Sega SPDIF...

[Endymion]

Every so often I see peeps asking about an SPDIF for their Genesis/MegaDrive, which of course isn't possible due to its sound chip.

The thing that casually came to me on a boring afternoon, has anyone looked into doing this with the SegaCD unit? That would solve the problem of getting SPDIF from the Genesis, but I don't know enough about the equipment involved to tell if this is even a possibility.

[Aidan]

The SegaCD simply mixes the analog signal from the Genesis with it's own analog output. If you converted the digital output from the SegaCD before it hit the DACs, you'd end up with a signal that was missing the Genesis output.

So basically, what you'd end up doing is taking the analog signal from the device and converting it back into digital. At which point you might as well stay in the analog realm the whole way.

The only way I can see this to really be a possibility is to build something to emulate the soundchips in the systems, but not to convert the output to analog. That probably means an FPGA and a DSP.