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

I'll test the cdi file (or iso file) of Half life with my GDemu board later

 

Remember:
Filesystems only matter to the software READING it. (GE-EMU, now in ???? ### Flavours?!?)

SD,
SDHC,
SDXC,
-- Are ALL different PROTOCOLS both electrically AND software (well 99% software except in the fastest transfer modes).

There are ~3+ Different modes and several different ways to read blocks of data. It is most likely the author(s) of the GD-EMUs chose the slowest, easiest, and most common method to read data from the card.

So having the fastest card in the world makes no difference since only the slowest mode is used.

However since the major difference from SDHC and SDXC is a updated protocol - this should just be a software patch to improve compatibility and speed.

 

I wonder how cybdyn's and Ozone's device is doing. We haven't heard anything from them in a while.

 

Thanks a lot old friend!

 

I've now got it playing on my Dreamcast with my GDemu (Deunans) and it loads and plays a lot better. The loading bar screens (between areas) get to a quarter of the way and then the game just carries on.

It's running that much faster and its only from the cdi. file of the game - I imagine with the GDI file it would load even quicker.

I'll try get a video of it up soon.

 

Thanks a lot man, look forward to your video.

 

Anyone know how to easily identify these "bad" rips? I was hoping that I wouldn't have to laboriously manually rip all my original discs (using SD card reader and SD Ripper), but if there's bad GDI rips floating around then it might be my only option.

 

I have really been reading and watching both GDEMU and the new UGC. Both are brilliant devise IMO. But there are also limitations.

I really hope @cybdyn / @Ozone device will solve all the problems.

1. Easy to swap images or multi-disc games.

Example - For GDEMU, if I have codebreaker in folder 1 and crazy taxi in folder 39, I have to press the physical button 39 times!!

I am not sure if this would be possible or not, using a button combo or a physical button, when it is pressed, a "overlay menu" will appear on top of dreamcast os. With all the available images. Users can use the up/down button on their controller to select the image to swap. That way, you don't have to press the physical button 100x to swap image.

2. Support all Images types and formats.
3. No folder limit. GDEMU can't go more than 40 folders I think. I am not sure of UGC.
4. Support homebrew images.
5. Region Free
6. Able to backup/load VMU to/from SD card or USB drive (Whatever storage option available)
7. Better support

I really hope you will take there ideas into consideration.

Thanks Alot.

 

Anything that is identified as part of the Dumpcast/TOSEC GD-ROM set will NOT suffer from this problem. We dump all of our discs on original Dreamcast systems. It is a requirement and we do not allow "swap method" dumps because the tracks have this offset issue.

 

The Trurip set is Dumpcast right?

Anyway thank you darcagn (and all the other dumpers - many of whom are on this site) for your time in preserving these awesome games

 

The Trurip dump set also comes from Dumpcast/TOSEC dumpers (they are not 2x verified checksums though), so those should be good as well.

 

finally sent money with Western Union... forget the online crap with "verified by visa" quadruple "protection" , just go to an agent and pay some more fees, saves you time and talking to bank representatives ...

 

The GDemu board has contact points on it for an up AND down button. (I have not bothered though as game selection takes a few seconds and isn't a problem to me).

 

IIRC, I did verified dumps using the lite-on ltd-165h drive and swap trick for the TOSEC project and the checksums matched perfectly, I also did some via parallel port and first version of sd-card so I might be confused, but I'm pretty sure I matched a few games with the dvd-drive trick. I'm not sure what these guys are up to, but there's certainly something they do wrong if the checksums don't match.

 

I've got a couple of days off work so my plan is to have a mammoth Shenmue playthrough.

I plan on starting a new game and continue the save over to Shenmue II, so that should give the ol' GD USB Controller a bit of a test run, plenty of hours and disc changes

 

Ok, just a heads up, had a few issues with new HDDs :-\ took them all apart (6) & was swapping them in different enclosures to no avail, even went & bought a new 500GB one from ASDA ( USB3.0 ones dont work with the device, well they work, but show up as garbled txt :-@ )

Anyhow found the issues & wasted £45 in ASDA set the bloody partition as primary. When formatted to FAT32 they default to logical ahhhhhhhhhh.

So now I have 6 hdds that all work. (cant even take the new one back ripped the case open, because it wasn't working lol, HDD works fine the enclosure is USB3.0 & refuses to work)

So for cluster sizes.
0 to 250GB - 16k
250GB to 500GB - 32k
500GB to 2tb - 64k

& the software I use MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition works great. (I'm running Window 8.1 & formating with format/fs:FAT32 defaults the cluster size to 16k or 4k, we need 64k for anything over 500GB, could probably specify it after but who wants to use command lines)

 

My USB 3.0 enclosure works fine

 

Seagate Expansion portable drive - 500GB doesn't load for me, black screen after boot.
inatech USB3.0 enclosure - any 2.5" drive works, but anything above E-F is all garbled when you enter a menu. (same drive in a USB2.0 enclosure works perfectly fine)

OK just tested the Seagate one again works :-@ but its a blank HDD, dont want to spend 2h 50mins transferring everything to it for it to arse up like the other one.

So currently both load but only one (not tested the other) corrupts everything over a certain file.

Also to note, both enclosures have different cable thicknesses & types, the inatech has a USB head to USB head & the Seagate has the new USB3.0 flat head to USB head.

 

You got me worried there as I hadn't tested since copying everything over to the HDD but I'm pleased to say after testing all is fine.

Perhaps its the structure of your folders? I wouldn't have thought so, mine is a little messy but I have a folder for each region and games sorted in folders e.g. A - B, C - D, E - F, etc, etc. Each game is in its own folder using the title from the original GDI rip, I've left the name of all GDI's as is.

Screen Shot 2014-09-03 at 01.35.41 by Meringues, on Flickr

I did have to format the HDD in OSX before I could write to it for some reason, plus it had a bunch of windows tools preloaded.

 

My names are shorter than yours, I removed all the crap after the first ( also there all in [A-B] - [C-D] eg....

its not the HDD its the enclosure, the same hdd works perfectly fine in my USB2.0 (red one in the above posts image)

I'm currently transferring a load over to the new one to see if it corrupts the same as the inatech one. (it was a cheap enclosure)