MiSTer FPGA Forum

Hi all, Krikzz the man behind everdrives was working on his own way to make normal mega drive cart games enjoy red book hi-fi quality audio. Instead of basing his work on proprietary APIs like md+, he developed a nice tiny driver which makes interfacing with the Sega CD hardware easier and all using official bios calls. This means that these hacks could run on official unmodified hardware and on mister too. If you download the latest os for mega everdrive pro you will find inside ips patches that you can apply to unmodified .md roms and then put the modified rom, named cart.rom, inside a folder along with cue/bins/wav and load it thru megacd core. I personally tested with streets of rage 2 and it is working fine. Thanks to krikzz and all the mister developers that made this possible! I also hope that thanks to this more of these hacks will be done.

Golden Axe is freezing regardless if using v1.0 or v1.1 and even with a corrected cue file. I've opened a ticket on this. So far the other games seem to be working. It's possible that MiSTer code may be tied closely to Pier Solar so some tweaks could be necessary to get all MSU-MD games working.

EDIT: Found the problem with Golden Axe MSU-MD on MiSTer. Discussed with the original author Relikk. This game's cue file requires a dummy track 10 entry in order to work properly in emulators and MiSTer. Here is a link to a working cue https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vOV6jW ... sp=sharing

I also noticed that sometimes streets of rage 2 freeze on black screen until reset.

Interesting. Perhaps there are other factors involved. I didn't have any more problems with Golden Axe using the new cue sheet but haven't tested SoR much

That's nice, thanks for the news

Mr BIG

In case you didn't know, the audio packs for the games can be downloaded from here: https://www.zeldix.net/f66-md-hacks-database

Krikzz also released a mega cd test bios/cart to see how actually accurate the hardware is based on his findings. Mister has some errors about registers and then hangs on cdc init. Who knows if sorge is aware of this and if can help the work of the core's developers

Lisko wrote: ↑Sat Jul 11, 2020 2:10 pm Krikzz also released a mega cd test bios/cart to see how actually accurate the hardware is based on his findings. Mister has some errors about registers and then hangs on cdc init. Who knows if sorge is aware of this and if can help the work of the core's developers

I actually think you should open an issue on github for this!

I wish I knew how the conversion/patching for these worked, there's an MD+ version of Rock n Roll Racing with real music but doesn't seem to be on anyone's radar.

It would be great if MiSTer supported fade & loop for MD+ / MSU tracks like Mega SD and MED Pro.

mario64 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 17, 2020 2:02 am It would be great if MiSTer supported fade & loop for MD+ / MSU tracks like Mega SD and MED Pro.

Yeah, it's also strange because msu-md driver should run fine on original hardware. Maybe the mister core has some bugs preventing fade and loop from working? I think and hope that test bios can be helpful for devs in making a hardware accurate mega cd.

Submitted a formal enhancement request for this. https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/MegaCD_MiSTer/issues/52

So do MD+ games not work at the moment? I tried a few and they just bring me to the SegaCD audio player.

hiddenbyleaves wrote: ↑Sat Nov 21, 2020 6:00 pm So do MD+ games not work at the moment? I tried a few and they just bring me to the SegaCD audio player.

Did you read the readme? It says that you need to place the cartridge dump named cart.rom into the game's folder.

Hello there, thanks for replying

Where do I find this readme?

So in the Moonwalker folder I have a .md file and a .cue file and the music files. So I rename the .md file to cart.rom?

Ok I named the Moonwalker.md file to cart.rom and now it loads the game but there are only sound effects and no music

Can anyone answer hiddenbyleaves question as i have the same issue.

EthanHunt007 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 03, 2020 8:17 am Can anyone answer hiddenbyleaves question as i have the same issue.

Hi there,

I was unable to get games to work by trying it myself. A person on reddit gave me a link to a pack of Msu-1 files that he said were for Mister and they all work

I can't see what the difference is when I look at the files inside the folders and I don't think the fading in and out of the music is happening with these files but they definitely work.

I'm not very internet savvy in terms of uploading files and stuff but maybe I could put them on google drive for you to grab and try out if you like?

Hi hiddenbyleaves,

That would be great. Thanks

EthanHunt007 wrote: ↑Fri Dec 04, 2020 1:41 pm Hi hiddenbyleaves,

That would be great. Thanks

I tried to send you a private message. Did you get it?

hiddenleaves, please PM me and help me get the correct MSU-1 files if you can.

daverhodus wrote: ↑Mon Dec 14, 2020 11:59 am hiddenleaves, please PM me and help me get the correct MSU-1 files if you can.

Sent

Hiddenleaves... would you mind sending me a link to the files too please. I’m struggling to get the patches to work on MiSTer too.

Many thanks

So I have spent some time on these games and managed to get them successfully running - except for one. Art of Fighting...

It complains that the roms needs to run on an NTSC Genesis... but the region automatically gets set to JP regardless of the bios I use either at the root (boot.rom) or the cd_bios.rom that I place in the folder to override the default bios when I load the MSU-MD cart.rom.

I've checked the rom and ensured it is the correct CRC value before I patched. Is anybody else seeing this behavior? If so... have you had any luck resolving?

ghamson wrote: ↑Thu Jan 07, 2021 7:38 pm So I have spent some time on these games and managed to get them successfully running - except for one. Art of Fighting...

It complains that the roms needs to run on an NTSC Genesis... but the region automatically gets set to JP regardless of the bios I use either at the root (boot.rom) or the cd_bios.rom that I place in the folder to override the default bios when I load the MSU-MD cart.rom.

I've checked the rom and ensured it is the correct CRC value before I patched. Is anybody else seeing this behavior? If so... have you had any luck resolving?

the fix has been pushed to the core not sure if its been released yet though
if you want a quick fix and have an io board load game so you get the error and then goto osd and change it to US then press the button labled user on the io it will reset without ejecting disk and reload and work fine

if no io you could hex edit the cart.rom to have EJU instead of JUE and it will work too
or wait for the fixed release

You my friend are a genius - I updated the header and it totally worked.

Thank you so much for the quick response... I thought I was going crazy

KnC wrote: ↑Thu Jan 07, 2021 8:49 pm

ghamson wrote: ↑Thu Jan 07, 2021 7:38 pm So I have spent some time on these games and managed to get them successfully running - except for one. Art of Fighting...

It complains that the roms needs to run on an NTSC Genesis... but the region automatically gets set to JP regardless of the bios I use either at the root (boot.rom) or the cd_bios.rom that I place in the folder to override the default bios when I load the MSU-MD cart.rom.

I've checked the rom and ensured it is the correct CRC value before I patched. Is anybody else seeing this behavior? If so... have you had any luck resolving?

the fix has been pushed to the core not sure if its been released yet though
if you want a quick fix and have an io board load game so you get the error and then goto osd and change it to US then press the button labled user on the io it will reset without ejecting disk and reload and work fine

if no io you could hex edit the cart.rom to have EJU instead of JUE and it will work too
or wait for the fixed release

Interesting, this shouldn't be a problem as Art of Fighting on Sega Genesis USA has "U" in the header already, and the European version has "E". Is the region handling in MegaCD not setup according to this --> https://plutiedev.com/rom-header (check bottom for updated region handling in header).

we are talking md msu patches here and the header is patched to be region free so is changed to JUE
and mister is choosing the first region in the header on segacd
as i say though the fix is already in the github waiting for a release
https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/MegaCD_ ... ea3a270368

Has anybody tried the relatively new MD+ MSU version of Ghouls & Ghosts on MiSTer yet? Before I go reporting issues to the author of the patch I guess I want to make sure I'm not alone in seeing issues. The coder of the patch admits that it wasn't tested on MiSTer.
I'm seeing constant freezing and locking. It's happened in various different places but as of yet I've not been able to complete the first stage because of it. The rom has been patched and renamed to cart.rom. The screen freezes and the game locks, music still plays & the MiSTer OSD is still functional.

i have had a quick go used the cheat version to play level 1
and it seems ok but you also need to remember that msu is not officially supported by mister so they maybe problems with some games
i used the music by relikk if that makes any difference