Unofficial Deunan's GDEMU Thread

For me I tested doesn't work,after we always have too much heat (and again freeze etc...).
The best is REMOVE 12V,and if you can put the liquid cooling of a VA0.

 

Hi,
I used this batchfile,copied it in the root and it renamed my games to their folder numbers where there in,so folder 02 is for example sonic adventure,it is now 02 as game name.
So i formatted my sdcard and set it once again up with all my games,put it in my dreamcast,and guess what,same as before,what is that man,even if you format your sdcard,and still stays like before,tryed gdmenu 0.5,same result,strange.
I fully hand copied all my games from hdd to the sdcard,and my folder number is also my game name.
How i revert this mess please??,formatted sdcard wiith guiformat x64

 

So i tryed again,formatted my sdcard with Aomei partition to fat32.
Then i copied fresh gdi to all the folders.
First it doesnt see all my games anymore,second all my games in gdmenu are numbers.
What the hell does this batch file dragoncity???????????
I have 240 dirs,my gdemu sees only 186,the correct ones are cdi files,these are good,all the rest are gdi and are numbers in the menu,don't hope this pos file broke my sdcard.
Problem solved.

 

Have you read correctly the post?

So with my friend "Magus" we created an script who rename GDI GAMES as the name of the folder !

>> Rename GDI games AS THE NAME OF THE FOLDER !

So if you put the script in SD it's not that..because the folders are : 01 02 03 ...

You need to put the script in your HDD where there is GDI Games.

Exemple : C:\Dreamcast\GDI

And in Folder GDI there is for exemple :
4 Wheel Thunder
18 Wheeler - American Pro Trucker
etc...

All folder renamed like you want after in GDMENU !

So put "insert.exe" and "Rename GDI.bat" in your GDI folders (Ex: C:\Dreamcast\GDI),and launch !
(No point (.) in the name of the folder !! )

 

I downloaded this and used it fix up my 400GB card.

I have the perfect alphabetical order now. thank you.
But isn't the menu option supposed to allow instant boot with the menu automated with this program?
Every time I boot my 400GB card it still takes 2-3 mins for the menu to come up.

Is there a way for GDMENU to be instant?

 

I use the gdemu_sd toolkit and it adds a list file into the gdmenu CDI automatically, under these conditions it is near instant with a 64gb sd

 

With or without the SD menu app.. a 400GB takes 3 mins to load.
I was using a 128 GB with 109 titles on it and that took 57 seconds every time.
With the SD APP it does not do anything faster?
Not sure if I am doing something wrong.

I added 337 folder to the SD CARD.
Check the MENU button.
Pressed Save.
Edited Titles to make sure the name were right and there were no junk charaters - like one games said GAMENAME "10 spaces" R18
SO I deleted the junk to make it "Gamename" only.
Pressed done.
Let the card build - took like 4 hours.
The card built just fine and booted but GDEMU acted the same way as if I didn't use the SD Menu app. 3+ mins to load all 337 games.

 

Try mounting the the CDI and seeing if the menu list file is there, because it's supposed to load the list file and not intersct with the card as much

 

You do.

Check if the CDI in folder 01 has been updated when you rebuilt the list, using timestamps in files properties. If it hasn't, find the proper CDI in the programs folder and put it in folder 01.

 

I am not understanding that. Perhaps explain it different.

There was no Folder 01 or anything in it. By clicking menu it generates folder 01 with the proper GDMENU cdi in it.
So I have no idea what your referring to to by "Find the proper cdi in the programs folder".

 

The CDI in folder 01 of your SD card seems not to contain the game list.

You should look into the program's folder to see if a cdi with the list was generated but somehow didn't make its way on the SD card.

Also, maybe the list is invalid somehow, with strange characters or broken formatting?

 

I’m a bit confused as well.. someone just needs to make a YouTube video on how to use Gdmenu-SD properly. Whenever I try to use it I’m getting the same results as Comp1demon, Do we have to prepare the GDI files like we would normally would do if we were setting it up manually? Example: placing the GDI files in folders 02,03,04? And drag and drop them in GDMenu Sd? Or we can use the original folders to drag and drop and the SD-maker will structure the SD card for you?

Also do we place the latest version of the gdmenu on the sd card first and .ini file in the root? Or does the GDMenu-SD create it automatically when using the tool? So yeah the setup process is not very clear when it comes to the GDMenu-SD I’ve done searches and all I get is vague explainations.

 

just use the tool fully by itself, dont interact with the independently.

ensure menu is checked, DONT manually add gdmenu yourself.

Customize is completely up to you, it has no effect on the menu working.


Just let it do its thing.


If you can mount CDI images you can verify things worked and are set up correctly.

 

Did all that.

Verified the List.ini from a mounted .cdi that SD CARD MAKER generated.

My List.ini has every single game properly in there.
Also every folder has a Name.txt that it generated in all 337 folders.

Still takes 3 mins to show the menu each boot.

RMenu for saturn works much better in my opinion. Add games, Re-run the Rmenu APP.
Every game auto shows instantly.

If a 400GB card can be used and have every game on it, GDMENU needs an instant menu boot option.
Waiting 3 mins is way too long. I rather use my USB GDROM - a 2TB drive takes 3 seconds to show up in the list.
I like GDMENU better looks nicer. So hoping to figure this out.

 

So.. I know the latest gdmenu doesn’t require renaming the .gdi files so using the gdmenu_SD is required to rename?

 

Try another SD-Card. The official capacity supported is 32GB. Maybe the 400GB card has to much latency, weird issue, or there's still something you're doing wrong and don't realise.

There should be a ini file in the root of the SD-Card with some settings for GDMenu too.

 

That is the point... One card - One library.. I can try another 400GB but only Sansdisk makes 400GB.. The 512GB are near impossible to find and other than one company, Samsung and others who promised 512GB months ago still have not released their cards.

I am familiar with how GDEMU works. I have been using one for years now. But never used anything bigger than 64GB until last year when I went to 128GB, but now with 400GB cards able to hold Every US game GDI and a few extras (for imports and or homebrew) It is time to move away from smaller cards You can get a 400GB for less than $90 now. As low as $70 on big sale days.

If anything it is not the card. It has to be the software. GDMENU is fantastic and I think it works great, I was ok with 53 second load on a 128GB card, but 3 minutes is TOO LONG. I would abandon GDEMU and GDMENU all together if a solution can not be found. Perhaps a fork or build could be made for people moving to 200, 256, 400, 512gb cards that allow a Manual Menu to be compiled in the same way as RMENU works for sega Saturn ODE (rhea and Phoebe) and allow users to easily compile on PC. Perhaps as easy as a Flag check in the GDMENU settings for autoscan or read from ini.

If anyone else has any ideas I am all ears.

Thanks

 

Ironically, you've suggested making a manual menu in your post, but you can already do that. Just read about CDI4DC, fetch GDMenu 1st_read.bin and build a CDI with a custom LIST.INI.

You said that you had to wait with a 128GB card? Has the precaching ever worked for you?

In the eventuality that you're doing everything fine and that it's the fault of the sdcard, don't put the blame on GDEmu. Deunan is very clear that only up to 32GB is supported, over that is a gamble; optical drives are very timing sensitive and sd-cards are terrible at random I/O (even if they're great at sequential I/O).

To me, it really looks like either you're doing something wrong, or GDEMU has problems with your card. In the latter case, I'd expect games to have problems too, not only GDMenu.


You have a few options:

1. Format your card and do over exactly as @Mrneo240 said.

2. Get another card and test the procedure. At least on a 32GB card, the list should work fine and the loading of the game list should be instantaneous.

3. Build the list yourself (or find the one that's created by the program) and insert it into the GDMenu CDI in folder 01 yourself.

4. Reflash latest firmware.

I know you say that you know how GDEmu works, but I've released enough software to know that most people that have problems are actually making mistakes, even if they sincerely think they're doing everything right. No offense, just an explanation of why I insist that you do tests and report instead of simply stating that you're doing everything right.

 

@Comp1demon I had a similar issue previously that I traced to a problematic game. Try starting with an empty, freshly formatted card, and add 1 game to make sure it works. Then add games in batches of 25 or so until you encounter the slowdown, and you should be able to nail down the culprit by removing games until it works again.

It's possible that it may be your card, but I got my 128GB card working properly again by doing this.

 

That is a TON of work... but it is a good suggestion.