Hello! I have a NPDP-GDEV, the USB adaptor, and (finally) a NPDP cart (no ODEM yet). When I plug the NPDP cart into the GDEV it boots up a screen saying something like , 'This NPDP is property of Acclaim' then goes to black. Am I doing something wrong? Or is it likely this NPDP cart simply has nothing else on it? If it did have other contents, would they boot? Any help/insights would be appreciated.
The NPDP cart was probably rewritten, but I believe there was a method on replacing the HDD inside with a custom game. Or you can try to pickup a Gangwriter or Singlewriter with the PCI card and write over the hdd.
Thank you for replying! I'm more-so interested in seeing if there was anything on it (development/beta version of a game) for preservation purposes. Just wanted to make sure that there wasn't something I was missing/something else I had to press or do when loading it. But it seems like if it just goes black, if I understand correctly, there likely isn't anything else there?
Possibly, or the hard drive is failing and degrading by time, whatever game the GDEV is trying to load might be missing something.
have you read the manual? if yes, locate the section about the DIP switches (external interface, to the right) and try choosing each of the 4 possible disc images. Caveat: DO NOT fiddle around with the DIP switches unless you read the instructions.
I haven't touched the DIP switches yet, however my GDEV did not come with a manual. Is a scan available online/can you give me any further information?
Dip switches allows you to select the region of your NPDP cart. Do you know if your cart is pal or ntsc ? Also, there is 4 different slot on each NPDP cart. You can select the slot using the button on the front of your GDEV (disc change, then select the slot with up and down, disc change again, and then Hreset). EDIT : Don't change the swithes while the system is running !
Thank you, the DIP Switch/Region chart was very helpful. I get the 'property of Acclaim' with the USA and Japanese regions and nothing with the PAL region. I don't have a Disk Change button, but when I press the up/down buttons (assuming this is the same thing?) the disk number always stays on 0. It does not seem like it is able to switch through different slots.
That's normal, for a blank cart. ...'All' of the NPDP carts have a sorta hard coded security message/black screen in them, to identify the developer. i.e. blank carts sold to SEGA, have a SEGA hard coded screen.
But do we have a blank black screen when a card slot is empty or do we have a message saying that the Cart is empty (see below) ?
All I can say in simple terms is....If you boot up an NPDP cart and it boots to a black screen with the dev company name, thats a blank cart.....You have 4 slots for apps/games on the cart, if there's anything on there it will boot to the app/game as you cycle through each slot.
I tought this Black screen with the message saying "This NPDP carts belongs to...." was displayed even if the cart was not Blank. I was probably wrong. I need to test again with the carts I have.
It's displayed all the time, whether there's data or not. It/they was/were coded at Nintendo before release to the dev's. ....I've probably read your original question wrong, but you said you fired it up, and it went to a black screen....I was just confirming that the cart is blank if you cycle through each slot and they all stay 'black'.
Can the boot of this cart be related to the version of the Development unit used ? I mean, I have some carts that boot on the Black screen we are talking about when I use my NPDP Reader. But the same carts boot on the black screen and then the game when running on my GDEV unit. Is it possible that two GDEV can have different firmaware version that cause one cart to boot on a GDEV and not on the other one ? Thanks for your help anyway
Quite possibly. It's also quite possible that a cart was 'made' and used purely on a a GDEV, not accounting for extra 'dev factors'.....And vice-versa, if using a reader........I've done that myself....Written stuff to cart that was 'setup' to run on a GDEV, i.e closest to retail, but not retail, if that makes sense.....And would fail to run on a reader, which is more closely tied to retail, than a GDEV.
You are right, GDEV having more debug options than a NPDP Reader, it may sense that some builds may run on the GDEV and not on the NPDP Reader. P.S. : I have PMed you, as I have few questions about developping on gamecube
