Hacking Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin

[phazer]

Nintendo DS lite
Supercard DS-ONE (OS 2.0 SP 2)
SanDisk 1Gb microSD

I have problems with playing Castlevania Portrait of Ruin properly. The game freezes sporadically.
A bunch of posts in different forums report the same problem and they said that it may be a problem
with the Speed of the microSD card. The auto detect speed feature of my SC DS-ONE card detects
a speed of 5x. I´ve tried different settings (4x, Auto) but the game still freezes.

Must I really use a microSD card from a different manufacturer?


thanks,
-phazer-

 

[TLSpartan]

Sorry to say but yes, I have a 1GB Japanese Kingston in my SC-ONE and no game slows down. This is the cheapest place you will find one 1GB Kingston for 13USD

Buy a EZF 4 Lite Deluxe and use the Sandisk for that

EDIT-More info and spelling

 

[phazer]

Thanks for the fast reply

So any Kingston microSD cards will work fine with Castlevania Portrait of Ruin then?
Then I will buy such a card and can still use the Sandisk for my Supercard micro

 

[Destructobot]

So any Kingston microSD cards will work fine with Castlevania Portrait of Ruin then?

No, you want the 1GB made in Japan model.

 

[sidneyyoung]

you could try as a long shot to back up your games and reformat your memory card (FAT with 64k clusters seems to be the best) and when you put verything back on make sure CastlevaniaPOR is the first rom back on (copy it over individually first).. also shorten the file name to just a few characters

otherewise theres a way to rip the sound from the game, but as you can imagine it's not a popular fix.

but as the previous poster said a Japanese made memory card, is the proper answer for this game (for all mem based flashcarts afaik)

 

[phazer]

No, you want the 1GB made in Japan model.

Thanks!

QUOTE(sidneyyoung @ Jun 21 2007, 11:10 AM)you could try as a long shot to back up your games and reformat your memory card (FAT with 64k clusters seems to be the best) and when you put verything back on make sure CastlevaniaPOR is the first rom back on (copy it over individually first).. also shorten the file name to just a few characters

I will give it a try first. Thank you.

 

[TLSpartan]

Keep in mind though that dealextreme take 2 weeks shipping for the free shipping

 

[phazer]

Now I´ve got a original Kingston microSD 2GB Made in Japan card.
But the game still freezes sporadically during teleport sessions (mostly on teleport select screens).

Do I need to use any special DS-ONE related settings?

 

[Bob Evil]

I have some random Chinese clone card and everything I have plays perfectly ... no slow-downs ... nothin'.

 

[helpme]

@phazer

have you auto set sd speed?
the 2gb kingston jap should be set @ 25

plus the 2GB can be formated to fat(16) with 64k clusters as well

if you use windows.....

Go to: Start -> Run -> diskmgmt.msc

Select your SD card and right-click "Format"

* Volume Label: Whatever you like
* File System: FAT
* Allocation unit size: 64k

 

[phazer]

have you auto set sd speed?
the 2gb kingston jap should be set @ 25

Auto set sd speed is disabled.
Here is the recent default global.ini section:
;0|1|2|3|4
;0 1X ,1 2X,2 3X,3 4X,4 5X,5 other
SCSDSpeed=2
;1-32
;1 1X ,7 2X,17 3X,24 4X,30 5X
SCSDSpeedValue=17

What is the difference between SCSDSpeed and SCSDSpeedValue. Which value should be set for the 2gb Kingston Japan card?

 

[megabug7]

My Sandisk 4GB MicroSDHC Class 2 SDSDSQ-4096-E11M (Made In China) has no problems with COR if thats any help.

It came bundled with the CycloDS. But I'm sure you can find it seperately.

 

[coolbho3000]

My Sandisk 4GB MicroSDHC Class 2 SDSDSQ-4096-E11M (Made In China) has no problems with COR if thats any help.

It came bundled with the CycloDS. But I'm sure you can find it seperately.

If you use it with CycloDS and not Supercard, it's an entirely different issue.

Get a 1GB Japan Kingston, format FAT16 64k or 32k cluster (try both), that will have the least problems.

 

[raulpica]

Have you tried using DMA mode? It should (theorically) fix speed problems with games.

 

[phazer]

Have you tried using DMA mode? It should (theorically) fix speed problems with games.

Not yet. I will apply all hints (DMA, format FAT with 64 or 32k clusters) today evening. But which option should I choose for the speed?

 

[sidneyyoung]

Your sd speed is set to 17.

Set it to 25 or 28 in the scds1 menu and save, there is no need to edit any ini/cfg files.

Also note you will get better results if you format to fat rather than fat32.

 

[FAST6191]

I think it was kenghot (he translated FF3 to Thai before the US release even and FF6 on the GBA to thai amongst other things, his site was down last I checked but it was posted here that made a hack to disable parts of the soundfile (or you can do it yourself: you basically want to make all the big files point to nice small ones or to not point to anything).
If push comes to shove you can delete the end of the soundfile (literally hack off the end with a hex editor or something).

 

[phazer]

Your sd speed is set to 17.

Set it to 25 or 28 in the scds1 menu and save, there is no need to edit any ini/cfg files.

Also note you will get better results if you format to fat rather than fat32.

I´ve checked the card and it´s already formatted in FAT16 with 64k clusters. I´ve copied the Castlevania ROM at first onto the card.
Now I´ve set the speed to 25.

 

[xcalibur]

Have you tried using DMA mode? It should (theorically) fix speed problems with games.

Not yet. I will apply all hints (DMA, format FAT with 64 or 32k clusters) today evening. But which option should I choose for the speed?

You should have the card choose your speed for you.
It does a very acurate job.

Also, get the OS3 since DMA mode wasn't included in OS2.

 

[phazer]

Still got freezes using 25x speed. Using 28x speed seems to work.
I will also try to use the Auto Speed option.

Thanks all.