And I just threw some oil on the fire....
Arcade operators aren't interested in multi's as arcade cabinets have a dedicated theme.
You can't just take your outrun cabinet an run another racing game on it, so why would you need a multi?
What is interesting however is a cheap repair method.
If a harddisk becomes bad, you can still order a replacement at sega it seems, but the prices are usually so high that you start wondering if the machine is still worth the expenses.
Since you bought the machine and the software already, why would you need to pay extra for a harddrive with the same software if you can prepare one yourself using an off the shelf pc drive?
Even just knowing the details why it won't work is helpfull, as it prevents wasting time on it trying.
If the forum rules forbid technical discussion of such hardware, I will follow them, but it's not like the watchdog question was asked to bypass security. It was just asked to see if the cf cards could be used elsewhere. If security needs to be disabled without password, the contents of the card are erased.
It makes sense they poll the card on regular base for it's presence, But I am really curious if they designed some special cards that "lock themself" again or "wathever" if they don't get the watchdog sequence at regular intervals. If that's the case the card indeed can't be used as normal cf memory card.