So I was playing with my GDSF7 recently and I was again annoyed by the limitations of the GD3 format or so it seemed. I use UCon64 like most of us would to convert my SNES roms to GD3 format and then split them to fit on floppys for when its not linked to the PC via parallel. Well it really sucks for games larger than 16mbits. You can format a floppy to hold a 12Mbit rom no problem, but if you split a game thats 20mbit or 24mbit, you have to waste a ton of space. 2 disks should fit a 24mbit game and 3 disks should easily hold a 32mbit game. But no, UCon64 tells you MUST split into 8mbit chunks. Well back when I had my GDSF3 I made my own tool that hacked up 24mbit hirom games and let me fit them onto 2 disks and was pretty happy. Basically it split things so you have 4 files, A and B equaling 12mbit, C and D equaling 12mbit. This used up all the ROM slots but I didn't care. Well the GDSF7 doesn't like what I did and all my games had to be rewritten taking up more disks which sucked. Sucked so bad I had to try to do something about it which was somewhat surprising. I decided to try just manually with a hex editor taking a 24mbit game and cutting it in half. Now this seemed so stupid and retarded. Why the hell would that magically work? The UCon64 people said I HAVE to split GD3 roms into 8mbit pieces. Clearly they know what they are talking about and I'm an idiot. But wait, what's that? It worked perfectly? That's right, so I opened a window and wrote some code to make a small application that just automatically splits files into 12mbit pieces. And it really does work, I've got all the 24mbit games back taking up only 2 disks again which saves disk space, space for storing the disks, and the number of times I have to actually change between disks. And something I never had before, I now can take those wasteful 32Mbit games that waste a combined 16mbits by using 4 disks, and only waste 4mbits and use 3 disks. I also had to think about it, and the 96mbit hack would be a very fun 8 disks of loading. Unfortunately I don't have 96mbits of DRAM installed but it would have been funny loading it from floppy! So incase anyone else here actually uses floppys to load up SNES games on their GDSF7, here is a valueable tip I hadn't heard anywhere before. It seemed so silly to me that the SWC series could split games in various sizes allowing you to use less disks yet the GDSF couldn't. Turns out it can too just fine. I'm busy going through floppys and reducing the number I need to use for each game saving disks and caddy space so maybe I can add a few more good titles in there.
Uhm intresting ^^! Post the link to the tool! I have a GDSF7 as well, but i actually use the parallel port I still have to try it via USB too (with a ParP to USB cable of course). That machine is incredible. Its really a nice toy! It lets you do lots if you just take the time to hack it over...I am btw currently reverseengineering the BIOS, hope to find some nice functionality
Huh? I thought this was pretty well known, I don't know which "uCON64 guys" would argue against it. There is no such thing right now as a parallel port to USB cable, the thing you are talking about just translates printer protocol and can't be used for general purpose usage. A real one wouldn't be terribly hard to make since the parallel port's logic is incredibly simple but it would be difficult getting old software to use it, or come up with some way to redirect access in Windows.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290106247773 this one is the one i got..I'll try it tonight and I'll tell you if it works! ^^ Hopefully it does :lol: Anyway, it should be just a driver issue methinks...should it?
Calpis, I'd mentioned this issue before once I think, maybe indirectly cause I heard SWC could split in many sizes. No one ever told me GDSF was capable of this, and UCon64 doesn't support it. Atleast not in the version I have. It tells you that you cannot specify a split size for GDSF3 roms. I assume that means that atleast at one time, they didn't know you could split GD3 roms like this. http://ninjagaiden4.thegaminguniverse.com/gd7tool.zip That's the tool. I tend to use the floppy disks because it's cool in an odd way to be loading those games off old school floppy disks, and also you have to install some weird driver for the parallel transfer to work which I ended up removing because it was detected as spyware or something.
I can guarantee it won't work like I said. It's not about drivers, that device is hardwired to either make a virtual COM port and translate RS232 <-> USB or translate USB printer commands to centronics printer commands, it doesn't give you low level access to the connector's bits which is how all non-printer devices operate. uCON64 does this because that is how the unit splits games. Don't assume uCON64 has every possible feature implemented because it doesn't, not even close. I believe some old tools like SNES-tool and Insnest support splitting to arbitrary sizes in multiple formats.
