PC Engine Beetle emulator giving me fits

ultrakev9

I had this working before and now maybe I've had it working long enough to not have figured out that it may have been by accident.

My PC Engine Beetle emulator was working about 95% and I was pretty happy. Now after a full reinstall of RetroPie and Emulation Station I've got about 50% of roms working.

Originally, all games except for a few were loading and working just fine but a couple simply wouldn't work and send me straight back to the game selection screen in Emulation Station and I just figured they were bad copies. Recently, I've replaced some of them and I've replaced some of the other "problem children" roms that would load and give me a screen that says "This game only works on the Super System 3.0" which is odd because that's what the load screen says when the game starts up initially. After the reinstall none of the CD games worked so I figured it was a BIOS problem.

In both my roms directory AND in my BIOS directory I've placed copies of the syscard3.pce BIOS file and I expect that's why, at least, the 2.0 CD games are working but I'm at a bit of a loss why the syscard3.pce BIOS file doesn't seem to want to make the 3.0 games work. I put the BIOS in the bios directory and the roms because I've read elsewhere here that it can help. Before I did the reinstall I remember having a copy of syscard2.pce but since it's not listed in the "required" bios files I got rid of it.

All the HuCards work but they don't need a BIOS. The older CD ROM titles like Exile seem to work just fine and when starting the system it says CD-ROM System 2.0 which leads my emulator to believe it's the old TG-16 with the CD-ROM attachment and it explains why the newer Super System 3.0 titles are not working and giving me the "insufficient hardware" screen. If it's a missing BIOS file (like syscard2.pce) that still doesn't really explain why 90% of the newer games worked before the reinstallation of the OS and a couple like Exile 2 and Forgotton Worlds keep stopping at a screen that tells me I don't have 3.0 when it says exactly that at the 'run' prompt.

Any ideas what's going on here?

mitu

@ultrakev9 https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first - please add the necessary info like version of RetroPie and the emulator.
Have you checked that your BIOS is correct - the checksums match what is shown in https://retropie.org.uk/docs/PC-Engine/ ? Run the emulator with verbose logging and add the log file from /dev/shm/runcommand.log to your post.

ultrakev9

@mitu - Hooboy. Thanks for your help. After the reinstall of the OS the PC Engine BIOS must've corrupted or something.

Or, I was using the United States version and not the Japanese one. Dunno.

Downloaded the BIOS again and renamed and rebooted and absolutely every single rom, CD-ROM and Super CD-ROM work except one and that's clearly not the emulator's fault. Incredible. I must have been using the US BIOS instead of the Japanese BIOS and that's what was causing the flaky behavior.

Even Exile 2 loaded right up and that one hasn't worked for me yet. Only one not working is Robo Aleste and it gets a "load error" at the start screen so it's either simply not going to work or I have a bad image.

mitu

@ultrakev9 said in PC Engine Beetle emulator giving me fits:

Even Exile 2 loaded right up and that one hasn't worked for me yet. Only one not working is Robo Aleste and it gets a "load error" at the start screen so it's either simply not going to work or I have a bad image.

Hm. Robo Aleste is a Sega CD game, not PC Engine (although the same emulator), so you'll need a different set of BIOS files - or just re-check the game image is ok.

ultrakev9

A Sega CD game? That would probably instantly explain why it isn't working. I knew I found it in a pile of other TG-16 roms so that's why I stuck it there but if it belongs in the Sega CD pile then I'll give that a whirl.

I'll keep picking at this one rom and emulator at a time.