Superfamicast Not Working

[That Guy]

I hope some one other than me had this problem;

I have been using cygwin and cdrecord to make bootable cd’s for my dreamcast. every emu i have tried has worked except for superfamicast.

It boots on the dc, but right after the sega logo the screen goes black and just sits there.

I am using the plain files from the v2 release and i even tried burning it at 10x.

I would greatly appreciate any help.

thank you.

[fackue]

Can you explain the step you did to create the disc?

[That Guy]

Thank you for the response,

1. I downloaded the 1st_read then realized i needed an IP.bin so i downloaded the plan files.

2. I extracted all the files to my cdrecord directory.

3. I burned a previosly created Audio.raw and used -msinfo to find the numbers 0,11702

4.Useing the extracted files and mkisofs a collection of roms i made superfamicast.iso

5.I then transfered my .iso to my cygwin home directory and from there concatonated the package ip.bin into the boot strap.

6. I then transfered the resulting Superfamicast.raw back to my cdrecord directory and burned it at 24X. After that didn't work i tried it at around 10X.

I put both of the disks into the DC and the disc boots i get the sega logo from the boot strap and then the screen goes black and nothing happens.

I know that it is something i am doing wrong but iam not sure what it is.

Any help is rgeatly appriciated.

Guy

[fackue]

I see, so you're creating it manually...

The latest versions of mkisofs will add the IP.BIN to the bootstrap without the need of Cygwin. Use the -G parameter followed by the path to the IP.BIN.

If I'm reading you right, it sounds like you'er burning Superfamicast.raw after burning the ISO. That's most likely the problem. You only need the first session and the second. First being the audio, second being the ISO. The first Audio.raw should work just fine.

Also, can you give me both the parameters of mkisofs and cdrecord that you're using.

[That Guy]

I may have miss lead you if you think that i am burning more than one session. The Superfamicast.raw that i am burning has the IP.BIN inserted through cygwin.

The parameters and the exact promts that i use are as follows;

/cdrecord dev=0,1,0 -multi -audio audio.raw

/mkisofs -l -C 0,11702 -o superfamicast.iso superfamicast

#in the cygwin bash;

/ (cat IP.BIN ; dd if=superfamicast.iso bs=2048 skip=16 ) > superfamicast.raw

#back in Cmd;

/cdrecord dev=0,1,0 -multi -xa Superfamicast.raw

And then i put the disk in the DC.

I have done this with just about every other emulator that i have found for the DC and it has worked flawlessly. I am not sure what io am doing differently. I have tried at least ten different times with slight variations, always witht he same result.

Thank you for your help,

Guy

[fackue]

I see. Have you checked to see if 1ST_READ.BIN is scrambled? Though your method seems fine, you can use

mkisofs -l -C 0,11702 -G superfamicast\IP.BIN -o superfamicast.iso superfamicast

That adds the IP.BIN directly to the bootsector without needing that bash function.

Ah, I see your problem, unless it's a typo. For the second session, it must be closed and not multisession. You also might wanna add -v to the list and -eject. The first (-v) tells you how much is burned on the disc, and how much is left. The second ejects the disc when done.

[That Guy]

Well i tried useing the -G and the other flags that you suggested.

I am sad to say that it did not help. I tried twice to be sure that i just din't ntype something wrong and produced the same results. The new images do not even load, let alone help with my non functional issue.

I really appriciate all your help and I want to let you know that i am not giving up. If you can is it possible that you could post a link to a version of the plain files that you know work? if you can't, i understand. At this point all I can do is assume that i have bad files.

Thank you again,

Guy

[fackue]

Try these:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/superfamicast/superfamicast-2.0-plain.tar.gz?download

Also, when I said the second session must be closed, you did remove -multi from the second burn, right?

Also, if you don't have mkisofs 2.0, the -G parameter won't work since it wasn't implemeted until the later versions. I think you can check your version by doing mkisofs -version.

[That Guy]

I did indeed remove the multi flag from my promt, and i checked my version of mkisofs today and found it to be 2.01 bootcdru or something much the like. I am going to try the plain files that you directed me to today and see waht results i can get from them.

thank you

guy

[That Guy]

I don't quite know how to say this with enough exuberance, but it finally worked! I can only assume that the root cause of the issue were the files that i was using to try to create the disk.

Using the plain files that you directed me to at sourceforge i was able to burn a copy of this emulator with all the bells and whistles. I am very pleased with this emus interface and it is quite possible that i can now play some of my games on the DC!

Thank you most noteably fackue, and Christuserloser for your tremendous helpful advice and links.

can't thank you guys enough,

guy

[fackue]

No problem... glad it was the files and not something else because I was begining to run out of ideas.

Also, can you link me to the original files you downloaded?

[That Guy]

Sorry i can't link you to the bad files because i have no clue where i downloaded them from.

I downloaded them probably about 2 months ago and since then have started using mozilla.

The long andthe short of it is i don't even know what browser i was using so can't check my history

sorry

[Black Jackal]

Sorry to bump this topic, but is SuperFamicast as good as DreamSNES or better?

[fackue]

You can alway put both on the same disc with Dream Inducer and test them out.

But, techically, DreamSNES is better. SuperFamicast v1 is faster without sound, v2 is slower with sound (a little). I would goto www.consolevision.com/members/sbiffy/ and get the two (or three) SBIs and test them out.

[Black Jackal]

Cheers I' do that, thanks alot!

[Christuserloeser]

You can alway put both on the same disc with Dream Inducer and test them out.

But, techically, DreamSNES is better. SuperFamicast v1 is faster without sound, v2 is slower with sound (a little). I would goto www.consolevision.com/members/sbiffy/ and get the two (or three) SBIs and test them out.

Hehe. That's about EXACTLY what I've pmed That Guy ^^

[fackue]

http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Christuserloeser]

Wait, I just remembered that there was an SBI missing in our SBI repository:

DreamSNES
http://dchelp.net/sbi/files/Emus/DreamSNES-0.9.8.sbi

SuperFamicast v1:
http://dchelp.net/sbi/files/Emus/Sfamicast_V1_bO.sbi

http://dreamcast.dcemu.co.uk/SuperFamv2_CG.sbi.zip (just remove the '.zip' from the file extension)

[fackue]

I fixed the links to the DCHelp SBI respository.

And Actually SuperFamv2_CG.sbi (http://dchelp.net/sbi/files/Emus/SuperFamv2_CG.sbi)is there, it's just not next to Sfamicast_V1_bO.sbi.

[Christuserloeser]

Hehe, okay I see - now ^^

[Black Jackal]

Sorry to be a dufus, but I have a few questions that need answering...

(1) Is there any chance that either emulators will be updated?

(2) I heard someone was updating the MegaDrive emulator for the DC - any more news?

(3) Seeing as the NeoGeoPocket Color emulator was updated/released at full speed, is there any chance of an update for the GBA one?

(4) I still can not work out how to use SBInducer - BootDreams works a charm, but SBI is a nightmare - can anyone help?

[Christuserloeser]

(1) DreamSNES: Guess not really. SuperFamicast: Maybe. SNES4ALL: Very likely.

One a side note: I've put up a tutorial how to get a massive 20% speed boost with DreamSNES here:
http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=27338 (this makes the emu play pretty much exactly full speed)

(2) This seems to have been established as the No.1 place for staying up-to-date about any progress on GenesisPlusDC (Genesis/MegaDrive emu):
http://www.dcemulation.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=62701

(3) There sure is, but I can't speak for GPF or what he's working on next. Personally I'd prefer cosmetic updates to the NGPC emu (RACE!DC) first atm instead of updates to Visual Troy Advance.

(4) More details please. What exactly doesn't work for you ? Is the menu showing up on DC but without any entries ? Where did you download it from ?

[Black Jackal]

The thing is, I've read so many FAQs and topics that point out how to use the program, but I keep making bad CD-Rs that don't boot. Any help would be great thanks.

[Christuserloeser]

At first start with v3 of SBInducer (some distributions of v4 do not work for some odd reason, but others do perfectly...)

Download:
http://dchelp.net/sbi/files/Sbindv3.exe

Install and then download the SBIs. Place them in C:/SBInducr/SBI

Make sure your SBIs have the .sbi extension (and not .zip)

Then fire up SBInducr and click on the icon to extract your SBIs.

Create a DiscJuggler image (click on the icon with the two snakes on it) and then burn with BootDreams - or: Point BootDreams to C:/SBInducr/Inducer/ directly!


Done ;)


PS: Once you got a working disc you could try out SBInducr v4. It surely is a much better version of SBInducer, but they both result in the exactly same nice disc.

[Black Jackal]

Cheers for that mate, I'll give a whirl!