind of thinking the adding of the games isn't that great. But I don't know. Maybe if I put a faster drive in, that will help that problem. But it was accessing the crap out of the HDD when there's a little access light when we were playing Marvel vs. Capcom 2. So anyways, that's it for now, guys. If you like this video, please like the video. Please consider subscribing to the channel if you enjoy stuff like this. We do a lot of things like this. We started with arcades, but we do a whole bunch of different stuff on the channel, but mostly all console-based stuff, arcade-based stuff, and modding and all sorts of fun things. So if that's what you're into, then definitely subscribe, hit notifications to be informed of future updates, and yeah, put your comments below. I want to hear what you guys think of this thing, and thanks for watching, guys. We'll see you on the next one. Outro Music