I think it¡¯s high time to address the elephant in the room. Yes, GDEMU has been cloned. The clone is not perfect, it does work but not without issues and can¡¯t have the FW upgraded.
And you know what, turns out it is ¨C after all ¨C my fault that it got cloned. The reason being I made my devices too affordable and picked common off-the-shelf parts with not enough security. I looked at the prices of other similar projects and figured I can make mine cheaper since it didn¡¯t make sense to me that the ODE costs twice what the console does. Turns out that was a huge mistake, too many would rather stuff the cloner¡¯s pockets and claim it¡¯s competition. And best of all I¡¯m the one being called money pinching piracy enabler ¨C might as well play the part. Why should I care how many can afford my devices? If I price them at over 200 Euros I will get less orders but still the same profit. That¡¯s less work for me too. Clearly I need to rethink what I¡¯m doing here.
So, there will be changes. Let¡¯s start with the rules ¨C mentioning or discussing the clones is fair enough but posting links to ebay or sales pages is not. Don¡¯t do it. Also, commenting only to say that you want a clone or got one and it works great? That¡¯s trolling (not even very creative) and wasn¡¯t allowed anyway but I mostly turned a blind eye so far. Too much, I suppose.
As for new projects ¨C I will use more expensive parts now. I¡¯m experimenting with clone-resistant code, and new ideas in general, and DocBrown is going to be the first device to test some of those. That¡¯s why the menu software isn¡¯t ready yet ¨C or actually, it is, but I¡¯m going to release it along with newer FW and not any sooner.
The PCE ODE will require a major redesign though, I¡¯ve put too much time into it to just see it cloned right away. I was too obsessed with cost cutting and frankly I don¡¯t care if I only sell 5 of these by the time I¡¯m done. This was a hobby project I had hoped would be useful for other people as well and initially I only wanted to make just a bunch for some guys I know.
TL;DR: Enjoy your cheap SEGA CD ODE ¡°competition¡±. Oh wait¡
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