Potential differences in usage between CF and HDD?

[Mu.]

I've modded my Dreamcast with an IDE mod and custom BIOS, and I have to say it's been well worth the time and effort I've put into it. Being able to load all my games off a single storage device is something I look for in all my consoles and it was great to find out that it was achievable with the Dreamcast as well.

So far I've been using it with a SanDisk 50MB/s 16GB CompactFlash card plugged directly into a GD-IDE board with an adapter and have had decent compatibility with most games I've been wanting to play (e.g. Star Wars Racer, V-Rally, Toy Story 2), however some others just simply don't work with my system despite others users here being able to play them perfectly with the same configuration (the main ones in my case being Crazy Taxi, Ready 2 Rumble and Shenmue).

I've had Ready 2 Rumble boot and run perfectly on one occasion, but as soon as I took the CF card out and copied some more files it would refuse to boot again.

So my question for this thread: Should a CF card be functionally the same as an IDE hard drive when being used in a Dreamcast for DreamShell, or do some changes need to be made to obtain the same compatibility? I've found a 40GB IDE laptop drive and a cable which I might end up switching to once I find a way to transfer files, but for now I thought I'd ask.

Just for completion, my console is a PAL VA1 (HKT-3030) converted to NTSC using DS' Region Changer. And switching it back to PAL didn't seem to make a difference.

[fafadou]

For me compact flash is better than ide.

Look carefully at the dragoncity list may you have done a mistake in the preset :
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...1719450497

[Mu.]

I've been using dragoncity's spreadsheet for my games this whole time and even obtained the GDIs from the same locations as his, but they still don't seem to boot.

[fafadou]

Try to repack your DS folder with dragoncity's you can download it directly from his list.

If it persist look at your welds directly.

You have this only with ready to rumble ?

[Mu.]

I've gone over my soldering several times (both reflowing and checking for continuity with a meter), and made sure every connection is solid. I've also been using Dragoncity's build of DS along with a clean install of DS with the 0.6.6 loader beta and both have similar results.

I have this issue with Crazy Taxi, Ready 2 Rumble and Shenmue, all of which are supposed to work with the settings in his spreadsheet.

[fafadou]

I had a problem with shenmue I and 0.6.6x loader beta with ide because my ground was not short enough I get shorter my ground from pin 2 of 7cm to 5cm and after the result were clearly better.
But it was only with shenmue I, and you said the games were running before. Perhaps the ground is just limit... I really don't know.

Those games work on sdcard (espcially shenmue I) ?
For two others what ide.bin version did you use 0.6.6x beta for all games ? chose only 0.6.6x beta only for shenmue I and soulcalibur and other lag games for seeing the difference. I advise you to use 0.6.1 gcc7.1 and 0.6.0 original in order to see.

[Mu.]

I use 0.6.6 with Shenmue, and 0.6.0 with R2R and Crazy Taxi.

Looking at the ground length on the GD-IDE board, it seems like the length is just under 2.5cm so I imagine that would be well in spec. It'd be strange for an issue of ground not being short enough to only affect three specific games.

[fafadou]

Yeah your mod is very good. It's not that.

I don't know what happened... Nothing to say more... May you can format again your CF, but you have trouble with three games only. It the last thing I can advise...