"Let's make GD ROM emulation happen" Facebook group.

IIRC you can downgrade the GD-EMU firmware to an earlier version

 

SD card problem game boots ok now!

 

What card are you using? I have one Kingston Class 4 (16GB) + one Kingston Class 10 (8Gb) and the same problem with both.

 

1) 32GB Samsung Class 6 (Problem Fixed using SDFormatter)
2) 2GB No brand printed (mmagr02gueca-mb)

Edit: Use SDFormatter

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/

 

I tried using SDFormatter for both cards and the same problem. Maybe bad dump :/

 

i send you a pm with the dump i used

 

Thanks! ^_^

 

Hey folks,

I'm having a weird time with GDMENU on my GDEMU

I've got a 16GB SDHC card, with around half a dozen games on it that I've ripped myself using the httpd-ack utility and my bba. It's a mix of Euro/PAL and US/Japan/NTSC games. All the games are full .gdi images with 'disc.gdi' and the corresponding track**.bin and track**.raw files.

If I use GDMENU in folder 01 it boots up ok and detects the games I've got loaded:

01 GDMENU
02 Alien Front Online (USA/NTSC)
03 Cannon Spike (Euro/PAL) - I get a 'does not work with your av cable'... which is fine, as I've yet to patch the image and the PAL release had VGA removed.
04 Grandia II (Euro PAL)
05 Skies of Arcadia Disc 1 (USA/NTSC)
06 Skies of Arcadia Disc 2 (USA/NTSC)
07 Under Default (Japan/NTSC)

One thing that seems a little fishy is that the disc images don't appear to work.

The only game that launches and plays correctly from the GDMENU system is Grandia II. If I select any of the others it either loops back to GDMENU, or goes to the DC desktop/media player - if I select play from there it pops up 'please insert a disc'.

For example: Under Defeat, here - doesn't show a disc image, and when selected, will boot to the DC swirl and 'licensed by sega' screen, then just load the DC desktop/media/setting screen and act as if no disc is inserted:



(disc shown just to prove its my legit version and not an iso/cdi/gdi I've downloaded from somewhere!)

If I remove GDMENU from the SD card (rename folder so that it is not scanned, for example) and reboot it, I can cycle through the disc images using the hardware button on the GDEMU board. All of the games play fine that way, and no need to load a boot disc for any of them (so my modchip is working correctly), just GDMENU seems to stop the selection of non-PAL disc images working.

Any ideas?

Hardware details:

DC: VA1 Euro Pal, 4-wire modchip, VGA box
GDEMU: v5.3 board with 5.9.0 flash
GDMENU: v0.3
SD Card: 16GB Sandisk SDHC

 

Does seem a strange problem you have there, I have a similar set up apart from having a region free bios instead of the 4 wire modchip and I can load disk images from all areas just fine from GDMENU.
(If I remember correctly - you need to do a power off cycle if you wanted to play different region games when using the 4 wire chip?)

Not all GDI's have the 0gdtex.pvr file so will not display a disc picture on the menu

Have you thought of using Madsheep's GDEMU_SD program to transfer your own rips to SD - and using the region patch feature. Maybe give that a try and see if it solves your problem and course you can do the VGA patch at the same time

Another thing worth noting is that since DK updated the firmware there has not been a menu update - the folder prescan was removed and when cycling 'down' the GDEMU will stop at 1 instead of looping back - whereas the menu will carry on as if it has looped. So you could also try using 5.7.0 firmware and see if that helps (I doubt it will though as it seems to be related to the 4 wire chip in some way)

 

Cheers, I'll give the GDEMU_SD utility a go. It's odd that with GDMENU out of the picture the functionality of both GDEMU and the modchip appear to work fine.

Hmm, if the modchip requires a reboot to change regions, I'm not sure how that will work with GDEMU, won't it lose the selected disc (which might explain the above issues)? The region-free bios might be the better solution, ultimately, in that case... <sigh> ... more work to do!

 

AFAIK the modchip hijack the communication to make it as if the gd-rom had it's region flags set to JUE (with corresponding For COUNTRY flags). When you're using gdemu manually, you emulate opening the drive and selecting play on the bios. When using gdmenu there's a soft-reset. Maybe the modchip doesn't detect the soft-reset. Have you tried booting a game of the right region and/or removing the modchip?

 

did you create the GDEMU.ini with the following parameters?

open_time = 150
detect_time = 150

 

If I try a PAL game via GDMENU it works. Both PAL and NTSC work when selected via the manual method. I haven't tried disabling the modchip yet, as that would disable me playing any non-PAL games without a boot disc (or need to patch them all - i.e using GDMENU_SD).

Interesting to note the technicalities of the implementation differences between plain GDEMU and GDEMU via GDMENU. That sounds like quite a plausible explanation.

 

Yes, I used the default GDEMU.ini file that comes with GDMENU 0.3 - so it has those, and only those entries.

 

V 5.9.0 try the GDEMU SD CARD MAKER


we need GDMENU update because of the FW update

 

Just been trying now - unfortunately I'm using Linux and it doesn't appear to want to run via Wine.

 

Install Mono into WINE. (Or just try it directly via 'mono GDEMU_SD.exe')
It appears to be a Visual Basic .NET application.

 

GDMenu Builder For Linux

Tested on Linux Mint

Packages Required

mkisofs or genisoimage
mono-vbnc


give execute permissions on ./data/cdi4dc

Usage
1) Prepare your SD CARD with your games and leave folder 01 Empty

2) Run GDMENU Builder (with mono) and Press Browse and Select your SD Card

3) Edit your Menu (The first line will be your GDMENU so edit it)

4) Press Build

5) Copy disc.cdi to folder 01

Link: http://xxx.biskoto.gr/GDMENU_Builder.rar

 

That's fab - I'll give that a go tonight. If it doesn't work I've just pm'd Bad_ad84 for region free bios and will fit that instead of the modchip (and will fit the modchip into my 'ripping' DC that still has the gdrom drive).

 

Thanks madsheep! That's greatly appreciated! I won't have the chance to try it right away though!