1st_boot.bin help for tomb-raider Chronicles and F355 challenge

[The_Agent]

hmmm OK I'm having trouble getting this to work,

right iv got my DC disk in the drive iv extracted the damn thing, but i cant for the life of me get the bin files sorted so that they self-boot, every time iv tried using Exors self-boot thingy it just crashes and freezes me PC so i have to do a hard reset, iv tried a different download of Exors thingy me bob but still have the same thing, and I'm no good with hex editors as iv tried other ways

Both games, once burnt to disk do work with utopia (DC not PC) but i want them self-boot for chankast

is there away of putting, in already modified 1st_boot.bin files for these games?

if so does anybody know where i can get them? (note: its not in the rules about asking for 1st_boot.bin files ) and yes i have tried a Google search as well as other avenues

so short of getting the damn things with me bandwidth and ending up supporting something that id rather not, I'm at a loss.....

Please Note both games are PAL and also Tomb-Raider is a
0WINCEOS.BIN ,file name



any help would be much appreciated

[Acorn]

WinCE games will not work in Chankast - check the compatibility list.

F355 will work, but it will appear as if you are always driving backwards (the rearview mirror expands to fill the entire screen).

Also of note, you CANNOT RIP DC GAMES from a DC disk with your standard cd/dvd drive. It will only really read the first section of the disk.

[The_Agent]

WinCE games will not work in Chankast - check the compatibility list .

well compatibility list says :

Tomb raider chronicles: Crashes after the Sega logo

but didnt say weather that test version was a echelon one...as most of the problems iv seen or read to do with crashing after the logo is because its a echelon release

F355 will work, but it will appear as if you are always driving backwards (the rearview mirror expands to fill the entire screen).

Also of note, you CANNOT RIP DC GAMES from a DC disk with your standard cd/dvd drive. It will only really read the first section of the disk.

bugger.....

anyway about that cant read GDroms? from what i know its a laser "focus" thing, the tracks on a GDrom are closer together, thus a "normal" cd-rom drive laser would be almost as big as about 2 to 3 "tracks" on the GDrom, so to speak, i might go dig out an old cd-rom drive and adjust the focus on it and see what happens, they might not be able to come up with software to do the job, but old hardware can be changed as its stil got the focus screw on it,

ill let u know my out come....if all else fails i might even try converting a broken DC and its laser unit into a pc cd-rom drive........u never know, it might just work

[Acorn]

This is true - a lot of crashes are due to using the Echelon releases, however no WinCE game will work on Chankast at the moment

Corrent about the GDRom issue as well You might be interested in:

http://www.emutalk.net/chankast/2568...rom-drive.html

If you are serious about dumping the games, and don't want to do it over a BB adapter.

[STC-Fan]

Rewiring a GD-ROM drive to work in a PC would be one heck of a challenge. A while ago (not on these forums), somebody busted open their DC to have a look at the drive - it's connected by one cable, which is 50 pins wide and resembles an IDE cable, but it uses a different connector to the board. So this would have to be rewired to a female IDE connector - not very difficult.

The PCB on the drive has several "custom" chips with the SEGA logo stamped on them. But some of these could just be "all-in-one" chips with PC-compatible / standard components - see this page for more info (and I know the chips inside the OTI9220 are PC-compatible, because my broken [mech. failure] LG CRD-8160B has an OTI912 on it, while my working CRD-8240B has the same Sony chip as the one in that all-in-one chip). And given how recent the DC is, it's doubtful that chip is the only one on that PCB, but there's no picture of the other side of it to confirm this. So writing drivers could / will be quite a challenge.

Finally, the GD-ROM drive itself uses 3.3V for power / signalling - so even if you did the aforementioned work to the cable, it can't be directly connected to a male IDE port on a PC mobo without some other logic components to convert 3.3V to 5V, after which it could be connected - hopefully without anything becoming fried in the process.

So all in all... hardly an easy job. And because the DC drive is top-loading you'll also have to sucessfully bolt on a tray-loading mechanism from a PC CD/DVD drive. But if you're gonna have a go, good luck =P

EDIT: Also... you'd need to be able to find out how the drive firmware works (nobody has ever dumped this to my knowledge), and also how to properly rewire the connector - however, the drive is most likely IDE based since it doesn't have an external power cable coming from it (if it were SCSI, as I'd suspected once, there'd probably be one), like those small 2.5" IDE hard drives for laptops.

[The_Agent]

mounting it wouldn't be a problem as i could get and modify a external IDE to USB caddy or hack it to bits and just mount the laser on new railing system to fit a PC CD-ROM case?

if i could find out a pin lay out and separate the power, then it wouldn't be an issue ether, as stepping down 5.5v to 3.3v is not a problem as i know a few very talented PCB board makers and could get them to make a small enough PCB to fit inside the actual USB caddy and not be on show, that could do such a job, tho it would be handy to know what milliamps the Unit is (may have to go get a fried DC and rescue the drive from it)

i think the only real problem would be drivers, as i stated in a different post, the GD-ROM reads from the out side of the CD toward the middle, so the PC would need to understand this, and also it would need to see the instruction set of them chips you mentioned, but i believe it could be done (wonder how cheap this could be and if i could actually come up with a working product that would slip right into a PC case)

on the other hand, getting a normal PC CD-ROM and turning the laser mounting around so that two will read from the out side to the inside with out having to worry about drivers, mounting, or voltage is still a viable option then all that would need doing is the laser focus adjusted to read the thin tracks of a GD-ROM..... that would be easier, faster and probably less of a head ache

i think ill try the second one first, if that fails then ill try the old GD-ROM one, but i will try (just as an added side project)