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DARKSOFT CHIHIRO TYPE 3: New Firmware !

Darksoft said:
To celebrate the 4th of July I'm releasing a new version of the Chihiro TYPE 3 Firmware that allows to boot your Chihiro with any CF or SSD.
Click to expand...
I use CF (with IDE-CF adapter), it's great, but slow. How to add a game on a SSD, the same way than on CF?

And more important question: what is max speed of Chihiro IDE? Because I've seen some IDE DOM cheap, but a bit slow (reading 43Mo/s max). So I don't know if I must choose a SSD disk (faster but you have to use a converter IDE-SATA, and to attach inside the Chihiro or Triforce) or this very convenient DOM (small, easy to change, but slower).
 
With your firmware he just needs an SATA to IDE adapter. I think he just needs to know how to write the actual game to the SSD.
 
isnt compact flash just as fast as a ssd? i thought the speed was limited by the ide interface of the chihiro....

i wouldnt call the compact flash method slow at all....i can load up outrun 2 sp in just over a minute...
 
I have a CF running with a power took elsewhere inside the system, so no problem for power.
That's this speed limit that strike me. I have several CF, some slow, some fast, and there is some very fast sold nowdays. I just wonder if I will realy have faster loadings since this damn IDE port must limit transfer speed, and so if I take a not so fast DOM or a fast SSD. I know Xbox use a 40 wires IDE cable, so ATA33 or 66?
And I don't know how to write games on SSD, too, but that will come after I choose what kind of storage I will use.
 
here is mine loading up outrun 2 sp...via compact flash


its not as fast as mitsi's ssd boot up on his youtube video...so looks like ssd is faster than cf cards
 
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Isn't a ssd with a sata to ide adapter equal to a compact flash card from a host point of view?

While xbox was using a 40 wire ide cable, the chihiro is using an 80 wire cable between the base board and the dimm board. In the leacked bios we can see that the chihiro 3 dimm board uses dma 5 transfer and the chihiro 1 dimm board dma 2
I don't think the loading speed is influenced by this as it's basically a transfer between the cf or ssd and the dimm memory. It's under control of the asic. The xbox mobo doesn't interfer with that transfer. Once the image is transferred from the disk to the dimm, the system is rebooted and sees the dimm as a fatx formatted drive.
 
obcd said:
Isn't a ssd with a sata to ide adapter equal to a compact flash card from a host point of view?

While xbox was using a 40 wire ide cable, the chihiro is using an 80 wire cable between the base board and the dimm board. In the leacked bios we can see that the chihiro 3 dimm board uses dma 5 transfer and the chihiro 1 dimm board dma 2
I don't think the loading speed is influenced by this as it's basically a transfer between the cf or ssd and the dimm memory. It's under control of the asic. The xbox mobo doesn't interfer with that transfer. Once the image is transferred from the disk to the dimm, the system is rebooted and sees the dimm as a fatx formatted drive.
Click to expand...
It is basically equal from a host point of view, but SSD is from my experience significantly faster. Now, it depends on how fast the host can pull out of it.
I always used 40 wire cable both with CF and SSD and it's in this configuration where I saw it loading faster. I'm not sure if a 80 wire cable would help. Think that in a 80 wire cable the other 40 cables are just connected to GND and only help to avoid coupling.
I'd be happy to see some users posting their spped rates here.
 
You are correct about the 40 wires being connected to gnd, however, one of the wires isn't connected indicating to the device (ssd or cf) that faster dma speeds are possible since the crosstalk between 2 signal wires is much less. Both devices need to support the faster speed, or the 80 wire cable is useless. A modern ssd and high speed compact flash cards will support the faster transfer rate, but I am unsure if the asic firmware will benefit from it. After all, sega assumes you have a good dimm battery that can hold the game in dimm memory for a couple of days, so basically they assume that reloading it from disk is hardly ever needed, unless the system was unpowered for a longer period.
Loading from gdrom disk was slow as well, and they only switched 2 compact flash because the gdrom drives started going bad and the optics for it were no longer produced.
Basically, the host is asking the disk what dma transfer it supports, and the disk will only allow the higher speed dma's if it detects an 80 wire cable.
 
When I was testing Darksoft's custom FW I was testing using the same CF cards as I use with Naomi so I've never tested it with a high speed CF card so it would be cool to see the comparisons. I know SSD was much quicker than the CF cards I was using. Also much faster than netbooting for me. Though some people say Netbooting is fast for them but it has always been super slow for me on both Type 3 Triforce and Chihiro.
 
I have used embedded pc's that booted from a compact flash card, and their performance wasn't all that great either. On the other hand, I have read about people that replaced their xbox harddrive with a compact flash and claim it's super fast like that.
An older sandisk ultra I am having seems to allow up to 30MB/s. I have a couple of Kingston cards coming in that are 266 * 150KB = 39,9 MB I still have to check if those can be considered fast or not.

Netbooting doesn't appear to be fast in my case either. It's only a test setup and the chihiro is connected to our local network with a homeplug, so my results aren't relevant at all.
If you use a raspberry pi, it's network speed will be limited as well as it uses usb 2 ethernet for it's lan connection. It needs to get it's data from a sd card (or usb stick) which isn't the fastest medium either.
When people started using the pi as a cheap nas, they complained about it's transfer speed as well.

In theory, a good 100Mbit connection should be able to transfer at 10 - 12MB / s That's still 4 times slower than the possible compact flash transfer speed.

This brings us to the next point of intertest. Not all game images are equal in size, so comparing transfer speeds between different systems and methods should be done taking the game image size into the equation. A 200MB game image will load twice as fast as a 400MB one. Both will fit in a 512MB dimm system.

I don't have the proper setup for a guide I am afraid, but I don't see how it would differ from a compact flash setup guide.
Power can be taken from the gdrom supply connector. There is one to the outside next to the security chip connector and there is one inside next to the 40 pin ide connector. They both have the same pinout. You have 12V and 5V on that connector.
 
Lexar seems to make the fastest compact flash cards and claims a speed of 800 x 150KB = 120MB/sec.
Transcent comes next with 400 x 150KB = 60MB/sec.
However, they claim their speed is actually 90MB/sec.

120MB/sec is faster than the maximum ATA-100 theoretical speed.
I doubt a SATA SSD with sata 2 ide interface will be able to transfer data much faster.

You can find such a Lexar 8Gig for approx. 23 euro. The cheapest SSD I could find is 50 euro. (Didn't really looked very hard.)

The bootup time of outrun 2 sp with an SSD is around 2 minutes. Terminator 2K2 has a boottime of approx. 2:15 which isn't that much different.
I am curious what speed grade compact flash card he is using.
 
@terminator2k2 can you shoot a video so we can compare the loading times?

This would apply to chihiro. I guess that it's very similar to Triforce.
 

it only seems around 15 seconds or so behind the ssd so not worth messing around for me.....

plus i use a 12v sealed lead acid battery through a pico ups which charges for a couple of hours everyday which keeps the battery level up, then through a LM2695 to step the voltage down to 7.2v, straight to the chihiro.....the original battery has been removed from the chihiro...This then keeps the game on the dimm board....
 
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