chankast hard drive

[copious]

About how large of a hard drive should I buy for 200 dreamcast games?

[Witchboard]

Well, let's do the simple math.  Max size of a CD is 650MB.  I presume they didn't use any 700MB discs.  Multiply that by the amount of games you have then divide by 1024 to get the GB size.

650*200=130000MB/1024=126.95GB

Don't forget space for an OS, pagefile, etc...

[Generic Eric]

What are you worried about that for? You only need one game anyway. Ikuargua! Of course, this is only a matter of opinion.

BTW, and this is the real reason I posted, don't forget about the games with multiple discs.  There is a compatiblility list on the chankacast emutalk forum.  That should help.

[Scott84]

isnt it 700MB/CD?

[Witchboard]

isnt it 700MB/CD?

Typically not for console game discs.  At least the PS1.  I can't say for sure on the Dreamcast, thus the reason I said,

I presume they didn't use any 700MB discs.

[Generic Eric]

What are you worried about that for? You only need one game anyway. Ikuargua! Of course, this is only a matter of opinion.

BTW, and this is the real reason I posted, don't forget about the games with multiple discs. There is a compatiblility list on the chankacast emutalk forum. That should help.

I never did answer your question did I?
Dreamcast used GD Roms, not cd-roms.  GD Roms are 1Gig.  Part of the reason the games can fit on a cd is because they strip the videos, or compress the music.  The other reason, is that some of the games were just smaller.

It may be a bit premature to build a machine exclusively for chankast.  There are compatibility issues between working backups on hardware vs the backup working within the emulator and there are issues with save states.  This is the way it was when I stopped following it closely, a refresh of the message board reflects that the issues are still prevalant. 

You should use your backups, ones that you make yourself.  I think the compatibility issues will be resolved once there is a correct way to make a back up.  It seems that there are "different" ways to do it.  I think that is part of the problem. 

So, get yourself a Dreamcast, the broadband adapter, a high toned S.O.B of a PC (cause you will really need one of those to make it worthwhile.)  For the PC, watch for sales and rebate offers, you will want about +250Gig of space. 

All in all, once you are ready for chankast (or the dreamcast emulator of your choice) I think you will find that you have quite the pc and will want to use it for other reasons.  If that is the case, make sure you have enough room for all of your mp3s and roms.  In closing, the emulator is too immature for storing all games to played at the click of a button.  You should get a dvd burner and 40G hard drive, they could be had for less than $100 after rebates.  That and a back up plan.

Perhaps I am being too wordy.  To answer your question, use this formula: 1GIG per disc.  Not one GIG per game.  If you use that, you will be safe.

[Lilwolf]

I don't believe you want to rip your own dreamcast games.  This takes FOREVER especially if you don't have the network adapter (and they go for a few hundred on ebay these days).

So you are probably talking 600 average per CD pre ripped.  With many that take more then one CD. 

But there is a bigger question.  How many games are actually playable on the system?

And after that.  Why not just mount a dreamcast?  Sure you have to swap CD's... but it doesn't take all that long.  Dreamcasts have to be the easiest console to get into an arcade cabinet (arcade CRT is trivial.  There are known offbrand controllers with easy to solder to points.)

[Silver]

Most of the Dreamcast images I have come across are between 650 - 800 megabytes. A few (15%) seem to come around 100-400megabytes. I do not know if they have had stuff ripped.

However, I would strongly recommend compressing via the filesystem - if you are using windows 2k or XP then you are probably using NTFS filesystem on your hardrive. If not, you could make a partition for your dreamcast images are format that to NTFS.

With NTFS you can then set a particular folder to be compressed. The advantage of this is that its completely transparent to any programs such as chankast. You can easily save 100-200megs per game this way. Its not as much saved as using zip or rar, but then you don't have to decompress each game before its run.

However, more importantly, I'd wait for a newer version of chankast (if there ever is one) as the current release is very impressive but has too many drawbacks IMHO.