Sega CD roms that Won't work on actual Hardware

Hello!

I have been trying to get some ISO/Bin/Roms working for the Sega CD on the actual hardware. Some of these files work in emulators with a few option changes. For Example Popful Mail will not work on actual Sega CD hardware when burned to a disc but works in emulators because of the "Perfect Sync" option under the CPU tab. I burned this game to a disc and it gets all the way to the title screen but gives me an error once it tries to play the first FMV. Another game is Lunar, known to have issues on actual hardware but fine on emulators as long as "Perfect Sync" is enabled. I have tested multiple ISO/Bin/Rom files for the Sega CD for these two games and cannot get it to work.

1. So after all this time is there still no way to fix these games to work on actual hardware?

2. Also, is there a comprehensive list of all games that won't work on actual hardware but will in emulator? I have looked online for hours to no avail.



I spent a lot of time getting a Sega CD looking forward to Popful Mail and Lunar only to find the 2 games I really wanted to play on actual hardware do not work because of some perfect sync issues. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thread moved.

One problem title you mentioned; Lunar. Is that Lunar: The Silver Star or Eternal Blue :?

Lunar: The Silver Star
http://redump.org/disc/29312/

Lunar: Eternal Blue
http://redump.org/disc/21035/

Popful Mail
http://redump.org/disc/20699/


Edit:
I would look for (and maybe request) redumps of whatever you need just to have a verified good source to start with. Warrior has some Sega CD redump shares here in the forums...not sure how many and maybe most of them are NTSC-J, but it doesn't hurt to request stuff.
Relevant request thread if you need to use it:
http://www.epforums.org/showthread.p...-Miscellaneous

Sorry I meant Shining Force CD not Lunar.

Shining Force CD
http://redump.org/disc/3875/


Edit:
From the start I just assumed you were talking about US versions, is that right?

Oh please feel free to ask for a few Sega CD Redump, I actually forgot to post them and I love me some Sega CD. :P

And there you go :) Warrior should be able to sort out some verified sources for you.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Warrior

Oh please feel free to ask for a few Sega CD Redump, I actually forgot to post them and I love me some Sega CD. :P

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Thank you for the assistance! I just tried Robo Aleste and while it burned it mentioned a problem on track 1. I was able to pop it in and it worked, so I probably should have copied the burn error. Hoping a problem down the line on that burn doesn't happen.

As for Shining Force and Popful Mail, I don't think it's so much the image hosted is bad as it is the Sega CD doesn't like how the FMV runs on a burned disc. Unless I'm completely unaware of what your redump does, but all the sources online talk about emulators. Not running it on actual hardware.

If you could be so kind as to get me a copy of Popful Mail so that I might burn it and try it on my console, I would appreciate it!


EDIT:

Just for context, I get to this screen:

http://i.imgur.com/3v8mEzX.jpg

And the following screen is:

http://i.imgur.com/JGyWjV7.jpg

Sorry, I had to remove that link you had there. You aren't allowed to link to other sites like that.
Should be no problem quoting some stuff from elsewhere though, so just do a copy & paste and wrap it in quote tags. Just make sure to leave out any links.

redump are just clean accurate dumps of the original media

avoid MP3 or other lossy codec audio files, when lossy is converted back to a raw or wav form data is lost in the translation some tracks become shorter or even longer than they should and can cause in game issues and even crashing depending on how the game was coded

also avoid patching the region display from PAL to NTSC or vice versa as that can cause some games to not boot or just cause sync issues that in turn asides from getting annoying, crash the games (also depends on how the game was coded)

Your Sega CD's laser may need a bit of fine tuning to read CD-R's smoother though, but in general Pressed CD's do read smoother than burned CD's, doing this may also lessen the Pressed CD readability

Pressed CD's are retail CD's as CD's you buy with data already on them are Pressed onto CD rather than Burned on to CD-R

the CD-R's used can also contribute to read issues CD-R's can in many standards from low quality to high

Boot Region Patching is fine (if it is needed for Sega CD, I forget) but remember to rebuild the sector fields, if the software used to do this does not do that for you

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zorlon

redump are just clean accurate dumps of the original media

avoid MP3 or other lossy codec audio files, when lossy is converted back to a raw or wav form data is lost in the translation some tracks become shorter or even longer than they should and can cause in game issues and even crashing depending on how the game was coded

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I have read that WAV format for the audio files that come with a iso/bin are better than mp3 when it comes to running on actual hardware. There are some tutorials I have found online that detail how to extract iso/bin to get these WAV files which seems to be a pain. I will have to keep a lookout for dumps that haven't been tampered with.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zorlon

also avoid patching the region display from PAL to NTSC or vice versa as that can cause some games to not boot or just cause sync issues that in turn asides from getting annoying, crash the games (also depends on how the game was coded)

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I don't require this, but good to know.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zorlon

Your Sega CD's laser may need a bit of fine tuning to read CD-R's smoother though, but in general Pressed CD's do read smoother than burned CD's, doing this may also lessen the Pressed CD readability

Pressed CD's are retail CD's as CD's you buy with data already on them are Pressed onto CD rather than Burned on to CD-R

the CD-R's used can also contribute to read issues CD-R's can in many standards from low quality to high

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If you are referring to the laser pot adjustment, I am aware of it and have changed it before on other consoles I've modded. So far the Sega CD I have in question wasn't not booting up the discs, but rather certain games are notorious for having more problems than others, or so i've read. Popful mail being the culprit in my case. Everything I read online says its very finiky. When I burned Robo Aleste and popped it in, it ran fine. I am going to try a few other titles to see how they perform to rule out the problem being my laser.

I know more than half the websites and forums I've researched for coming here with this problem stated the ol' quality of CD's issue. I am using the same media for my Sega CD that I use for my Sega Saturn burns, and so far my Saturn burns have not turned up a single coaster.

So my issue lies in perhaps the dump im downloading from emuparadise perhaps. I need to educate myself on how to compare what is offered on emup to the redump but I am unsure how. How do you go about testing if a dump is correct? Some say just testing it in a emulator is fine before you commit to a burn. I did so with popful mail and it still requires certain settings within the emulator in order for it to run, but once you set those settings, it runs fine. It gets past the screen I was stuck at if I had not enabled that setting. The two games that require the "Perfect Sync" setting under the CPU tab in SCD Emulator are Popful Mail and Shining Force. So really it isnt that the downloads im getting are bad because they do run in an emulator, it's that they aren't running on my Sega CD because it's not like I can toggle "Perfect Sync" on the console, you just assume it's already enabled.


So my steps now are to understand how to compare the downloads I get off Emup or elsewhere check up against the redump site (if you could link me or explain how to do that it would be appreciated), And to get a verified redump of Popful Mail with WAV audio to really see if it's the dump I have is bad, or that the game itself is just not burnable and must be pressed to work.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ken

So my steps now are to understand how to compare the downloads I get off Emup or elsewhere check up against the redump site (if you could link me or explain how to do that it would be appreciated), And to get a verified redump of Popful Mail with WAV audio to really see if it's the dump I have is bad, or that the game itself is just not burnable and must be pressed to work.

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CRC/MD5/SHA.

sfv files are provided by redump as are the values DL just mentioned

if you open up a compressed file with 7-zip it has the CRC info you can use to compare with redump

There are tons of other ways though as well if you have already extracted the files

Quicksfv is one of the external methods and makes use of the sfv files

just install QuickSFV download the sfv file from redump and drop it in the same folder as your dump and run the sfv file that should be associated with QuickSFV

The only pain with QuickSFV is that the file names need to match the ones used in the sfv file, you can find those in the cuesheet redump provide though, cuesheets are just plain text files, so notepad does the job just fine to read those

You can run SFV files with QuickPar and MultiPar as well and if memory serves me the file names do not have to be exact.