Why in this age of retro computing, we still don't have an CD emulator in hardware?
We do have gotek floppy emulator already.
You put in a USB stick which contains images of floppies.
Why we don't have an PC IDE CD ROM drive which doesnt read CD discs but instead it has an USB port where you put in a USB stick which has loads of CD disc images?
You could use it to replace real CD:s in old 90s PC hardware. Even in early 2000s hardware.
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Because CD drives are still cheap and the media is still readily available and writable from modern systems. Floppies really aren't, and there was a shitstorm of competing formats and filesystems that are almost impossible to read/write on modern systems, even if you still have a floppy drive. Emulation is also much simpler.
Compare that to CDs where the method to read/write them is standardized planet-wide, and any modern system can read/write discs at the sector level.
Also optical drive emulators do exist for niche systems, like the original playstation, that deal with quirks of that specific system.
Almost all software can work with software CD emulation (eg DaemonTools) or full system emulation (DOSBox, VirtualBox etc.). Rare software that can't typically has some arcane copy protection that a hardware emulator probably won't be able to emulate either. And if you want to run real 90s hardware for authencity, a CD emulator is missing the point.
I remember several projects like :
retrotronics.org
and
hackaday.com
And also some atapi drive emulator for industrial stuff. But no need on PC because virtual drives.
They are needed on consoles though since they are mostly non standard drives based on audio ones
What, physically emulating a CD without a disc in a drive? Probably in the future. You might could use something like a very fast DLP chip placed over the laser, and then hardware would encode your .iso files into "pits and lands" that would be represented by the reflector chip to the laser detector.
unfortunately DLP technology is pretty unreliable in the long term, and any device would surely be too thick to fit in a CD drive.
Maybe I'm being obtuse, but what does this do that can't already be done in the OS (linux, of course)?
even if your bios doesn't support it you could put grub on a usb floppy and then boot off whatever
There is a HD DVD emulator, xk3y, but it uses SATA.
We do for niche tasks, there's one for the Dreamcast for example (well GD-ROM but it works for CDs too)
Seems like something with an extremely niche use case. It's easier to add a USB interface to those old PCs, or rip the whole CD to the HDD and install a program to mount disks virtually.
>Rare software that can't typically has some arcane copy protection
It's not rare or arcane. It was extremely common in the 90's and literally every CD-ROM based game post-2001 has some sort of root-kit based DRM.
Isn't what you're wanting basically an ISO image?
Zoomer detected.
No he wants an SD reader that shows up as and works as an optical drive when you plug into an IDE/SATA/etc. bus
You can make android do that
Just download PLOP
Your phone has an IDE connector?
How without rooting? Faking some connection?
plugs into usb bus :^)
>without rooting
nvm
That's not very useful
Can't root for 2 reasons, first I'm still under warranty and second all tools I've found are for Windows. Tell us how anyway
>I can't root because I'm too dumb to set up a VM or temporary dual boot
Well like a lot of phones (that have carrier-specific installs at least) show a cdrom drive when plugged into a computer which has a pretend cd with drivers+garbage that you can install
easiest way would be to have it use a different iso or w/e, but itd be possible to have it dynamically translate the sd card contents if you really wanted
>&tag=duckduckgo
>t. actual retard who thinks an Android phone can dual boot
Some can, I've got a phone that can dual-boot Debian and Android. That's not what I was saying though, I was talking about your desktop/laptop.
so your answer to OP, who's asking about legacy hardware without USB support, is a USB device
>And if you want to run real 90s hardware for authencity, a CD emulator is missing the point.
yeah if you want to use original hardware then you totally have to use all the shitty parts as well. Would it blow your mind to know I installed windows 98 on a sata ssd using a usb stick and never even touched a cdrom drive?
Daemon tools is shit. Requires WDM drivers for cd audio (which many games on cd use) in many cases that are shit on windows 98 and obviously it doesn't exist for DOS.
CD drives are cheap, and writable media is easily available and works well. Also software CD emulation solutions exist and work very well. Grab an old version of DaemonTools from back in the day and you're set. It can handle most of the DRM you'll run into. No-CD cracks were very common back then too, and still work beautifully.
Also many rooted Android phones CAN emulate CD drives over USB using DriveDroid.
Late 90s PCs had USB, and ones that don't can easily be upgraded with a PCI USB controller.
>DriveDroid
ISO is pointless unless you're just installing operating systems. Games will mostly be cue/bin
Hm? I ripped most of my games to iso back in the day and it generally worked fine. I would mount the iso with DaemonTools, install, and then put in the no-CD crack. Many games worked fine without the no-CD crack since DaemonTools emulated various DRM schemes, but I didn't like leaving the isos taking up disk space when all files from them were already installed.
yes they will work but you won't get cd audio which many games used.
True, it's a problem with games that use CD audio tracks.
yikes
talk about a stupid zoomer
>who's asking about legacy hardware without USB support
No he's not. He was describing a floppy emulator, with which you plug your flash drive into to get it to be read as a floppy.
however we dont need to write on CD:s like we do have to write on floppies
that zalman shit doesnt even work
>Why in this age of retro computing, we still don't have an CD emulator in hardware?
Because we have an CD emulator in software.
You only see it in really niche hardware applications, like in this Sega Saturn were the disc drives are wearing out and are copyright protected
Same on the Dreamcast.
GDemu and USB-GDRom, the chinks are already making copies of GDemu
>the chinks are already making copies of GDemu
>Easy to install, the original optical drive seat can be removed and replaced with GDEMU, no welding, no modification to the machine board.
>no welding
kek
