Unofficial Deunan's GDEMU Thread

This is a terrible idea, it'll slow down your readings a lot and drastically increase the space the file allocation table takes.

Furthermore, most gdi include BIN files that have the edc/ecc code in the image, which means theit sector size is rather 2352 bytes/sector, so your gdemu needs to read at least two sectors each time it has to read a single one.


Get a good, known to work, card and format it with the biggest cluster size you can. Deunan himself suggests this, BTW.

 

Good info. Thanks

 

I've just received this card in the post - Hopefully I'll be able to report the same success!

 

Well, the report as is expected is that this card works perfectly! No freezes while scrolling up and down through the list at all.

I do still have a problem with SF Rush 2048 and Elemental Gimmick Gear - they refuse to work and reboot the console. No other games do this for me. I would be surprised if I really need to do this PSU pin cleaning thing as all the other games (40+) work fine.
I have a PAL console that appears to have been made multi-region at some stage by somebody - I'm not sure what method they used.

When GDMenu shows the region, is it talking about the region of my console or the image of the game?
I can only assume that there's some slight incompatibility with the way the console's been modded and the images.

I've run loads of US and Jap and some PAL game images BTW and they all work but for these 2 so far.

 

I have the exact same card and those titles work fine for me (Trurip Dumps), so trying a different image may help.

Reboots can also be unsupported video i.e the cable used from the DC to the TV. I know SF Zero 3 (Alpha 3) non-RGB had this issue on a PAL console when using a Scart connection, yet composite and VGA was fine, if I remember correctly. I don't remember those two games in question having this problem, as I never played them back in the day and my current setup now is VGA to HDMI with a Hanzo Scan liner.

When you say multi-region, was it chipped to play import originals, since practically all DC's can boot CD-R's copies (Mil-Cd) or is it a region free bios (Dev boot up animation but you can have the choice to have the default one)? Plus, Gdmenu is talking about the image selected and not the console.

 

Yeah, unfortunately, that's the problem, I've had 3 dreamcasts - the first one a PAL unit i love and had for ages before selling it. The second one a US model I bought on a whim which I was going to but a GDEMU in and then found it was an incompatible model. Then I hurriedly bought another PAL unit (I'm in europe) and it seems that despite it not being advertised as being modified for any specific region it's capable of playing all regions via GDEMU images - I've not tried discs.

I've only had it open to install the GDEMU, I couldn't see any sign of a mod outside of this without going all the way down to the motherboard. Is there a good way to tell what region this is set-up for using some kind of shareware disc or replacement shell software? I might try a VGA cable as well, but so fre I've used a fully wired Scart RGB cable and a composite cable and the same happens.
Thanks for your help BTW!

 

Basically, if it's a PAL console, it will have the Blue Swirl on boot (can be changed though if the machine has it's bios modded) and are 50hz by default. DC's don't need to be setup for a specific region, as it will detect the region from the game and adjust it accordingly to match the game(s) region.

Only way to tell if it's chipped or bios modded is to open it up (Piggy back install for example) http://www.mmmonkey.co.uk/sega-dreamcast-region-free-bios/

Also, try booting those two game without GDmenu (unpatched clean image) using a separate card with the 01 folder blank and 02 and 03 with those images and cycle with the button on the ODE.

 

It's definitely a PAL console - that's for sure. Blue swirl on boot, blue swirl printed on case and PAL mentioned on the serial sticker.
I booted Dreamshell last night and saw that it looks like everything is set for Pal.
The way I read what you've written is that the DC is region free - sorry if I've misunderstood, but I though it wasn't. The hardware is of course capable of supporting any video mode, however after coming back to the DC after a long time (and never having modded the DC in the past) it seems it either needs a region free bios, or to write the region to the flash each time you fancy changing it or to fake the region using a boot disk.

I did try the technique you mentioned, and that didn't work for me. I just got please insert disc each time. Maybe the ini file needs a bit of tweaking?

I'm still confused that all of the other Japanese or US images run completely painlessly - in fact, except for the PAL exclusives all 50 games I've tried that work are US or Jap. and they are either Trurip or Tosec depending upon which was a full GDI image. I do find CDIs work fine but I have found releases that are just a GDI with no supporting files and they tend not to work. The two games I'm trying SFR and EGG are what I'd call full GDI images.

I'm convinced I must have a mod chip in there - but until next week I'm not going to be able to see what going on (going on a short trip). While I'm digging around, I'll install the wire to and a switch to allow me to flash the ROM from Dreamshell.

 

Don't forget to remove the wire afterward, or put a switch. Otherwise you risk getting the flash over time.

 

SF Rush is one of the few games that has some weird kind of protection when trying to play the game on a different region console. Basically if you have a PAL console, try the PAL version of the game (region patching the US version to be region free won't help in this case).

 

You're right - I grabbed the PAL version and that works! I am in the process of patching EGG for the PAL RGB fix to see if that works as it didn't get a PAL release as far as I can see.

 

YES! The KAL PAL fix worked! I had to run a VM of Windows XP to get BIN to CDI to work, but all the games I wanted are now running perfectly!
I'm a happy boy and won't need to bother this thread again. Thanks for all your help guys!

 

Dear

Could you help me?
Need patch to freezone PAL or US game for JAP dreamcast with GDEMU?

 

Have you tried using SD Card Maker? A link for it is in the first post, it includes a feature to patch region free...

Ted.

 

Anyone know how to track orders in the US? I know the main GDEMU page says it's undoable, but i came across someone's comment a while ago either in here or on one of D's posts that said they could do it. Thanks!

 

Possibly here... http://www.trackitonline.ru/

Ted.

 

Just a heads up I had to redo my whole Dreamcast GDI collection that I originally extracted, IP.BIN edited the title and rebuilt then patched using the tools on the front page. Many of the games were corrupted after using the extract/rebuild GDI program, as well as the GDROM Explorer region free and patching messed up others. I found simply opening up the untouched GDI track01.bin and track03.bin and changing the region/vga/title info works a lot more effectively. I only say that because I would stay away from patching with SD Card Maker as well. In case it doesn't patch them properly. It really is extremely simple and quicker to just hex edit the track bin files and not risk the rebuilt image having errors.

 

If you edit the bin files, your modifications will get reversed when reading because of the error correction. What you did is to simulate errors on the CD. If it effectively worked, it might be that deunan simply ignores the error detection/correction code when reading the images.

Why would you edit the ip.bin anyways? GDMenu does the region/vga patching on the fly, and madsheep's program generates a game list that you can edit for proper titles.

BTW, RebuildGDI should not result in unplayable games. Something wrong happened...

EDIT:

I recently added support for 2336 bytes/sector images on gditools, which means it's now possible to parse/extract cdi images directly (for editing gdemu's game list per exemple). You still need to manually check some values depending on the LBA of the 2de session, and it will not work yet with data/data games that have data in 1st session.

A test script for audio/data LBA11702 (most common) is here (requires latest gditools from sourceforge in a folder named gditools next to this script): http://pastebin.com/4TVcnwPQ
It can be used along with cdi4dc to extract/build cdis easily. You would have to modify "offset" and "manualRawOffset" at line11 to support other LBAs, (like 0).

This should allow you to easily modify the game list names without requiring to edit anything in the gdis.

 

I have no idea on the error correction scenario.

Eh, I would edit the titles (because I was too lazy to retype them into madsheep's program if my game list changed) and delete the 0GDTEXT.PVR files because I'm an all or nothing with cover art kind of guy. Then I'd rebuild and run the VGA/Region patch with GDROM Explorer. The problem games weren't just on the ones that had 0gdtext files removed so I doubt that was the main culprit. Though it definitely could have been part of it on some. Most weren't unplayable they just didn't run properly. For instance Dragon Riders: Chronicles of Pern would skip the company logos, have much longer loading times and dialogue choices would refuse to display before the game hung indefinitely at the beginning. In my tests I noticed if you patched VGA/Region with GDROM Explorer and then extracted the GDI (just out of curiosity) the changes wouldn't be present in the extracted IP.BIN. However extracting a hex edited track01/03 bin GDI had the patched IP.BIN intact.

I only have a vague understanding of GDI structures from the fiddling I did but GDROM Explorer might only be patching track03.bin instead of both? I have no idea. Patching Tomb Raider Chronicles with GDROM Explorer left it unable to load the GDI and said the IP.BIN was corrupt.

When I loaded games in SD Maker program after doing this method the initial scan didn't come up with the corrected title names either. But when I went to save and edit the menu it caught the corrected names. But when I hex the original track files the SD Maker program reads the correct titles at the beginning as well. Not sure if I explained that too well.

 

You should not modify the ip.bins at all.
Leave the titles to madsheep's program and the patching to gdmenu.