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I was recently excited about getting this flashcart recently along with one of NEO's PC Engine flashcarts to play the more rare titles. However, I am a bit skeptical now after reading this. The PC Engine one might be more reliable but I'm just going by the 'testimonial' on their page, and with everything considered, who knows if its real.
Interesting, unfortunately as you may or may not know from my capture card topic I don't currently have a working way to capture Genesis video or otherwise I would show you. :(Quote:
Originally Posted by TmEE
If anyone else gets around to trying Samurai Shodown, let me know what happens. I might seek out the real cartridge version for a comparison.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 5233
Don't be, the NEO Myth MD is a great cart with great prospects,
its just that we're right in the middle of having to figure everything out ourselves,
and that might make it seem a bit.. bad.
But i recently flashed like 228 SMS roms to it and I've had no troubles at all.
don't judge a book by its crappy Asian tech support!
I'll try to try it out later tonight (oof what a tongue breaker)Quote:
Originally Posted by mugenmidget
I also have the original PAL cart to compare but no USA cart.
Also, Dr. Neo made another post with two BIOS files today:
http://www.neoflash.com/forum/index....ic,5784.0.html
And loading them up seems to produce the same behavior as an official BIOS, which is freezing at the "planet" background before showing any of the other logos or playing the music. Very strange.
Oh, thanks, I appreciate it! :)Quote:
Originally Posted by NeoVamp
Quote:
Originally Posted by NeoVamp
That being said, I'll eventually buy both the Neo Myth and give their PC Engine flashcart a shot as well. I am looking forward to it, but need to pony up the cash first.
There are two bytes changed in the Sega-CD BIOS that Dr.Neo posted. Before that patch, running that BIOS would show a region error on my PAL Mega-CD II but now it shows the Earth and then freezes.
Sega-CD Model 2 BIOS V2.00W (U).bin
000007AE: 66 changed to 4E
000007AF: 02 changed to 75
Sega-CD Model 1 BIOS V1.10 (U).bin
000007C2: 10 changed to 4E
000007C3: 39 changed to 75
I tried Samurai Shodown on my PAL MD but the E roms just gave a black screen and the U rom said I need an NTSC console. I still got the NTSC error after changing the region using Conle's SuperMD Tool.
edit: I wrote the same Euro versions again and now they work.
I'll show you the one I used in a PM, then hopefully you can get it to boot.
I reburnt the exact same Samurai roms that black screened before and they run now. I can confirm the stray flashing pixels on the E versions.
Reset buttons don't fix it. It's minor but doesn't look normal.
Oh, thank you very much!Quote:
Originally Posted by Sektor
And that's strange, I wonder why that happens? :daze:
I wonder if they are pixels left over from the Myth Menu. The myth loader or the game might not clear the VRAM correctly. It could also be a timing issue, the Myth cart might be slightly slower to read from than the original cart.
Just burned all the Samurai Shodown/Spirits roms that i had to the NEO,
and.. pretty much all the roms have the same problem, little yellow pixels kinda in the middle of the screen.
even the PAL rom had them, so i decided to try out my original copy of Samurai Shodown,
and.. yellow pixels in the middle of the screen.
its odd though, never noticed them before. (though i hardly played it when i got it since i have the MVS cart)
I will try to clean my cartridge slot and see if that fixes it, but i doubt it.
But at least now you know its not a rom problem.
If it's an European ROM played on a 60Hz NTSC system, it's likely to cause problems if the game was optimized for 50Hz.
EDIT: Didn't notice above post. - If you could post your setups it may help locating the issue.
EDIT #2: Okay, must have overlooked this part:
Quote:
Originally Posted by NeoVamp
Oh, I didn't expect it to happen on the original cart. Strange but good to know. The pixels looked white here. I'm using an LCD and composite video. Running Euro ROM on an unmodified PAL MD1 with a Mega-CD II connected.
My setup is a Model 1 Genesis (VA6, I believe, the ports are located in the right spot and the audio isn't crummy but there's no HDG writing) with a US Sega CD Model 2 with V2.00 BIOS. It is currently hooked up through composite video.
That's somewhat heartening to know it's happening with the original cart (although still a shame), thank you NeoVamp!
I'm running a Model 1 Pal Megadrive (with HDG) with 50/60hz & Eng/Jpn switches,
And a Model 1 MegaCD with no modifications while my video is output via an RGB cable.
(in case anyone was interested)
Also the roms refuse to boot if the switches are not set to the correct region.
And strangely enough the Japanese rom does not give me a message when i try to play it with different switch settings,
the screen just stays black, the US and Euro roms on the other hand both give me the "MADE FOR .... REGION ONLY" screen. (well something like that anyway)
Too bad i don't have the US cart too.
NeoVamp, have you tried running a Sega-CD BIOS from your Myth cart? It freezes on MegaCD model 2 but not sure about Mega CD model 1.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sektor
I just flashed ALL of the Sega bios files in existence to my NEO cart and ALL of them froze at the planet/clouds part.
All but one.. the bios file called Sega-CD Model 2 BIOS V2.00W Emulated Hoax (Hack).bin
gave me music, but then still froze after i chose the CD option.
Haven't tried the Bios file that DrNeo posted yet simply because of the fact that i'm not registered there and thus can not see the download url.
and i'm currently too lazy to register there. "hint"
Also Chilly Willy you were correct about my USB port not giving enough juice to power the cart,
i plugged an adapter in it and now it will write without errors.
and mugenmidget that pc speaker disable thing did the trick, I no longer hear pc speaker beeps after flashing is completed.
I'm kind of excited actually, played some Bare Knuckle III (translated) today and tried out a lot of roms,
I can't wait till this thing goes opensource so we can have a better looking menu,
maybe with separate pages for SMS/32x/SegaCDBios/Genesis files.
and perhaps even GameGenie & Action Replay. (with build in cheats even?)
Could be like this
Genesis game : Press A for game start, press B for GameGenie support, press C for Action Replay support.
SMS : press A for FM, Press B for Game Genie, Press C for normal Game.
Check your PMs! ;)
Both of those DrNeo posted bios files freeze.
I wonder if he even tested them, maybe he just booted the bios and saw the Earth pic show up and he thought it worked..
that or he has some sort of magical Megadrive. ;)
That sucks, I hope this gets addressed properly soon.
What is the cost of shipping to the USA from the retailer's location? I am curious, and also how long it takes, because I'm selling stuff to aquire the money to get the NeoMyth and a PC Engine flashcart from them, and am excited about this. Thanks.
If i remember correctly shipping costs are included in the price.Quote:
Originally Posted by 5233
edit : ooh look what i found on the NEO site.
I'm excited for that one and their SNES and NES projects. The PowerPak from RetroUSB looks nice but as far as I understand the compatibility isn't perfect yet so I'd rather wait and see if the NEO Team can pull it off.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mugenmidget
I have one and its pretty damn awesome, any incompatibilities can be fixed by future updates,
which reminds me, i need to update that fucker.
Oh, that's good to hear. I might have to check it out then, it looks like they'll have stock again on September 24th.
I'll most likely get the N64 cart once it's out.
As to the SEGA CD BIOS, he probably took the BIOS from his own CD(s) and patched the region check. There's been a number of CD BIOS revisions, some of which supposedly reflect a change in hardware. I don't see distributed patched BIOSes as the answer, and not just because it violates copyright laws in many nations. Instead, I see him making a Genesis program for the cart that reads the CD BIOS from the CD you have, locates the region check code, then writes a patched version of YOUR BIOS to the cart. At that point, you just power off the SEGA, power on, and select the patched CD BIOS. Because it's YOUR BIOS, it's guaranteed to work on your CD.
I could probably write such a thing - I was one of the first people to RE the CD BIOS and document how the CD side was decompressed and the system started. What I don't know is how to write to the Neo Myth. If I knew that, the app I described should be pretty easy.
Very interesting, Chilly, I'm eager to see what you're able to do. Hopefully Dr. Neo will be cooperative in giving the information you need to make such an application possible.
But my question is if he did disable the region check in those BIOSes he posted and they actually booted on his system, then what is different about his setup that makes it so they will not boot on my model 2? The startup screen for mine says v2.00W and that seems to be the exact same BIOS he patched, is there any reason why I can't boot it through the Neo Myth MD?
Is the CD really incompatible with all but the BIOS it shipped with? I think it's more likely that the BIOS just isn't being loaded into the correct location or something isn't being initialized.
There's no way to tell for certain what's going on with just the little info we have. It's just guesses at this point. It's possible his "patch" is the problem.
An Unpatched BIOS of the same region also freezes on the planet screen. The two bytes that were changed just let you run the US BIOS on a non US system but they don't fix the freeze issue.
I guess it freezes because it loads a small part of the 128KiB CD BIOS into the 64KiB MD RAM. That code is executed, it looks for the rest of the BIOS data in the Sega-CD RAM/ROM but it can't find it since it's actually stored on the MD cartridge.
I find this description on IC2005's forum amusing:
LOL!Quote:
Here you can get the help from our sales team, like ask the shipping checking number. Please login first. And for protect the business secret purpose, you just can see your own topic.
Haha, must protect the business secret purpose, they don't want anyone knowing about their world domination plans. The main reason for hiding comments is to hide negative feedback but if they need an excuse, they should write for customer privacy.
The files are now named:Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr.neo on neoflash.com forums
CD-BIOS-USA-CD_V110.bin
CD-BIOS-USA-CD_V20.bin
Still freezes on planet screen if I run them using the menu.
I had a look at neo2client.exe in a hex editor and noticed the following text:
CD-SYSTEM CD-RAM CD-BIOS
I'm not sure how or if it uses that text. I assume they are filenames.
I burned and executed it the same way as you and it actually worked! Probably because I have a US SEGA CD Model 2, I hope he releases the BIOS for PAL CD systems. I'm just thrilled that we're actually seeing some of the promised functionality now.
Still wondering if it supports CD Backup Cart features, hope we get a clear answer on that soon (the original "specifications" make it sound like it should).
I spoke too soon, I still had a US region disc in my SEGA CD. The BIOS definitely loads but as far as I can tell games from other regions flat out do not work.
He posted CD BIOSes for all regions now, I encourage people to try them out and relay their experience.
I am not currently at home so I cannot try it yet on real hardware BUT I did load up the new US Model 2 version in Fusion and the behavior seems the same: the BIOS loads but is unable to boot discs from other regions.
Hopefully this is an error on my part, but I'll wait for experiences from others first, because as I know nobody has attempted to load games from another region with this setup yet. But it's still a step in the right direction, at least.
I tried the US SCD2 BIOS on both my Model 2 and CDX. They work as they should, but I don't have any non-US CDs to try. All I've got is US games and Sonic Mega Mix.
Try burning the Japanese version of Sonic Megamix from the Sonic Retro wiki, that's what I was using for tests:Quote:
Originally Posted by Chilly Willy
http://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_Megamix
The removed region check was for running the BIOS. If you can run a BIOS from another region, you should be able to load some games from that region.
I tried them all on my PAL hardware but it's still freezing on the first screen. At least some of you are having success with US hardware.
My Mega-CD2 is model: mk-4102-50