Help With A Possible Prototype GD-ROM Dreamcast Disc

I'm going to copy verbatim what this fellow posted on the Digital Press forum. He's looking for help with a DC GD-disc possible prototype. He cannot register here though.

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/sho...th-A-Possible-Prototype-GD-ROM-Dreamcast-Disc

 

It's a shame he has not managed to get accepted here although I am sure if any of the admins see this post they will endeavour to sort that out (unless he has been previously banned or something)

122mins sounds promising but could just be a failed burn, maybe you could suggest putting the disc in to a PC and checking some of the contents that way in the meantime.

I don't own any GDR discs but I am sure the swap trick is pretty unreliable to be honest. The only real way to check them out is using a System Disc 2 on the DC or playing directly on a Dev Kit.

Hopefully someone will give him a hand anything like this is always exciting

Rob

 

Quite a lot of the GD-R's out there are region coded and thus will not boot on another region Dreamcast. So suggestion to the GD-R owner, if you have access to a PAL or US Dreamcast try it on both

 

1) System Disc 2 is the best, but swap trick works well enough for those that don't have access to a System Disc.
2) As wombat noted, GD-Rs are typically region coded.

If the GD-R is for a different region, you'll need the matching region DC to boot it.

 

All GD-ROMs are 122 minutes long. If you got it to show 122 minutes like that, the disk is a correctly-burned GD-R most likely. If you want to play it, your best bet is a System Disc 2 as mentioned; to dump it, get a System Disc 2 and Broadband Adaptor.

There exist methods to dump GD-ROMs with PC drives, but they're complicated and involve hacked drive firmware.

 

Yes

No


@OP:
It's probably a real burn, try the swap trick (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsqMLHvyiKU)

 

The person who asked me to help never responded on digital press so I wouldn't comment here anymore.

 

Finally, I found my old thread! I recently bought a Dreamcast BBA, so I've been trying to dump this thing for a few days.

@wombat, the swap-trick doesn't work, I've tested it numerous times. I'm beginning to think that it's because the my Dreamcast is NTSC-J, and the disc isn't.

 

It may be. I had NTSC-U GD-R's that didn't play in my PAL Dreamcast

 

You could've dumped it with a sd-card adapter though. But a BBA is nice enough! Keep us informed!

AFAIU the swap trick should work even with out-of-region disc as long as the one used as the authentication disc is from the right region. Unless the swap is done very early in the booting process, before the bootsector is read, which is completely possible.