Unofficial Deunan's GDEMU Thread

I take responsibility for my own actions, as I did rush it and was not in the frame of mind at the time (should have had sleep first) and then tried it in the morning. Only thing, I don't agree with, is that Dreamshell should have some sort of fail safe checks against file sizes/image types used for flashing the bios and warned me against using the small 128k FlashRom dump.

 

Tbh, the vast majority of people with flashable bios for dual setup, and the functionality was added at a time people with this mod were doing it themselves.

 

To all, need test DreamShell app "GD Play" with GDEMU
DOWNLOAD

 

Ok, I downloaded it and tested. I was unable to see any other folders or images. It opened the app but only showed dreamshell.

To be more clear. I was in the app from inside dreamshell but wasn't able to change the image.

 

Thanks Neuroacid - that's just what I wanted! Works great and has made navigating much easier.

 

Just tested the new menu and it works great! Although I could only boot games with the retail bios. Link83's Region Free bios with devkit intro doesn't seem to work for me... Reboots gdmenu.

Is there any limitations to the swirl and sega screen skipping? Like incompatible games or what not?

 

That's kinda strange, because Link83's bios with devkit intro is exactly the one I use mostly on my testing console. Between me and Nightbreed we tested close to 200 games and didn't find any problems (he also has Link83's bios btw).
Mind sharing which games you had problems with? what video cable type you are using? and lastly which patches you have enabled?

It is possible there was a problem with the flash? use the compare function on DS bios flasher or dump it and see the checksum, md5 sum should be (787b6639a04b090e071cdc414a853396) for that bios.

For the details on the Sega license and intro skipping, check the readme, right now those two options only apply to .GDI disc images.

 

My bad, the bios I was using was rather jpcake 1.030. If I don't skip the swirl/sega screen, it reboots to bios and don't see the disc, if I do skip them I get a black screen.

 

Ah ok, that certainly explains the problems, I honestly didn't bother with those older versions of his bios... I guess that's something I should have remembered to mention in the readme, sorry.
Since bootROM patching/support underwent some pretty significant changes in this last update of the menu, it's very likely that I broke the compatibility for those older ones.

Right now the "officially" supported bootROM versions are: 1.004, 1.01d (same as link83's) and japanese_cake's 1.032.

Anyway, if there's a feature you really need from those older versions, let me know, I can probably also implement it in the menu...

 

need replace all code from 8c000100 to 8c00ffff

 

I was wondering, is it possible to implement codebreaker codes from the menu or would you have to code that completely from scratch? I think the ability to launch games with widescreen codes pre-enabled would be a really great feature of GDMenu.

 

Well, then you will be happy to know that that's exactly what I'm working on for the next update
The "cheat engine" part is mostly feature complete and, at the moment I'm playing around with the UI implementation, I'd say that work on it, is about 60% complete... It will support the same encrypted and raw code types as the codebreaker.

No ETA on it yet, because this stuff requires a lot of testing...

I think that right now, the detection/prompt in the current version of the menu is already pretty decent to apply cheats or widescreen codes, at least it doesn't take that many more steps until you get to the game anyway.

 

WOW! So happy to hear this! Keep up the great work man, I know we all apreciate it. If anything, Dreamcast gamers are a paitent lot for the most part. I know we sometimes wait a long time for homebrew and Indie stuff.

 

Just to confirm, I put 1.032 and all is fine. I was simply too lazy to flash it before.

PS:
I can enable the sega screen skip in the bios, but not the swirl skip. They work fine in gdmenu for gdi files though. Not that I care too much about it. It even feels weird with no swirl at all.

 

Yeah, I don't think I could get used to skipping the swirl and Sega legal screens after seeing them for so many years.

 

Glad to know it is working well for you

I think the behavior you are describing is normal, it happens because the skipping options in the menu overrides the ones on the bios (jc was nice enough to provide a custom call to change them).
So for e.g. when they are off in the menu, you get the full boot, independently of the settings in effect on the bios, in essence the settings on the menu are always the ones taking effect.

 

I only meant for the initial boot to gdmenu from power off. I noticed you override it, although I didn't know how.

I do skip the sega screen to get to the gdmenu faster, although no boot animation feels wrong, and doesn't work with gdmenu anyways. I skip both from gdmenu, but it doesn't feel weird since you're booting from the menu though.

The interplay between the bios and gdmenu is a great example of idea sharing. It's very great together.

 

Oh, I misunderstood what you were referring to, yeah that happens because the swirl animation skipping patch doesn't work with the GDEMU, when booting mil-cd.

Deunan said he suspects that it has something to do with the initial drive status being set to "open", however for me it only occurs with common homebrews, because old scene releases like echelon's (with LBA 45000 and unscrambled main binary) actually seem to boot fine when skipping the swirl. Either way I do intend to look into it whenever I have the chance and hopefully find the culprit, but right now I'm not really bothered by it anyway.

 

Hello,

I've just installed GDEMU recently bought, but thanks to my inexperience, I can't get it to work. It seems to me it's something I'm making wrong.

When I plug my DC on with the SD card that I made, the LED stays on, what means, by the research I could get on GDEmu site (installing and operation) that:
1-GDEmu is correctly installed.
2-The SD card is faulty/incompatible/badly configured.

I've tried with a 2 GB SD Card (is SD, not SDHC or SDXC). I'm just trying to get GDEmu to work / get confirmation it's alright

Regarding to the SD card, what I made was:
1-Formatted with SDFormatter from SD Association
2-Extracted GDMenu to the root of SD Folder.

Something like this:
SD\01
SD\01\GDmenu_v0.6.cdi
SD\GDEMU.ini
SD\readme.txt

As it didn't work (it boots the DC to the BIOS asking for inserting game), I also made a "02" folder and put it there a cdi game). It didn't work also.

Can you please help me? Or can you point to some site or detailed documentation to troubleshoot this problem?

Thank you very much!

 

Hi, You need to rename GDmenu_v0.6.cdi in folder 01 to disc.cdi