Here are some links you may find helpful
Dreamcast GDEMU info
- Thread starter Plavix
- Start date
- Jun 3, 2019
- 184
- 192
- 43
- AGName
- Greg2600
- AG Join Date
- Jun 23, 2010
That's a perfectly valid point. 10 years ago, probably wouldn't say anything, but when basically every other device has a cool menu, it spoils you. Particularly when the DC is 10,000x more sophisticated than a Mega Drive. It deserves something at least bordering on professional looking. Furthermore, his and GD-EMU prices are absurd, and are keeping many aficionados from partaking.
I think we have all been spoiled to a certain degree by coverflow-ish, fancy game selection screens at this point, but it really comes down to how effortless you can select and start the game you want to play and in that regard, the USB-GDROM just works.
your tool looks fine, but please add .mds support, love sort list button.
sega smash pack i think it detects bad length (gdi have several track0X.raw), and a total sd lengh could be great, to avoid copy new games.
i downloaded GDMENU_SD from here and dont detect virus https://mega.nz/file/UE0FQDob#K2R8LRoZyhNUq4rdfHoDG6MVmYlf3_iHncm2APzSMVw
Last edited:
CDI is by far the most used format for DC games, but NRG (Nero) and MDS/MDF (Alcohol 120%) are quite common as well.
IMG4DC tools are open source: https://github.com/sizious/img4dc
And support CDI and MDS creation, but doing CDDA tracks is only supported by the MDS image function and not the CDI function. So some people use the format.
Of course, you can easily convert to CDI by mounting the MDS/MDF in a virtual drive and creating an image from the virtual drive using DiscJuggler, but it would be nice for these utilities to support it
Am wondering too. Resident Evil 2 black screens and goes back to the menu for me. Ready to Rumble crashes at the character selection screen.
I started to compile a list of the problematic games. Also some games wont work with rgb scart. I'm taking note of these too.
- May 31, 2019
- 344
- 337
- 63
- AGName
- -=FamilyGuy=-
- AG Join Date
- March 3, 2007
At the very least, I could implement a check to not shrink incompatible games.
@sonik If you could add the md5 checksum of the 1st_read.bin to your list it'd help me greatly.
@sonik If you could add the md5 checksum of the 1st_read.bin to your list it'd help me greatly.
- May 31, 2019
- 344
- 337
- 63
- AGName
- -=FamilyGuy=-
- AG Join Date
- March 3, 2007
Best is CRC of 1st_read.bin as I don't actually read any information from the IP. I have code for that, but it's not required so I'd rather not do that.
Feel free to gather as much info as you care to, having options in the future is good. But the md5 is the easiest and fastest way for me to implement that fix, and I have very little free time nowadays.
- May 31, 2019
- 344
- 337
- 63
- AGName
- -=FamilyGuy=-
- AG Join Date
- March 3, 2007
Gditools can do it
by extracting to ram and computing md5 there.It's actually one of the check that I do to ensure the shrinking is valid. I compare the md5 of the 1st_read before and after shrinking as a sanity check.
I could write a simple script for you that spits it out.
Last edited:
Please! It will be handy.
I will still get the Product Number from the IP too. As the 1st_read might be patched by the user.
I went through my US TOSEC list and tested out each title from @sonik that's marked as problematic when gdishrink is used. I shrunk each title, copied to a known working SD card, and tested with my GDEMU clone. I also used the suggestion from @FamilyGuy and grabbed the MD5 of the IP.BIN, using the following snippet:
It's probably noteworthy that all the problematic titles are WinCE titles. Other noteworthy items:
Code:
with GDIfile(os.path.join(disc_dirpath, disc_gdi_file_name), verbose = False) as gdi:
ip_bin = gdi.get_bootsector()
md5sum = hashlib.md5(ip_bin).hexdigest()It's probably noteworthy that all the problematic titles are WinCE titles. Other noteworthy items:
- I didn't test Taxi 2 as it's not a US game
- Roadsters seems to work OK after using gdishrink (and it's not a WinCE game).
- gdishrink fails on Q-bert
Last edited:
- May 31, 2019
- 344
- 337
- 63
- AGName
- -=FamilyGuy=-
- AG Join Date
- March 3, 2007
Thank you for doing that. I've been so busy lately that I completely forgot I said I was gonna write a small script for the checksums.
Does any WinCE game work once shrinked?
I'll try and update the code with the "blacklist" in the holidays break. If you want to send a pull request I'm all for it as well.
Cheers!
Last edited:
No problem! I did test one shrunk WinCE game called "Armada" that worked well, at least for the 45 minutes or so that I played it. My plan is to shrink literally everything in the US TOSEC set and try each one, but I can probably start with just the WinCE titles to see how all the rest of them work.
Would you want the "blacklist" to be based on Product ID only, or also the MD5 of the IP.BIN? I ask because changing any flags in the IP.BIN (region, VGA, etc.) will obviously result in an MD5 difference. I observed that games managed using MadSheep's GDEMU SD Card Manager seemed to have different MD5s than the originals, but I haven't done a proper diff of two of them to figure out what's changed.