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replacing scsi cd-rom drive with scsi sd card adapter?

rabbitholecomputing said:
We do have some stock on SCSI2SD V5.0c and V5.5 boards right now, but you're otherwise correct; We don't have stock on SCSI2SD V5.2's, simply because the manufacturer hasn't been able to supply the necessary semiconductors in nearly a year. We were therefore left with no choice but to pivot, and develop a new product, which was based on microcontrollers we could actually buy. The situation isn't much better with SCSI2SD V6 hardware either, as the FPGA used has been unobtanium for quite some time as well, due to the ongoing electronics component shortages, which are expected to last well in to 2023, and possibly even 2024.
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Keep up the good work team, what you do is valued and appreciated! 100% agree on the global component shortage by the way. I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Stay with it!
 
rabbitholecomputing said:
We do have some stock on SCSI2SD V5.0c and V5.5 boards right now, but you're otherwise correct; We don't have stock on SCSI2SD V5.2's, simply because the manufacturer hasn't been able to supply the necessary semiconductors in nearly a year. We were therefore left with no choice but to pivot, and develop a new product, which was based on microcontrollers we could actually buy. The situation isn't much better with SCSI2SD V6 hardware either, as the FPGA used has been unobtanium for quite some time as well, due to the ongoing electronics component shortages, which are expected to last well in to 2023, and possibly even 2024.

AzulSCSI represents a fusion of SCSI2SD's very mature and fully-functional SCSI command handling codebase, but employs a fundamentally different configuration paradigm, which uses a images/ISOs represented as files. AzulSCSI's CD-ROM emulation is extremely straightforward to use. All you need to do is take an ISO or raw image file, put it on a FAT32 or exFAT-formatted SD card, of any size, with a file name that begins with "CDx.iso", where X is a unique SCSI ID between 0-7.

Performance-wise, AzulSCSI fits in-between SCSI2SD V5 and SCSI2SD V6. In effectively all scenarios, it's faster than SCSI2SD V5, but not as fast as V6.

Mechanically, the full-sized AzulSCSI board dimensions are identical to that of V5.1/V5.2/V6, meaning any SCSI2SD mounting solution for these boards will work equally well with AzulSCSI.

We're confident the AzulSCSI will work well with the CPS3. If you buy one and find it doesn't work for you, we'd be happy to either work with you to diagnose why, or give you a full refund, with return shipping on us.

You can learn more about AzulSCSI at https://azulscsi.com, including where they can be purchased. Just as with SCSI2SD, the AzulSCSI firmware is open source, GPLv3-licensed code, which there's a link to on the AzulSCSI website.
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as long as there's no stuttering and the load times aren't any worse than normal, I'm ok with it. I really appreciate you reaching out.
 
Is speed even relevant? I always thought the code was the bottleneck, it's not like flashing times are faster off the SD card than they were off the original CD-ROM.
 
I dont know much about how the game loads or flashes but I just wanted to make sure there wasnt any introduced loading issues. that might be a non-issue concern but im just a novice hobbyist so ill probably ask questions like that from time to time.
 
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Drive Speed is not relevant to gameplay.

CPS3 loads the game from disc 1 time when it writes to the SIMMs, after that it only checks that the disc is present but doesn't use it. it wont load again until you change to a different game. This is why there are noCD versions of the games because they play 100% from the SIMMs and don't use the disc data for anything once it's installed.

perhaps a faster speed would help reduce the time to reflash the SIMMs when changing games, but I believe the bottleneck is the SIMMs not the Disc.
 
rabbitholecomputing said:
We do have some stock on SCSI2SD V5.0c and V5.5 boards right now, but you're otherwise correct; We don't have stock on SCSI2SD V5.2's, simply because the manufacturer hasn't been able to supply the necessary semiconductors in nearly a year. We were therefore left with no choice but to pivot, and develop a new product, which was based on microcontrollers we could actually buy. The situation isn't much better with SCSI2SD V6 hardware either, as the FPGA used has been unobtanium for quite some time as well, due to the ongoing electronics component shortages, which are expected to last well in to 2023, and possibly even 2024.

AzulSCSI represents a fusion of SCSI2SD's very mature and fully-functional SCSI command handling codebase, but employs a fundamentally different configuration paradigm, which uses a images/ISOs represented as files. AzulSCSI's CD-ROM emulation is extremely straightforward to use. All you need to do is take an ISO or raw image file, put it on a FAT32 or exFAT-formatted SD card, of any size, with a file name that begins with "CDx.iso", where X is a unique SCSI ID between 0-7.

Performance-wise, AzulSCSI fits in-between SCSI2SD V5 and SCSI2SD V6. In effectively all scenarios, it's faster than SCSI2SD V5, but not as fast as V6.

Mechanically, the full-sized AzulSCSI board dimensions are identical to that of V5.1/V5.2/V6, meaning any SCSI2SD mounting solution for these boards will work equally well with AzulSCSI.

We're confident the AzulSCSI will work well with the CPS3. If you buy one and find it doesn't work for you, we'd be happy to either work with you to diagnose why, or give you a full refund, with return shipping on us.

You can learn more about AzulSCSI at https://azulscsi.com, including where they can be purchased. Just as with SCSI2SD, the AzulSCSI firmware is open source, GPLv3-licensed code, which there's a link to on the AzulSCSI website.
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It appears this has been rebranded to ZuluSCSI in the past month?

I'll take the dip and give one a shot and post back if it works once I receive it.

-K
 
Kagaden said:
It appears this has been rebranded to ZuluSCSI in the past month?

I'll take the dip and give one a shot and post back if it works once I receive it.

-K
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I bought one before the rebrand. It seems to be working well. It appears to be much simpler to implement as you don't have to use the utility program to change the device type, etc.
 
rabbitholecomputing said:
We do have some stock on SCSI2SD V5.0c and V5.5 boards right now, but you're otherwise correct; We don't have stock on SCSI2SD V5.2's, simply because the manufacturer hasn't been able to supply the necessary semiconductors in nearly a year. We were therefore left with no choice but to pivot, and develop a new product, which was based on microcontrollers we could actually buy. The situation isn't much better with SCSI2SD V6 hardware either, as the FPGA used has been unobtanium for quite some time as well, due to the ongoing electronics component shortages, which are expected to last well in to 2023, and possibly even 2024.

AzulSCSI represents a fusion of SCSI2SD's very mature and fully-functional SCSI command handling codebase, but employs a fundamentally different configuration paradigm, which uses a images/ISOs represented as files. AzulSCSI's CD-ROM emulation is extremely straightforward to use. All you need to do is take an ISO or raw image file, put it on a FAT32 or exFAT-formatted SD card, of any size, with a file name that begins with "CDx.iso", where X is a unique SCSI ID between 0-7.

Performance-wise, AzulSCSI fits in-between SCSI2SD V5 and SCSI2SD V6. In effectively all scenarios, it's faster than SCSI2SD V5, but not as fast as V6.

Mechanically, the full-sized AzulSCSI board dimensions are identical to that of V5.1/V5.2/V6, meaning any SCSI2SD mounting solution for these boards will work equally well with AzulSCSI.

We're confident the AzulSCSI will work well with the CPS3. If you buy one and find it doesn't work for you, we'd be happy to either work with you to diagnose why, or give you a full refund, with return shipping on us.

You can learn more about AzulSCSI at https://azulscsi.com, including where they can be purchased. Just as with SCSI2SD, the AzulSCSI firmware is open source, GPLv3-licensed code, which there's a link to on the AzulSCSI website.
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I've ended up buying one from RECAP-A-MAC (the AU distributor) and I will report back once I figure out how to get it to work on the CPS3
 
Got my ZuluSCSI yesterday. The install is incredibly easy.

These were my steps:
  • Use ImgBurn to create a .iso of my CPS3 Multi disc
  • Plug SD card into my card reader
  • Make sure the SD card was formatted correctly
  • Drag my CPS Multi disc iso into the folder of the SD card (card connected via a SD reader on my PC via USB)
  • Rename the disc image by adding CD1 to the rest of the file name (in my case CD1CAP-33S-1.iso)
  • Plug SD card into the ZuluSCSI
  • Unplug my CD drive from the CPS3
  • Plug the 50pin cable into the ZuluSCSI
  • Enjoy
I'll report back if anything changes, but so far so good.
 
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Happy to report that I've received my ZuluSCSI and it's as easy as you've outlined. Literally plug and play - it just worked!

I definitely wouldn't have known about the renaming of the ISO file though.

Thanks again for the guide @DMRSX !
 
Hello. I bough one of these adapters from ebay. I have it with a Darksoft ultrabios modded cart. I bought it because my cd drive wasn't working properly, with nothing happening when I held P1 start. Now with the scsi2sd I still get the same error, even with a greenish screen.

This is what I've done so far:
-Updated the adapter's firmware
-I then "burned" the CPS3 multi iso into a 2gb micro SD card with HDD Raw Copy Tool
-Next, with the SCSI2SD utilty software, I checked the "Enable Parity" box,
-set the "SCSI ID" to 1
-on Device Type I selected "CDROM"
-On device size I put 700 mb

When I plug the adapter I get the same "Now reading CD rom. Please wait…" but with a greenish tone. Holding P1 Start wont do anything.

Any suggestions?
 
diosleon said:
Hello. I bough one of these adapters from ebay. I have it with a Darksoft ultrabios modded cart. I bought it because my cd drive wasn't working properly, with nothing happening when I held P1 start. Now with the scsi2sd I still get the same error, even with a greenish screen.

This is what I've done so far:
-Updated the adapter's firmware
-I then "burned" the CPS3 multi iso into a 2gb micro SD card with HDD Raw Copy Tool
-Next, with the SCSI2SD utilty software, I checked the "Enable Parity" box,
-set the "SCSI ID" to 1
-on Device Type I selected "CDROM"
-On device size I put 700 mb

When I plug the adapter I get the same "Now reading CD rom. Please wait…" but with a greenish tone. Holding P1 Start wont do anything.

Any suggestions?
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I think there may be something else going on here. I was experiencing similar weirdness a while back and wrote a post about "expected behaviour" of a CPS3 board in various fail states and misconfigurations. Now I have 4 x CPS3 boards it's much easier to test this kind of stuff, but at current prices ($1500?!?!?!?! each) that's not really a realistic option for troubleshooting :)

https://www.arcade-projects.com/thr...ued-on-to-both-any-thoughts.17507/post-303504

Anyhoo, regardless of what media you have in the drive (or the SD2SCSI) you should be able to get to the Darksoft menu by holding down start while powering on.

The fact that you're getting the exact same problem with both a CD drive and an SD2SCSI points to a problem further up the chain.

So things to try.
Super simple and I'm 100% sure you are already doing this - power off, hold down start on the controller, keep it held down, power on, wait minimum of 10-20 seconds still holding it down
still simple and cheap, source another 50 pin SCSI drive and see if that improves the situation
still simple but less cheap, give up on the SCSI thing altogether and upgrade to ultrasimms + noCD bios
not at all simple, consider that the onboard SCSI controller may not be... controlling and start learning about CPS3 board repair
 
diosleon said:
When I plug the adapter I get the same "Now reading CD rom. Please wait…" but with a greenish tone. Holding P1 Start wont do anything.
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I was getting stuck on the "Now reading CD ROM" screen with some slight graphical glitches. Cleaning the contacts on the Darksoft cart with q-tips and rubbing alcohol fixed it for me.
 
I think as well that it might be the cart. clean the contacts well and then insert/remove the cart a couple of times (4-5)
 
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