Cuilan wrote:fernan1234 wrote:Is he aware of the very high demand for a model that only works as an ODE (with video output handled by the console) without any upscaling for analog monitor users? I'm guessing it would still need to have analog audio output only for the CD audio. Are there any plans to offer such a model?
I spoke to him about this, and he currently doesn't have the motivation to make something like that. He'd only consider it if he had at least one person to sponsor the development. The end product would be cheaper, but the initial time and money needed to create it would be too high for him to want to handle alone.
Also, there are two other projects that may fill this niche: Duenan's ODE and HuDebug are both supposedly still in development last I checked. If I were in his shoes I'd stick with the distinguishing feature (direct digital video) rather than enter a a market where I might soon be redundant.
fernan1234 wrote:Always nice to hear about continued work on one of these devices. My only strong wish for the UGX-02 is the original unprocessed, unscaled, non-stretched 15kHz video output. Doing it through the HDMI output is fine, so no need for new hardware on it. I bet it can already be done easily, and that the dev hasn't implemented it because the signal wouldn't be compatible with modern displays anyway. But this would actually provide a solution for analogue users, who would simply need to use an HDMI to VGA converter (which can extract the audio too, or digital audio can be extracted via an HDMI switch) and a sync combiner like an Extron RGB interface. I would totally buy one if it had this one feature.
Additional features like easier CD image loading would be the icing on the cake, and would render the SSDS3 100% obsolete.
I would like to see that as well. UGX-02 actually has a headphone jack, presumably because many DVI displays don't support audio over DVI... even DVI HDTVs like my old Sony XBR910. The headphone jack would pair perfectly with 240p output with an HDMI to VGA converter.
Personally, I want to see 1200p or 1080p (cropped) 5x mode so I can get an integer scale on a 1200p or 1080p monitor with an aspect closer to the original.
retrorgb wrote:Cuilan wrote:FBX wrote:Bob tried talking to the guy that made it in the hopes he would support more modern and common image formats, as well as fix some of the issues, but he said the guy was stubborn and refused to change it.
It's not about him being stubborn. Adding support for other formats would require a lot of extra work, and not only to implement them, but also to debug any problems that would pop up. Because of that, he currently has no interest in adding any others, though he might do so in the future
Not true. All he'd have to do it change his code to not require a reference to CDM in the PCE CD files and he'd open up a LOT more compatibility. Sorry, I probably sound like I'm going after the guy, but I'm just being honest.
Yes, it would be really easy to add support for CloneCD files but I've done a lot of digging and there just don't seem to be many PCE/TGCD titles distributed in CCD format. For those, I wrote a batch file that copies the *.ccd file to *.cdm and then changes the first two lines to "[CDManipulator]" and "Version=2" (from "[CloneCD]" and "Version=3").
I then proceeded to rip about 30 games with CloneCD instead of CD Manipulator since I happen to own a license. When it came time to load the games on my SD card for the UGX I realized that my batch code was on a different computer, so I just did all 30 by hand in about a minute and a half (keyboard shortcut warrior here
). I found a lot of BIN/CUE, ISO/WAV, CHD, etc images but still haven't found a CloneCD image of a PCE/TGCD title in the wild. [Edit: OK, I've finally found a huge set of old CCD rips to fill in the gaps from the June 2019 ReDump set. Someone with this set could definitely use CCD support!]
I did make a batch file for extracting BIN/CUE from a Mame CHD image set and used that to get a lot of the titles that were missing from the ReDump set. Unlike the CCD2CDM batch file, that one actually came in handy: I'd just drag and drop six images at a time with the appropriate MAME utils around and it would create the BIN/CUE output files I needed. Yes, I still needed to get those to *.ccd/cdm format, which I did using a virtual drive.
Cuilan wrote:fernan1234 wrote:Always nice to hear about continued work on one of these devices. My only strong wish for the UGX-02 is the original unprocessed, unscaled, non-stretched 15kHz video output. Doing it through the HDMI output is fine, so no need for new hardware on it. I bet it can already be done easily, and that the dev hasn't implemented it because the signal wouldn't be compatible with modern displays anyway....
A small correction: the UGX uses a DVI connector, not HDMI. The reason for this is that a license to use HDMI costs money, and also that the signal that is output by the UGX isn't fully compliant with the standard.
Yeah, but even stuff that does have an HDMI connector like the OSSC isn't technically compliant (my OSSC still has a DVI connector). The active adapter people use for this purpose (240/480p HDMI to VGA) may even come in a DVI flavor, though most DVI to VGA adapters are passive and require analog output from the source device.
To most people, DVI is just an alternate connection for HDMI... just like miniHDMI, microHDMI, DisplayPort, MHL, etc.
Also very much like USB-A, USB-B, USB-C, miniUSB-B, microUSB-B, microUSB 3.0, etc: All USB as far as we are concerned.
Just trying to put it in perspective for folks who may balk at it being DVI instead of HDMI: An extra adapter is also needed to use that HDMI to VGA adapter with a RetroTink 2X, since it's miniHDMI type-C. Needing a miniHDMI>HDMI adapter is really no worse than needing a DVI>HDMI adapter. My brother is the only person I've ever heard complain about UltraHDMI, GCDual, DCHDMI, WiiDual, etc using miniHDMI, so I think most people should be OK with DVI the same way.
Cuilan wrote:retrorgb wrote:
Not true. All he'd have to do it change his code to not require a reference to CDM in the PCE CD files and he'd open up a LOT more compatibility. Sorry, I probably sound like I'm going after the guy, but I'm just being honest.
No problem. I tried to explain this to him, but he doesn't understand what you mean. Could you try explaining this is a different way, or with more detail?
The program he supports for ripping CD games, CDManipulator, is essentially generating CloneCD images with a "cdm" file instead of a "ccd" file. Literally the only difference other than the filename extension is the first two lines in the file, which simply label the file as a CloneCD or CDManipulator. If the UGX-02 software "ikaebi" recognized both them instead of just one then people with CloneCD images would not have to rename the ccd file and edit the first two lines of text. CDManipulator is not even known outside of Japan so you aren't going to just download a game and find a cdm file while it is possible to find games with a ccd file. CDManipulator appears to be free so I've got no problem using it to make rips of my original discs in the first place but, well, I do own CloneCD and CDManipulator doesn't like some of my virtual drives.
Fudoh wrote:Could you try explaining this is a different way, or with more detail?
The creator is kinda forcing users to have their CD images created or formatted using some obscure imaging tool, which is silly, because the binary files aren't any different from your average image files, just the TOC files differ due to some syntax issues. If the firmware on the unit wasn't so picky about this particular toc syntax format, it would be much easier to just load existing images onto the machine.
Close, but it's not the FW... it's the "ikaebi" application you use to write images to the SD card. The file browser filters for cdm files and doesn't even show ccd. If you rename the ccd files to cdm it will still require those two lines at the start identifying the file as a CDManipulator Version 2 file. You can edit it with Notepad since it's essentially just a text file, but all the renaming and editing all the ccd files could get tedious if you have a large collection of CloneCD rips.
Cuilan wrote:Fudoh wrote:The creator is kinda forcing users to have their CD images created or formatted using some obscure imaging tool, which is silly, because the binary files aren't any different from your average image files, just the TOC files differ due to some syntax issues. If the firmware on the unit wasn't so picky about this particular toc syntax format, it would be much easier to just load existing images onto the machine.
Alright, he's telling me that he wants to see an example of this in action so he can fully understand what it is you guys want him to do. I dunno how easy that would be to provide though.
Simple: Just get rid of the steps outlined in Q1 on this page of his site:
http://www.upergrafx.com/cdrom2_setup_en
It's literally no harder than what he's already done. If he didn't care about continuing to support CDManipulator he could literally "Search and Replace" the references to cdm and CDManipulator in his code. That said, CDManipulator is free and CloneCD is not, so he should support both. Again: I'm using CloneCD because I happen to own it and it works better with other image formats mounted to a virtual drive.
Changing this behavior would also let people use their existing collection/downloads if they happen to be ripped in CloneCD format (literally a million times more likely outside of Japan). No one is asking him to support an entirely new image format just so that we can download games and copy them to the card directly. Just duplicate and edit a few lines so that those of us with ccd rips for *whatever* reason can use them without futzing around with filenames and text editors.
If it sounds like I'm complaining, remember that it didn't really slow me down so this isn't a personal complaint. Still, I can see where it would slow down and frustrate most people who have a bunch of ccd rips instead and it looks just stupid-easy to fix. I'm still refining the batch file as I write a my own user guide but I'm hoping he'll just update ikaebi and make this whole thing pointless.