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

They boot but play the game and see what happens. It isn't until much latter in the game you see problems. You get stuck at certain points and can not progress.

 

Now that you say it, I vaguely remember my Shenmue 1 GD-Rom getting stuck in a loading screen when I was young. I had to go back to the store and change it as it was unplayable. I vagualy remember figuring out years later that it might've been because I had a NTSC|U console with bios language set to french. I think trickstyle also had this problem. Though my memory is fuzzy as it was over 13 years ago.

As far as Katana go, I believe you can patch a few bytes on the Katana flash to make Shenmue Boots.

Ok, but it seems patching the bootsector (ip.bin) will still allow 99% of games to boot out-of-region. I still find it weird they got a hardcore region-protection, but no good copy protection...

 

Copy protection on proprietary format is useless also the first games have no protection at all (only regional) after the MIL-CD hack the game developers started to add more custom protection for that reason, about the regional protection japan have lot of new games that released first in japan so region protection is logic step but on the El Dorado Gates series the protection is for the MIL-CD Hack i believe

 

i plan make device of gd-drive emulator just more simple and cheaper than existed GDEMU (by Duenan).some pages before i showed picture of pcb. of course more info later, when i'll back from holidays. also in parallel , i have good success w/ psio, about xa support.

 

Great News!

 

No try the GD dump on an emulator using a region free BIOS but the country flag set to US it will lock up. Capcom has had a lot of nasty unique protections. The game doesn't work right on hardware using a region free BIOS or a boot disc either. This is the only game/series I know of that has this nasty of protection.

 

I remember this one. Was it 180 points of protection? Throughout the whole game, at strategic points, there are hardware checks to ensure the game is running from an original GD-ROM on an original console. That's maybe the heaviest protected console game ever released.

 

Thanks for your info. Enjoy your holidays. Really looking forward to both your PSIO and GD-EMU devices.

BTW, so do you suggest I should get the region free bios mod first? Thanks.

 

i don't know about the emulator and the free bios but i used a Region patched gdi on my European Dreamcast and boot, because i don't know Japanese i cant progress the game but if you know a fast way to check if it is working tell me to try it

 

Oh it boots fine bro its as you progress it locks up, you can check the points it locks up by reading the NFO from Hykan about his release for the game. It even has the save file you need to use on an emulator to progress past the point where the protection checks the game. It is a few hours into the game. It isn't a normal region protection you can bypass by setting the flags in the IP.bin, using NullDC's debugger the game does a call to check the systems regional settings in the flash ROM. It isn't a big deal as it is only the seven games in this series that are protected as such and it isn't a normal protection that has been defeated.

 

The game has four detection addresses need to be modified:
1 Get 1ST_READ.BIN the LBA judgment, into the smallest you can (or 0)
3CC98: 68 96
3CC99: 1E 00
3CC9A: 06 00

2 Get LBA Some * .lzs files can be changed to a minimum (or 0)
5BF78: 43 96
5BF79: 1B 00
5BF7A: 06 00

3 Get MIDWAYLOGO.SFD the LBA judgment, into the smallest you can (or 0)
5C7F4: 80 96
5C7F5: 1A 00
5C7F6: 06 00

4 address from a detection 0x8c0010F0, NOP it
2962E: 0B 09
2962F: 42 00


GOOD LUCK

 

can't say about what you need do something w/ bios. i did try (on DCIO) launch ntsc/jp games on pal console, by using IP.bin from pal game, or universal one. it worked. only one game didn't run , don't remember what exact (maybe bad image).


also, i'm interesting to try make working bleemcast for playing ps1 games on DC.

 

Most IP.bin are generic and point to 1st_read.bin and those that point to a different file like Mars Matrix for example can be altered to look for that file by simply renaming the file to 1st_read.bin as not all games use this naming scheme. Then the generic IP.bin will work fine.

 

It'd be preferable, for optimal compatibility, to dynamically patch the right bytes of sectors 45000 to 45015. Namely offset 0x3704 of the bootsector with the "For COUNTRIES" flags (0x11c bytes long); "JUE" at offset 0x30 ; "1" (character) at offset 0x3d for VGA.

 

i didn't try much about this things, but i think it's not big problem to fix ip.bin dynamically.
yeah, i just used ip.bin w/ right region support and right name of exec file 1st_read.bin or 0wince...
anyway, it'll be next step after simple things will be working good)))

 

I've just watched the last youtube clips from SWAT.. I'm wondering if the ide mod is worth it.

If dreamshell keeps improving it... in theory.. would be possible for games to run at full speed from serial sd card slot?
Or is it too slow?

As far as I can see speed diference only happens in the few games that dma transfer works.

What about cdda? Is it possible from sd serial slot?

 

It won't ever be possible for the serial SD card to be full speed, as the serial port itself is limited to a slow speed. Nothing you can do in software to fix that.

 

Full speed? No way, but with a Class 10 SDHC card it's pretty fast. He's also working on CDDA support, but like it's been said, an IDE interface is far superior.

 

Even if CDDA is added for SD I doubt any game will play well due to the constant streaming of audio. I'm sure it would cause jitters. If it were to get maxed out at all times it is capable of just over 1mbp which could be enough but I think right now we are only getting around half to maybe three quarters of the max speed at most. A lot of optimization would be needed to do this.

As for the G1-ATA interface mod I have a dead GD-ROM drive I want to attempt this mod on as to not ruin my working drive doing this. Would it still work with a botched laser?

 

CDDA works via SDHC card using the GD-EMU via IDE. Via Serial interface, it will never work properly.