NAOMI 2/Chihiro/Triforce Card Reader Emulator (Initial D3/WMMT/Mario Kart/F-ZERO AX)

whatnot said:

ID1~3 should work fine with YACardEmu. Just be sure to select the correct device settings, and always remember you don't own a card *before* you buy one in game -- meaning, don't create a blank card and "insert", let the game generate one for you.

No clue how nicely it'd play with wipi, never used it (but did write the UI with API at chunks request!)

Click to expand...

I got it running last night & my PIN's arrived today from digikey, so I can confirm the WiFiPi - YACardEmu ran flawlessly for 3-4 hours. I set it up on ports 8080/8081 & used a different port for each side.

I needed to bump up the partition size for the 3rd party libraries which took a while (big!) but otherwise it's relatively plug-and-play w/your documentation.

For anyone who may use this emulator for Derby Owners Club (a few people), I have made some reproduction cards to use for card images. Access here.
I would just attach the .zip but the site doesn't want to let me. Probably because my account is new as-of writing.

These are pixel perfect (or should be) and I hope these are authentic-feeling reproductions. Aside from a couple of artistic liberties, they are pretty much identical to the original SEGA cards (which, fun fact, aren't pixel perfect). These are what I'm calling a "blank variant" without a picture of a racehorse like the original cards.

There are 63 colours, so more than enough to colour-code your horses if you so desire. Or to forget the last horse to use any one colour once they start repeating. Enjoy!

Cruelhaus said:

Hi, i'm not sure if you're still around here anymore, but I bought a MSR605X, and I'm having trouble getting it to read my cards correctly, so wondering if you could help.
Every time I swipe (i'm swiping them backwards like you suggested), I seem to get different values. After swiping a bunch of times, I did notice that some values appeared more often, it's like both tracks 1 and 2 are reading the same value. Could you shed some light on how you got the cards to read correctly?

Also, I tried to take the values you posted and convert them to ascii myself just to see if I'm doing the process correctly, but I wind up with a .card file that can't be read by the emulator. Is there a step that's missing?

Click to expand...

Sorry to bring this up again, but has anyone else managed to get a real ID1-3 card read and saved as a .card file that can be read by Flycast or Demul?

kamikazi20 said:

Hi Guys, I wanted to let everyone know that I got Derby Owners Club World Edition Card readers working thanks to @whatnot YACardEmu https://github.com/GXTX/YACardEmu.

Here are the steps to get it working

Computer -> USB to RS232 ->RS422 ->Naomi
I bought this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075YGKFC1?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1
USB RS232 Pin out
Notes you only need 3 wires | CTS/RTS Bridged | You will have to modify a cable|
Pin 2 RXD
Pin 3 TXD
Pin 5 GND
**Pin 7 CTS Wire this together with pin 8
Pin 8 RTS Wire this together with pin 7
It should look like this:

Plug it into the RS232 Board Male DB9 Port.

Then you Down load the Binary here - https://github.com/GXTX/YACardEmu/tags
Down load to your computer
Extract Files
Make a copy of config.ini.sample
Rename it to config.ini

[config]
; basepath MUST end in a trailing slash!
;basepath = /home/wutno/cards/
;Very Important you must Specify a location and there has to be a folder. If the folder is missing you will get an error.
basepath = C:\docwe_c
; Linux
;serialpath = /dev/ttyUSB0
; Windows
serialpath = COM3
;serialpath = \.\pipe\YACardEmu
; Which device should we emulate?
; C1231LR / C1231BR / S31R
targetdevice = C1231BR
;
; Optional
;
serialbaud = 9600
;Acceptable even & none
serialparity = even
apiport = 8080
autoselectedcard = card.bin

Then Run YaCardEmu.exe.
Then Fire up the DOCWE Machine

Massive to @whatnot and everyone here who made this possible.

Click to expand...

On the chance you still have this cab, how is your RS422/RS232 board wired to the Naomi? Could you grab some pictures if possible?

I'm trying to run this emulator on my own DOC machine and I'm getting "card reader does not respond". Stumped a few people as it's all wired exactly like your post.

Cruelhaus said:

Sorry to bring this up again, but has anyone else managed to get a real ID1-3 card read and saved as a .card file that can be read by Flycast or Demul?

Click to expand...

A friend of mine & I have been trading full tune ID3 cards between Demul<->Flycast<->YACardEmu which should confirm compatability on those. The default card emulator w/WiFiPi has some extra characters (215 vs 207 I think?) in the card so I wasn't able to get that one aligned.

I'm expecting to have mine rebuilt in the next few months and will be working on trying to do this as well given my encyclopedia of old cards.

Thought I'd write a more comprehensive, in-depth guide for using this card emulator with Derby Owners Club so others don't struggle like I had to.

You will need the Sega Serial Conversion PCB #838-13661. I'll just call this 'Serial PCB'. This may change in the future as the protocol has been reverse engineered and so may be added to the emulator in the future.

This info MAY work for Virtual-On Force and other games that use this PCB.

Here's a picture of it.


1. Connecting to CN4 with a USB.
1a.
You will need a USB - RS232 cable, preferably one with an FTDI chip or similar. You can get pre-stripped ready-to-solder cables; I got this one. Parts # is USB-RS232-WE-1800-BT_0.0 <-- MAKE SURE you get the one with '0.0' on the end otherwise you will be sending 3.3v/5v down the red wire (usually a ground). Use the datasheet that comes with your cable (or just make sure you know the pinouts).

1b.
Get yourself a female 9-pin serial. I brought this as it was cheaper than a single serial port from RS/Digikey and came with a bunch of extras and some plastic shells to make it look neat.

1c.
Wire it up; takes 5 minutes with a soldering iron. If you don't have one I suppose you can use heat-shrink to keep the wires in place against the contacts. DON'T do what I did and wire transmit into transmit and receive into receive. It won't work and you'll have a massive headache trying to figure out why it won't work. This wiring diagram image ONLY applies to the cable I linked above; so again make sure you know your USB pinouts or use the datasheet for your cable to correctly apply the information here to your specific setup.



Pin 2 on Serial (Receive) - Transmit on USB
Pin 3 on Serial (Transmit) - Receive on USB
Pin 5 on Serial (Ground) - Ground on USB

Pin 7 (Request to send) & Pin 8 (Clear to send) will need to be connected with a jumper. Do this on the serial port itself, not on the USB side.


1d.
Install the FTDI VCP driver so your device recognises the USB and it appears as a virtual COM port. Obviously, install the relevant drivers if yours has a different chipset.


2. Connecting CN7 on the Serial PCB to CN8 on the Naomi.

2a.
You will need two JST-NH 6-pin connectors and pins. I used 28 AWG wire and it works fine. The SegaRetro.org US manual for DOC is wrong. Please trust me on this.

These are the pinouts, by Bobby Dilley.



Text guide:
Pin 1 on Naomi - Pin 1 on Serial PCB
Pin 2 on Naomi - Pin 2 on Serial PCB
Pin 3 on Naomi - Pin 3 on Serial PCB
Pin 4 on Naomi - Pin 6 on Serial PCB (US Manual messed up here, as it has Pin 4 to Pin 4 which grounds the TX+.)
Pin 5 on Naomi - Pin 5 on Serial PCB
Pin 6 on Naomi - Pin 4 on Serial PCB (US Manual messed up here, as it has Pin 6 to Pin 6 which grounds the RXD+.)

3. Powering the Serial PCB.

3a.
You will need a 4-pin and 8-pin JST-NH connector. I used 28 AWG wire and it works fine. Yes, for some reason the Serial PCB has an 8-pin for power but only uses 4 pins.

If you have a JVS Type 3 IO board you can use CN8, which is a 5v header. The IO board gets power from the CN7 header (there is a 5v header on the Naomi you can use to power it, but that's a different topic).

Pin 1 on 4-pin (5v) - Pin 1 on 8-pin
Pin 2 on 4-pin (5v) - Pin 2 on 8-pin
Pin 3 on 4-pin (Gnd) - Pin 7 on 8-pin
Pin 4 on 4-pin (Gnd) - Pin 8 on 8-pin

If you don't have a JVS IO board then you will be able to make a cable (or a split cable to power both IO & Serial PCB) coming off the 5v header on the Naomi, that will follow the same wiring scheme (the manual is actually correct for this).