Every time I play dreamcast, displays the setting screen time/date

ango

just found a solution for the time/date setting bug.

Install dreamcast emulator "NullDC"
start dreamcast without a game and you are in the bios
make your settings (date,time,language) and exit the bios
NullDC just craete a new file in the /data directory : dc_nvmem.bin
rename dc_nvmem.bin to dc_flash.bin and copy the file to your raspberry pi /bios folder, overwrite existing file
start reicast with a game and have fun without the date/time setting screen

edmaul69

@misslehead3 i havent tried modified runcommand but in normal setting a rtc does not fix it. I just verified that my rtc is fully working and still no dice.

edmaul69

@ango this did not work for me. Not sure if it is because i have a realtime clock or not

vretro

@ango can you share your dc_nvmem.bin file?

Sinatra

I did what ango said and it worked for me. Here is my dc_flash.bin file.

https://www.mediafire.com/?xv8ls6hqfx0f3od

danyo

Replacing the dc_flash.bin didnt work for me.

Solution:
Setting the clock (and btw recreating the broken VMUs for saving games) is working by using the Systemmanager entry in the ES Dreamcast Menu. If the entry is missing, execute the following command and restart ES:
ln -sv fileThatDoesNotExist ~/RetroPie/roms/dreamcast/systemManager.cdi

vretro

@Sinatra Thanks! Could this ship with RetroPie without any issues?

goigle

@danyo Huh, replacing the dc_flash worked for me at first but then stopped working.

I've tried resetting the VMUs multiple times to no avail unfortunately.

TyphonInc

@goigle said in Every time I play dreamcast, displays the setting screen time/date:

@danyo Huh, replacing the dc_flash worked for me at first but then stopped working.

I've tried resetting the VMUs multiple times to no avail unfortunately.

Ditto,
Using the posted dc_flash filed worked for a couple of weeks, but stopped last night. I tried replacing the file, and resetting the VMU, and still get the request to set the date/time.

krizzy

@TyphonInc Mine setup also stopped working after weeks without problems.... :( replaced dc_flash, creating new VMU's... nothing worked...

danyo

It stopped working for me too.

The reason for this bug is that (currently) the linux client does not exit cleanly and just halts execution. This means that it does not call the routines to save the NVRAM which results in no date and time being saved.
https://github.com/reicast/reicast-emulator/issues/863

There is already a pull-request with the fix submitted:
https://github.com/reicast/reicast-emulator/pull/917
But there is no new version of reicast available.

Temporary fix:
I found a reicast branch that contains all fixes for this problem and should be upto date with the current reicast master:
https://github.com/7oxicshadow/reicast-emulator

Is somebody able to build it and can provide the fixed emulator for us?

Shizzmoney

I couldn't get it to work using the new methods here. It seems as if (at least for me; RPi 3 w/ Retropie 4.2) reicast will only play nice with dc_flash.bin with MD5 checksum 74e3f69c2bb92bc1fc5d9a53dcf6ffe2.

Granted, I can still save new games and load my saves.....so this issue of having to set the date/time each time is more cosmetic and slightly annoying rather than an impediment on actual gameplay and data loading.

I agree with danyo than the software just needs to be updated to fix this issue on the majority of builds, IMO.

BenMcLean

@danyo said in Every time I play dreamcast, displays the setting screen time/date:

It stopped working for me too.

The reason for this bug is that (currently) the linux client does not exit cleanly and just halts execution. This means that it does not call the routines to save the NVRAM which results in no date and time being saved.
https://github.com/reicast/reicast-emulator/issues/863

There is already a pull-request with the fix submitted:
https://github.com/reicast/reicast-emulator/pull/917
But there is no new version of reicast available.

Temporary fix:
I found a reicast branch that contains all fixes for this problem and should be upto date with the current reicast master:
https://github.com/7oxicshadow/reicast-emulator

Is somebody able to build it and can provide the fixed emulator for us?

I hope this gets merged in soon. :)

Toxicshadow

I have updated my branch to hopefully fix the "date/time" problem when using RetroPie.

Some Background:

My initial fix for this issue was tested on both a linux desktop machine and a Raspberry PI and both worked as expected. I had never tried it with a front end launcher before as I always use them standalone.

When I read that people were still having problems using my branch on RetroPie I ran some tests and confirmed that it did not work??? This didn't make sense as I could run it standalone and it worked fine?

After digging around in the launch script used by RetroPie it was apparent that they make use of the command line switch "-config" which allows you to configure most of the options in the emu.cfg at launch.

It appears that using "-config" forces Reicast to use a "virtual" configuration and as such discards everything in the emu.cfg file. This means that the dreamcast.RTC value was also being discarded and a default value being used resulting in the Dreamcast bios displaying the date/time screen.

I have done some quick tests using my latest branch on RetroPie and the issue seems resolved.

If any Devs are reading this and want to try it, it is important that you modify the makefile in /shell/linux to enable NO_VIRTUAL_CFG. This will allow the -config command line to modify the emu.cfg fle rather than a virtual ram copy.

https://github.com/7oxicshadow/reicast-emulator

darknior

@toxicshadow Is your branch is the Retropie Official one ?
Because i don't know what is the official :(

I also have this problem on my Dreamcast emu on my PI 3.
And an other big problem, i can't understand how to configure my x360 controlers with it.
I take some hours to try, to read tutorials, read threads and wiki ... i'm very sad for it :(
I try to found a good solution too.

darknior

The official is : https://github.com/RetroPie/reicast-emulator

@Toxicshadow can you ask @BuZz to see if you can merge your branch with the master one ?
You have some 2017 little update we don't have ...

And maybe if you have some free time you can add some other update from other branch of this fantastic emulator. I never dream to play Dreamcast on PI one day and for some games it is really perfect !

My only other big problem was to configure the PAD :(
Playing it with Keyboard is not really fun :(

spud11

Hi @Toxicshadow . I'm just wondering if you may have had any contact with @BuZz about Reicast and perhaps using your branch as the official branch of Reicast for Retropie purposes? Thanks.

jonsim

So I was able to take @Toxicshadow's fix and merge it into a local clone of the RetroPie fork of Reicast, then build it successfully on my Raspberry Pi. It now properly saves the NVRAM settings and no longer prompts for date settings after the first time you set them.

I'll post a binary shortly (it's a drop-in replacement for the Reicast binary that RetroPie installs), and I'll try to get a PR to the RetroPie fork so this can be fixed in an official RetroPie Reicast release.

spud11

@jonsim Well done!

jonsim

Here is the replacement reicast binary, which I compiled for Raspberry Pi:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/dh1umn50tqgxrg1/reicast?dl=0

It's a drop-in replacement for the file in /opt/retropie/emulators/reicast/bin. It contains @Toxicshadow's Linux fixes so Reicast can exit cleanly and save NVRAM settings.

To use it, download the "reicast" file above, copy it to the root of a USB stick, and plug the USB stick into your Raspberry Pi. Then from the Raspbian shell, run these commands:
cd /opt/retropie/emulators/reicast/bin
sudo mv reicast reicast_old
sudo cp /media/usb0/reicast reicast
sudo chmod 755 reicast

This will go into the directory and rename the previous "reicast" file to "reicast_old", then copy the new file in, and then change the new file's mode to be executable.

If you want to put the old one back (if for some reason the new one doesn't work right), run these commands from the shell, which will delete the new file and replace it with the old one:
cd /opt/retropie/emulators/reicast/bin
sudo mv reicast_old reicast

I'll work on getting this pulled into the RetroPie/reicast-emulator GitHub repository in the next few weeks.

Let me know if this works for you!

-JonSim