Emu's on the Dreamcast

[Retsudo]

Just want to know something. I see people play Emu's on the Dreamcast. How is it done? I saw on epay a guy selling a disk that contains a lot of nes games on a disk you can play on ya Dreamcast. Does your DC have to be modded to do it? Any help would be appreciated. :sob:

[Ze_ro]

Well, first of all, anyone selling Dreamcast emulators is breaking the law. If you see anyone auctioning them on eBay, they really should be reported.

No, you don't need to mod your Dreamcast, they can read CD-R's already (although there are a small number of later models that supposedly can't). Instead of trying to explain everything myself, you're probably better off just going to DCEmulation (http://www.dcemulation.com), as everything is explained pretty well there. The easiest way to do all this is to use a program called Selfboot Inducer (http://www.sbiffy.com) (I think you have to sign up on their forums to actually get anything from that site) to make a disc image, and then burn it with Nero/Disc Juggler/cdrecord. If you do it properly, you won't even need a boot disc or seperate rom disc or anything like that.

I should also warn you that although NesterDC (the NES emulator) is essentially perfect, a lot of Dreamcast emulators are not full speed. DreamSNES need some frameskip, and the Genesis emulators each have their own problems too. Most of the emulators are not perfect, so don't get your hopes up too high.

--Zero

[Retsudo]

so don't get your hopes up too high.

--Zero

Nah, never do. Just wondered how it was done. Dont plan on emulating on my Dreamcast.

[nesuser2]

on an added note, there were supposedly dreamcasts that wouldn't read cdr's as Ze_ro already stated. It was a manufacture date type rule and it has been proven wrong, so I would say that the number of DC's this actually effects is quite low. And for anybody else that would like to know, NO, it doesn't effect the sports system either. The dreamcast is perfect for those that don't have the space to display their gaming collection or even have it boxed up around the house. If all of your collection is stored this is the most practical way to keep it around. You could step up to an xbox but thats where the difference in dollars comes in, in a big way...

[Solid Snake]

www.dcemulation.com

[zektor]

Any DC manufactured on or before OCT 2000 (look on bottom) will play cd-r discs, although I heard all models (even after that date) can do it. I have to add that DC emulation is quite nice for some systems such as SMS and NES....emulators for both are near perfect.

[Ze_ro]

I might be wrong, but I think the way it works is that when Sega built the Dreamcast, they made it able to play this goofy type of CD called "mil-cd". I think it was meant to be some video format or something, but it never panned out. As a consequence of support for these mil-cd's, the machine could play CD-R's as well, as long as they were burned in a very specific way, using a 3-second audio track at the beginning.

Eventually, Sega realized that mil-cd was completely dead, and piracy was very much alive, and removed mil-cd support at some point in time (Oct 2000?). Because of this, the audio-data cd's wouldn't work anymore.

However, there is another way of writing a CD-R (known as data-data, as it uses two data tracks instead of an audio and a data track) which apparently works even on non-mil-cd Dreamcasts. I think the data-data method uses more space on the CD though, and since the vast majority of Dreamcast's are fine with audio-data discs, not many people bother with the data-data method.

I may have some of the facts backwards, so don't quote me on any of this. I also have never used a newer Dreamcast, so I can't verify any of this at all.

--Zero