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

Brilliant news, glad he is quick to sort things out!

I reckon Soldier of Fortune will take ages to load regardless

 

Yeah that is what I fear.

 

SOF from press (A) on normal difficulty 35 seconds till the first intro thing & then another 48 seconds to load into the game.

if half life is a GDI then I can test, but if not then no luck since currently USB-GDROM Controller doesn't support CDI.

(according to the UGC site it supports GDI & ISO but I can't get ISO files to work at all :-()

 

Another guy tested SOF for me on the GDEmu. Here are his results.

Seems to me there is a MASSIVE difference with the one you got and the original emu.

 

Ok, from the swirl screen to press start 1min 1 second. (Pressing nothing)

from begin new game > medium (tapping start like a mofo, to skip the cutscene) 1min 27seconds (to gameplay, ie, I control the character.)

Ok from the swirl pressing start all the way into the game I get this. (Skipping everything)

Press start 33seconds
First ingame intro 1min 11 seconds
Ingame 2mins 4seconds

Using a 5400rpm HDD, latest UGC firmware & with the US version of SOF (GDI ISO format)

also so what you put is confusing, was it 55seconds to the press start screen or 1min 20seconds? Also he never got 1min 24seconds for new game & loaded, maybe to the first I game intro, but not loaded where you control the character.

 

Not sure, it seems confusing to me as well now that I look back at it.

He is on these forums so I am sure he can explain better when he views it again.

 

I tested SoF on the GDEMU for Anthony817
Didn't post the results here as I was hoping to avoid a GDEMU vs USB GDROM Controller debate lol - personally I think both devices are awesome and equally worthy of merit

OK - followed the exact steps as above, skipping everything and used the NTSC-U version of SoF (GDI - Bin/Raw)

SD Card - Fujifilm class 10 SDHC card (23MB/s Max)

Press start 31 seconds
First ingame intro 59 seconds
Ingame 1min 32seconds

***Edit***
I originally pulled the Fuji SD card straight from the camera to do the test lol - after reformatting with a 64Kb cluster size I got:

Press start 31 seconds
First ingame intro 56 seconds
Ingame 1min 28 seconds

***End Edit***

SD Card - SanDisk Extreme Pro SDHC Class 10 UHS-1 (95 MB/s Max)

Press start 31 seconds
First ingame intro 55 seconds
Ingame 1min 26 seconds

Haven't got anything lower than class 10 to test - but from the results it kinda looks like a class 10 (30MB/s Max) would be the cheapest way to get the maximum out of the GDEMU

***Edit No.2***
I found an old MiniSD card to test - so old lol it predates class rating, I looked on the web and the general consensus is that it has a 10MB/s Max transfer rate... so:

SanDisk MiniSD 2GB - SDSDM-2048 (10MB/s Max)

Press start 31 seconds
First ingame intro 56 seconds
Ingame 1min 28seconds

This was a surprising result - as it is obviously a slow card, so it seems to be that the limiting factor is the Dreamcast's own internal transfer rate/processing rate.

***End Edit***

Using this Youtube clip as a reference for disc loading times (On the clip though he doesn't skip the dreamcast boot logo and the first ingame intro)



Disc:

Press start 1min 18 seconds
First ingame intro 3mins 17 seconds
Ingame 6mins 41seconds

If that is an accurate disc load time then both current devices are an immense improvement

 

Geeze, that's quick oO may have to try just that game on the HDD, (currently have 250+) a 7200rpm drive & my USB 3.0 pen, since well depending on the device I should be getting 35mb max from USB 2.0

will never get close to 95mb lol I also dough me optimising the GDI bins would effect the speed?

how is the GDEmu? I wanted one but missed the preorder :-( why I jumped on the UGC as soon as I seen it.

 

Whats the largest Card Supported by GDEMU? I only had a 2gb with mine.

 

Supported memory cards:


SD: 512MB, 1GB, 2GB
SDHC: 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, 32GB
Other cards might work (SD smaller than 512MB and SDHC bigger than 32GB) but were not tested and are generally not recommended.
IMPORTANT: 4GB SD cards are NOT supported. Neither are SDXC cards of any kind.

From his site, so 64GB SDHC card would be the max size.

 

There wasn't too much difference between the 23MB/s and the 95MB/s card - which is why I would estimate the GDEMU at around 30MB/s Max (Though I am using an extension cable which may be slowing it down a little)

The GDEMU is perfect for my needs - I played a load of titles when the dreamcast was current - so 2 SD cards will hold all the games I would need
But . . . for my son - who was only 4 at the dreamcast launch and so has missed a lot of great titles, I would like to get him either the USB device or Cybdyn's when finished for a complete dreamcast collection (internal with no case modifications as his dreamcast is mint lol)

 

The USB HDD would fit on top of the UGC no probs inside the DC. Only issue would be heat, my PSU got hot & the side & top the DC was hot :-/ so I added a 5v fan (taken from a poundland laptop cooler) & stuck a CD separator (white sponge thing) on the underside to stop vibrations & stuck it to the top of the GDRom shield. Now the DC is only slightly warm after a hour or so.


also need some info please for the quote bellow, does that mean GDI dumps with track03.raw & track06.bin don't work with GDEMU? (Used thoughts as an example)

if so, UGC has no issues with such dumps, some games I have have 90 files oO

 

As Rocky5 said - probably 64GB - but GDEMU only supports 40 folders and if you use folder 01 for the menu that leaves 39 folders (discs) So if you use CDI images (for rips that have nothing removed /downsampled) and GDI images for the rest then you could easily get 39 discs on a 32GB card

I cannot really comment on that - as after reading this when I ordered the GDEMU, I manually ripped all my discs 1:1 using the SDrip tool, and any GDI images I sourced elsewhere I made sure were 1:1 rips before I got them.
All images I have tried that have track04.raw and trackxx.bin have worked perfectly. Infact the only 2 things that have not worked for me so far is Bleemcast for Metal Gear Solid and the Twinkle Star Sprites English Translation CDI image.

 

Is it easy to rip your own Dreamcast games? Didn't know if the GD-ROM format of the disc presents an obstacle with that.

 

You need a dreamcast, well there were PC Drives that could do it, but good luck finding one of thoughts now a days & the firmware to match.

You can use the SD card addon & SDRip or the BBAdaptor & a program you run on the DC. (SD Card method is the easiest & cheapest)

 

Actually, it is very probable than any size SD card (128gb, 256gb, etc) will work with the GDEMU. SDXC is simply a format issue. If you format a card that big to FAT32, I won't guarantee it'll work, but I'm about 90% sure it would. It's the same reason people are able to get 128gb working in a PSP or DS/3DS. Not that it matters though as you can only put 40 games max. (folders named "01" to "40")

 

Regarding ripping Dreamcast discs:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~lantra9jp1/gurudumps/tutorials/dumping_gdroms/index.html

You can skip the chd creation of course.

Do not go the way of PC Drives, use a drive which can read the GD-ROM natively..

 

Well, I take it back about the speed of SOF, that is pretty good!

 

I just ordered one, WU is very strange... I used the online transfer , got a phonecall from my bank to authorize the usage of the credit card for WU , they took the money from the account but WU will also send me some papers via snail-mail to sign... Transaction is still "being reviewed by WU" atm , I hope it will be complete 100% soon

edit:

bollocks, WU declined me , my money is in bank limbo and I am waiting for them to return to my account. awesome.

 

Anyone serious about dumping gd-rom and who doesn't wanna buy an expensive BBA just for that should really get a sd-card adapter.

BTW ripping with a pc drive works quite well as long as you have a lite-on ltd-165h. Checksums match and all.