CD-i Emulator 0.5.2 Limited edition now available!

CD-i Emulator is the first fully evolving windows compatible emulator project of the Philips CD-i system. Discuss the emulator, compatibility issues, seek help and support to get the program operating and post what you'd like to see in future revisions of the program. CD-i players ROM (BIOS) requests, begging and links will not be tolerated. Otherwise feel free to post your thoughts on this amazing new piece of software.
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cdifan
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Post by cdifan » Fri Sep 30, 2005 11:18 pm

The full release will be available within a few hours; I'm still working on a nice GUI for NVRAM loading and saving (the basic code is already there for weeks).

There will be a save/load-state feature at some point, but it won't go in the limited edition; otherwise there wouldn't be much point in it being limited!

Like Bas says, three minutes is usually plenty for seeing if a CD-i title / ROM combination works or not.

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Post by [Playfull] » Sat Oct 01, 2005 12:38 am

ok now im talking straight out this might upset some but its my impression anyway ...


When i first saw the project i thougnt thats a great thing respect to the author
but reading more and more it looks/sounds to me its more about making money
my reasons well here are a few of them :

first you need to pay for the emulator (what are completly fair) but here is the
catch you will have to pay again when the athour feels like a "major" update are
out ok you get a discount if you allready have payed for the outdated version :)

so if lets say i have to pay 2-5 times for every "major" update the price will
be over if you go and buy a used CD-I here in denmark what would
be 100% compatible...


the free version so called limited version 3 mins. try then you are done
you cant help the team by testing you cant do anything usefull with that version at
all in my mind its completly useless my guess are the author are afraid of
people should be using a save state to much and therefor not pay for the
emulator i feel another bleem are out feels more its about the money not really
about the CD-I .... this is the first emulator with so low time limit and nothing
else to do than see the intro screen and jump a few times i Merlin`s Apprentice
and then you are done ...


i understand when a author feels he should get alittle our of his hard work but
in my oppion this are about being alittle to greedy ..

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Post by Kao » Sat Oct 01, 2005 1:20 am

Come on, it's just 31 USD. That's not asking very much for five years of dedicated coding! I can see where you're coming from about the "major update" deal, but you do get a considerable discount if you're already a paying customer.
It's like 1993 all over again!
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Devin
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Post by Devin » Sat Oct 01, 2005 1:28 am

I can think of better ways to make money than spend countless hundreds of hours coding an emulator which without a doubt is what CD-i Fan has done!! In my mind CD-i Fan has always been focused on preserving the CD-i system through CD-i Emulator, his attention to detail is meticulous right down to the LED readout of a CD-i player.

No information has been held back and CD-i Fan is quite forthcoming that a major breakthrough such as Digital Video Support may warrant a further micro payment. I have no problem making a payment for CD-i Emulator and any further developments in the project, make no mistake i'm not getting or asking for any freebies. All the BETA testing was carried out with the limited release so the unlimted package will be as much of a treat for me as the rest of you guys!!

Of course in the end it's upto you how you spend your money and to an extent the payment system does limit the user base to a certain demographic as you rightly point out. Then again we hope this system will bring a level of responsibility to the use of the full unlimited CD-i Emulator and CD-i Player ROMS.

Correct me if i'm wrong CD-i Fan but as far as I gather from our discussions the base case version of CD-i Emulator will receive future updates to the paying customer free of charge. However a major breakthrough such as Digital Video capabilities or a ROM less version would warrant a further micropayment and then future updates would be free of charge. Just to set the record straight would this be the rough plan?
Last edited by Devin on Sat Oct 01, 2005 1:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by [Playfull] » Sat Oct 01, 2005 1:33 am

well i dont know CDIfan in person so i cant judge from that im only judgein
from what i read and feel :wink:

and if the beta testers only gets the limited version i guess its very limited
beta testing 8)

anyway good luck with the project and take care all .....

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Post by Devin » Sat Oct 01, 2005 1:48 am

[Playfull] wrote:and if the beta testers only gets the limited version i guess its very limited
beta testing 8)
Not at all, we've tested numerous CD-i player ROMS from a diverse collection of CD-i players through the various BETA testers which has helped CD-i Fan implement numerous variations on the CD-i hardware in CD-i Emulator. All this work is shown in the excellent player compatibility CD-i Emulator displays at this stage.

A wide range of software has been tested with diffferent ISO image formats to insure it will function correctly when used through CD-i Emulator. For the most part 3 minutes is all that's needed to test the introduction, menu systems and the main body of software be it a game or reference CD-i.

Of course we're bound to find problems in the future which CD-i Fan will undoubtedly remedy with future releases. CD-i Emulator is an evolving project and we seek your input and involvement.

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Post by Heatseeker86 » Sat Oct 01, 2005 2:23 am

31 bucks is lot of money lol.. :P well, from the authors point of view, not many people are going to want to play this system in the first place so then it is probably a good price to get the most profit out of it for the work put in... however, paying for updates would be down right JACKED :)

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Post by cdifan » Sat Oct 01, 2005 5:58 am

I have stated several times and will state it once more:

Compatibility and minor feature updates will be free; there will probably be a lot of these in the coming months.

A possible major feature update is the addition of Digital Video Cartridge (MPEG) support, as this is a major undertaking. But I haven't made up my mind yet, it will depend on the amount of hours I have to put in.

I can't state it any clearer than this. If you don't want to pay, then don't pay, but please quit whining.

You are free to write your own CD-i emulator, as many people have done already. :twisted:

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Post by CD-WHY » Tue Oct 05, 2010 4:51 am

It's not so much paying that's a problem to me, but paying for something that doesn't work. By "working" I mean, at least 80% of titles should fully function, not just the first 5 minutes (and I'm not including the DVC titles).

Until then I have my 4 Cd-I machines, with only one working, but hope to be able to repair the others some day.

I am almost surprised that there is an update to this emulator. I thought everybody had forgotten about CD-I. This said, the 3DO emulator felt abandoned for a long time, until a gang from Russia worked on it recently with amazing results (if you can find the english translation version). I have played full 3DO titles with near perfection quality (the emulator is still much a work in progress) when I thought it would never be posssible.

Maybe the same with Cdiemu some day? Time will tell (or beta testers will: we are waiting.)



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Post by phatrat1982 » Mon Jun 20, 2011 11:09 pm

I am sorry but I disagree entirely as far as I can tell this is the ONLY emulator in existence where someone is charging money for it period. This isn't even a well sought after system. The author talks about how he wants to get something for his coding, what about the authors of nesterj, Fusion, project 64,epsxe, mame, etc none of them are making money doing this they are doing it to spread the world of their console it is things like this and how insanley expensive a used system is are the reasons why so few people get into this system in the first place. I mean it was cost prohibitive when it was new and it looks like even now it continues to be so.

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Post by opt_fr_ » Wed Jun 22, 2011 12:52 am

phatrat1982 wrote:I am sorry but I disagree entirely as far as I can tell this is the ONLY emulator in existence where someone is charging money for it period.
VGS (virtual game station) and Bleem were playstation emulators released as commercial software.

If you want write your cdi emulator, you have to spend a lot of time guessing how does the device works because of the lack of documentation. Also, all the available specifications is not free, consider about $150 only purchasing the green book.

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Post by phatrat1982 » Wed Jun 22, 2011 1:39 am

ok
Last edited by phatrat1982 on Thu Jun 23, 2011 8:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by phatrat1982 » Wed Jun 22, 2011 1:45 am

edit.
Last edited by phatrat1982 on Thu Jun 23, 2011 8:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by cdifan » Wed Jun 22, 2011 8:05 pm

Let me insert some facts here...

CD-i Emulator v0.5.3-beta2 and MAME are both free and play most CD-i titles about as well, provided you use a Mono-I system ROM. See my website for details.

This is not a coincidence as I basically coached the MAME CD-i developer through the undocumented parts of the Mono-I hardware, using the knowledge I gained from reverse-engineering the hardware for CD-i Emulator. Note that the MAME source is publicly available.

I don't know where you live, but reverse-engineering for interoperability purposes (which is what I did) is perfectly legal here. I am not distributing any copyrighted information.

I have been wondering lately if it was time yet for a fully free release of CD-i Emulator with a donation button or something. The discussion above is certainly not encouraging me...

Could you please take any further whining to a separate thread instead of contaminating this one?

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Post by phatrat1982 » Thu Jun 23, 2011 1:10 am

No I was not trying to whine I was providing an alternative perspective, I could have worded things differently but the truth remains that from someone not particularly familiar with this stuff it appears as though everyone else is doing just as much work for nothing I meant no disrespect to you personally man just the comments who replied to my initial reply. But to be honest man, if you read my posts from that day I was just having a bad day and taking it out on you, I don't have a job right now been out of work for a year so reading about this and the news about Trip Hawkins cheating on his taxes and some other shit that happened personally yeah I lost my temper so for that sorry.



I just wanted to provide an alternate perspective so if I offended you I am sorry I just had a bad day and lost my cool.

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