Dreamcast GDEMU info

[megavolt85]

@cta It's not about time



Better no menu than so bad
Кусок Казахского высера. Пипл хавает.

 

[Greg2600]

First world problems... How much time do you spend in the menu versus in-game?

I get where you're coming from tho, for me it's the RetroArch menu "system".

That's a perfectly valid point. 10 years ago, probably wouldn't say anything, but when basically every other device has a cool menu, it spoils you. Particularly when the DC is 10,000x more sophisticated than a Mega Drive. It deserves something at least bordering on professional looking. Furthermore, his and GD-EMU prices are absurd, and are keeping many aficionados from partaking.

 

[Alastor]

I think we have all been spoiled to a certain degree by coverflow-ish, fancy game selection screens at this point, but it really comes down to how effortless you can select and start the game you want to play and in that regard, the USB-GDROM just works.

 

[neo]

@darcagn

 

[Greg2600]

Well, hoping your menu continues to progress! Obviously, that's not going to work on the USB-GDROM!

 

[Gromber]

I've had some problems with madsheep's GDMENU_SD.
My antivirus don't like GDMENU_SD. And from time to time when moving content it messes up the folders. I can't find the source code to it to try to fix.
So I've created an alternative program. Been using it for some time now. Anyone want to help me test it? AFAIK it works only in windows.
There's also gui version for FamilyGuy's gdishrink in the works. And I'm testing a lot of games trying to figure out the incompatible ones.

your tool looks fine, but please add .mds support, love sort list button.

sega smash pack i think it detects bad length (gdi have several track0X.raw), and a total sd lengh could be great, to avoid copy new games.

i downloaded GDMENU_SD from here and dont detect virus https://mega.nz/file/UE0FQDob#K2R8LRoZyhNUq4rdfHoDG6MVmYlf3_iHncm2APzSMVw

 

[sonik]

@Gromber thanks for the feedback. I will look into Sega Smash Pack. It's the one from TOSEC?
For mds support I need to find how the format works. There's many games using it?

 

[darcagn]

@Gromber thanks for the feedback. I will look into Sega Smash Pack. It's the one from TOSEC?
For mds support I need to find how the format works. There's many games using it?

CDI is by far the most used format for DC games, but NRG (Nero) and MDS/MDF (Alcohol 120%) are quite common as well.
IMG4DC tools are open source: https://github.com/sizious/img4dc
And support CDI and MDS creation, but doing CDDA tracks is only supported by the MDS image function and not the CDI function. So some people use the format.

Of course, you can easily convert to CDI by mounting the MDS/MDF in a virtual drive and creating an image from the virtual drive using DiscJuggler, but it would be nice for these utilities to support it

 

[sonik]

Anyone knows if there's a compatibility list for GDIShrink by @FamilyGuy ?

 

[Gizmo613]

Anyone knows if there's a compatibility list for GDIShrink by @FamilyGuy ?

Am wondering too. Resident Evil 2 black screens and goes back to the menu for me. Ready to Rumble crashes at the character selection screen.

 

[sonik]

I started to compile a list of the problematic games. Also some games wont work with rgb scart. I'm taking note of these too.

 

[FamilyGuy]

At the very least, I could implement a check to not shrink incompatible games.

@sonik If you could add the md5 checksum of the 1st_read.bin to your list it'd help me greatly.

 

[sonik]

The product code and CRC found on the IP is not enough? I was planning to use this info.

 

[FamilyGuy]

The product code and CRC found on the IP is not enough? I was planning to use this info.

Best is CRC of 1st_read.bin as I don't actually read any information from the IP. I have code for that, but it's not required so I'd rather not do that.

Feel free to gather as much info as you care to, having options in the future is good. But the md5 is the easiest and fastest way for me to implement that fix, and I have very little free time nowadays.

 

[sonik]

The IP have a CRC field.
How to get the checksum of the 1st_read without extracting the file. There are tools for this?

 

[FamilyGuy]

The IP have a CRC field.
How to get the checksum of the 1st_read without extracting the file. There are tools for this?

Gditools can do it by extracting to ram and computing md5 there.

It's actually one of the check that I do to ensure the shrinking is valid. I compare the md5 of the 1st_read before and after shrinking as a sanity check.

I could write a simple script for you that spits it out.

 

[sonik]

I could write a simple script for you that spits it out.

Please! It will be handy.
I will still get the Product Number from the IP too. As the 1st_read might be patched by the user.

 

[Xerxes3rd]

I went through my US TOSEC list and tested out each title from @sonik that's marked as problematic when gdishrink is used. I shrunk each title, copied to a known working SD card, and tested with my GDEMU clone. I also used the suggestion from @FamilyGuy and grabbed the MD5 of the IP.BIN, using the following snippet:

 with GDIfile(os.path.join(disc_dirpath, disc_gdi_file_name), verbose = False) as gdi:
    ip_bin = gdi.get_bootsector()
    md5sum = hashlib.md5(ip_bin).hexdigest()

It's probably noteworthy that all the problematic titles are WinCE titles. Other noteworthy items:

• I didn't test Taxi 2 as it's not a US game
• Roadsters seems to work OK after using gdishrink (and it's not a WinCE game).
• gdishrink fails on Q-bert

Anyway, my results are in the Google Sheets spreadsheet here:

 

[FamilyGuy]

I went through my US TOSEC list and tested out each title from @sonik that's marked as problematic when gdishrink is used. I shrunk each title, copied to a known working SD card, and tested with my GDEMU clone. I also used the suggestion from @FamilyGuy and grabbed the MD5 of the IP.BIN, using the following snippet:

 with GDIfile(os.path.join(disc_dirpath, disc_gdi_file_name), verbose = False) as gdi:
    ip_bin = gdi.get_bootsector()
    md5sum = hashlib.md5(ip_bin).hexdigest()

It's probably noteworthy that all the problematic titles are WinCE titles. Other noteworthy items:

• I didn't test Taxi 2 as it's not a US game
• Roadsters seems to work OK after using gdishrink (and it's not a WinCE game).
• gdishrink fails on Q-bert

Anyway, my results are in the Google Sheets spreadsheet here:

Thank you for doing that. I've been so busy lately that I completely forgot I said I was gonna write a small script for the checksums.

Does any WinCE game work once shrinked?

I'll try and update the code with the "blacklist" in the holidays break. If you want to send a pull request I'm all for it as well.

Cheers!

 

[Xerxes3rd]

Thank you for doing that. I've been so busy lately that I completely forgot I said I was gonna write a small script for the checksums.

Does any WinCE game work once shrinked?

I'll try and update the code with the "blacklist" in the holidays break. If you want to send a pull request I'm all for it as well.

Cheers!

No problem! I did test one shrunk WinCE game called "Armada" that worked well, at least for the 45 minutes or so that I played it. My plan is to shrink literally everything in the US TOSEC set and try each one, but I can probably start with just the WinCE titles to see how all the rest of them work.

Would you want the "blacklist" to be based on Product ID only, or also the MD5 of the IP.BIN? I ask because changing any flags in the IP.BIN (region, VGA, etc.) will obviously result in an MD5 difference. I observed that games managed using MadSheep's GDEMU SD Card Manager seemed to have different MD5s than the originals, but I haven't done a proper diff of two of them to figure out what's changed.