Naomi Files

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Cookie Grosky

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Aug 4, 2024, 5:21:14 PM8/4/24

to aseselsnig

1stif you are already using Demul for DC in LB then you will need to setup a separate instance of the emulator in LB Name it Demul [Arcade] or something similar to differentiate the two instances. This is because the DC and Arcade boards need conflicting parameters. These 2 screen shots should help you get up and running. FYI if you wish to use Gaelco games you will have to set up another instance of Demul this time with a 2nd emulator unless you want to use the oldDX11 drivers for everything as it doesn't work with the newer driver. If anyone might knows how to pass the video driver in the command line then this might solve that but I don't know if that is configurable from the command.

Are they .zip files? If you are using the latest version of Demul they are looking for a pretty recent ROM set from MAME a lot of the files I had set up before no longer worked in with Demul. If you have a fairly recent MAME you should see my download found here it will help you extract the correct ROMs from MAME put it in a separate folder and allow you to import the games much easier. For the Sega Naomi GD and Naomi 2 GD section you will also need the appropriate CHD files in order to get the games to work I'm thinking of adding a txt file for next time that will list the CHD files helping users narrow down their search.

Yeah the setting I had you use is to pass the rom -dat= might work but I don't know as I've never used those files to run Demul if you are already using MAME I would suggest not bothering with the dat files but that is just me.

Sorry to jump on that thread, just wondering, I have applied your settings on a Demul complet rom & chd pack I have, all works well with naomi 1/2 zip classical rom files, but can't manage to make the CHD files working.

@Bilbotorm for CHD files to work we will take Beachspikers for an example. You need the zip file for the game as well as the Chd. Beachspikers is named beachspi. So you need the beachspi.zip as well as the CHD which is named gds-0014.chd. Make a folder called beachspi (named after the zip) and place the gds-0014.chd inside that folder unzipped, Now point LaunchBox to the beachspi.zip set emulator and the chd will work. Do the same for all CHD games.

without the empty zip file same as gamefolder name, DEmul can't find the game. If I remove the chd and put it in the beachspi.zip, same it does not work. If I try to zip the whole beachspi folder and leave the final zip file in rom folder, it doesnot work either.

I've been at this for about a month now and have had great success getting many things set up. Most of this is due to the excellent work the community has put into helping newcomers and sharing information. I am truly thankful for how easy this is after all of these years.

I'm sure I'll be back here in future forum posts bothering you all about other Systems but today I've run into a problem getting Naomi games to work with the Flycast core in Retroarch -

I have a few hunches as to what could be wrong - I currently have a .zip file called naomi.zip in my System folder for Retroarch that contains several "BIOS FILES". I've found the same pack at several sites and so assumed it was fine but upon further inspection, I see that I need to rename an epr-21576h.bin to naomi_boot.bin.

The .zip I have does have a file called epr-21576h.ic27 but no epr-21576.bin. Is the .ic27 the same thing? It is in there with many other epr-21576/7/8(x).ic27 files and I am not sure if I need all of these as they are not mentioned in any of the troubleshooting topics I can find. Also, is it fine in the .ic27 format? Must it be renamed to be recognized? Is the file (if renamed) alright inside of a .zip archive or does Retroarch require it to be decompressed and placed in the System directory? Some help on understanding the various .ic27 files, their purpose, their relationship to the .bin file (to be renamed naomi_boot.bin), etc... would be helpeful.

I have been examining my Naomi games compared to what other people online say I will need (including ETA Prime's excellent video on the subject) and have also compared them to what I have in my Atomiswave games.

They do NOT have a .lst file. I see that these were the files to add through the Launchbox ROM import according to ETA Prime's video. In researching further, it appears that the .lst files act as some sort of hash to confirm the size of the game? Not sure if they are truly necessary to open the archive or if telling Launchbox to simply use the .zip files for the Emulator will be enough for the Emulator to know what to do.

I thought that this must surely be the issue until I saw that my Atomiswave games are very similar to my Naomi games. They, too, come zipped and do not have .lst files and they run fine (again, full of just .bin and .ic and .mrom files).

I am open to the possibility that my Naomi pack of games are outdated or are not compatible with the Emulator/Core I am trying to use but the similarity to the Atomiswave games (retrieved from the same source and roughly of the same age) leads me to believe that my .zip Naomi games are fine and it is, in fact, a BIOS issue.

For now, I will try to find an exact epr-21576h.bin (not .ic27) file and rename it to naomi_boot.bin and will try to remove any and all other references to Naomi from my Retroarch/System folder in case the Core is trying to load some other random file it is finding there. I'll also search for another ROM pack.

I apologize for how verbose this is. I work in IT and know that I always work better off of more information, not less. Also, I am hoping to help others troubleshoot here in the future once I get my system fully configured and running so I am hoping that by asking detailed questions I will get detailed answers that will not only help me get the system working, but will also teach me some of the nitty gritty details that will make me of more use to someone else in the future.

Does retroarch have easily readable log files? I did a quick Google search and found that it logs to a file called retroarch.log, but I am unable to locate that file. I think that perhaps I need to enable a higher level of logging from the command line or something prior to launching.

Also, a detail I left out - When launching the Naomi games in Retroarch (be it through Launchbox or standalone), it doesn't throw any error messages or default back to a Launchscreen for Retroarch. It just crashes (closes) without warning.

The naomi.zip file that I have appears to be a MAME BIOS file from at least version .154 or later and the .ic file that I was referencing in my previous post IS the correct one to be renamed to noami_boot.bin. With that said, I'd somehow had a copy in a /dc folder (which I see is how some suggest you do it) and another copy one level up from that in my /system folder. Cleaning these up did not fix the issue.

Also, the .zip files that I had did not come with the .chd's so I downloaded a new pack and this one appears to have them. I've also read that they need to be in the same directory as the .zip files for Flycast/Reiscast to use them properly (so I did that). This did not resolve the issue.

I'd read somewhere that someone just had to completely delete flycast from their Retroarch system and reinstall the core. Did this, updated everything in Retroarch. This did not resolve the issue.

That is more likely an issue with a bad rip, there are a lot especially for Dreamcast with the different formats. Some emulators are better than others for different format, but anytime I had that issue, a different rip fixed it.

Some of the games in the pack give me a "01 THIS GAME IS NOT ACCEPTABLE BY MAIN BOARD" error but according to this thread from Feb of this year, it may be because Flycast doesn't fully support Naomi 2? I will research further but for now, 3/4 I've tested work -

-Sega-Naomi-via-retroarch-library-Error-01-on-loading-games

Back when I'd first started troubleshooting with this new ROM set, I had placed the .zip files for games in the folder where matching .chd's sat. (for example, azumanga.zip was placed in /azumanga because azumanga.chd was there).

Once I removed the .zip files from those directories and placed them where they were when I'd downloaded them (along with the other .zip's that did NOT have .chd folder/files), those games started working.

Trstruggle to get light-guns going and I got Ninja Assault working with Aimtrak so I have hope for other ligjgun titles in Naomi. But I could never got atomiswave games to work. A extreme hunting 1 & 2, sport shooting usa..all have my cross hair locked in the down right part of the screen(!) anyone want to try as some of you state that all Naomi1 games working for you. ? Thanks for the thread hijack