Chankast-alpha25 problems/questions

[unclet]

Let me say that I have read the "Chanka Compatibilty List" thread in this forum to find which games work for which version of Chankast.

I download Chankast-alpha0.25 application and install it properly on my WinXP(SP2) system. I placed the "dc_bios.bin" and "dc_flash.bin" files I found in the chankast install directory as well. I configured the controller for player1 (I must say ....I like the older way of configuring a controller via the picture of the controller .... much more straight forward in my opinion). After this, I mounted the NRG image file (ie: Nero image) to "F:" using DaemonTools with no problem. I pointed to the "F:" drive in Chankast and clicked "Start".

I tried the following games:

1) Disney's Dinosaur: (indicated as "works perfect, and fast")
2) Chu Chu Rocket: (indicated as "Works flawlessly, no music, entriely playable")
3) Donald Duck's Quack Attack (indicated as "Works perfect, full speed")

None of these games actually worked for me.

Chu Chu Rocket:
Comes up with a spinning CD display. Not sure what to do here.

Disney's Dinosaur:
Starts up with a green triangle being displayed on the diagonal of the display. I can hear the audio for the game but no display occurs. Clicking the assigned game buttons flashed the "Dinosaur" intro screen comiong up but the n everything went black.

Donald Duck's Quack Attack:
Starts up with a green triangle being displayed on the diagonal of the display. I can hear the audio. I clicked assigned game buttons and the little cuckoo clock (part of the game) is displayed. Then chankast locked up.

Questions:

1) I tried to test games which should be working on chankast-alpha.25 but had no luck. Are these games really working for other people on this version of chankast? If so, what am I doing wrong? What do you recommend.

I realize some games are recommended to be executed with previous older versions of chankast, but since I just wanted to test the chankast emulator out, I wanted to test with some games which are known to work with the chankast-alpha25 version only.



2) Can someone recommend games for the chankast-alpha.25 version which work for them flawlessly (or at least very close to be playable at 100%)?

3) Why does the capatibilty list only go through games starting with "L"? Is it because the creators just did not get to the "M->Z" games yet for support and thus there are no games which work from "M-Z" ..... or ..... am I missing the rest of the list?

[axcc123]

first of all you need to make all of your images self bootalbe good luck on that. second of all if it comes up as a cd screen the emu thinks it is an audio cd

[Guru64]

If it comes up as a CD, it's probably not self bootable.

[unclet]

All of my images are NRG (Nero CD Image files). They mount find using DaemonTools.

I even found that CrazyTaxi comes up (although the menu text is non-visible) and can be started. I can drive around but then it eventually freezes up.
Since CrazyTaxi starts, does this mean I "do" have bootable images?

Please answer these questions:

1) How I can determine whether I have bootable images or not

2) Why do I need to have bootable images?

3) How can I convert images I Have (if they are not bootable) into bootable images?

[Agozer]

1) If the game doesn't start and /or shows up as a CD, the image may be corrup or then it's non-selfboot.

2) Chankast works best with selfboot games. If you have non-selfboot games, one trick getting them to work is to use the Utopia bootdisc.

3) Search the board. You need tools.

[unclet]

What do you mean "shows up as a CD"? Where do I look to see if it is a CD or not?

[Agozer]

What do you mean "shows up as a CD"? Where do I look to see if it is a CD or not?

Chankast might recognize the CD as and Audio CD, and as a resul tof that, kick you to the BIOS screen, where the disc shows up as a CD.

[unclet]

If all of my images are NRG, then how come CrazyTaxi loads and I am able to ride around in the car ? Just curious?

Anyway, what if I try to burn the NRG to a CD-RW ..... then should chankast be able to play it?

[Mouser X]

You obviously don't understand what's being said. Self-booting is different from being mounted. Competely different. You can mount any image just fine. Go ahead, make an image of an audio CD. It will still mount as an audio CD. When mounting a DC game, Chankast reads the CD. If it's not a self-booting disc, then Chankast will think the CD is an audio disc (the image file format is completely entirely irrelivent in every way (99% of the time). In other words, it doesn't matter if it's NRG, CDI, ISO, MDS, IMG, ect. Every single one of those is still read in THE EXACT SAME WAY by Chankast, when mounted properly). So, if Chankast starts the game, then it's self-booting. If it doesn't start the game, then it's not self-booting. Easy as that.

You can also try to mount images (as long as they're not NRG) using Daemon 3.29. Though, as I said, only use Daemon v3.29 if you don't ever want to mount NRG files. V3.29 will crash (so I've heard) if you attempt to run 2 different versions of Daemon at the same time. And v3.29 can't read NRG files.

Though I've already said it, I'll say it again for clarity purposes:

If all of my images are NRG, then how come CrazyTaxi loads and I am able to ride around in the car ?

This makes no difference whatsoever.

As for burning it to CD, you will most likely get the same results that you're currently getting. Did that clear that issue up at all? Do you still have questions? Hopefully that helped some. Mouser X over and out.

[unclet]

Ok, this is now clearer......

After reading a bit I guess using Utopia allows me to load Utopia, then mount the game over that somehow which allows chankast to accept it as self-booting. Anyway, I can not get this to work. I tried mounting the Utopia1.1 (and also 1.3) image with DaemonTools, then opened Chankast, pointed it to that drive letter and clicked start. I then tried mounting the game image to the same drive letter at that point but it did not start. Seems like the game should just start, but nothing happens. Using v1.3, I keep seeing the spinning reindeer/dog looking thing at this point .... nothing else happens.

I might be interested in trying to convert my NRG files into self-bootable images. Will someone point me to a place which details how to do this?

Maybe someone could post the selfboot.zip application for me as well, since I can not find this anywhere.

My goal is to "eventually" be able to launch the Sega Dreamcast games using an emulator front-end like MameWah or Mala directly from my harddrive. I can use DaemonTools with the frotnend to mount games no problem, but just need to get to images to be self-bootable I guess.