custom firmware for sega flashback 2018

Excalibur007 · Mar 14, 2019

DoctorEvil8 said:
I tried Picodrive, but couldn't get my Sega CD games to work. That said, I've been using CHD and I'm not sure if Picodrive can use that format. Either that, or I need to provide the bios for Picodrive.

PicoDrive does not currently support CHD. With the latest update using GenesisPlusGX, the SegaCD performance is good enough that PicoDrive is much less appealing (previously only appealing for better SegaCD and 32X, but now only for 32X).

***The trade offs with PicoDrive are:
No GameGear support
No CHD support
No Master System FM sound support
Not sure about SG-1000 (I should try it with PicoDrive)
————
You get 32X support

***Trade off with GenesisPlusGX:
No 32X support
————
You get GameGear suppport
You get CHD support
You get Master System FM sound suppport
You get SG-1000 support

And besides that, PicoDrive actually performed worse than the GenesisPlusGX core on this system when I tested.

@rrifonas Do you know what name is being given to the ROMs that are dumped from carts? If the name displayed in the Cart screen is an indicator, it may be a name from the header. If that is the case, games with spaces in their names in the ROM header (or no name) will not play. I’ve seen several cartridge games not play on the 2018 model that played on the 2017. The 2017 did not have the limitation of no spaces in the filenames. This seems to be a restriction inadvertently introduced when AtGames designed this to be able to use an SD card and play ROMs.
I’m wondering if the incompatibility with certain games could be fixed by either changing the way the unit names the ROMs dumped from carts, or by fixing the dashboard to properly load files with spaces in the names.
I ask this because I thought you might know or be able to give some insight. I want to file a bug report or feature request with AtGames and wanted to get any possible insight before I do.

rrifonas · Mar 14, 2019

I don't think disc swap will work as the emulator does not support playlist.

CHD only works with Genesis Plus GX. You need to convert it to cue/bin if you want to use Picodrive.

DoctorEvil8 · Mar 14, 2019

@Excalibur007 Awesome detailed post! Thank you so much.

I am debating if I need/want 32x or not at this point. I am very happy with the performance of the Genesis Plus GX. I guess it all depends if I have enough storage space for the CD games I want to use if BIN is too much. I remember reading the SD has a limit of 16gb. Is that still a limit with the custom firmware?

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

rrifonas said:
I don't think disc swap will work as the emulator does not support playlist.

CHD only works with Genesis Plus GX. You need to convert it to cue/bin if you want to use Picodrive.

@rrifonas I am using the all-games.ini file, using subfolders and save states. It's a trick I learned with the C64 mini.

Create a subfolder inside the rom folder for disc 1. i.e. /rom/gzt1 Save the disc 1 of the game GroundZeroTexas.CHD and point to this inside all-games.ini.

Next, create another subfolder for disc 2. i.e. /rom/gzt2 Save the disc 2 of the game with the same name as disc 1. GroundZeroTexas.CHD and point to this in all-games.ini. This gives two icons, one for disc 1, one for disc 2.

Play disc 1 of game. When prompted for disc change, create a save state. Exit the game. Start disc 2, and resume the save state. Since the filenames themselves are identical, the save state is available for disc 2.

The save state from disc 1 is accessible for disc 2. I tested this already. I haven't played a game through to a real disc change yet. In theory it should work.

rrifonas · Mar 14, 2019

Excalibur007 said:
@rrifonas Do you know what name is being given to the ROMs that are dumped from carts? If the name displayed in the Cart screen is an indicator, it may be a name from the header. If that is the case, games with spaces in their names in the ROM header (or no name) will not play. I’ve seen several cartridge games not play on the 2018 model that played on the 2017. The 2017 did not have the limitation of no spaces in the filenames. This seems to be a restriction inadvertently introduced when AtGames designed this to be able to use an SD card and play ROMs.
I’m wondering if the incompatibility with certain games could be fixed by either changing the way the unit names the ROMs dumped from carts, or by fixing the dashboard to properly load files with spaces in the names.
I ask this because I thought you might know or be able to give some insight. I want to file a bug report or feature request with AtGames and wanted to get any possible insight before I do.

The carts are always named card.bin and they are stored in /tmp, so the problem running the games is not related with their names.

Excalibur007 · Mar 15, 2019

DoctorEvil8 said:
@Excalibur007 Awesome detailed post! Thank you so much.

I am debating if I need/want 32x or not at this point. I am very happy with the performance of the Genesis Plus GX. I guess it all depends if I have enough storage space for the CD games I want to use if BIN is too much. I remember reading the SD has a limit of 16gb. Is that still a limit with the custom firmware?

I haven't tried anything larger than 16GB, but this shouldn't be affected by the custom firmware. If this helps you decide, I currently have on my 16GB SD card:
59 SegaCD games in CHD format
414 Genesis games in bin format
76 Master System games
10 GameGear games
68 SG-1000 games
32 32X games in a separate folder even though they're not playable (just sitting there from when I tried PicoDrive)
with 172MB of free space remaining

That's really all the Sega games I'll ever want/need to play. I still have plenty of space for more games, and if I want to add another SegaCD game, I can either remove those excess 32X roms or replace a SegaCD game that I never play. However, if I use PicoDrive, I give up CHD (so a lot of those SegaCD games have to go). I also give up SMS FM sound, GameGear, and possibly SG-1000. All for poorer performance (in my experience), but added (less than full-speed) 32X support. For me, it's no contest. Just depends on how important 32X is.

DoctorEvil8 said:
I am using the all-games.ini file, using subfolders and save states. It's a trick I learned with the C64 mini.

Create a subfolder inside the rom folder for disc 1.... create another subfolder for disc 2... Play disc 1 of game. When prompted for disc change, create a save state. Exit the game. Start disc 2, and resume the save state...

Very cool. I hadn't even thought about the multi-disc game issue yet. I haven't added any SegaCD games to my all-games.ini, but I've been tempted to. I guess if I want to do multi-disc games, I now have a reason to add some.

rrifonas said:
The carts are always named card.bin and they are stored in /tmp, so the problem running the games is not related with their names.

Well, that's good to know. But, now I have no idea why some carts would have problems in the 2018 model when the 2017 played them. Any ideas?

rrifonas · Mar 15, 2019

I don't know why some games doesn't work with the FB2018. Except for Sonic 3, all my few other games worked. I see the cartridge slot is not as good as the FB2017, the games doesn't dump on the first attempt, and the dumper only extracts 1 ROM at a time - FB2017 can extract Sonic & Knuckles and Sonic 3 (but it can't merge them).

DoctorEvil8 · Mar 16, 2019

Finally advanced far enough in Ground Zero Texas to get to a disc change prompt. Note: The rewind function is awesome!!!

Swapping discs works! The save state only uses filename of the game, not the location. So using sub folders and using identical filename for each disc allows the save state to resume from either disc. I need the bios, the chd and both pics in each sub folder and point to that sub folder in the all-games.ini.

Mauricelelapin · Mar 20, 2019

Hello,
Thanx a lot for all this great work : You rock & kick ass

Alphons Potters · Mar 21, 2019

I installed the latest Custom GenesisPlusGX firmware on mine MD Flashback.
I tested a lot of games but I have some problems with the some audio delay.

Sonic 3 has when you start it the normal way a sound delay of 0.5 sec. When you make a quick save and load than the sound is more sync (still a small delay)... really weird (tried different versions PAL NTSC and all have this problem).
On overdrive mode it's less noticeable. Alo with some other games like Sonic 1,2, Contra, Turtles and Streets of Rage there is a fraction of delay but much smaller but still this is really a shame…
But when I use the original latest firmware you also have some delay. Really weird.
But now the weird part! When I rewind the game the audio goes back to sync!!

I read that the Picodrive does not have this but than I can't play Game Gear anymore and will get a delay overtime??

Virtua Racing has bad sound effects and on overdrive even worse.

dcuk7 · Mar 23, 2019

The strange audio lag is the only thing that lets this unit down now. As you say, it can be really delayed at times and quitting the game and restarting can bring it back closer to sync but yeah, there is no one solution to fix this issue. Maybe this is the reason SEGA ditched AtGames for the Mega Drive Mini.

DoctorEvil8 · Mar 23, 2019

The audio lag for Sega Genesis games is way worse on the Super Retro-Cade. It's the reason why I started looking into the Flashback.

Alphons Potters · Mar 25, 2019

dcuk7 said:
The strange audio lag is the only thing that lets this unit down now. As you say, it can be really delayed at times and quitting the game and restarting can bring it back closer to sync but yeah, there is no one solution to fix this issue. Maybe this is the reason SEGA ditched AtGames for the Mega Drive Mini.

If they Ditch them Why did they release in Europe in 2019 the Flashback! They still got the liscense otherwise they couldn;t release it...
But the solution for me is to rewind the game (not close the game) and than it's back sync again most of the time. It's still playeble but very unfortunate. I hope a firmware upgrade will fix this someday!

But a lot of clone systems have indeed these audio delay problems!

Almost all games work perfect except for Virtua Racing that I tested!
The sound effects are great on a lot of games like Contra / Turtles / Sonic while on a lot of clone systems they are Garbage!

I also seen video's of the new Expensive Analogue Mega Drive Clone system. Looks really great but they changed the audio. I hear a lot of people like it because it sounds better but actually it does not sound in mine opinion how it should be.
They shouldn't have changed that or put an option in it to change it back to original. As far as I saw you can custom a lot of things but not the sound (could be wrong).

subcon959 · Mar 25, 2019

dcuk7 said:
Maybe this is the reason SEGA ditched AtGames for the Mega Drive Mini.

That sounds way too sensible a reason, we're talking about SEGA afterall!

Alphons Potters · Mar 26, 2019

subcon959 said:
That sounds way too sensible a reason, we're talking about SEGA afterall!

But if you rewind the game a few seconds it's good and the sound of the games are correct with the new model and latest firmware upgrade. It's just to tweak het a bit to make it more sync all the time !
Only Virtua Racing Sounds garbage but all other games I tested where great besides sometimes a bit out of sync (to late).

Alphons Potters · Mar 28, 2019

I just add some Games to the system with dcuk7 software thanks for that.

But is it possible to add the Sonic games to the Sonic list.

Also I see on the Sonic List also one hidden icon you can select and on the Bonus games list also one hidden item (and a tab below) when you put the SD card inside and use dcuk7 software to add games! When you hit that than you get some messed up text message on the screen.
Is there an option to fix this so this that this is not visible or that the Sonic and Bonus Games are not even selectable when there are no games in that folder linked? I know it's not really important but it would be great if this can be fixed for the finishing touch.

Thanks dcuk7 and rrifonas.

dcuk7 · Mar 30, 2019

You can add to the Sonic list yes. Just change the Genre tag to sonic and it will put them in the Sonic section (same for Bonus games, just change the Genre to bonus). Note that for the Sonic section, it does not show the page numbers at the bottom so it looks like you can only have 10 games but you can add more and just use X and Y on the pad to move back and forth between pages.

You can't hide those sections if there are no games in there. I wonder with a bit of hex editing if you could hide/remove those sections completely. Might have a go at that but I'd guess that it would break something by doing so.

Alphons Potters · Mar 31, 2019

dcuk7 said:
You can add to the Sonic list yes. Just change the Genre tag to sonic and it will put them in the Sonic section (same for Bonus games, just change the Genre to bonus). Note that for the Sonic section, it does not show the page numbers at the bottom so it looks like you can only have 10 games but you can add more and just use X and Y on the pad to move back and forth between pages.

You can't hide those sections if there are no games in there. I wonder with a bit of hex editing if you could hide/remove those sections completely. Might have a go at that but I'd guess that it would break something by doing so.

Ok thanks for that I will do that!

Alphons Potters · Mar 31, 2019

Alphons Potters said:
Ok thanks for that I will do that!

dcuk7 said:
You can add to the Sonic list yes. Just change the Genre tag to sonic and it will put them in the Sonic section (same for Bonus games, just change the Genre to bonus). Note that for the Sonic section, it does not show the page numbers at the bottom so it looks like you can only have 10 games but you can add more and just use X and Y on the pad to move back and forth between pages.

You can't hide those sections if there are no games in there. I wonder with a bit of hex editing if you could hide/remove those sections completely. Might have a go at that but I'd guess that it would break something by doing so.

Also with your program you can only put a small description off the game.
It would be great if you can make it bigger. I needed to edit the .ini file manually to put a bigger text.

Also no matter what I do:

Genre=Sonic

or:

Genre=Sega
#Genre=Sonic

They won't get to the Sonic list... only the normal list.

dcuk7 · Mar 31, 2019

I'll fix that in the next version. Somehow I've gone and set the max length of the textbox to 260! That definitely wasn't intended!

The genre tag should be all lowercase. Here is Sonic CD from my .ini file. This shows up in my Sonic section no problem:

Code:

[Sonic CD]
File=/rom/sonic_cd_usa.chd
Platform=Genesis
Sort=Sonic CD
Year=1990
Genre=sonic
Description=Some description here
Dpad=Movement
Start=Start, pause
A=A
B=B
C=C
X=No Function
Y=No Function
Z=No Function

Alphons Potters · Apr 1, 2019

dcuk7 said:
I'll fix that in the next version. Somehow I've gone and set the max length of the textbox to 260! That definitely wasn't intended!

The genre tag should be all lowercase. Here is Sonic CD from my .ini file. This shows up in my Sonic section no problem:

Code:

[Sonic CD] File=/rom/sonic_cd_usa.chd Platform=Genesis Sort=Sonic CD Year=1990 Genre=sonic Description=Some description here Dpad=Movement Start=Start, pause A=A B=B C=C X=No Function Y=No Function Z=No Function

Thanks lowercase did work! And thanks for fixing that. I hope you make the update soon!

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