So this is Rhea V1, the Saturn ODE prototype, playing Yello – Pocket Universe on my TV:
At the moment playing audio is all it does as I haven’t gotten around to implement protection emulation yet. I’m in no hurry, this is a prototype and it’s main purpose is to test how stuff works, what I can and cannot do.
Saturns use 2 different drive types: 20- and 21-pin ones. Even though it looks like a small difference, the protocol is actually quite different for both models. This prototype has only 20-pin connector but the design was meant to handle both formats with just once MCU and no external logic chips like FPGAs or PLDs. If it works that way at all that is, but so far it’s very promising.
Just so that we are clear on this: V1 is not for sale, and in general not quite fully functional yet. All questions about the final product, it’s timing and price, will be ignored. It’ll come when it’s ready.