Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

Thanks for the tips bro but i must say i am still confused as to how you get/create a Bios?? i mean how? lol sorry for my noobness but i really just dont get how the files you are mentioniing are nowhere to be found even in the rom zip files and i am not sure as to what folder or thing i am creating if any. I just name a folder and call it Bios?? that seems silly.

Sorry again for my noobyness. BTW i am trying to run SonicCD

-MASTER

Edit: check my following post....>.<

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

Ooops I am a total newb anyway i found the bios software. *do'h!!* and when pico drive loads it says looking for disk with the earth outerspace background and some random music playing and it finally loads and then it says no disc. Aren't i suppose to have the folder with the game and Mp3's in the same location or how do i go about loading games?

BTW the Bios software i have is actually SegaCD BIOS V2.00 (U) does that not work or should i look for another Bios?

-MASTER

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

/home/user/bios/

eu_mcd2_9306.bin
jp_mcd1_9112.bin
us_scd2_9306.bin


these are the 3 bios i have in my bios folder. hope it helps

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

Sorry for such a silly question but what is or how do you know what /home/user/bios is located? so i can tell you where mine is.

I really dont understand what i am doing wrong. i know i am close but i am just missing that last piece.

-MASTER

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

I'm over the moon that SegaCD games are now supported and the ones that I've ripped to .iso from my own collection work without a hitch.

But I still don't have CD Audio in the games. I've ripped the music tracks from the Game Disc to mp3 and placed them in a folder with the parent game's .iso file.

In the case, the game is Snatcher. So I've got the .iso called "Snatcher.iso" and put it into it's own folder.

The mp3 files are in the same folder and I've tried several naming schema's: (this example is for the logo track, first on the disc, but listed as 02 on the discs track listing):

Snatcher-02.mp3
Snatcher_02.mp3
Snatcher02.mp3
Snatcher 02.mp3
Snatcher-02
Snatcher_02
02.mp3
2.mp3
02
2

Nothing has worked. Should I be naming them differently? I used a CD ripping program that seams to have automatically edited the .id3 tag as it created the mp3 file, could the inclusion of mp3 metadata screwed the pooch?

I've only used the desktop Kega emulator before for Sega CD and Kega doesn't require mp3 audio as it can read everything straight from the .iso/.cue file. However I've heard that the desktop gens emulator requires a similar conversion of audio to mp3 for it to play. Has anyone gotten mp3 audio to work in either picodrive or gens?

Any help would be awesome.

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

Okay, so on the linux file system, "/" tells you it's the very top of the file structure, so everything starts with that.

If you open the Terminal program on the N900 and type:
pwd
(this stands for "present working directory")
it'll report to you where you are at at that time. The default start location is called you "home directory" and will show as:
/home/user

The area that shows in the N900's graphical file manager as "N900" will show in the terminal as:
/home/user/MyDocs

In your home directory, there are several directories that contains settings and preferences for all of your applications. These directories have a "." in front of their name that usually makes then invisible, but you can still "cd" to them. So if you type:
cd /home/user/.picodrive
this would put you in the directory that contains your preferences and settings for the picodrive application.

In this directory, you can type:
mkdir bios
and that makes a new directory call bios. You now would have:
/home/user/.picodrive/bios

If you have (somehow) obtained SegaCD bios files from the magical google, and placed them on your N900 in the "N900" area of the phone, you would type this:
mv /home/user/MyDocs/*.bin /home/user/.picodrive/bios
(it'll yell some warning at you about preserving permissions, you can ignore that)
You now have the bios files in the right place to play SegaCD game .iso or .bin images.

If your magically obtained SegaCD bios files were dragged on to your N900's Memory card, then instead you would type:
mv /media/mmc1/*.bin /home/user/.picodrive/bios

Any questions?

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

Very much appreciated bro. I am short on time right now and will have to test out later to let you know of any hiccups lol. but i at least wanted to say thanks for the info ;)

-MASTER

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

As always, the problem was the dumbest available. The Bios' names were incorrect. Now i have Sonic CD running perfectly!!!

Thanks all

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

If like me you hate seeing MegaCD sound files on your media player you can stop media player indexing it.

You need to edit the tracker config file (/home/user/.config/tracker/tracker.cfg)

look for the line

# List of directory roots NOT to index and NOT to watch (separator=; )

NoWatchDirectory=

and at the end put: $HOME/MyDocs/.documents/PicoDrive/;

also if you do not want Sygic maps mp3 showing do:

$HOME/MyDocs/.documents/PicoDrive/;$HOME/MyDocs/Res/;

then

in terminal "tracker-processes -r" (it will take while for phone to find your normal audio/video files)

This is not for every one so becareful when doing this, if your are not sure how to please do not attempt it.

(credit to Rob1n for helping me)

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

Whoa you people are really taking this up one level with that Sega CD stuff.

I never got around to getting aquainted with Sega CD so I just have this one thing in mind about MegaDrive/Genesis emulation: Are there plans to optimize battery usage of the emulator? Right now 30mins of play take down about 1.5bars of battery. Is there going to be optimization? :)

By no means do I mean that the battery consumption would be particularly high , just asking out of intererst. :)

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

I just got my Snatcher sega CD image to run audio with MP3. Found a great guide that even I could follow:

http://www.segacd.org/rip-iso.html

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

Okay, checked with Conky and Sonic3. The CPU usage is at 100%. So, reducing the FPS to 30 pictures per second at maximum could reduce the CPU usage. But the Display illumination is still there. And this is one of the biggest battery consumer. Use the "Simple Brightness Applet" form Maemo Extras. You can reduce the illumination and you can play even longer.

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

The key pad lights are always on when gaming. If one was to take off the keypad lights it would last even longer.

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

The first 4 names of your list are allowed, the rest aren't. Audio tracks start at #2 (#1 is the data track, the game itself) so everything seems right.

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

here is a screen of how final fight file names are.

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

There's little CPU usage optimization left to be done, at least in the most CPU intensive tasks. I suppose I could try moving all screen scaling code to ARM assembler, but I doubt we'll see huge benefits from that. CD audio playback is the clearest candidate for optimization, though. I'm currently working on that.

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

New update available.

-Added support for 2 players
-Fixed CD audio sometimes not working when resuming games.
-Mode button was missing from configurations
-Fixed showing onscreen buttons caused framerate drop.

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

Thnx for the MODE button fix! Awesome :D

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

brilliant work

cant find this in extras or testing is it still in devel at the minute or am i just beeing a bit blind

thanks

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

Alright the best got better. :)

And thanks for the reply to my optimization question. :)

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

Dude, fantastic job. I'm looking forward to MP over wireless link (unless thats in the latest update that I haven't installed yet....)

Made a donation for your great work.

Cheers,
Maquis196

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

it's in extras-devel

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

When are you going to promote this to extras-testing?

The app is rock solid so far. :)

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

Soon, I hope... as soon as I'm done sorting out CD audio a bit more. I want to see first if we can get some benefit from moving mp3 decoding to the DSP. As of now I'm lost in the turbulent sea of the maemo documentation ;)

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

how i can download Mega Drive?
I dont understand ((

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

Enable extras-devel in your N900's application manager.
Go to the Enable Repositories Automatically section of this site:
http://maemocentral.com/2009/12/29/h...ith-one-click/

Once that updates, click on Download inside your application manager and scroll down the list of applications until you see Picodrive. Click on it.

Please be warned that extras-devel software is still in development and most of the time can be tricky and hazardous for users new to Maemo devices.

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

Woo!

Just got picodrive working 2 player, with 2 wiimotes for controllers :-D

Combined with tv-out cable, I have a megadrive in my pocket.

How-to coming soon on my blog, along with a video...

(will try get it done over the weekend)

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

Any chance you could squirt out a new .deb for us Diablo losers as well?

Oh and did you catch my two previous requests of being able to remove the fps notice on the screen and also having the option to disable sound in the configuration file?

Thanks chief! :)

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

Hmmm... Installed the new version a hour ago and tested with Sonic the Hedgeoge. In the new Version the Sound is not synchron. As longer I'm playing the sound is even longer behind the action on the screen. Is it just me? Or have other users the same bug?
This haven't occoure in the old version.

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

Frozen window issue is fixed in latest version. Thanks for the great work!

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

Hey there javicq...
So i couldn't wait and i enabled the devel catalogue and downloaded the emulator, along with a few games in bin format, about 20. What do i think?

The icon is sweet, the GUI of the program is simple, but effective and i like the logo. I like the settings options, hardware keys work very well, although i had to play a while to find a comfortable setup. I ended up with: W, A, S, D, Q, E and I, K, J, L, U, O with Enter and Backspace. Pretty comfortable, though it needs getting used to obviously. I tried also the touchscreen buttons with the on-screen button grid - it is a great idea and actually that feature surprised me. But it doesn't work with all games and having both keyboard and touch-screen enabled controls makes a big mess, the game doesn't really know to what to react. Accelerometer is amazing and fun. It still needs little tweaking, but overall i'm impressed. How long did implementing it take?

About the games themself - I've played so far about 12 games, each for 15minutes: Aaahhh Real Monsters!, Aladdin, Duke Nukem 3D, Earthworm Jim, Earthworm Jim 2, Ecco Tides of Time, Ecco Jr., Ecco, Golden Axe, Golden Axe 2, Golden Axe 3, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, Pitfall The Mayan Adventure, Sonic & Knuckles 1-3, Sonic 1-3. All of them work 50 or 60 fps = full speed, with sound of course :) Mortal Kombat is the hardest to play of them all though. Ecco is my favorite - amazing underrated series. And Earthworm Jim is a great classic. Golden Axe series is fun, though a little hard. And Sonic? What can i say lol... "Seeeeegggaaaaaa" :D Loading saves and resuming games works for me well so far.

The ONLY big downside ATM is the battery drain factor. This baby can deplete the battery very very quickly. Any idea why is that? Other then that I'm very happy and if you continue developing it (polishing it), I'll be glad to donate another 7Euros lol.

BTW, why isn't this already in Extras-Testing? It's basically finished, only needs tweaking here and there.

Muchas Gracias por el emuladores del MegaDrive :D

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

you ever heard of paragraphs and spacing?

it was hard to read your post :confused:

but yeh its been great since the 1st release :D

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

I did, very often, but i'm not on a fast connection ATM and am a bit lazy. Maybe next time, hey? The content is more important than the visuals.

EDIT: Ok, I edited my post and added paragraphs, better now? :D

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

Just tried my Wing Commander CD Iso on Picodrive and while it plays, none of the spaceships are visable.

Looks like Picodrive can't display scailing sprites. :(

I heard that Gens had a similar problem.

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

Hi great job on the emulator however i cant seem to get the diablo port working. Can anyone post an example of the commands im supposed to type in the command box? Like picodrive romname.gen ? or do i need to do something else? thanks

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

Here you go Steve.

/home/user/.picodrive/picodrive -o /home/user/.picodrive/picodrive.ini /media/mmc1/Minnesota.bin

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

this is a great emulator - my only problem is when trying out something that requires alot of diagonal d-pad usage (i think someone mentioned a 'dragon punch!'), but I guess thats more of a problem with the n900 than any emulator, lol. i hope you keep on developing picodrive to make it even better! some sort of control development to make it easier to work with diagonals would be interesting, but im just not sure how... perhaps some pico users may have good ideas regarding control that could be of more help/added to the emulator in time

thanks

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

its a n900 issue not emulator....

this emulator is near perfect.

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

I would love to see a touch screen Dpad something similar to this post I made a few days ago.

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=176

Does anyone know of someone who could code such a thing?

Re: Mega Drive/Genesis emulator for Maemo
 

Yes I took note... Be patient, a new release for Diablo is on the way... :)

Do you mean CD music or standard sound?