Unofficial Deunan's GDEMU Thread

Hi krisk77. So i did the tests, tnx for the tip.
I made with both Crazy Taxi 1 and 2 on demo loop, left CT1 running for 2h:40m and CT2 for 3h:50m. In both tests did not get errors , freezes , crashs ...

Thanks for the tip about the tests, if you have any other test let me know.

 

I tried the test with Crazy Taxi 1 and it freezes on the Sega screen in under 15 minutes. I'm using Samsung 64G micro SD EVO. It also crashed on Sturmwind once the other day. Can reflashing the GDemu help this? Or formatting and setting up my sd card again help?

 

i tested yesterday crazy taxi 1 for 2 hours,and not crashing here.
cant it be a heat problem?
that so called 12v problem,i connected 2 12v fans.
for those that have crash problems,maybe try with a 12v fan,its easy and you never know.

 

Hello could you append this information to the front page to help anyone else that might have similar questions as me?

1) Patching VGA and Region Free on GDI images was buggy with GDMenu SD. In other words if you replaced the modified GDMenu cdi image with a fresh copy or deleted the info.txt files GDMenu would refuse to boot. This only happens if you have the patch boxes ticked. On the other hand I had better luck individually patching each GDI image with GDRom Explorer 1.6.2 obtainable here http://www.mediafire.com/download/elaw6aezraxiqyd/jc-gdrom-explorer-v1.6.2.zip

2) When GDMenu SD asks if you want to customize your menu and you click the save button this ini file is mainly for backing up your custom title names so next time you can just use the load option instead of manual reentry. There is no specific file name required for this ini file unless you plan to manually inject it into the GDMenu cdi image. In that case you should name it "list.ini". Also because you are wondering "list.ini" cannot be manually placed in the root of your SD Card it has to be injected into the GDMenu cdi image itself. The easiest way to do this is to just customize your menu in GDMenu SD and hit the Done button.

3) If you desire to rename the title on a gdi image use the "Extract Re-Build GDI's" package on the first page. Move the whole game folder containing the gdi and track files into the "Extract Re-Build GDI's" directory. Drag the game folder on top of "Extract GDI Image.bat" and let it do its thing. Dragging the gdi file over it will do nothing. Afterwards use a HEX editor such as HxD to open up the "IP.BIN" file located within the "bootsector" folder of the extracted game folder and replace the title with one of your chosing.

Before:

After:

Save, delete the IP.BIN.bak and drag the extracted folder over the "Build GDI Image.bat". Make note the original game folder must be present with the now edited extracted folder or the program will not create the new GDI image. The original gdi game folder is now the edited image. You may delete the extracted folder.

Side thought. You can make the name name upper and lower case though GDMenu SD seems to prefer making everything caps. Not sure if it matters but I make everything all caps to keep with the trend.

That's all I can think of for now. Hope it helps someone.

 

Hi,

What would be a big help to me is to try D2 disc swapping. I made a post about it here some time ago, yet no other users could confirm the issue I was getting with the disc swap not switching correctly. Randomly, it would not reconize the swap no matter if it was Disc 1 booted, then loading a disc 3 save, as the when pressing the ode button, the game would not detect the swap, even though the GDI 's were listed in their correct order. It's the only Dreamcast game that requires a swap during play without saving first like other multi disc ones do. You can use the VMU saves iso floating about to transfer the disc 3 save to the vmu, without actually playing the game to test. I told Deunan about, which he thought it might be a possible bug, yet nothing was heard since and that was last year around July.

 

You could try doing that and also using a proper Fat32 format tool using 64k cluster size. However, I put mine down to the sd card i was previously using, yet heard samsung are okay for gdemu.

Already eliminated that possible cause. I tested it on a DC with the 12v removed, a stock DC with a 300 ohm resistor in the 12v/ground and another without any changes at all to the psu with and without a modified air filter. Made no difference at all, so narrowed it down to SD cards.

 

strange that his samsung sdcard gives problems,probably problems read access maybe.

 

Hi krisk77.

I did the test with D2 , open a save file from Disc 4 and Load Game with every disc before Disc 4, i tested one- by-one . Loaded save with disc 1 , disc2 ... in any case the swap is working. I push the button and game say "This is disc 2. Please insert Disc 4"..."This is disc 3. Please insert Disc 4"... So when DISC 4 is loaded the game open fine with no problems.

My configuration:
GDEMU 5.4 (FW 5.13.0)
GDMenu 0.5.2
GDI: D2 v1.000 (2000)(Sega)(NTSC)(US)(Disc 1 of 4)[!]

So, no matter the order of the disks open, it is swapping and is asking the disk 4 until I load . I have not found any Save from Disc 3, the test was to be that specific save?

 

Thanks for testing it. mmm, okay, did you soft reset the game a few times after a successful swap. Out of 5-7 resets, 2 to 4 would fail and other times it was consistent swapping, yet random times pressing the button would not do anything.

Is you're ini file loading the default open times? I did try that bit with adjusting the numbers but it made no difference and the game save 3 was an example.

Also what GDI is you're one from? Tosec? I used a trurip dump. If swapping is 100% consistent for you, i know the problem is my side somewhere. Btw, could you check it without the menu too, maybe on a different Sd card, as that too made no difference to me.

Thanks

 

Hi, ini file is default.

I will test more "swaps" with D2 today, and with different saves. I get this GDI from doperoms site, i don´t know if i can tell this site. I have a Kingston SD10VG2 which is on the compatibility list, i will test with this Kingston and without menu.

Tnx

 

Could my Samsung SD card problem be that its a micro SD?

 

Hi Strogen, could be Micro SD Adapter or Samsung Evo. I have the same card and no problems until now.
In an attempt , try to format using the Mini Tool Partition instead Fat32Format or Guiformat. Use this on Mini Tool:

File System: FAT32
Create as: Primary
Cluster Size: 32kb

 

Hi.

After many swap tests you´re right. D2 freeze sometimes when swapping, after 7-10 swaps it fails 1 or 2 using Samsung EVO. With Kingston card the swap failures is more constant. It´s like 2 swap and 1 failure.

I tried with both with and without menu, don´t have many differences.

But in any case it fail sometime on disc swap. For this tests in my case Samsung was more efficient.

 

Thanks for the tests, as it is much appreciated. Myself and you are the only ones, as far as I know who have encountered this issue and would be worth it, if more more users could do the same tests and report it to Deunan Knute because I'm sure this is not a isolated case, if more people could stress test it that we have done.

I was starting to think it might have been my ODE, yet it works fine with over a 100 games I have tested so far using the Gdmenu and without it (default button to cycle images on the card) so I have eliminated that possibility. This occurred on all firmware's before, so I know it is not a new bug introduced in the current version now, so the only wild guess I have, is that it's a timing issue with the game and the communication to the ODE when the user presses the button.

I have also had it hang randomly in mid-game when the swap has worked by pressing the button to return to 01 (blank folder) reset_goto =1 option on the ini file, yet other times it was okay. Even setup just D2 and nothing else on a freshly formatted card (5 types i.e Kingston, Samsung, Sandisk, Komputer Bay and Lexar ranging from 8gb, 16gb, 32gb, 64gb and 128gb with all random mixed results.

 

It's not isolated and it's not just D2.

I reported the same issue to him on December 29th 2014 with Shenmue 2, which is an extremely easy test case because you can easily get it to ask you to swap between Disc 1 and Disc 4 by Picking Shenmue Collection on Disc 1 for it to ask for Disc 4, and New Game on Disc 4 (or any other Disc) for it to ask for Disc 1. Of course, these cases aren't as important because disc swap doesn't need to work for that game, but it has the same problem where pressing the button or even removing the SD card does nothing. It's like the disc swap request causes GDEmu itself to freeze.

When I made the report I mentioned that it wasn't too important since the game doesn't need swapping. But back then he just said he would "gladly look into it". I haven't followed up since then because it's not extremely important to me.

 

Okay thanks for the info. I got a reply from D here when I asked if he looked at it.
The response was:

I did look at it and frankly I have no idea why it happens. The first disk change works, after all. I still haven’t (re)built the (upgraded) sniffer I need to run more tests.

 

That reply makes me think that he believes he's simulating something incorrectly. I wonder if it's just simply a bug in his logic. I mean, the entire GDEmu device basically locks up and you can't do anything until you turn off the power. I would expect if he were doing something wrong, the device would at least still work and let you switch discs / SD cards when you soft-reset.

 

I am happy to report that the Kingston Digital SDXC Class 10 UHS-I 45R/10W Flash Memory Card (SD10VG2/128GB) works great with GDEMU. I have it formatted with FAT32 with 64K clusters. I have played hours over 50+ games and it has run everything I have thrown at it.

Amazon Link:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B012GNQRDC?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

FYI - It is the current version of the Kingston Digital 128 GB SDHC/SDXC Class 10 UHS-1 Flash Memory Card 30MB/s (SDX10V/128GB) already on the compatibility list.

Edit: Forgot to mention. I tried a PNY 128GB High Speed MicroSDXC Memory Card (P-SDUX128U160G-GE) before this card. It froze on the GDEMU menu and had random freezing in game. Please add that to the incompatible list, as it did not work with any format/cluster type.

Amazon Link:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00W77C1W4?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00

 

Having issues with Resident Evil 2, Both disks, The game boots and asks me to pick my video mode, PAL 60 or PAL 50, then it shows a Virgin Interactive intro video, after the video plays or I skip it the DC reboots and goes back to the bios screen and boots in to GDMenu. Running PAL GD roms from the tosec set. Anyone got any ideas or fixes?

 

No issue on my side, PAL TOSEC Dump on GDEMU firmware version 5.13.0 via VGA.