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Emulation on Dreamcast


GregadetH

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Ok...so here's the point where I just flat out ask for someone to PM me a tutorial on building my own NesterDC or Stella disc. I finally figured out to burn full emu/rom images to CD's but they all have adult games in the rom sets. While I'm not a prude, I don't want my kid exposed to crazy Jap hentai NES roms or Beat 'Em and Eat 'Em just yet. If you got time to send me a tut on how to create my own discs, I'll greatly appreciate it.

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There is an enhanced version of NesterDC called NesterDC SE, which includes a graphical CD Builder tool that you can use to compile your own bootable disc (including screenshots, scans, and instruction manuals!) in Nero or DiscJuggler format. I'm planning on using it to replace my own ancient NesterDC 3.0 disc, and it certainly looks easier than building the ISO image manually at the command line, which was the way I created my old disc. Here is some information from DCEmulation, including a download link (the builder is inside the "1.0 Plain Files" archive) and URLs for the master library.

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There is an enhanced version of NesterDC called NesterDC SE, which includes a graphical CD Builder tool that you can use to compile your own bootable disc (including screenshots, scans, and instruction manuals!) in Nero or DiscJuggler format. I'm planning on using it to replace my own ancient NesterDC 3.0 disc, and it certainly looks easier than building the ISO image manually at the command line, which was the way I created my old disc. Here is some information from DCEmulation, including a download link (the builder is inside the "1.0 Plain Files" archive) and URLs for the master library.

 

Thanks. I tried it out this morning, but just didn't "get" how it all falls together. Look's like I'll be spending some more time with it.

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SBI gives me a headache.

 

May I ask why?

 

Probably because I'm Dreamcastarded. I've been reading about it since it was mentioned to me earlier in the thread and I just cannot wrap my head around it. I've modded close to 20 Wiis, 5 XBOX's, repaired countless laptops and PC's, but I cannot figure out any of this DC emu disc stuff to save my life.

Edited by GregadetH
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I'd like to know a bit more about this too. I've tried the NesterDC SE and its really nice but I'd like the ability to put roms of only the games I actually own and like. Is there an indepth tutorial or a "for dummies" way to do this?

 

If I find a "for dummies" tutorial for Nester or Stella I'll let you know!

Edited by GregadetH
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Okay, I just tried the NesterDC SE CD Builder that I linked to earlier, and I'm not sure what you guys are talking about ... that utility is brain-dead easy to use. It took me about five minutes to figure it out. Here's how I did it:

 

  • Download the archive and unzip it to a folder
  • Open the folder and launch the "NesterDCSEBuilderWx.exe" application (you'll find it along with some other files that are used by the program to build the CD image, but you can ignore these)
  • The program window will look something like this:
    nesterdcse.png
  • First, collect the NES ROMs that you want to include on the disc into a folder and enter the path in the "ROMs Path" field (I just created a temporary folder on my desktop).
  • Then, enter the URL of an active NesterDC master library, which is how the program identifies your ROMs and retrieves screenshots, manuals, and other optional metadata for the "special features" you select in the next step. This option didn't seem to work for me, so I guess the URLs that I have are offline, but it doesn't affect the emulator; it just means that the metadata won't be available.
  • Select the CD image format (Nero or DiscJuggler) and select the extra features you want.
  • Click "Start Build," and the program will compile the image automatically. I selected Nero format, since that's the CD burner I use, and after the image was done, the program launched Nero for me, and all I had to do was insert a blank disc. I tested it in my Dreamcast, and it worked perfectly.

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Probably because I'm Dreamcastarded. I've been reading about it since it was mentioned to me earlier in the thread and I just cannot wrap my head around it. I've modded close to 20 Wiis, 5 XBOX's, repaired countless laptops and PC's, but I cannot figure out any of this DC emu disc stuff to save my life.

 

Haha, I doubt you're "Dreamcastarded" :) I just tried out SBI and it was just as easy as I remembered it. I'll do a step by step and hope that'll be helpful.

 

1 - Download Selfboot Inducer v4 from here

2 - Get the NesterDC SBI from here

3 - Unpack Selfboot Inducer to a folder of your choice (I'll call it C:\SBInducer below)

4 - Place the NesterDC_6.0_NTSC.sbi in the C:\SBInducer\SBI folder

5 - Run sbinducr.exe

6 - Click NesterDC on the right side

7 - Click the barcode button

8 - Place your roms in the C:\SBInducer\Inducer\NES folder

9 - Go back to Selfboot Inducer

10 - Click the Discjuggler logo (green swirlythingy)

11 - Write a label for the CD for example NesterDC

12 - Click the Generate button

13 - Input a name for the image and choose where to put it (Nesterdc.cdi)

14 - Click the savebutton

15 - Use Discjuggler to burn the image

 

That should work fine, it did the last time I tried but since I don't have any of my DC's out right now I'm not able to try to burn a disc. Also I'm sorry If my english makes it hard to understand, it's not my first language :)

Edited by Trooper
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Okay, I just tried the NesterDC SE CD Builder that I linked to earlier, and I'm not sure what you guys are talking about ... that utility is brain-dead easy to use. It took me about five minutes to figure it out. Here's how I did it:

 

  • Download the archive and unzip it to a folder
  • Open the folder and launch the "NesterDCSEBuilderWx.exe" application (you'll find it along with some other files that are used by the program to build the CD image, but you can ignore these)
  • The program window will look something like this:
    post-3819-126902921437_thumb.png
  • First, collect the NES ROMs that you want to include on the disc into a folder and enter the path in the "ROMs Path" field (I just created a temporary folder on my desktop).
  • Then, enter the URL of an active NesterDC master library, which is how the program identifies your ROMs and retrieves screenshots, manuals, and other optional metadata for the "special features" you select in the next step. This option didn't seem to work for me, so I guess the URLs that I have are offline, but it doesn't affect the emulator; it just means that the metadata won't be available.
  • Select the CD image format (Nero or DiscJuggler) and select the extra features you want.
  • Click "Start Build," and the program will compile the image automatically. I selected Nero format, since that's the CD burner I use, and after the image was done, the program launched Nero for me, and all I had to do was insert a blank disc. I tested it in my Dreamcast, and it worked perfectly.

 

Thanks, Jay! You just cleared up all of my problems with the NesterDC SE CD Builder.

Edited by GregadetH
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Probably because I'm Dreamcastarded. I've been reading about it since it was mentioned to me earlier in the thread and I just cannot wrap my head around it. I've modded close to 20 Wiis, 5 XBOX's, repaired countless laptops and PC's, but I cannot figure out any of this DC emu disc stuff to save my life.

 

Haha, I doubt you're "Dreamcastarded" :) I just tried out SBI and it was just as easy as I remembered it. I'll do a step by step and hope that'll be helpful.

 

1 - Download Selfboot Inducer v4 from here

2 - Get the NesterDC SBI from here

3 - Unpack Selfboot Inducer to a folder of your choice (I'll call it C:\SBInducer below)

4 - Place the NesterDC_6.0_NTSC.sbi in the C:\SBInducer\SBI folder

5 - Run sbinducr.exe

6 - Click NesterDC on the right side

7 - Click the barcode button

8 - Place your roms in the C:\SBInducer\Inducer\NES folder

9 - Go back to Selfboot Inducer

10 - Click the Discjuggler logo (green swirlythingy)

11 - Write a label for the CD for example NesterDC

12 - Click the Generate button

13 - Input a name for the image and choose where to put it (Nesterdc.cdi)

14 - Click the savebutton

15 - Use Discjuggler to burn the image

 

That should work fine, it did the last time I tried but since I don't have any of my DC's out right now I'm not able to try to burn a disc. Also I'm sorry If my english makes it hard to understand, it's not my first language :)

 

 

Dude, you're english is awesome. It's my native tongue and I butcher it on a daily basis. :lol: This makes much more sense to me now, seeing all the steps one by one. If I were to build a stella disc, then I just replace all the nester stuff mentioned with stella files. right?

 

Good lord both of these methods are so simple I want to kick my own ass for not being able to figure them out. Thanks for having patience with me!

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I haven't had any luck retrieving metadata files directly from the master library sites I've tried, even ones that still seem to be active (like this one), but I've found a workaround. The first time you run the CD Builder program, it creates a directory called "local_library" which contains subdirectories for the scans, screenshots, etc. If you populate these manually with files downloaded from the master library, the program is able to find them. I just went into the site linked above and downloaded the ZIP files containing the complete sets of files in each category and extracted them into their proper folders. I'm sure this isn't how it's supposed to be done, but it seems to work.

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Thanks, I'll give that a shot.

I'm finding that the artwork collection is incomplete for certain games, but it's a great collection that makes the user interface a real pleasure to use.

 

In case anyone hasn't seen it, the emulator uses the iTunes "album cover" model of browsing through the games, using the box covers, title screens, cartridge scans, or in-game screenshots. You can select through the different media by pressing "Up" and "Down" on the D-pad. Some games are missing some types of artwork, and show up only as "gaps" on the list, but it's still very usable and looks really nice on the Dreamcast. The emulation is also considerably improved over older versions of NesterDC.

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Thanks, I'll give that a shot.

I'm finding that the artwork collection is incomplete for certain games, but it's a great collection that makes the user interface a real pleasure to use.

 

In case anyone hasn't seen it, the emulator uses the iTunes "album cover" model of browsing through the games, using the box covers, title screens, cartridge scans, or in-game screenshots. You can select through the different media by pressing "Up" and "Down" on the D-pad. Some games are missing some types of artwork, and show up only as "gaps" on the list, but it's still very usable and looks really nice on the Dreamcast. The emulation is also considerably improved over older versions of NesterDC.

 

I was pretty impressed by that feature once I managed to get a pre-made disc image to burn last night. Turns out I had to unrar the file about 3 times before the image would extract. Too bad the emu was full of hentai and adult games. I'll be using both methods described above tomorrow once I grab some new discs. Have to pick up my son in near the Mall of Ga tomorrow...maybe the Staples there still has there $5 12 packs.

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If I were to build a stella disc, then I just replace all the nester stuff mentioned with stella files. right?

 

I haven't tried the Stella SBI so I don't remember where the roms should be and if there's anything else you need to do. I'll look into it and get back to you. Also I forgot one step above so let's call it step:

 

5.5 - Choose Single or Multi menu in the lower left corner of the Selfboot Inducer window. Use single menu until you're sure you know how to get that working and then you kan make multimenus with several emulators on one disk.

 

:)

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Well I tried burning a disc and it seemed to work but when I tried it out there were no games when I browse the game library. I have 50 roms (of games I actually do own) and I double checked that it linked to the roms folder, the build programs said everything was "ok" when it created the ISO, I chose discjuggler which seems to work great and it burned the disc just fine. It loads the title screen, etc but no games show up.

 

The roms all end in .7z

Does that matter to the program?

 

Where might I be going wrong?

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Well I tried burning a disc and it seemed to work but when I tried it out there were no games when I browse the game library. I have 50 roms (of games I actually do own) and I double checked that it linked to the roms folder, the build programs said everything was "ok" when it created the ISO, I chose discjuggler which seems to work great and it burned the disc just fine. It loads the title screen, etc but no games show up.

 

The roms all end in .7z

Does that matter to the program?

 

Where might I be going wrong?

If the ROMs end in .7z, they are compressed, and you'll have to decompress them first (using 7Zip or WinRAR) so the CD Builder can attempt to identify them. As it compiles the list of ROMs, the program uses a database of checksums to identify them, and any ROM whose checksum is not in the database won't show up in the emulator menu, even if the ROM actually works. When I made my disc, I had to replace three or four of my own ROMs for this very reason. If you're able to use your compressed ROMs in another emulator as they are, it's because the emulator is decompressing them for you on the fly, but NesterDC doesn't support this.

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