has released the first public release of his Dreamcast Emulator for Windows thats now being talked about as the best Dreamcast Emulator so far:
nullDC v1.0.0 BETA User Manual
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1. What is it?
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nullDC is a plugin based Dreamcast emulator for x86 based computers running Windows Operating Systems.
2. Recomended System Requirements:
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- CPU: AMD Athlon XP/64/Turion at 2GHz or Intel Pentium 4 at 2.6GHz or equivalent.
- Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 4 TI or ATi Radeon 8500.
- RAM: 512MB
- Operating System: Windows 2000/XP/2003
- December Redistributable of DirectX 9c
The above requirements are considered as the absolute minimum in order to run the emulator as it was
intended to run. The emulator might be able to run on systems that do not meet these requirements
but with issues (like slow speed, GFX errors or Sound errors).
Notes:
- Some games have higher requirements than the rest and have speed issues even on systems that meet
the recomended requirements. In that case a faster CPU is necessary to reach full speed.
- Pentium 4 CPUs perform some tasks slower than other CPUs, thus the clock speed of 2.6GHz is needed.
On the other hand, Pentium M CPUs perform the same tasks much faster
(A Pentium M 750 at 1.86GHz should be enough to reach full speed).
Intel Celeron and AMD Duron (and probably Sempron) CPUs are slow and it's expected to perform worse than the rest
- Nvidia Geforce 4 MX video cards are worse than the TI series and they do not meet the minimum requirements.
- DirectX 9c has many redistributables. It's common to have an older version installed that misses certain necessary
files.
Be sure to download and install the December redistributable or the default graphics plugin will fail to Load.
- nullDC will run on Windows Vista. However, hardware requirements will be a little higher than the ones mentioned
above and there will probably be sound related issues (as with many other applications running on Vista).
3. Preperations/Other Requirements
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Before running the emulator make sure that you have the necessary Dreamcast BIOS and Flash files dumped from your
Dreamcast.
The BIOS must be named "dc_boot.bin" and the Flash must be named "dc_flash.bin". Both files must be placed in the "Data"
directory which is in the location where you installed the emulator.
The emulator will fail to run any game or software if you don't have these files.
Please note that original Dreamcast discs (GD-ROMs) are special discs that cannot be accessed by common PC DVD/CD drives.
Because of this it is not possible to run these discs directly on an emulator. The only way to run such a disc is
to make a backup copy (a dump) of it using some "special" methods either by using a Dreamcast or a modified PC DVD/CD drive.
4. Usage
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When you run the emulator for the first time you will be asked to select the plugins you are going to use.
Here is a list of the plugins that come with the emulator:
-PowerVR (Graphics) Plugins:
"nullPVR" is the graphics plugin that was made by the nullDC team.
"Chankast's video" is a port of the PowerVR (graphics) core that was used on Chankast (another great Dreamcast emulator).
-GDRom Plugins:
"Image Reader" is used to run images of discs (ie: cdi, mdf/mds, nrg).
"zNullGD" is used to run discs directly from the PC DVD/CD drive.
-AICA (Sound) Plugins:
"nullAICA" is the sound plugin that was made by the nullDC team.
"Chankast's AICA" is a port of the AICA (sound) core that was used on Chankast (another great Dreamcast emulator).
"Empty AICA" is an audio plugin that produces no sound. It has reduced compatibility but is faster than the rest.
-Maple (Input/Saves) Plugins:
There is only one available maple plugin available that covers all the maple related functions. It has 2 divisions.
Its first division handles each controller port and its second division handles the expansion slots of the peripheral
connected to each controller port. Each division has various states. Divisions and states are explained below.
Controller Division:
"nullDC Controller [WinHook]" connects a normal dreamcast controller using input from the keyboard.
"nullDC Controller [WinHook.NET]" connects a normal dreamcast controller using input from the keyboard but for
NetPlay usage.
*Refer to the NetPlay section for more information about NetPlay.
"None" acts like no controller is connected to the port.
Expansion Slots Division:
"nullDC VMU" declares that a VMU (memory card) is connected to the expansion slot of a peripheral.
"None" acts like nothing is connected to the expansion slot of a peripheral.
In case the above looks confusing... Imagine a Dreamcast, it has four ports, you connect a controller (peripheral)
to a port, then a memory card to the controller (the Dreamcast controller has two slots for memory cards etc.).
Maple uses the same structure. See? Simple.
-External Device (Modem/Broadband Adaptor) Plugins:
"nullExtDev" acts like no modem or broadband adaptor is connecter to the external device slot of the dreamcast.
After all the necessary plugins are selected and the "OK" button is pressed the emulator window and console will appear.
5.1 Menus
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Here's a brief explaination of the menu options and their usage. Whenever a menu option has an arrow next to it it will
expand revealing more options. If it doesn't have an arrow then clicking on it will pop up a configuration/message box.
Clicking on the "File" tab
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