Okay, I really want to play my import mega CDs on my new portable CDX. I don't mind doing the individual conversions of each game through my computer, but I haven't bveen able to figure out how to do that. I've toiled at it for a while so I thought I'd ask for some help. I need help with these steps (just about everything, heh):
1. converting the sega cd .bin format of a game to an .iso file...
I used a freeware program called magiciso, but I'm not sure if it did the trick.
2. opening up the .iso in the command prompt window of scdconv
I'm not so great with command prompt yet, and while I do know a little I'm having a lot of trouble putting in the correct syntax to make scdconv happy.
If someone could walk me through the process i would be very grateful, there's also another program (supposively better) called conv.scd. I found it over here:
http://www.retrodev.com/convscd.html (http://www.retrodev.com/convscd.html)
If anyone knows how to use these please help me out.
Thanks,
-Segasonicfan
You shouldnt have to convert your cd's from bin format, rip them straight to an ISO. I know NERO wants you to rip to a .nra, Alcohol lets you rip to an iso. I dont remember if Majic ISO lets you rip cds. Yes I think convscd works better then the other one, I will help you more when i get home. Long Live SEGA CD!
hey thank you so much! I think the format the Sega CDs are originally is .bin...or that's what my computer lists them as. I think the Magiciso file I created should work okay, but I'm not sure. If you could tell me what program you use, that would be really helpful. I don't understand the whole iso thing all that well...
I appreciate your help =) Long live Sega and the Sega/Mega CD!
-Segasonicfan
Ok, your .bin can be two different things. Genesis ROM Dumps (the rom file) are often stored in a format with .bin. I dont want you to confuse that with a CD Image. A cd Image is basically the whole cd in one file, and can have several extensions such as ISO BIN RAW NRA and etc. If Majic ISO suscessfully creates an ISO from that BIN then it means your bin was a correct CD image. So here is what you do to convert your import.
Extract the convscd105.zip into C:\scd\
Copy your ISO into C:\scd\ (rename to something easy to type like sonic.iso)
open up start>run and enter in cmd (hit enter)
in the console window type cd\scd
type in convscd (hit enter)
enter in your iso name (with .iso extension)
follow on screen instructions
hey that was my 150th post earlier who wants to share a bubbling bottle of mountain dew with me?
Hey thanks for all your help. Thanks to your info I know how ot run the program in command prompt and everything now however, I am having one hellish time making a proper ISO file. I've tried Ultra ISO, MagicISO, and Alcohol 120%...Alcohol is the only program that will rip the files from CD without giving me an error message (Ultra ISO gives me a dumb error message saying multiple tracks cannot be put on ISO...). Unfortunately Alcohol will only rip the CD into a weird .mdf format...It won't do ISO. Did you use another version of Alcohol or do you know another program that would work? I really want to play my imports.... :(
-Segasonicfan
Oh yeah, Its been so long I completely forgot you need to do multiple tracks for the audio, its so freakin silly they use audio tracks. What game are you trying to do this too?
I'm trying to do this for my Japanese Silpheed (yeah, I don't have the US one yet and I want to play it), and for my Japanese or european Sonic CD. I know how to rip the audio from WAV to MP3 (I already did that) so what o I do now? How do I combien the audio with the ISO?
-Segasonicfan
Now what you need to do is make a cue file. Remember when I told you an ISO is an image of a cd? I was wrong, I should have said it is an image of a track. The first track is the data track and the rest is the audio. What you need is a cue file, which is a listing of all the tracks in order. You can make cue files by hand but I recommend using a program designed just for this: http://abandonisomisc.web1000.com/utilitie...er/scm1011b.zip (http://abandonisomisc.web1000.com/utilities/sega%20cue%20maker/scm1011b.zip) (freeware)
Store the cue file, and all the audio tracks in the same folder, and then you need to open up the cue file in whatever Burner program you use. I use NERO and if i recall Alcohol rediculously does not handle cue files. Best of luck, if you want to chat some time IM me on AIM: its at0m
Well I followed your advice and made a .cue file and stored the WAV tracks, track 1 (iso file), and the .cue in the same folder. I opened it all up in nero, but it would only let me burn the .cue file to a Nero format (nrf). Do I open all the files (including .cue) and make them into an .iso? I tried that too and it didn't work. No matter what I do, convscd just says "this doesn't appear to be a sega cd iso"... :-(
gah, I've been working on this for 3 hours now...
-Segasonicfan
You may want to IM me because I can't help you anymore here because Im afraid someone will scream "DIRTY PIRATE!"
AIM:
its at0m
yeah I know what you mean. I've been looking for you on AIM but you haven't showed up as being online yet. You're on my buddy list though. Add mine to yours, it's Tuneviperz14
Thanks! :)
-Segasonicfan
woops, forgot to log in. That above post was me, btw =)
Wow I haven't been on in a while.... Lots of topics to catch up on.
As far as a solution for doing playing imports on various Sega CD systems, I've opted to start doing MultiBios mods. I'm not sure how many people (although I know the maximum number) know about/have one of Arakon's MultiBios chips, but it's freakin' great!
Check it here at Arakon's page. (http://arakon.yi.org/)
I just installed it successfully in a JVC X'Eye! No copying and patching multiple discs for me!
how much is the multibos chip/where can I get it? And will this mod work with a CDX? Sorry if these questions can be answered from that site...it's not loading for me. I know Sega continually changed the bios they used in their systems, which makes modifcation success on CDX and 2.0+ bios systems unlikely...
_Segasonicfan
Quotehow much is the multibos chip/where can I get it? And will this mod work with a CDX? Sorry if these questions can be answered from that site...it's not loading for me. I know Sega continually changed the bios they used in their systems, which makes modifcation success on CDX and 2.0+ bios systems unlikely...
_Segasonicfan
It "probably" can be done on a CDX.
BUT.
Since the chip is a 40 DIP and the CDX uses a 40-pin SMT, you have to run 40 wires to a socket to do it. You will NEVER fit this inside a CDX.
About the X'Eye, remember that it's a JVC system and uses a proprietary bios. That said, it worked fine with the MultiBios!
You can buy them directly from Arakon, whom runs that site.
arakon_de@yahoo.com
I'm very interested in multi-BIOS mod but there's no way I'm going to temper with my Sega Wondermega. :P
maybe I should get CDX myself...
cheers
heh i have about 50 wires already inside my cdx, so it will work. you just need the right wires. How much does it cost?
-Segasonicfan
also, what chip inside the CDX is the bios? I'd assume it was a Sega chip...there's a 40 pin one near the chroma encoder...is that it?
-Segasonicfan
Quoteheh i have about 50 wires already inside my cdx, so it will work. you just need the right wires. How much does it cost?
-Segasonicfan
No idea what he'd charge you (maybe $30-40 shipped?).
You guaranteed won't have space inside, maybe externally. The chip and socket is at least 1/2" thick, plus all the lines you'd need to run, plus how difficult it is to get clean, good solder points on the chip.
Nope, don't know which it is inside the CDX.
damn...if I can't fit it and I don't even know where the Eprom is then I guess there's no point. My softwate ISO conversions are working pretty well anyway thanks to Atom's help. However, many of my games still wont convert properly because the success rate of the two programs isn't too high (I'd say 70% for EUR games and less than 20% for JAP games). Does anyone know of any other Sega CD region conversion programs other than SCDConv (written in 99) and ConvSCD(still being updated)? I would love to be able to play some great imports on my CDX such as Cyborg 009, BC Racers, etc.
oh and one more question...anyone know how to convert .bin SegaCD games to .iso? I know asked you before Atom....I can't convert some of my games without knowing this :(
where can i get one of these multibios chips? that dudes page is down now
ask D-Lite about this multibios mod first.
think he said it wasn't easy thing to do...
Wait a sec... Since the region check for Sega CD games is in the actual game program, wouldn't it be possible to patch said code to make it completely region-free? Since Sega CD emulators exist now it might not be impossible to develop specialised patches for all the least cooperative games. I don't have the technical knowledge to attempt this, but I bet it would be a snap for say, some of the better translation patch authors out there.
As far as I've been able to determine, there's no 'region free' setting for Sega CD games. The region coding isn't a binary on/off thing, it actually has to be set to US or JPN or UK. The hardware isn't set up to accept a region code of 'none' without the multibios installed. Worse yet, it's not just a string in a consistent spot on the disc; the ConvSCD application has to search the ISO image for the region coding and then make an intelligent guess as to how to replace it. My experience has been that it's only successful about 80 percent of the time.
Not to be a killjoy, but Sega CD emulation has gotten good enough that there's not a lot of motivation to hack or backward-engineer the real hardware beyond the point of our current knowledge. It's less expensive and less time-consuming just to play import games on an emulator than modifying the actual hardware. Hell, in some cases it's less expensive to get import hardware than it is to modify the domestically-released hardware.
-KKC, who would pick up a Mega CD unit if he didn't already own six Sega CD-compatible pieces of hardware already...
i hate emulators.
i will never play a game properly on an emulator.
real consoles only. kthxbye
Hey Phreak, the hate on the emulators is specifically directed at PC versions, right? The emulators that run on the Dreamcast and Xbox are pretty cool and have the virtue of already outputting directly to a normal TV, and the handheld emulators (for devices like the GP32) are really hard to get wrong. Also, there are the sanctioned first-party emulators (like the one-chip PS1 inside the PS2, or the low-power firmware code in the TurboExpress) that are sitting right at 99 percent as far as fidelity to the original hardware goes.
Anyway, I'm looking into running a Sega CD emulator on an Xbox and using one of the USB Saturn pads for the input device. Best of all possible worlds on that one. :)
-KKC, who really shouldn't be spending money on more redundant game consoles. Anybody need a spare Neo CDZ? :)
Get a converter. They're a lot less ubiquitous lately (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=49227&item=8194672412&rd=1&ssPageName=WD9V) for some reason. I love mine. It's called a "CD+ Plus," which I guess makes it . . . a CD Plus Plus? Just be patient and keep scanning ebay, they keep popping up.
Edit--Here's a link to the store that sold mine on ebay (http://chollogames.es/), it's been a while and I'm not sure if the item is still in my ebay list so I don't recall the seller's ID on ebay but if you brush up on your Berlitz Spanish you could probably just order it from their page.
Edit Edit--Found his ebay id, it's armyx.
Quotei hate emulators.
i will never play a game properly on an emulator.
real consoles only. kthxbye
Don't get all biased because you dont know what your doing or your PC sucks. Their are emulators out there with perfect emulation for some of the best systems out there. You get instant RGB on a decent monitor, and you can interface your favorite controllers. I even have an old AT computer hacked into a console hooked up to my tv. I was able to take all the hundreds of my cartridges and put them in the attic where they belong.
kthnx?
generally, there is always going to be some problem in emulators.. i had problems with every dreamcast emulator i tried. playing oldskool games on my gba just didnt do it for me. i dont have an xbox. i havnt found any worthwhile emulators on ps2.
but that aside, i am a collector, i somehow get a kick out of running the old consoles as they were meant to run.. i mean, i prefer to look at my atari 2600jr through a static haze (it wont tune quite properly with the cable i have), rather than play it 100% on a pc. i have svideo out on my pc, it's permanently attached to my tv. i have played donkey kong country on my tv with a snes controller plugged into my pc. the picture was actually better than i get from composite video out of my snes. but i would still rather play it on snes any day.
theres something special the originals have that all emulators lack.
btw, i have a p4 2.6GHz with 512MB DDR RAM. im perfectly capable of running emulators on high resolutions at full speed.
atom, if you dont use your carts, would you sell a few?
No, cuz I just like holding onto them. Except for the 2 2600 carts I havent thrown away yet. Oh wait, there they go. I just cant stand having all 8 of my consoles hooked up to my tv at once with all the cables and switch boxes and controllers and power supplies and extension cords... talk about EMI problems! And then there are the buckets and buckets of carts I talked about, which oops little cousin mikey just got into them and spilled his juicebox all over.
Dreamcast emulators are good, except of course the dreamcast is too slow because homebrew developers only know how to use a software mode. Nobody really knows how to use that video chip! GoodSNES ran a few games full speed and others like DK Country at about 70 75 percent. NES emu I tried (no clue what it even was) worked perfectly for me.
But I do have to admit, sometimes I still have to pull out the SNES and play Zelda in it in its original form. I have been making plans for a while now for a NES SNES hybrid, I just need a new dremel to cut the case. That would definitley make it into my entertainment center.
Say there, all this talk about Dreamcast emulators, is there a Dreamcast SegaCD emulator? Every time I look I find very little good info on Dreamcast emulation. One site has lots of stuff but most everything is at least a couple of years old, with all of the "unfinished, no sound, etc." plastered everywhere, and when I google for other stuff I only find boards where people beg to be handheld on how to copy games and fill my screen with more popups than a hardcore porn site.
Is there a worthwhile SegaCD Dreamcast emulator?
i assume youre joking about your complete lack of care for games.. i will give money for anything oldskool.
the verry best emulators on dreamcast are snes nes sms imo , the genesis one isnt complete yet .
no sega cd emulators it would be impossible to run on teh dreamcast with the amount of ram that has to be worked with
dcemulation.com has a fairly complete set of all the emulators on dreamcast
btw dreamsnes is almost 100% it runs everything great except yoshis island
i recomend i little oc job tho if ur gonna be runnin the snes emulator
Quoteno sega cd emulators it would be impossible to run on teh dreamcast with the amount of ram that has to be worked with
while i thought you were nuts i checked it out and the sega cd has roughly 16mb worth of memory addresses to work with. dreamcast has 16mb of main ram so you are correct, not enough to work with for emulating the cd addon.
i am a dreamcast homebrew maniac,
somehow my projects always suck tho
16MB in the sega CD? That seems a bit inaccurate. A quick check shows the RAM of the SegaCD is only 6Mbit plus some additional small chunks of RAM - a total of less than 8Mbit, or 1 MByte.
No, not ram. Memory addresses. every single thing that the cpu has access to has a memory location. pixels on the screen, video ram, main ram, the cd, the boot rom, the controller ports, the cartridge pins, the rom locations, the sound chips, the video chips. you then have to take in account the both sides of the console has some of these chips. each one of these memory addresses have to take up a byte in memory in an emulation enviroment. a sega genesis cpu has access to memory addresses from 0 to ffffff which is 16777215 addresses. and memory management is the easy part to emulation!
man i really gotta get a new keyboard. left shift acts as tab, right shift acts as . thats why my last couple posts lately have been in all lowcaps
Quotebtw dreamsnes is almost 100% it runs everything great
Not sure what's so "great" about snes games running at about 15fps even in 8bit mode (no transpareny effects) and no sound..... It may be a great home coding achievement but it's way too slow and completely impractical for the actual gamer.
For emus on DC stick to nes, master system and gbx - they all run at 60fps with full sound.
Quoteeach one of these memory addresses have to take up a byte in memory in an emulation enviroment. a sega genesis cpu has access to memory addresses from 0 to ffffff which is 16777215 addresses. and memory management is the easy part to emulation!
No, you don't need to emulate every single addressable byte of memory space.
Take the Genesis on it's own. Looking at the memory map of the genesis, and you'll see there's a huge hole in it, consisting of 0x5FFFFE bytes between 0x400000 and 0x9FFFFF that can be easily emulated (Some is designed for the 32X, some just returns the next instruction). The memory mapped IO also has holes and mirrors. For example, VDP access is between 0xC00000 and 0xDFFFFF, but the VDP only actually has 31bytes of addressable space. Those two on their own have just reduced the memory space by half. The 64K RAM also has aliases, appearing between 0xE00000 and 0xFFFFFF, which makes that 64K of RAM appear to take up a 2MB chunk of memory.
Between those, we've just taken that 16Mbyte that the 68000 can address, and turned it into just 6Mb that needs to be emulated, if that.
Granted, that doesn't take into account the SegaCD part, but I haven't got as detailed information on it I'm not going to look at it!
I didnt even think about mirroring. Yeah, the other side has its own Motorola as well and some unkown to me soundchip for the cd audio. I still think it will be a stretch, but the Non cd side is def possible (as the SNES was) but It would probably be HELLISHLY slow like the SNES emulator. As far as emulating the CD Your talk about emulating dual CPU's that are completely independent of each other and simply share a data bus meant for a rom. There is also a whole whopping MB of memory on that side and having to hold the ROM in memory. Im assuming the 600MB Cd's would simply be read off the actual cd by swapping lol.
http://www.eidolons-inn.net/tiki-index.php...egaCD+Multibios (http://www.eidolons-inn.net/tiki-index.php?page=SegaCD+Multibios)
http://forums.segaxtreme.net/index.php?showtopic=11082 (http://forums.segaxtreme.net/index.php?showtopic=11082)
Here is the reply from ExCyber:
I don't actually have the patch anymore, but how it works is that
there is a byte-wide "version" register located at $A10001, the upper
two bits of this register are the 50Hz/60Hz flag and the
foreign/domestic flag. The foreign/domestic flag is set to 0 for
Japanese systems and 1 for non-Japanese systems, the 50/60Hz flag is
set to 0 for 60Hz and 1 for 50Hz, so there are four possible
combinations:
00: Japan
01: Japan 50Hz (as far as I know no stock Genesis/MD comes in this
condition, though you could set it this way with a switch, and some
emulators support it as a manual override)
10: North America (possibly Brazil also)
11: Europe / PAL regions
So grab your favorite 68K disassembler (I used Antiriad's DOS port of
the Intelligent Reassembler, which you can get at
http://www.rainemu.com/romerror/ (http://www.rainemu.com/romerror/) ), look for code that checks the high
bits of $A10001 (the low bits are checked in boot code, you need to
leave that alone or it probably won't boot on some systems), and then
patch the routine to jump/not jump unconditionally to the correct code
path considering the native region of the BIOS and the register
contents it expects (if memory serves the opcode for an unconditional
branch is 60xx as opposed to 66xx or 67xx for beq/bne, and nop is
4E71),
Hope this helps.
What about dumping the rom from the "cross products" segacd SDK machine?
QuoteGet a converter. They're a lot less ubiquitous lately (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=49227&item=8194672412&rd=1&ssPageName=WD9V) for some reason. I love mine. It's called a "CD+ Plus," which I guess makes it . . . a CD Plus Plus? Just be patient and keep scanning ebay, they keep popping up.
Edit--Here's a link to the store that sold mine on ebay (http://chollogames.es/), it's been a while and I'm not sure if the item is still in my ebay list so I don't recall the seller's ID on ebay but if you brush up on your Berlitz Spanish you could probably just order it from their page.
Edit Edit--Found his ebay id, it's armyx.
These converters also will not work for every game. Besides there are multiple revisions of these cd+ carts.
What game or games haven't they worked with? I haven't run into one yet, although I do use it mostly these days to run my SegaCD games on my Japanese Wondermega 2.
Using revision 1.8i of the cdx plus cart I can confirm the following from firsthand experience:
On a Sega CD:
Earthworm Jim S.E. PAL does not run.
Besides this game I have encountered at least one more (an US one not working on a Euro machine), but I don't remember as I had a very strange Sega CD setup at that time. I had a broken Sega CD and a Mega CD (Euro) and would switch the mobo to play different regions and this has muddled my memory. However most old games (games released before the cart revision) work fine. If you want to go by the experience of others there is a small list of other games that do not work in a Gamefaqs FAQ.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/segacd/game/916395.html (http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/segacd/game/916395.html) (the import games one)
(Japanese games)
"Known NOT to work with CD+PLUS:
Black Hole Assault
Heavy Nova
Known NOT to work with Pro CD-X:
Ranma 1/2"
and
http://forums.segaxtreme.net/index.php?showtopic=8683&hl= (http://forums.segaxtreme.net/index.php?showtopic=8683&hl=)
http://forums.segaxtreme.net/index.php?showtopic=811&hl= (http://forums.segaxtreme.net/index.php?showtopic=811&hl=)
This question is probably remotely related to the conversions topic but I have been looking for an answer for the longest time. I'll be eternally grateful if someone can answer it for me. Can someone please tell me how I can play US Sega CD/Euro Mega CD games on a Japanese JVC Wondermega RG-B1?
Thank you soooooooo much for your help.
W, you mean the RG-M1, with the six buttons on top and the keyboard port, right? As far as I can tell there's no model number RG-B1.
For complete import conversion, it'll require a BIOS swap. If you don't have a convertor cartridge that works on a JPN-region console, then you'll have you find yourself a PCB-mount ROM chip and burn a compatible ROM image on it. Since there's so much code that goes into the region checking, there is no jumper to change since the code for running other regions' games simply isn't present in an unmodded Wondermega or Mega CD. Have a look at D-Lite's first post in this thread for a description of how this mod would theoretically be done for the CDX.
-KKC, attaching things to his Xbox 360 that should never be attached to it
THank you so much for the quick reply. Unfortunately, I don't have the technical knowledge so I don't quite understand you method. Do you know of any conversion cartridge, for instance, the CD+plus, CDX or Pro CD that would work on the wondermega model 1? I've read somewhere that it would not because it does the cartridges do not read the code on wondermega. not sure what that means though. please advice.
W, please read the thread thoroughly. In order to use a CDX or other convertor cartridge, you'll probably have to do the import jumper mod for the cartridge side of the Wondermega. This is because those cartridges are intended for use in EU and US regions in most cases. This mod process is pretty well documented here on GamesX:
http://www.gamesx.com/importmod/gen2import.htm (http://www.gamesx.com/importmod/gen2import.htm)
-KKC, imagining Lawrence's ears flying off his head. For the usual reason. :)
Old, but very interesting thread. Since I own a japanese (nope actually it's a southern asia unit, the "PAL-Compatible" one with the 9112 bios) I'll share what I know about this stuff...
Due to the crap of SEGA vs. Accolade in late 1990 the second generation of MD Mark I chipset came with a mini bios (SEGA call it IPL or Initial Program Loader) they started to put codes to "protect" the boot of their machines. The idea is make that code copyrighted so if you make discs or cartridges that boot on their system without a licence makes you suitable to a lawsuit from them.
This happen to be a good way to enforce a region protection on the discs. So each region of disc has a boot sector "key" which is actually the code that prints the Sonic and the stars on Euro-PAL/NTSC-US Sega/Mega CD units. The japanese just have a plain blue SEGA logo and the words "Produced by or under licence of Kabushiki Kaisha SEGA". Since the japanese code has no spiffy Sonic logo (man how I hate that logo lol) it's way much smaller than the Euro and US codes. US code is the biggest one.
What I do is replace the US code with the Japanese one and pad the difference with 68000 NOP instructions so the boot sector is still aligned.
I use CDRWin to dump only the 1st sector, hexa edit it with winhex and then inject the edited bootsector with the same tool used to inject the Dreamcast boot sector on CDR isos (IPINSERT.EXE/IPINS.EXE)
One of the very first games I did this was Snatcher in 2002. I got it on the net, fixed the audio (was off sync due to gaps inserted by crappy dumping programs) then patched the boot sector.
This has a 99.9% sucess rate converting USA games to Japan. The other way arround is not possible at most times because the boot code can't be relocated properly because the japanese boot code being smaller than the code you need to boot the disc on a US or EU SCD.
Peace ...