Need help getting TG-16 CD games running on Xbox

[norkusa]

I've been messing around with the Mednafen PCE emulator on my Xbox over the weekend and have been trying to get some Turbo CD games running on it. I don't have any originals to put in the disc tray so I ftp'd a few images into the roms folder and tried to play them off the HD. Can't get anything to work though.

One I tried playing was Beyond Shadowgate. Got the game from a torrent that had all the US Turbo CD releases together and were all supposedly checked and verified. Image was in Bin/Cue format. I keep getting an error message whenever I try running the cue though. Says something like "Error-CD didn't load". Emulator settings seem to be fine too.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? Can this emulator even run bin/cue images or does it have to be broken up with all the mp3's listed separately with a toc file thrown in there somewhere? I tried doing Dracula X that way though and couldn't get it working either.

[roushimsx]

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? Can this emulator even run bin/cue images or does it have to be broken up with all the mp3's listed separately with a toc file thrown in there somewhere? I tried doing Dracula X that way though and couldn't get it working either.

I've run the BIN/CUE love in the past peachy-keen-like. I'll see if I can hook up the Xbox to the capture card and figure out what's going on for you

edit - Can you post the contents of your CUE just to be safe, fine sir?

[norkusa]

Thaks a lot! I'd appreciate that. I actually checked the Xbox-Scene forums for help on this before I posted here but amazingly, I couldn't find any useful info there.

I don't know how to cut & paste the cue info from Nero but it basically looks like this:

Size Of Image: 446 MB (Duration 44:11.29)

Number Of Tracks: 36

Track #2 is the only one that's not an audio track. It says "Data (mode1)" and its size is 66 MB (67,856 kb)

[sickdrummer420]

it took me a while also to get this working for me. ill take a look also when i get a chance. they do work good once its all configured correctly. when you go to load game, are you choosing the cue file to run it? i remember thats what you have to choose.

[norkusa]

it took me a while also to get this working for me. ill take a look also when i get a chance. they do work good once its all configured correctly. when you go to load game, are you choosing the cue file to run it? i remember thats what you have to choose.

Yeah, I'm choosing the cue file to run it. After I choose the cue, it tells me to select a "perfect" cue sheet from a long list of other turbo cd games.

Maybe it's just a bad dump I'm using? I should load a couple others in there and see if I get any different results.


EDIT: Just tried It Came From The Desert and that wouldn't work either. Got the message "Error Opening CD". It's probably something I'm doing wrong but I can't figure out what it is. Do the folders have to be named a certain way? I'm keeping my Turbo CD's in a sub-directory in my main roms folder but my roms are split into 2 different folders anyway (PCE and TG16), so that shouldn't make a difference, should it?

[roushimsx]

Ok, I've started experiencing the same problem for a couple of my games for no explainable reason. Some still work fine while others refuse to load, despite having peachy-keen CUE sheets to go with the peachy-keen BINs. Apparently there's some way to bypass the perfect cues, but I haven't found it yet...perhaps that might yield some spiffy results.

Also going to try building an ISO+MP3 of one of my games and see if it still does the same thing (several people have mentioned that that's fixed it for them for whatever reason). Hrml.

Fallback solution: Burn the image to a CD-RW. I know, I know

Off to do more testing! (going to try to rip an image using Alcohol 120% and see if that automagically works)

[roushimsx]

edit -
Yea, never mind, I don't know what the hell I was thinking.

Hrml.

I'll try re-ripping some more stuff tomorrow before I break down and do the ISO+MP3 final solution.

[norkusa]

Hey roushi, what games are working for you? Tell me and I'll load them up and see if they work for me. Could just be a wacky compatibility problem with certain cue's.

I tried building an ISO + MP3's of that Castlevania game but it didn't work for me either. I know it's built right too because it worked for me in the PCE emulator on my PSP.

Will CD-RW's play on a janky Thompson drive? Every CD-R I've tried so far wouldn't load. Are CD-RW's any different?

[roushimsx]

Fuck a duck, the only stuff I can get working is stuff I haven't ripped for whatever reason. Alcohol 120%, CloneCD, MagicISO, CDRDAO, you name it...if I rip it, it won't load as BIN/CUE. I downloaded a copy of Godzilla and fired it up as BIN/CUE and it worked without a problem. The only difference I could tell was that it had a catalog number on the top line of the CUE that doesn't correlate to anything else I've found online...?

I can take that exact same BIN/CUE that I ripped with any of the programs and use CDDISSECT (from the Xport dude) to rip CUE/ISO/MP3 and they work flawlessly.

So...fuck it. I'm done troubleshooting for now and I'll throw a post up on the official forum for the port in a little bit.

All Xbox drives should support CD-RWs, though your mileage may vary based on the quality of the media.

edit - posted on the official forum. Let's see how long it takes to get a retarded reply (loaded with shitty english!) recommending that I just use CUE/ISO/MP3 since that always seems to work.

[norkusa]

Thanks for the follow-up, roushi. Taking a look at those pics you posted on Xbox-Scene, I think I know what my problem is. I'm not getting that Super CD-Rom System v3 screen when I try loading up an image. I just get a Mednafen pop-up error window.

I have the options sent to use a v3 system card, but do I actually need the rom for it too? I assumed the emulator had it built-in but maybe not. If I do need it, where do I place it? In the same folder where the cd images are kept?


EDIT: I just tried some more roms from another set I had and those aren't working either. This is really driving me nuts. Could it be a problem with my cue files? I'm not altering them in any way for this emulator....do I have to tweak them out a bit in order for them to work?

[roushimsx]

EDIT: I just tried some more roms from another set I had and those aren't working either. This is really driving me nuts. Could it be a problem with my cue files? I'm not altering them in any way for this emulator....do I have to tweak them out a bit in order for them to work?

As long as you edit the path out of the CUE file so it only points to Game.BIN and not C:\Documents and Settings\Sally\Desktop\NonPorn\CDImages\Game.BIN then the CUE should be fine. I don't believe the system card needs to be put in there because I only have V3 in there but can freely toggle between 1/2/3...so...I don't know. If you want to double check, here's system card 3.

Oh, and a bunch of US HuCards out there are bad dumps (the dumper forgot to reverse the pin order so they're byte-swapped). They're commonly referred to as being "encrypted" and are considered good by GoodTools, but they're not. MagicEngine just disregards 'em and loads 'em anyway but Mednafen is picky about it and you'll have to use something to fix 'em (like PCEToy).

Sooooo...hopefully that helps a little bit. We may be a little shit outta luck for a little bit until he can diagnose the problem with loading the BIN/CUEs and you may have to resort to converting to ISO/MP3/CUE via CDDISSECT (which relies on ASPI, which kinda blows ). I have no idea why I was able to play 'em in the past and can't now.... I either did something dumb when I redid my Xbox or it's just a wonky bug (i'd love to be able to just disregard the perfect cue system, it seems to be that that's causing the trouble)

[NE146]

Yeah man.. not sure what problems you're having unless you're using bad images. Pretty much everything I toss at the thing runs without a hitch!

[norkusa]

As long as you edit the path out of the CUE file so it only points to Game.BIN and not C:\Documents and Settings\Sally\Desktop\NonPorn\CDImages\Game.BIN then the CUE should be fine. I don't believe the system card needs to be put in there because I only have V3 in there but can freely toggle between 1/2/3...so...I don't know. If you want to double check, here's system card 3

That's strange. I can pick System Card 1 & 3 but there's no v2 card available. I'm pretty sure I'm using the latest version of Mednafen too (v2 I think). Is that what you guys are using?

[norkusa]

Okay, I think I know what my problem is - bad disc images. I just downloaded my *third* Turbo CD rom set. Got it from an Xbox torrent site and all images were tested with Mednafen and confirmed to be working. Put Dracula X on there and it booted right up!

Don't think the images from the other 2 sets I downloaded were bad since they were all confirmed to work with other emulators. I guess Mednafen PCE is just *REALLY* picky about what it'll play.