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

I can get bleemcast to boot, but not be in a usable state since we can't swap images & the way I think self boot bleem disc work is they have the PSone game in the track 1 section of the disc, not sure if that's possible with a GDI?

Also UGC doesn't require Track01.bin or Track02.raw to be present for games to function.

 

Just created an account to download RebuildGDI and to say this:

I purchased the USB-GDROM Controller from MNEMO. Although his English is not the best, I had no problems ordering one. I contacted him through Skype to get the shipping costs and sent around €150 to him as a gift through Paypal. Normally I would not do that as its a lot of money, but I've only heard good things about him so I took a gamble.

The card arrived a week after. I picked up the old dremmel and used his template that came with the card to cut the back of the Dreamcast for the USB connection. I thought about resoldering the USB contact so that I did not have to cut the chassi, but figured that I want to connect a 2TB HD (max size) to it anyway in the future and that will not fit under the lid anyway.

I opted to disassemble the broken GD-ROM and connected the USB-GDROM to the metal part where the GD-ROM controller board was. It fit perfectly.
I then removed the laser and cables from the broken GD-ROM and put that on top as well. This was to improve airflow by making it look as original as possible.
However, using the old GD-ROM "chassi" made the USB-GDROM fit a little bit higher, so I had to dremmel out a bit more to make it fit. No biggie.

Then I hooked up a 8GB USB memory to it (all I have at home at the moment. Wanted to test it) and copied a few GDI dreamcast games to it. I have a PAL console but used some USA games since its region free anyway.

Started it up and all games works fine!

The 12v rail measures 14v at the moment and it gets quite hot. I can run it for about 2 hours before the parts on the power supply are too hot to touch. I do not like that... The original fan also sounds like a windmill, even after cleaning it and lubing it up, so I've ordered a 12v, 30x30x10mm, 3 pin fan to replace it. I'll connect it to the 12v rail on the power supply but leaving the 3rd fan speed detection wire connected to original location. My hope is that is will improve noise and heat, both by blowing more air but also using the 12v rail instead of the 5v, making the power supply create less heat.

Anyway, long story short, if you're main priority is playing "original" GDI roms, it can't be beaten. Sure, its expensive as hell, but well worth it IMO.

Now I just have to figure out where he publishes new firmwares...

http://3do-renovation.ru/USB-GDROM_Controller.htm

 

Retail Bleemcast are very complex discs, the executable data are strongly intricated in the discs structure, making it almost impossible to convert them to GDI or extract executables file from them.

In theory though, it should work if gdemu supports cdi completely. My guess is that Deunan did not implement some stuff that are doable with a cdi, like custom pregap data, to simplify the code. Although that would break bleemcast compatibility.

 

Well, it is known that bleem! CDs' protection is based on broken sectors. The real GD-ROM has to react to them somehow, but GD-emu doesn't (or at least didn't) do anything at all with ecc data. As Deunan said, it might be impossible to implement this feature on current gd-emu hardware due to lack of processing power.

So, yeah, maybe the right way to go is find some crazy assembler guru and ask him nicely to hack those images a bit more. But then again this task sounds really-really complicated because bleem doesn't even work on any DC emulator.

 

The Dreamcast BC! discs have a lot of copy protections. The bootsector completely hijack the booting process (the bootbin is not actually executed) and it has data in places it should not. I've personally found a track after the lead-out of the disc with a file in it, called BLEEM that contained a few charaters ("BLEEM!\r\n" iirc) and there is also data between the end of track02 and the beginning of track03 (the pre-gap of the 2de session, that should be full of "0x00" per the yellow book standards).

Using swap techniques and lots of read-retries, I was able to make an actual cd-r that booted BC! GT2 to the menu that says "Insert Disc", but it would not load GT2. This is as far as I got personally, and it took me months. It was not lost though as it interested others to work on it too!

The cracked and working bleem versions released online were cracked by such a "crazy assembler guru", he was able to bypass the check for the post-lead-out session, read all sectors correctly and crack other checks as well as including the 2de session pregap in the cdi image (Just search in the cdi image for "SEGA SEGAKATANA" to find the bootsector and then check a few sectors before for this data).

I don't know if he could build a frankeinsteined single executable for those BC! versions, usable as standard binaries, but if someone can it's him.

FG

 

HDD's

 

Fat 32 and 64k allocation is key to get any drive to work. You should have the info in emails sent?

 

FG can yo make a MDS+MDF from the bleamcast cd

 

I don't think it would work. AFAIK only cdi supports custom pregap, which is needed for BC!. If not the only, it is one of a few.

 

i thought that MDS/MDF can copy in raw

 

It's not a matter of raw or not. It's a matter of writing a custom lead-in/pregap to the 2de session. I don't know if MDS/MDF supports that or not, but in any case it'd probably have to be done manually, as cd-imaging softwares typically assume those sections are standards (in other words that the cd format is yellow-book standard) and don't dump it as they generate it at burning time.

You can test that yourself, burn BC! GT2 using DJ, then make an image out of it in Alcohol. I'm pretty sure that if you burn that image again it won't work. Information was loss. Typically it's not a problem as it can be rebuilt using the cd structure when burning, but in this case the content was custom and part of the voodoo copy protection!

This is good copy protection isn't it? Even when you have a working cd-r of the game, you can't easily reproduce it!

 

Yep, I've tried FAT32 and 64k allocation with those drives and they still hang at DC swirl. Does anyone know what the current firmware is for the USB-GDROM? I got my board directly from Mnemo about 2 weeks ago.

 

DC_USB_Host_14-10-02.bin is the latest as far as I'm aware, if your date it greater than the latter then you're on a newer build.(Obviously)

What happens exactly? Does it look like the USB devices recive power? ie, a solid led.

Skip to the 12:20 note this is an old video.

 

yes the drive receives power and the led is from the Hdd Enclosure
i love the part with the drive sound at 17:22

 

The devices get power but it just sits at the swirl logo for a long time, no Dreamcast sound. After about 3-5 minutes it goes to the Dreamcast menu and says disc is being checked. I can't use the controller or anything since that dialog box is open and it just sits there - I've tried letting it go for about 45 min and nothing happens.

When I use a usb hdd it works great - my build date in the usb-gdrom menu says 8/30/2015.

 

First part confused me o__O

second part :-$ I sound like a tool lol

if it's the 8/30/2015 then it's newer or maybe MNEMO got the year wrong?

what you're describing is what happens to me sometimes, my external USB3 hdd enclosure doesn't initilize or the UGC doesn't doesn't detect it, either way it hangs & to fix my issue I can remove the hdd or turn the system on & off.

It could be the type of hdd inside the enclosure that's causing the issue for me, as there is another person on here that has the same enclosure or similar that doesn't have this problem. I also have other hdd enclosures that work flawlessly.
(I don't use them as the hdds are too small & I can't be arsed removing or swapping hdds out of seeled enclosure.)

 

Sorry, typo - it's 8/31/2014. Do you know how I can get ahold of a newer firmware? I've tried talking to Mnemo on ICQ but no response for the last week or so.

 

Some 2.5" HDD's Have only one led

so if you connect it the led will turn on, if USB-GDROM reads data the led will blink if not it will stay on.

Better now?

 

I can send you mine later, fixes almost all games.

 

One flaw in the CDI support that I've found so far is that GDEMU won't boot CDIs that are in Mode 1/2048 + Mode 2 XA1/2048 format. Data/data discs that use Mode 2 XA Form 1 on both sessions will boot, but Mode 1 / Mode 2 hybrid data/data discs stay on the BIOS with the DC asking you to insert a game disc (even though such discs will work if you put them on a CD-R and boot them with the GD-ROM drive).