Need a little help with this

[Slider One]

HI EVERYONE!

Nice place here. I went through nearly all of the posts in this forum and in many ways it was a big help. People here really seem to know what their talking about

But there're still some things, I couldn't find an answer for. maybe some of you guys could help me out.

1. I've got a non-booting copy of Sonic Adventure and wanted to make it selfboot. So I searched the forum and found a thread were it's explained. I replaced the Event_ADX.ASF with a 0-Byte File, Binhacked the 4 Bin-Files as Megalexxx said, but the result was that the game seems to boot, then resets and then again and again.
I fear I made a mistake with binhacking the files. I did a lot of selfbooters before, but there was always just the 1st_read.bin
Since Binhack always asks for the Bootsector I simply placed all 5 files (the 1st_Read, IP.Bin and the 3 others) in the selfboot-dir and hacked them. Could it be that the IP.Bin was overwritten trough that? I mean, is there a spezific order on how to hack them? How?

2. I just d/l Star Gladiator 2 (Plasma Sword) and it's the only game ever that absolutely refused to work on my (Japanese) DC. Couldn't find any fix for it, and since I d/l the original RAR's I have no clue why it's not working. Actually it seems to start, but when the developer-logos are through the screen goes black.

If anyone has suggestions on how to fix one or even both of these probs, please post it.

[Slider One]

No answers?

Anyways, I managed to get Sonic working with the I-Net Fixer. It was easier as I supposed.

As for Star Gladiator: I tested that game on a Pal-DC via Scart-Cable (I only have a Jap Dreamcast and an RGB-Cable) along with Looney Toons Space Racing, and both worked fine.
So I fear the games need to be patched for RGB. Unfortunately I could find any patch for them.
Does anybody have one for these? Or is it possible to enable RGB-Support another way?

Any help would be appreciated...

[Megalexxx]

Give me your Email, I'll send you my patcher.
Maybe it works.

For Sonic, you surely missed something binhacking your files. I sometimes prefer hexediting because I'm sure of what I'm doing, and changing a LBA value is easy.

[Slider One]

Thanx a lot for your answer

My E-Mail is [email protected]

I never really got this Binhacking thing before. I opened the Bins with the Virtual Dub Hex Editor to look after the CD001. Think that's pretty Newbie-like. However I'm happy it finally works.

Hope that I can get them working with your patcher. Sometimes the DC confuses me with it's behavior

[Slider One]

Got your mail. Thanx

But I didn't know you meant the Pal patcher. I don't know if it's of any use. You see, the games (Star Gladiator and Looney Toons), they both worked perfectly on the Pal-Console of a friend. Problem is, that I own a japanese DC (one of the very first) and since I live in Europe I have to use an RGB-Cable to play the games in full color. And since the games show the same effect like many other games before I patched them for RGB I suppose I need an RGB-Fix for them.

I couldn't find any RGB-Fix for neither of both. Is there a way to enable RGB via editing the 1st_Read.bin?

Your Patcher found in Looney Toons (Nero-Image) three 50 Hz Flags. I clicked on "Patch", nothing happened. When I searched once more, the Flags were still there.
Nevertheless I bought some more CD-R's today and I'll see if the Patcher can be of any help...

[Megalexxx]

Almost all of the games I patched with my proggy run well with a PAL DC, PAL TV but with a composite cable. I managed to have them work with the SCART cable, so there might be a chance for you.

If you check both "50 Hz" and "60 Hz" checkbuttons, you might have mistaken when looking at the list box.
Run "search", select then code you want to patch, and then click on "patch".

[Slider One]

I don't even have a composite-cable. Never saw the point in buying one, since all games worked nice on my DC. I also always thought, I would get a b/w picture, if I connected my NTSC-DC on a pal TV this way. So I only use RGB.
Okay, I did the following:
I started your patcher, chose the Image (it's a Nero-Image) and hit on search. The proggie showed 3 50 Hz-Flags (do you call it so???) in the list. Then I selected (highlighted) all of them and clicked on patch. The Patch-Button went grey, and I thought the Program was working but nothing happened.

When I tried to extract the Image to check directly on the 1st_Read.bin, neither Isobuster nor any other could open it.

Seems a hard case for me, but I won't give up on it. Later I'll try your Patcher on Star Gladiator. It's a CDI I guess. Maybe it works better...

[Megalexxx]

:/
Hmmm...
That sounds strange.

I never tested on Nero images, but I guess the whole file is scanned. Anyway, I don't think 50 Hz code will change anything to your problem. Maybe "Pal protection" 1 or 2...

If you want to check if patches work :
1) open your orignal image with an hex editor
2) look for 01E403A002E401A003E4 and note its place
3) patch with my program
4) open the patched image and llok for 00E403A000E401A000E4
5) check if its place is the same

[Slider One]

That's what I thought. Both games are NTSC-Versions (at least I think so), and I'm running them on a NTSC-Console. So I fear the reason they refuse to work has to do with the RGB-cable (which I have to use). But as there seems to be no RGB-Fix, I'm gonna try your patcher and look after the string you told me.
I'm gonna check this later (burning online turned out not to be such a great idea ) and let you know if it worked.
Till then, BIG THANX for your help

[suikoba]

I got the Genius-Release of Star Gladiator 2 selfbooting by extracting the CDI with CDMage and replacing the crappy CDDA-Tracks 2-4 with standard 705.644 Byte - Audio-Tracks and continued right after Echelon's Tutorial.

There is no RGB-Problem on my PAL-DC.

[Gambit531]

There are many protection schemes on Dreamcast games, the first one occers when the white sega logo appears and checks a file called IP.BIN on the Copied or origanl CD. If you clear that screen, and dont go to the Audio Player screen, then your problem is in a protection scheme in the Games main BIN file. The easest way to make a backup, if you dont want to find the protection string, is to use the following method to copy the game, instruction found a site below.

http://internetconvoy.com/4500.htm

[Slider One]

You guys confuse me (though I still appreciate the help ).

I don't believe in some kind of protection, cause the burnt CD worked fine in another console, that was even pal.
So generally I still think it has to do with the RGB-Cable.

@suikoba - Could you tell me how to replace the tracks, like you did? I heard in the past, that the DC-Console was optimized when it was released in the western world. I mean, I think the reading capabilities of the laser were better in pal consoles than in the first Japanese Dreamcasts (from which I own one).
Could have something to do with it.

[suikoba]

Slider, you can fix the tracks of the jap. Star Gladiator II (GeNiuS-Release) easily. All you need is a standard 4-sec.-track with silence, which can be taken from most cdda-games. You can do this by ripping the track to Wav-Format with DCRWin or most other CDR-Proggies.

Probably you can also take the Audio.raw from the Echelon Selfboot-Tutorial, but i haven't tried that so far. Maybe you can also convert this Audio.raw to Wav-Format with some utilities, but I'm sure about that.

After injecting the mp3 into the cdi you can extract both the data track and the 62 audio-tracks with CDmage. Now delete audio-tracks 02, 03 + 04. Copy the standard-CDDA-track to the same directory 3 times and name it track02, 03 + 04 or anything. Now you can burn it, go with the echelon-tutorial. It's working on my PAL-DC

[Slider One]

Okay, I found out a few things. After triying the Pal-Patcher (that didn't find anything), I thought I'd look once again into the NFO. It seems, Genius released the japanese version, and just a bit later the european one. Looks that I have the Pal-version (didn't even know that there is one).

Fine, that would explain, why it's works on a Pal-DC and not on mine, I guess...
Nevertheless I wanted to give suikoba's fix a try, by replacing all of the short tracks 2-4 (btw No. 23 is also that short) with a standard 4-sec track ripped from Trickstyle.

In the past I made all of my CDDA-Games work with Bin2Boot-CDDA. But in this case it refused to work properly, perhaps because of the fact that the 1st_read is already hacked. God knows.

So looked at the echelon-tut and my confusion increased. There is said, that you need 3 4-sec tracks in the beginning (which makes kind of sense for me), but what am I supposed to do with the very 1st track of the original CDI. It's about 40 seconds long and seems to be the intro-music?
I'm just tired burning one coaster over the other...