USB GDrom Thread

I have the EXACT same behavior with the US GDI and I even told MNEMO about that last week (the day before he uploaded the new cdi firmware to his site).
He says he can't recreate it. Interesting theory about the first batch of devices. My DC has that region-free dev-animation bios btw... so what do you suggest?

 

I have one of the original units too, I'll need to try it out and report back, I'm away from my DC for a few days but I'll check it out

 

Edit: Never mind. I think my switch is bad. If I hold it a little to one side, it works but sometimes it gives no continuity on the multimeter. Managed to get it to work once but giving it a little nudge to the side =(

Edit2: I managed to open the switch and clean it with isopropanol (IPA). Works like a charm now! Made a little instruction.


http://www.grandis.nu/images/DreamCast_CD_Switch_Clean.jpg

Edit3: I'd still like someone to verify that D2 works. As soon as I get to the "Insert disk 4" screen, if I press B, I can get back to the main menu (abort). But if I open the lid and let it switch to disk 4, it just hangs and I can not use B to get back anymore.
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Could someone verify D2 (USA version) for me please?

I just got my new batch of USB-GDROMs with the new firmware.
I load up D2 Disk4 with X and it verifies by saying "Image for swap: D2 (US) - (Disk 4 of 4).gdi".
I run D2 Disk1 and select "Opening Movie".
It asks me to insert disk 4. I open the lid and close it but nothing happens.

I've also tried without the lid. Queue disk 4, hold switch down, load disk 1. Wait for it to ask for disk 4, release switch and push it again. Nothing happens.

I've verified the lid and my soldering with a multimeter.

I know the switch works because if I open the lid while its showing the little intro from disk1, it hangs and jumps back to the DC menu, as it should, had I opened the lid.

Do you have to do something for it to detect a diskchange in D2 or should it just continue automatically?

Any other games that are good to test with, IE that wants another disk fairly soon?

Thanks

 

So apparently there are two types of switches (at least). Here is how to clean the other type.

 

I will try this tonight. I just got my GD_DEBUG file back from MNEMO today.

 

I just put the new GD DEBUG file on and its not work. Out of the 5 GDIs I tried they all get stuck at the swirl logo at startup. Not sure whats going, hopefully MNEMO has a fix.

 

Bro, I think you should make a post about this. I would hope Assembler would sticky it. Try to make a post about all your fix's. I am pretty damn sure this will help somebody else out with the same problem.

 

There seems to be an issue still, I recreated your problem with D2 and I also tried it booting from disc 4 then start game, open lid to swap to disc 1 and nothing happens.

I can confirm the swap works because if you soft reset by pressing all joypad buttons at the same time, go back to bios then go to music player you can see that the disc is the one it should be (disc 1, similarly for disc 4).

EDIT: also I had no problems running the versions of Vanishing Point you mentioned, I'm using a PAL Dreamcast with a flashed NTSC-J bios

 

Thanks. I'll inform MNEMO I guess =)

 

Tested on 3 different USB devices.

Edit:
I removed the video until I can test something, it would seem the NTSC version doesn't work with GDEMU either, only thing I can think of is I have a PAL unit with a hacked bios or stock PAL bios.

Anyone got an NTSC-J or US bios I can test?

Mnemo & Meringues are both running an NTSC-J bios & the game works for them.

Update:
I give up, flashed the wrong bios to my DC & now I think it's a dud , it's a pre flashed bios soldered directly to the board.
(Think I flashed a v2 DC bios to a v1 DC ahhhh Dreamshell need to organize there files better)

Ok second update :/
I got the NTSC versions of Vanishing Point to load, the issue is, if the region isn't NTSC it won't go past the Accessing Data screen, so it must have some protection that's stopping it. UGC region free mode doesn't work, nor does a region free bios.

What I done is on my stock DC I changed the region to NTSC (12v wire hack) & that's how it works :-/

So what works for me & what doesn't.

WORKING
Bios = PAL v1 bios
Region = NTSC

NOT WORKING
Bios = Japanese-Cake v1.030 or link83 bios
Region = PAL

 

Some of question maybe stupid:

- is it possible to use extract file from .gdi (extract with gdi explorer) and run the executable (like on xbox)
- could we use virtual memory (USB) like internal HDD for Xbox, to improve Ram avalable for Naomi game work?

 

Yeah, I used the the 12v wire hack to flash mine to NTSC-J using the region changing disc image on mmmonkey's website

 

Thanks for getting to the bottom of the issue Rocky5!
I have replaced my bios chip completely with the region-free/dev one, so it's VP PAL for me

 

The region info is stored on the flash chip, just above the bios, the reason I don't change all my DC's to NTSC (love the Orange/red spiral) is the last two I done got the black swirl & were goosed not sure why it happened but I don't do the region change anymore.
(The DC I used to test the region is my old DC, since I bricked my new one flashing a fecking v2 bios to it , different GDRom interface. Dreamshell should bloody folderize these bios, for console versions)

Update to the issue list.

Also since the latest update, truncated GDI images now work

 

Has anyone made an up to date review of this device?

 

Yeah lol, not the greatest video mind, I want to redo it, mainly because it's crap but also due to me saying you can have 10 swap images, you can't :/ you can have 6.

 

I am going to try and buy one of these

http://www.stoneagegamer.com/dreamcast-usb.html

Didn't want to mess with my good dreamcast so I just bought a used one on eBay that has a non working gd rom drive to mod with this.

A couple of questions. As far as images. I never did burn ISO's for dreamcast before because Im kind of a perfectionist and didn't want to play compressed versions. I want the real deal which this device seems to offer.

So are .gdi images generally the 100 percent accurate rips of the games? Or .cdi images. Or does that not really tell me anything? What is the best way to get full unadulterated game rips? I have the BB adapter. Would it be easier to rip my own discs to get everything ? Or just download them them? And just want to verify, I currently use a game shark I believe to play other region games. So woth this I won't need to anymore? Can just load any region (I'm guessing answer is yes)? Also so to use the disc swap function, I need to actually solder a switch for that purpose? (Again shouldn't be an issue just want to know ahead of time so I can plan something more elegant then reusing a switch or having wires outside my console.)

 

GDI images are 100% rips of the games, the device is region free so you can play any region game, you need to solder the lid switch if you want to use the disc swap function, if you are not bothered about that then its just as simple as taking out the GD-ROM and dropping in the device in its place, no wires or soldering required, and you can even get a version that doesn't require altering your Dreamcast case for the USB port.

 

They only have 30 of the ver. 4's to be ordered. After those are gone, it's all ver. 5 (where the USB stick goes inside). I have the ver. 4, but I also put the resistor on the PSU, which I don't think SAG are providing.

 

Did you leave VPP (the +12V line) connected? That seems to have a tendency to trash the region data eventually. My theory is that when the BIOS does a garbage collection in the flash it just does a chip erase because it assumes that the data that's supposed to be read-only is hardware write protected.