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Thread: Need help with NullDC 1.0.4, problem with booting CDI

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    Default Need help with NullDC 1.0.4, problem with booting CDI

    I'm using NullDC 1.0.4, r139.
    So I try to boot the game via "Normal Boot and choose the CDI image. Emulator starts just fine, without any errors, but doesn't load the disc, instead sending me to the console's CD player. When I try to load the disc via console's menu, it just asks to insert one.
    Can't tinker with the plugins, because now there is only ImageLoader one.
    Same thing with r150.
    Is there a method to fix it? Or should I turn back to the older versions?

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    What cdi are you tying to boot? (if you got the disc image off site then you can PM me)

    r150 is obviously the better version, it has a number of bug fixes

    Also what does the dos type window say for the GD Toc? does it have a Session 0 and a Session 1?

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    Seventh Cross Evolution(a.k.a. seventh.gdi), got it off site.
    r150 fares the same as r139. It shows an error about "Write to System Control Res not implemented" in dos window though, "WriteMem:463", but I don't think that it affects something.
    Also what does the dos type window say for the GD Toc? does it have a Session 0 and a Session 1?
    Yes, it does have these.

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    well now that you have mentioned a gdi

    gdi images have region protection so just change the region of NullDC and it will boot just fine, providing it is a good image file

    cdi images tend to be region hacked so will boot on any region Dreamcast, gdi images are raw images of GD-Rom discs with no sort of hacking so they have the original region restrictions
    Last edited by Zorlon; 10th-January-2014 at 12:34.

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    Looked at image again, it was the .cdi one. My bad.

    I tried to download an image that worked before, Maken X. That was .gdi one. Booted fine, good GD Toc, region is correct(Pal), but it is no use. Still ends up in the CD player.
    This is strange, Maken worked just fine in the older revisions, but now it doesn't. I'm puzzled.

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    As am I as it works just fine for me in the latest version.

    The only reasons it would not work is because either the region is incorrect for GDI images or for CDI images that are not self bootable/corrupt

    Use your older version instead

    To be honest Dreamcast emulation is far from perfect anyway it is much better to play the games on real hardware anyway

    Another Good Dreamcast emulator asides from NullDC is Demul so you could give that a try as well, Demul will run more anyway as it supports WinCE games that NulDC does not

    What OS are you using and how old is the old version that works?
    Last edited by Zorlon; 10th-January-2014 at 14:00.

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    That version was r111. I say "was" because now it does work the same way as the others.
    I tested all three versions(r111, r139, r150) on two PC's: on the desktop with WinXP and on a laptop with Win7. Got the same results on both.
    Now I can only speculate where is the problem lies. I think there is something wrong with the way NullDC sees images. I mean, why does it read them as CD-discs? *sigh*
    Is there any other way to boot images, besides Normal Boot?

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    Nope, there is no issue there with the Image plugin.

    Make sure you have both dc_boot.bin and dc_flash.bin in the data folder

    C++ 2010 Runtimes are needed from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...3-37bf0912db84
    Direct X 9c Runtimes are needed from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

    Both Gdi and Cdi images must be extracted, it is only gdi images though that require the correct regional setup

    If it is still not working after you have made sure everything is installed that should be and everything is located in the correct folders then the issue is with the machines you are using not the actual program
    Last edited by Zorlon; 10th-January-2014 at 19:11.

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    Problem solved.
    After I got the same results on Demul, I decided to replace the images with the TOSEC ones. Now everything works great.

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    What you probably had was a bin+cue to cdi convert that would never boot, i.e. it was not selfbooting, either that or it was just a bad disc image to start with

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    lol

    Let me explain this

    Retail Dreamcast games do not come on CD's they come on GD-Roms (GigaByte Disc) that do have a very very small CD outer edge surface this is what your PC can read (often had otake PC files like text files and or desktop images or just cdda tracks (music tracks)), the problem is the inner track that if you turn the original disc upside down you can physically see the difference between the CD data (apx 200MB) and the inner GD data (apx 1GB), the GD data can not be read normally with a PC CD/DVD-Rom drive and the GD data is the actual game data

    I say normally because you can buy certain CD/DVD drives that although can't read the disc like a PC disc you can do a raw dump using a method that redump.org has used though personally I do not recommend that, but they do have a guide for doing this, so try at your own risk.

    The way the pro's done it back in the day was via the Dreamcast through either BBA+eithernet cable or a coders cable, both will put you back apx £100 if you can even find either

    More modern ways if via an SD card reader on the Dreamcast that can either be made or purchased at a reasonable price, this is both an easy method and a cheap one

    both the above obviously require a working console though

    Just download the GDI for a raw copy or download a cdi dump that is a rip of a GDI (rip is such a badly used term, a rip just means taken from one format and put into another it does not mean that it will have anything missing, though it may do as cdi's are targetting CD's 800MB apx compared with GDI dumps that are targetting GD-Roms apx 1.2GB)

    P.S. next time please don't revive an old thread, just create a new one, we are a nice bunch and would help you, but reviving older threads is kinda annoying as they are usually full of out of date information or usually just unrelated like this case hence why it's best just to create your own thread .

    On that note I will close this but please if you require any more info just post a new thread.
    Last edited by Zorlon; 6th-April-2015 at 16:56.

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