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@rtw There seems to be at least a few improperly packed discs.
Netchuu Pro Yakuu 2002 is one of them. it's a CD game but appears to be packed as a DVD and neither of us have been able to get it to boot from disc.

There are a few other CD games packed as DVD but most of them seem to work (though I don't know how accurate the unpacked discs are to the original). I think Smash Court Pro and Ridge Racer V fall into this category.

Then there's Super Dragonball Z which I believe is a DVD game but is packed as a CD.

There may be others as well but those are the ones I've come across so far.
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There are other technical issues with the way they're packed as well but I'll let @electric_monk explain that as he has a much better understanding of it than I do.
 
When can I order/get in line?
BTW, I'm interested in at least one or two units
Color me interested as well.
Definitely need at least 1 of these!
The link for the waiting list is back on the first post.
I did do that a while back, but I don't use facebook hardly at all - so not sure if/when/how I would get notifications.

That is why I am asking here - since it's an easier place to ask :)
 
I just wanted to make sure everyone knew about the official list, since this is a bit different than our normal "post to reserve" threads ;)
 
When can I order/get in line?
BTW, I'm interested in at least one or two units
Color me interested as well.
Definitely need at least 1 of these!
The link for the waiting list is back on the first post.
I signed up through that link a long time ago, my post was more about expressing my excitement :) Thanks for the reminder though!
 
@rtw There seems to be at least a few improperly packed discs.
Netchuu Pro Yakuu 2002 is one of them. it's a CD game but appears to be packed as a DVD and neither of us have been able to get it to boot from disc.

There are a few other CD games packed as DVD but most of them seem to work (though I don't know how accurate the unpacked discs are to the original). I think Smash Court Pro and Ridge Racer V fall into this category.

Then there's Super Dragonball Z which I believe is a DVD game but is packed as a CD.

There may be others as well but those are the ones I've come across so far.
-----
There are other technical issues with the way they're packed as well but I'll let @electric_monk explain that as he has a much better understanding of it than I do.
Yup - the basics are as @twistedsymphony says. I'm still investigating Netchuu Pro Yakuu 2002, because I can see that there is some sort of ISO9660 filesystem in the file, but it's all jumbled up.

To use Super Dragonball Z as an example, it does have metadata that indicates it's a disk (normally a CD, but really it just says 'it's a track'), so when you run "extractcd", in the CUE and BIN you get, the BIN is actually a plain ISO and will work as such - but if you use "extractraw" you get a disk image containing entire CD frames, which appears to be a native format for MAME. All of the space in the frame for subchannel data/etc. is just empty (zero) bytes. As such, the "unit size" of the CHD is 2,448 bytes, the size of a CD frame.

However, Netchuu Pro Yakuu 2002 is something else. Like a few of the other files it has a "unit size" of 512, which implies it's just an array of bytes (more like a hard disk, but I suspect the DVD ones normally work like this too). It has an ISO9660 header indicating that it's a CD-XA disk, and 2352 bytes after that there's a second ISO9660 table which is presumably the disk contents, but neither table is aligned to a page, the start of the file is missing around 40 bytes, but if I just add 40 extra bytes, thus causing sector 16 and 17 to be correctly aligned, and craft a CUE file to indicate that the data format is MODE2/2352, the game still doesn't start. It might take comparing to a real disk to figure out what's going on with the file...though it'd also be interesting to see if the game does actually work in MAME.
 
MAME is currently unable to emulate any 246/256 games which is part of the reason the existing dumps are janky. There is a lot of debate internally about the CHD format; which has undergone changes over the years and some images may have issues.

I have physical copies of NPY1 (ver B and C), which I made ISO from. Pm'd @electric_monk the link to investigate and compare the MAME version

:)
 
I was talking to krHACKen regarding these issues:Wangan Midnight (boots but freezes during attract mode, could be bin/cue issue)Wangan Midnight R (boots but freezes during attract mode, could be bin/cue issue)He states that the issue might be too little memory, according to MAME there exists an expansion board.
Code:
Add-on Memory Boards (plugs into J10 on MOTHER(A) PCB)
--------------------
System246 RAM32 PCB
8908960400 (8908970400)
|--------------|
|  16M   16M   |
|              |
|      J1      |
|--------------|
Notes:
      16M  - Samsung K4S281632B-TC1H 128Mbit (2Mbit x16-bit x 4 banks) SDRAM
        J1 - Multi-pin connector
This PCB is used with Bloody Roar 3, Vampire Night and Ridge Racer V.
System246 RAM64 PCB
8908962800 (8908972800)
|--------------|
|16M   16M     |
|   16M   16M  |
|      J1      |
|--------------|
Notes:
      16M - Hyundai HY57V281620AT-P 128Mbit (2Mbit x16-bit x 4 banks) SDRAM
       J1 - Multi-pin connector
This PCB is used with Wangan Midnight and Wangan Midnight R.
Which sys246 unit do you have @twistedsymphony ?
 
I was talking to krHACKen regarding these issues:Wangan Midnight (boots but freezes during attract mode, could be bin/cue issue)Wangan Midnight R (boots but freezes during attract mode, could be bin/cue issue)He states that the issue might be too little memory, according to MAME there exists an expansion board.
Code:
Add-on Memory Boards (plugs into J10 on MOTHER(A) PCB)
--------------------
System246 RAM32 PCB
8908960400 (8908970400)
|--------------|
|  16M   16M   |
|              |
|      J1      |
|--------------|
Notes:
      16M  - Samsung K4S281632B-TC1H 128Mbit (2Mbit x16-bit x 4 banks) SDRAM
        J1 - Multi-pin connector
This PCB is used with Bloody Roar 3, Vampire Night and Ridge Racer V.
System246 RAM64 PCB
8908962800 (8908972800)
|--------------|
|16M   16M     |
|   16M   16M  |
|      J1      |
|--------------|
Notes:
      16M - Hyundai HY57V281620AT-P 128Mbit (2Mbit x16-bit x 4 banks) SDRAM
       J1 - Multi-pin connector
This PCB is used with Wangan Midnight and Wangan Midnight R.
Which sys246 unit do you have @twistedsymphony ?
How to make Wangan Midnight/R actually work.
Is there any chance of getting a memory upgrade to 64MB to get the WM games running for the 246C / 256 @Darksoft? :D


Sorry didnt mean to derail the thread at all. But driving chassis has more RAM it seems so Wangan Midnight wont work in other 2x6s.
 
interestingly both they seem to boot without it, they just lock up after the intro video.
Reminds me of a funny story about Donkey Kong 64... It was actually designed to work without that memory expansion.
220px-Nintendo-64-Memory-Expansion-Pak.jpg


However, a memory leak existed someplace in the code that if left running for a few hours the game would crash.
Rare supposedly made every attempt they could to fix it, but with the release date approaching and still no clue how, they finally said "fuck it" and made the memory expansion a requirement/pack-in.
n64_donkey_kong_64_p_nsdmmx.jpg


See with all that extra memory the game could run for weeks without crashing, and who left a N64 console on that long anyway?
Problem solved. :P
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Has anyone been successful in playing Sengoku Basara X Cross?

Other than the Driving games and Pro Yakyuu that's the only one still giving me grief. I haven't tested on Disc yet though.

Some other notes:
1. Kinnikuman 2 is a system 246 game while Kinnikuman 1 is a System 256 game. Not sure why the newer game was released on older hardware but that's how it is. I'm assuming someone saw that K1 was 256 and just assumed the sequel was as well. I made the opposite assumption when I discovered that K2 was 246 so the first game must be as well... and that gave me some problems until I played around with it.

2. The disc that we have for Tekken 5.1 will only boot for me with the Japanese dongle, the USA dongle doesn't want to boot with the disc we have.

I feel like there are some similar disc/dongle compatibility issues with Tekken 4, SC2 and SC3. At some point I'd like to go through and try every combination to see what works and what doesn't.
 
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