(13.04.2014 13:47)phoenix писал(а): "Could the DC serial port give enough juice to power an external hard drive? Not sure about that.
This design would also keep the limited bandwitch of the serial port and the hard drive would be bottlenecked."
Serial port used only for SD.
IDE HDD or CF card connected directly to G1 Bus as GD-ROM, but as Slave device. In connection used only wires, not more.
(13.04.2014 13:47)phoenix писал(а): "An external HDD would surely need an AC adapter, especially if it was a 3.5" drive. I doubt even a 2.5" drive would work, but I don't know what kind of power output the serial port has. I would expect it to be minimal. The CPU bottleneck would make such an adapter unattractive, anyway."
Yes, need external power.
(13.04.2014 13:47)phoenix писал(а): "I assumed that this was designed for one of them IDE-Parallel (modem) port adapters that some hackers have made over the years (also supported by Dreamcast netBSD!). I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing that would have a higher power output (I suppose this would be easy to check), also, more importantly should be faster (not sure if fast enough for CDDA, but maybe?)."
This is fully different. Speed more than on GD-drive. You can see here:
http://www.dc-swat.ru/blog/dreamshell/873.html
CDDA is another problem, it's not about of speed.