NEWBIE question

[MAnaGIRL77]

I have a question - I'm very new to this, so don't laugh =)

I've gotten my SNES-X emulator running on the GP32-okay

I was able to run roms with .smc files (only) eg: joe and mac, fzero etc.

I am dying to play secret of mana and chrono trigger- they have 2 files, .smc and srm files attached.

What directories to I paste those files to in order to play those games??

I've been pasting the other games (.smc) to the GPMM directory, and they've all worked.

I know I'm missing something so obvious! If anyone out there can help, I'd really appreciate it =)

Thanks :blink:

 

[T°y°T]

Well, in fact you just have to put all this stuff in GPMM directory, the .smc and .srm files must have exactly the same name, when you have to load you have to choose .smc files and none other type, and for finish roms must be under 4 Mo limit (Chrono trigger is in this case...not SoM, so it just can be a bad luck for this rom to not run on this emulator... try the other one ! )...
Hope i was helpfull,
T°y°T

 

[Tobriand]

I've had a couple of SoM roms that were under the 4 meg limit. At 4 megs, but they still loaded ... But the wouldn't run playably - waaaaaay too slow

 

[GurtyGurt]

Longish post following...

Ok, I still haven't got a GP32, but I think I should add what I know. ROMs if dumped correctly should be roughly a number which is to the power of 2 or something. What I mean is it gradually increases in the pattern 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192...and so on. A ROM, if dumped correctly, should always follow this pattern, but not exactly. I think the reason why it's always a bit off is because of the ROM header information. In any case, if the dump is screwed up, it'll either be an odd size or it'll be the next increment up (in the case of SoM, the difference is 2 megs). Have a look at your games and you'll see this. 4 megs is a lot for a SNES game, so most should run fine if that's true.

Also keep in mind bigger games mean the game is probably more complex, so the emulator might have problems with it anyway (ok, this wouldn't be true with say, Donkey Kong Country). That port of snes9x should run virtually everything in theory. Also, Chrono Trigger, as I remember, was one of the more troublesome games to get emulated back in the golden days of emulation. Dunno why, but I seem to remember a lot of people getting stuck in the stone age bit due to a bug...snes9x/96/97 never had this bug I don't think.

One other problem I can think of: Secret of Mana uses the SNES's hi resolution mode in some of the menus. The resolution is bigger than that of the GP32 - can it handle this at all?

One final suggestion: Get GoodSNES, the rom renaming tool, and run it through your collection. See if the games that don't work come up as being bad dumps (I think they're marked with ). Bad may not mean it doesn't work at all - it may mean it sticks at one point, it may mean the emulator ignores the bad checksums or something...it could mean many things. It could just mean the graphics or sound are messed up! If it comes up with an [!], it's definitely not the ROM.

Sorry for the drivel

 

[MAnaGIRL77]

Thanks for your help! I tried pasting the .srm file to the GPMM directory, and it worked, however, when I pated the .smc file to the GPMM directory, it would load 1/3 of the way, and then stop, and it would say error.

I tried this multiple times! The file names were the same, and less than 8 characters (I followed the rules), so could this mean my GP32 just cannot handle the ROM?

Then again! I've heard of other people being able to test out chrono trigger, and other games that have both files.

Should I create a separate directory for the secret of mana files? Or will this not make any difference?

Again, Thanks for your help :blink:

 

[MAnaGIRL77]

In replay to Gurty Gurt - thanks for your insight into this as well =)

Actually, I am using ALL the roms that I have on the ZSNES, and they work great, including Secret of Mana and Chrono trigger, and I've had no problems with them on the ZSNES.

Also, do you think it makes a difference if I placed the SNES9xgp under the same directory as the games? The other games seem to work, but Secret of mana doesn't.

Do you think i should make a separate directory for Secret of mana? And if so, do I just create a new folder, and attempt to download it there?

Or maybe I should delete my other games, and see if secret of mana, alone works.

I have a 128mb card, so I know space shouldn't be an issue, as I only have about 4-5 games loaded so far.

Thanks again!

 

[MAnaGIRL77]

Okay, NOW I have a bigger problem :blink:

I tried renaming both files to play secret of mana, and other games alike.

I went to download secret of mana, and it still wouldn't work.

I even deleted all of the other games I had downloaded, and that didn't work.

Then when I tried to reload the games I had deleted, they wont reload!

I thought then, I'd start from scratch, and delete everything and start over using the PC link, and NOTHING will download!

Question: Where do I load the GP_launc.zpk file AND the SNES9XGP file? Which do I load first, and into what directory?

Before, I had pasted GP_launc.zpk onto the GPMM directory, and pasted SNES9XGP on top of that, and it worked.

And if i did this correctly the first time, why is everything i deleted not wanting to load anymore??

Please help!

Thanks, Jen

 

[MAnaGIRL77]

OKAY!!! I FINALLY got secret of mana to work, and fixed my problem...



u wanna know what it was???? You are not gonna' believe this..

I was clicking too fast when trying to copy the files over.. when i clicked copy once or twice nice and slow, it worked! I apparently wasn't giving it enough time to load, before I went to paste it on the GPMM directory...

Can you believe that???

I never thought it was that... but hey.... I'm playing secret of mana, which yes... is VERY slow, but it's just nice to see it on the small screen, since I'm such a huge fun of the series..

Is there going to be another edition of an SNES emulator that runs like the ZSNES?? I heard rumors that some people are working on it- that would be great if someone could release a nice version of the ZSNES for the GP32!

Thanks for your help =)
I'm obviously new to this stuff... :blink:

 

[MAnaGIRL77]

OKAY- scratch that last one again =) i keep jumping the gun to write posts, when I should make sure other roms work.

Okay- got secret of mana files to download and the game to work.

Now I can't download my other games.

Is it true that if you have deleted a file before, that it won't download for you again?? For example, I downloaded joe and mac .smc file, and it worked fine. Then i deleted it in order to start over again.

NOw it won't work at all. I've tried downloading other files, and it starts to transfer it, and in the middle, usually the SAME spot, it stops loading.

What am I doing wrong here?

:blink: Jen

 

[Tobriand]

I've got the same problem - no, you CAN re-copy the rom, but for some reason you may find you;re limited to filed below or equal to 256 kb. My solution was to stop using that computer to transfer things, and move to my other one - if you've got 2 computers, I suggest you do the same. Otherwise, try re-installing PC-Link or, if necessary (shouldn't be, but hey) Windows.

 

[MAnaGIRL77]

THANK YOU! It makes sense, because it STOPPED loading at 256kb.

Does it only do that after you load one rom?? And WHY are you limited to only downloading up to 256 k on this computer?? Does that mean I have to free up some space or something, or is there anything I need to do to fix that??

That was a big help, because I thought it was something to do with the GP32 system itself.

Thanks again! Jen

 

[Tobriand]

Its not a problem with the GP32, of that I'm certain, coz it transfers fine on my other PC. It might be a difference between Win 98 and Win 2000, perhaps (different OSes on each machine), or possibly USB voltage... Could just be something that goes wrong randomly and fixes something in the registry that I have no idea where is.

If you don't have another PC, you might want to try getting hold of a copy of linux (Mandrake is nice and easy for a beginner) and using the version of GPlink for that. Or just try re-installing windows. Its a problem I have yet to solve - it STILL doesn't ork on one of my machines after about 2 months, but the other one has yet to run into even anything remotely similar...

The only thing I can guess it might be is that somehow PC-Link gets into its programming that the GP32 needs a break to write to the SMC at 256 kb instead of 3mb (at 3mb there should be a 30 second break while th console writes to the SMC). And if it stops sending at 256 kb instead of 3mb, then the GP32 assumes the end of the file has been reached or something...

Its a guess, but its the best I';ve been able to come up with...

Oh, try uninstalling and re-installing PC-Link, I doubt it'll help (I think I tried that on mine, at least, with no effect), but it might do, and that way is MUCh easier than re-installing windows or some similarly drastic solution.

If you've got a laptop with USB, you could try usin that, or another computer... either one would do the trick (unless they ran into the bug as well...)

Also, just possibly, assuming you're using win 98, try using GP-Link 0.9 instead of 1.2; its just possible that 1.2, whilst being supposed to be for both 98 and 2000 is better suited to the latter, and that an OS specific earlier version would actually work better.

That's about as much help as I can give, unfortunately... if you find a less than drastic way of getting it to work, please tell me; I'd like to be able to transfer things straight to GP32, not bother coppying to a CD, running up 2 flights of stairs, and doing it there...

 

[GurtyGurt]

One fairly obvious suggestion for speeding games up: turn the sound off. In theory, I reckon a GP32 should be able to handle most games without sound at full speed. That's on a fully optimized emulator, though. Don't expect that.

I'm basing the above theory on the GP32 being more or less like Pentium of some sort - I have a P166MMX laptop w/8mb which chokes to death on win98, which I HAVE to use for networking (stupid drivers!), which I expect should run things -roughly- as good as a GP32 (keeping in mind the laptop can do floating point calcs, is a MMX, and is a laptop so it generally runs slower than its desktop counterpart would). And, of course, GP32's are RISC. Which is good. On the laptop, zsnes runs great without sound. 8-bit emulation is no problem at all, obviously. The lower you go in technology the better it runs. Genesis/MD stuff runs. I really don't expect Sega/Mega CD stuff would.

I should get my GP32 tomorrow, so I'd like to look into this 256kb thing...if it's only doing it on files already deleted, that suggests to me that it's storing the fact it was previously put on the GP32. What happens if you put the same file in another directory? I dunno why all that info would be stored in the registry...but in any case, this feature sounds like software. Similar to what I said the other day, files are usually sent in packets of the same multiples of 2. 256kb would be one of those multiples. So what it says to me is the program sends one packet of 256kb to the GP32, it receives it, but for some reason, the PC-Link software does not recognise or receive verification of this. I'm not a programmer, so I really dunno...I just fiddle around with programs to see how they work.

One workaround I can think of without much hassle: rename the file or if possible, use another directory! Renaming it could be as simple as putting an underscore or dash in somewhere, like at the end of the name. Don't forget to rename the SRM files too!

 

[MAnaGIRL77]

Well guys, I tried out my laptop to see if it would work- and installed the driver for win98, everything set- and the roms transfer PERFECTLY!!

THANK you for that piece of advice! And I transferred games I had previously deleted on the other program , PERFECT!!

Haven't run into any bumps in the road yet, but I will let you know.

Another ridiculous thing I did on the 1st computer was I installed the driver for win2000 assuming it was the driver for winmillenium, when in fact someone told me to install the driver for win98 on winmillenium because windows millenium is based on win98!

Like I said, IM VERY new to all of this, and learning quite a bit!

ONE LAST IMPORTANT QUESTION- ANYONE KNOW IF SOMEONE IS DEVELOPING A FASTER SNES9X EMULATOR OR ZSNES EMULATOR FOR THE GP32?

PLEASE LET ME KNOW =)

IT WOULD BE PERFECT IF THEY COULD RELEASE A FULL SPEED WITH SOUND EMULATOR =)

JEN :blink: