On Thursday, March 6th, Ced, the creator of the Fenrir Optical Drive Emulator released a the long-awaited Beta Preview Build of his WiFi SMB Firmware via the Fenrir Discord Server that finally enables stable game streaming over WiFi via an SMB network share!
WARNING: This is a BETA preview build, and some folks are experiencing issues connecting to their SMB network shares. The ESP32 WiFi module is 2.4Ghz only, and it does NOT support SSIDs that are hidden or contain spaces and/or underscores. Please be sure to change your wireless gateway’s SSID if you wish to use this Beta Firmware.
Fenrir Wi-Fi SMB Beta FW
Unified Beta FW: Download (try this first)
20-Pin Specific FW: Download
21-Pin Specific FW: Download
Duo Specific FW: Download
While Fenrir has always been an excellent Saturn ODE at a competitive price, the far off promise of streaming games over WiFi is something we’ve talked about for years, and is really something only Fenrir is truly capable of, thanks to it’s incredibly powerful ESP32 MCU, complete with onboard WiFi module. This is Fenrir’s ‘ace in the hole’, so to speak…
Game streaming over WiFi has been a work in progress for at least a few years now, with Ced showing early demonstrations of it in action all the way back in 2021, albeit not without issues…
2021 Early Alpha Build Demo
This functionality has pretty much existed and has been available for the past 3 years as an unstable alpha build. A few folks here and there have had luck with certain games, but most of Ced’s attention has been clearly focused on perfecting Fenrir’s game compatibility and eliminating any lingering bugs in the firmware, so WiFi streaming really hasn’t been ready for public testing until now…
On February 6th, Ced released an early beta build citing the following issues:
- Loader is still WIP (no save, bugs, no advanced features)
- Audio/CDDA streaming isn’t stable yet
- Game loading seems stable with router nearby
- Loading big shares will crash listing (don’t use a directory with more than 200 files)
- FMV exhibits playback issues
A week later, he released an update that fixed several games and got FMVs playing correctly, however, only 21 pin boards were supported.
By March 6th, it seems most known issues have been addressed, and Ced claims to have tested popular first party titles such as Daytona USA & Burning Rangers, leaving them running/streaming for 4 to 5 hours with no freezing or crashing issues.
WIFI SMB FW Instructions:
In the fenrir.cfg file, please edit the following settings:
wifi_ssid
The Wi-Fi network identifier (SSID) to which the device should connect.
Example: “SSID”
wifi_password
The password for the Wi-Fi network corresponding to the specified SSID.
Example: “WPASS”
smbhost
The IP address of the SMB (Server Message Block) host to which the device should connect to access shared files.
Type: String (IP address)
Example: “192.168.1.54”
smbuser
The username for authentication on the SMB server.
Type: String
Example: “fenrir”
smbpass
The password for authentication on the SMB server.
Example: “fenrir”
smbpath
The path to the shared directory on the SMB server that the device should access.
Example: “/saturn/”
Then in the file broswer menu, use L/R to switch between SMB and SD Card
NOTE: SMB file browsing is currently limited to around 200 to 300 files.
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