Advice on burning for PAL Dreamcasts ( Flickering problem )
 

Hi.

I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on burning images for my PAL rev 1 Dreamcast. So far, I have burnt two discs for it - Utopia Boot 1.1 and Ikaruga. In both cases, the CD's boot fine, but flicker like crazy once they've passed the Sega Logo area. ( It looks like two or three images are squashed vertically onto the screen, or something like that ) - the result is unplayable, unfortunately.

Ikaruga also throws up with a Disc error, but I suspect this is because I ignored the .nfo file and burnt it with cdi2nero instead of DJ4 - my bad.

So, is this flickering an indication that the DC is spitting out NTSC video that is making my TV throw-up? Can I patch around it ( or am I patching incorrectly? )? Do I need to adjust some parameter on the Television, such as Vertical Hold ( I thought of this after I left the house )? Do I need to lay my fingers on some kind of converter, or a VGA adapter?

I didn't think it was the vertical hold because Bust A Move 4 ( original ) plays fine. Anyway, if anyone has any advice for me, I'd really enjoy it.

I just had a bad thought, and quickly checked around and found that PAL is 50Hz and NTSC is 60Hz, not the other way around, as I thought.

So I think the problem is that I am very, very stupid. :-P

-- Curious.au

Well, I thought this would fix it, but sadly no. :-(

I opened the discjuggler image with PAL Patcher 1.0, selected my Ikaruga (Jap) image, set the 60->50 box and PAL Protection 2, scanned it, highlighted the PAL Protection item in the list, and hit patch.

I then converted it to a nero file and burnt it. The result was a disc that actually plays ( I can start games, etc ), but still looks like its stacking three screens vertically onto one, and flickering horribly, and is generally impossible to play with. This is a real bummer, as I don't think there's any other way I'll ever get to experience this great game. :-(

Can anyone think of something that might help?

-- Curious.au

Open your original image with an hex editor.
Look for D20B420900011F0C84
and replace it by D20B420900011F30E0

Thank you so much for your help, Lexxx - I owe you. :-) However, I had no joy from that patch. :-/ First, I patched the CDI file, a fresh copy, checked it, converted it to a nero image, and burnt it. The result was a CD that went straight through the the dreamcast menu, as expected, and if you selected "Play", made the screen go black, and then rebooted.

I am told this is a symptom of the "PAL Protection", so I fired up PAL Patcher and scanned the CDI, finding PAL Protection types II and III. I patched both, but left the Hz settings untouched.

This CD booted, but still had the same problem - three images being crammed on the screen vertically - very unfortunate! :-/ All the same, I thank you for trying.

Do you think I will have these sorts of troubles trying to play other games? Just to be on the safe side, I ordered a copy of Dead Or Alive 2 from Ebay today, so hopefully I'll have something to play while I learn about patching. ;-)

I have plenty of CDR left if anyone else would like to suggest an experiment. :-) Perhaps in time I should try and write a SH commenting dissassembler.

If anyone can answer: I have heard there were CD's for playing Imported games available in the US. Did such CD's exist for Pacific / Europe PAL machines? If so, what were they called? Perhaps they are my best bet.

-- Curious.au

I have 1 suggestion : burn CDI images with DiskJuggler !!!

I have a PAL DC.
I had the same problem than yours with Ikaruga.
"PAL protection 3" is the one I just gave you.
Ikaruga plays fines now on my TV.
So there's no reason why it wouldn't play well on yours...

Well i will tell you what i did with Ikaruga...might be helpful,maybe not.

I got it 6th Sept,and Megalexxx soft didnt support it yet. I burnt it with DJ 3.50.05.830 + LG 8080B using the default settings.Soon i noticed it was 50hz,i have PAL Dreamcast + RGB.

I used this patch

http://www.gamefreax.de/cgi-bin/game...ez/adr-ika.zip

and burnt again,worx perfectly in my 2 dreamcasts :)

If this still doesnt work for u,try booting the game with Utopia,ActionReplay/Gameshark.There are images of them in megagames.com

Thanks Enuff. I had a look at this patch, and I'll give it a try, but I've realised it might be worth mentioning that my rip of this game is not necessarily the w00t release, but the one from Sharereactor. I didn't think this would make much difference, but now I'm not so sure. It's quite possible the releaser patched the hell out of it already.

I noticed that the patch there says its an NTSC to PAL converter patch... sounds like the opposite of what I want, but I'll give it a go anyway. And I now have DiscJuggler for burning the image with.

Thanks for all the help, guys. :-)

As for the Gameshark and AR, I have images of both, but the AR requires special hardware, and the GS a VMU - Mine is currently in the post. Does the GS require anything except a VMU? Perhaps this could be my lucky way out. ( Then again, perhaps I should just start looking for the w00t release... I wonder what it's ed2k:// signature would look like... )

-- Curious.au

So it was your TV after all.Well, the link i gave you is a 50>60hz patch.