NEWBIE INC.

[DCEMUMAN]

well ppl...lets be frank here...IM AN IDIOT...alright heres the scoop. I bought my dreamcast about 4-5 hours ago on the thanksgiving sale at best buy for $50 bucks. I was pleased with the dreamcast so far but i found out from a friend that you can:
a)watch movies
b)play BURNT games without paying for it(which in my opinion is
soooo sweet
c)play emulated games(nes,snes,neo geo, n64,etc.)

now the biggest problem is that i have no freakin' clue how to do ne of the three mentioned above. Now i know you are probably thinking at least one of four things while reading this.
a)how did he get his DC for $50
b)Oh great, thats exactly what i wanted to know too!
c)this kid is clueless and i guess ill help him out
d)may your soul wander for eternity...

please give me a step by step description on how to burn games(either regular or EMU), where i can find these games, how to burn the movies so that i can watch movies that i downloaded. I have nero 5.5, GypPlay_LikSangEdition, winrar, winzip, and, the VideoCodecs. what else do i need and what do i do with them to make my DC the SWEETEST system of them all...

[Dr Wily]

ok, first: please don't ask about illegal copies of games and how to burn them here. Its not allowed, and this is the wrong site for you if thats what you're interested in.

HOWEVER: I will be more than happy to let you know how to play SNES, NES, Master System, Arcade and NEO GEO games along with others, and how to watch VCD movies.

GypPlay is a multi format video player; if you have any VCDs you can use the .DAT (ie the actual films) really easily with GypPlay; just follow the instructions provided with it, and use the Utopia boot disk (available in the needed tools section) to do this.

A better option is to get yourself a self booting kit; theres plenty available that don't require you to have any knowledge of DOS to use; go to http://www.consolevision.com to get one; I personally recommend Discostu55555's one, but I don't think it works with GypPlay - use Burner0's for this. Folow the instructions provided with it and you'll end up with a self booting movie player - Please note you *will* have to have a copy of GypPlay on *every* CD with movies you want to watch, and DivX is *not* supported.

Now for the games;
The following is a list of current emulators, all of which you can download from this site, and a brief description of each. You can again use the self boot kit you downloaded to make each of these Emulators on one disk with all of your games on it as well; check some of the other posts in this forum for more detailed instruction.

DreamSNES - plays SNES games at about 70% speed - with sound turned off in the options menu this will be about 90%

SMEG - plays MasterSystem games perfectly. Damn fine Emu.

UNester / Nester / FRNES - all play NES games; I believe FRNES is the fastest and most compatible of them all.

MAMEDC - plays some old arcade games, and is quite slow on the whole, but still very nice. It will also play some smaller NEO GEO games. There are compatibility lists available if you want to know what it can play. Your best bet for burning this is to use the self boot kit provided with the plain files 'packs' releases from their homepage.

QuakeDC - a port of Quake 1. Very nice - only 'problem' is no multiplayer.

DoomDC - a port of Doom. Only problem, you can't change weapons without a keyboard, but I believe this is fixed for the next release so you may want to wait for that.

DreamSPEC - Spectrum Emulator - plays spectrum games and comes with about 200 included; you *will* need a seperate VMU to play it, as it will mess with / delete any files on your VMU if its plugged in when you load it. Your best bet is to just get the NERO image for this one.

NeoPocottDC - NEO GEO pocket EMulator. Not great compatibility, but nice if you're a fan of the NEO GEO Pocket.

Boob!Boy - Gameboy emu - no GBC / GBA support, and no saving- I think theres also some probs with sound, but if you're *desperate* to play Tetris...

DreamMSX - MSX emulator. Probably best known for its support of the original Metal Gear. AFAIK this emulator has *perfect* emulation.

Theres probably others that slipped my mind, but those should *easily* do you for the time being...

[DCEMUMAN]

wow...you sure do know your stuff...You probably do this often dont you? Well thanks for the help becuase that sure cleared up many things especially the boot disk.

[Dr Wily]

Hey, us DC owners are always glad when someone 'bucks the trend' and gets themselves probably the finest console on the market *right now*; great graphics, out of the box internet support, unbeatable price point, plenty of great games...

[MrSiggler]

.. not to mention very open for homebrew stuff

[DCEMUMAN]

ok now i have a new problem folks. I downloaded all the stuff i need to make a boot disk but the only problem is that it wont boot on the dreamcast. Yes it has the three text files when i load the cd in the computer but the only thing is that it doesnt have a dummy file. Could that be it? and if so where can i get one cuz i looked everywhere for one and i couldnt find it.

thx~

[Spaz-o-matic]

You don't have to dummy your Utopia Boot CD.

I fear the worst for you; The Sega Dreamcast does not use CD-ROMs for games. They use GD-ROMs, which is the Dreamcast's own format. A normal computer cannot read a GD-ROM's contents, except for what Sega wants you to see (pop a disc in and sometimes there is Desktop Wallpapers or Screensavers). A while back people figured out how to connect thier Dreamcast to thier computer and the Dreamcast would send the entire game through a cord to the computer. Then they would burn it on a disc and make a CD Image of it which they would upload to the internet. This was where major piracy for the Dreamcast started. The on good thing about it though, was that the people who don't pirate ( i.e. http://www.dcemulation.org, http://www.consolevision.com, http://www.boob.co.uk ) learned nough to start making different apps for the DC. Now Sega had made the DC able to read CD-ROMs so companies like Interact could make unofficial programs like GameShark, or Blaze's XPloderDC. These are unliscensed and mean they can't put it on a GD-ROM. The newer versions of Dreamcast have taken off CD-ROM support, which means no more playing pirated games on the DC! Unfortunately, it also means you can no longer play homebrew apps, emulators, and movies.

If the Utopia boot disc did not work for you, even though you used a disc image, you may have the newer model Dreamcast.

No burnt games. No emulators. No movies.

Don't feel bad that you bought a DC for nothing - It has some GREAT games that are worth the Best Buy $5 anyday.

[DCEMUMAN]

:cry: well...then its off to best buy i go to return my dreamcast and purchase an old one from ebay :D YES! at least i now know how to make that blasted boot disk so if i ever do get my hands on an old dreamcast ill be ready...

[DCEMUMAN]

how can you tell whether it is an old dreamcast or a new one? what is the model number that has the ability to watch movies and stuff?

thx~

[Spaz-o-matic]

Hmm... I don't know the serial number, sorry. I haven't used eBay before, but is there a way to ask when the DC was manufactured (the date is on the bottum)? Anything before 10/2000 should work fine. Also, the Japanese Hello Kitty and Sakura Wars editions do not work, but I don't think you're about to get any of those.

[discostu55555]

I personally recommend Discostu55555's one, but I don't think it works with GypPlay

i know im coming into this conversation late, but just to correct, dssbs does work with gypplay 100% (thats how i made my own copies)...what would make you think it didnt, the fact that its wince? if so, dssbs auto-detects that and hacks the bins for you (which is probably one of dssbs's coolest features), so dont worry, it will work... basically anything plain files will work...some things however (dcgen) are released without ip.bin's and the boot.bin isnt scrammbled, so those wont work (without scrammbling and adding an ip.bin) but whether its wince or not makes no differance, it will work

[Dr Wily]

[quote=discostu55555]what would make you think it didnt, the fact that its wince? [/quote]

Yup. I remembered it didn't work with that multi menu thing Chaoticsonic used to distro, which I know was just your kit and DCGrendals demo menu 'merged' but forgot that was because of the need for a 'WinCE' folder, nothing to do with the kit... I burnt a self boot GypPlay yesterday with your kit *just to check* and it does indeed work, so I was going to edit my reply, but you got here first