PC Engine CD woes

chubsta

ok, i have read the docs and must be missing something - my pc engine cds wont boot.

They are in the same folder as my 'normal' pc engine roms, they are in the format iso/cue and the filename within the cue file matches the name of the iso - for instance the Faceball.cue references 'FILE "Faceball.iso" BINARY'. I also have the syscard3.pce BIOS file in both the main BIOS folder and the pcengine one just in case.

Checking the runcommand.log file when I try to play the game gives me no clue whatsoever

Parameters: 
Executing: /opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-beetle-pce-fast/mednafen_pce_fast_libretro.so --config /opt/retropie/configs/pcengine/retroarch.cfg "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pcengine/Faceball.cue" --appendconfig /dev/shm/retroarch.cfg

any ideas?

edmaul69

@chubsta can you post the content of your faceball cue?

chubsta

FILE "Faceball.iso" BINARY
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 02 MODE1/2352
    PREGAP 00:03:00
    INDEX 01 00:44:65
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    PREGAP 00:02:00
    INDEX 01 01:41:36
  TRACK 04 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 02:20:04
  TRACK 05 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 05:47:28
  TRACK 06 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 09:57:39
  TRACK 07 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 10:01:51
  TRACK 08 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 10:12:08
  TRACK 09 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 13:57:61
  TRACK 10 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 19:29:43
  TRACK 11 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 26:02:69
  TRACK 12 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 26:13:17
  TRACK 13 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 28:14:61
  TRACK 14 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 28:20:31
  TRACK 15 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 28:24:74
  TRACK 16 MODE1/2352
    PREGAP 00:03:00
    INDEX 01 28:28:74

edmaul69

@chubsta is the caps and lowercase all exact inside the cue file and iso? Including the .iso/.bin? Linux needs the caps and lowercase to be exact.

chubsta

@edmaul69

as far as i can tell, yes, the cue is 'Faceball.cue' and the iso is 'Faceball.iso', I cant find a way to actually mount the iso to see what is inside it unfortunately.

edmaul69

@chubsta thats what i wanted to know. Try giving 0777 permissions to the iso and cue files and both your bios files.

If that doesnt work and if your syscard3.pce is all lowercase and it doesnt work i would try these two things. Download the bios and a cd game from somewhere other than where you first got them

pjft

I don't know enough about the emulator and whether it does take ISO files. Can you try getting a bin/cue version of the game?

I believe bin and ISO are the same, but worth trying it out. Maybe even just renaming the ISO file to bin, and editing the cue file accordingly, for testing purposes.

I'm out of ideas, otherwise. Maybe it's a bad dump, or just that game doesn't work in the emulator. Have you tried any other game?

chubsta

@edmaul69

ok, permissions are not something i know anything about as i am very new to all this, however a little research and some ssh later shows the files in the pcengine rom directory now have the permissions set to

drwxrwxrwx

which to me looks like everyone can treat write and delete - is this correct? Unfortunately cant check the game at the moment because my other half is watching the tv...

@pjft
getting a new file in a different format does sound like a sensible idea, i will give it a go!

cheers for the help guys, i am sure i will get there and at least i now understand about permissions and how to set them so it has not been a waste of time!

edmaul69

@chubsta if you use a program like winscp you can sftp into the pi. Then you can right click on the file and choose properties. And then you can just change the permissions to 0777

chubsta

@edmaul69
Im on a Mac so have to use 'Transmit' but it works! So in the space of an hour i have learned about files permissions, how to change them in terminal via ssh, and now how to do it very simply via sftp - can you tell that even though this hasn't fixed it (well, it may have but until the mrs finishes watching tv i wont know!) i am having very good day and learning loads - thanks very much!!

chubsta

Solved - it was actually a corrupt syscard3.pce file. I presumed this was working fine as i thought it was needed for all pcengine and tg16 roms, but i read it was only needed for the cd ones. Got a new copy from a different source and all seems to be working fine now...

Thanks very much for the replies, even though the problem was not as expected i have increased my knowledge a lot!

pjft

@chubsta Great to hear!

So, just to confirm, it worked with a cue/iso (as opposed to cue/bin) setup?

Thanks!

chubsta

yep, i have tried a few files and all are fine regardless of format. i have found though that the filename of the bin/iso as referenced in the .cue often still has (Japan) etc whereas it has been removed in the filename so they needed to be sorted, although obviously i had tried that early on to no avail.