I had a similar thing happen to my SH-D162D (which I think is almost the same drive). At some point it started to choke on certain parts of the HD zone and it was never again able to read any DC discs completely, but regular CDs and DVDs were fine.

At the time I had just switched motherboards so I thought it may have had something to do with that, but it's more likely that the drive just broke in some subtle way.

2

(3,493 replies, posted in General discussion)

You shoudn't need XP, this is my 708A on Windows 7 with a regular (non-elevated) command prompt:

D:\redump.org>cachex -i f:

CacheExplorer 0.8 - spath@cdfreaks.com

Drive on F is  PLEXTOR  DVDR   PX-708A   1.12

[+] Buffer size: 2048 kB, read cache is enabled
[+] Supported read commands: BEh A8h(FUA) 28h(FUA) D4h(FUA) D5h(FUA) D8h(FUA)

3

(17 replies, posted in General discussion)

If so, we should put a big warning in the forums or just hide the PC Engine section entirely. Otherwise, some people might start buying or dumping stuff, only to be told that they shouldn't.

4

(17 replies, posted in General discussion)

So, do I put all my stuff on hold, too? Because I'm not going to go through all the hassle of manually cutting and checking the gaps and everything if it's not recommended to add PCE dumps to the database...

5

(14 replies, posted in General discussion)

That method doesn't work with negative offsets because the "garbage" you would see is actually the last part of the last data sector, in scrambled form, which gets pushed into the audio track precisely because of the positive offset. If the offset is negative you can't see it because it's actually inside the data track, so even if you try to go back one more sector the drive auto-corrects the offset and doesn't let you see the raw, uncorrected data.

There are alternative methods, though; you can still use the audio swap trick or the D8 command (if your drive is compatible with it).

6

(14 replies, posted in General discussion)

Data tracks have the same offset, but it gets corrected automatically by the drive, using the sync marks (those 00 FF FF FF... at the start of each sector) as reference.

The CD32 is probably the most versatile console ever. I have an SX-1 expansion module and that thing is awesome, it pretty much transforms the console into a full, expandable A1200 with a built-in CD-ROM drive. The only thing it's missing is the PCMCIA slot.

I think there were some discussions about the gaps of the data tracks, yeah, but even if the images need to be fixed it's just a 1-sector shift that wouldn't need any radical changes. And we need to dump the remaining games anyway, so...

I have a PC Engine list almost ready. I just have to check a few games and I'll post it on the wiki.

I think it was included with the MGS:TS special edition of the console (not the game). If I remember correctly it's a port of the NES version of the first Metal Gear.

Just a tip: the Accuraterip list has a wrong entry for the 716A. The actual offset is +30.

If the CD-i Ready data track is in the pregap it should be dumpable with the "audio swap" method or D8, as long as there aren't any other quirks. But this is just a theory, I don't have any CD-i Ready discs to test it.

13

(3 replies, posted in General discussion)

Thanks, it seems I had guessed correctly. I'll submit it now.

I've been trying to dump another PC-98 game, but I've run into a little problem. EAC detects the track 2 pregap as 2.00, PerfectRip doesn't detect anything, and if I go back 150 sectors from the start I see a data sector. Usually this would suggest that the pregap is actually 1.74, but a data-audio pregap of less than 2 seconds would be very strange, so I took a look at the subs... and I could be wrong, but I think the problem is those so-called EAN sectors that seem to appear in a few Saturn games. Can someone with more experience in those matters help me with this?

Here's the .sub file:

http://www.r-09.net/redump/macross.zip

The "MICROSOFT*XBOX*DVD" thing is a header that marks the start of the file system, if I'm not mistaken. It's like the "CD001" header in ISO9660 compliant CDs.

Random data is random data, no matter which format you save it as. It simply can't be (losslessly) compressed in any way.

17

(5 replies, posted in General discussion)

It's not surprising, modern PC games can be mastered with any CD creation tool. You should only start worrying if you find that in a game released before 1998 or so, when Nero didn't exist yet.

18

(2 replies, posted in General discussion)

Don't worry, I've already worked with them a few times. wink

In this case, though... I think the disk is slightly modified (the game stores the configuration file in the same disk), so it wouldn't be up to the SPS standards. And in any case I can't make a SPS-style dump of a high density disk with my regular Amiga drives, so I'll have to wait for the KryoFlux.

In the meantime I will just create a regular image. It's better than nothing.

19

(2 replies, posted in General discussion)

I've got a new PC-98 game (Might and Magic: Clouds of Xeen) that needs both a floppy disk and a CD to work (the floppy contains the main executable, while the CD has the data file and the audio tracks). So I'm wondering... what do I do with this? Do I just add the CD to the database and put something in the comments field?

amarok wrote:

You probably haven't replaced the garbage sectors... Try to extract the game again and replace the byte range from 223182848 to 231571456 with 00s in a hex editor for WAVE2/3/4 and WAVE1 (108976-113071) dumps (see the Comments section of the dump to find out which WAVE the disc is). In case of WAVE1 (18128-22223) dumps, replace 37126144 to 45514752. You should get a match then.

Thanks, I'll try it later.

If you have further questions or want to dump games that aren't in the DB already I can send you further instructions.

Please do. I have quite a few games that aren't in the database and I'll probably sell some of them in the near future, so I want to get them dumped before that.

I'd like to know the dumping method with the SH-D162D, too. I tried it on my own but I couldn't get a match with the existing dumps, I must have been doing something wrong.

Audio trap disc + EAC should be the safest method. That way you can apply the offset correction on the fly and descramble the whole track.

23

(3 replies, posted in General discussion)

F1ReB4LL wrote:

Any news? smile

Yes, and good ones: my games are in the post office right now, along with more PC-98 stuff (Photo Genic and Brandish VT). I'll go pick them up later today.

NullDC (or, more specifically, NullDC's GDI plugin) doesn't like long filenames with spaces. I remember someone in this forum (themabus?) made a modified version that supported them, but I can't find it right now. Alternatively you could just rename the tracks to short names (track01.bin, etc) and modify the GDI file to point to them.

25

(3 replies, posted in General discussion)

You can just follow the CD guide and skip the PSX-specific parts. The FM Towns uses standard CDs, so they shouldn't give you much trouble.

As it happens, I have a couple of FM Towns games on the way too (Scavenger 4 and Galaxy Force II). I don't expect anyone to start buying the LucasArts adventures or the Ultima ports just for this project, but at the very least we'll have a nice database with the cheaper games. smile