[therock003]

I have a problem while configuring the PEOPS and SAPU's cdr plugins cause they cant detect my cdrom drive!

Actually it is an external one,which i have put on a frame and is connected to the pc through firewire.I don't believe they only detect ide connect cdroms?

 

[hushypushy]

I don't believe they only detect ide connect cdroms?

actually, that's true. it wont recognize external drives. why dont you use that drive F, it looks like its fine.

 

[therock003]

Cause it's a virtual drive and it's pretty time and space consuming to have to rip every game i have into an ISO...

Isn't there any way for cdr plugins to recognise external drives?

 

[hushypushy]

AFAIK, no, actually, because of the interface those drives use.

 

[therock003]

That's even more confusing!Since the system recognizes my cdrom i really can't see where the problem lies!

So bottom line,there isn't any bit of cod that can be written to bypass that restriction?No cdrm support for me?

 

[hushypushy]

So bottom line,there isn't any bit of cod that can be written to bypass that restriction?No cdrm support for me?

sigh, since you won't search, i guess i have to.

http://www.ngemu.com/forums/showpost.php?p=849315&postcount=5 << there is your answer buddy.

drives won't work anyway, they don't use the ATAPI interface which ePSXe requires.

so, your SOL.

 

[therock003]

"External drives won't work anyway, they don't use the ATAPI interface which ePSXe requires."

Is it the ePSXe specifically that requires ATAPI or all psx emus in general?If so can a hack be created to support the external drive interface?

Thanx for searching and helping hushypushy,really appreciate it.

 

[therock003]

By using the ePSXe core w2k/xp it detects my external drive but when i select run cdrom it displays a black screen and it doesn't seem to be loading.

any ideas?

 

[dbhankins]

Unless you're really short on HD space, I'd recommend making ISOs of everything anyway, and compressing them to save space - unless you like (a) game pauses whenever the game needs to load from disk and the drive has spun down, (b) FMVs longer than a few seconds getting progressively choppier as they play, and (c) listening to drive noise if your drive makes a wooshing noise at speed like mine does.

Not every game has these problems, but many do.

There are ways around it, but recently I've started to just make ISOs of everything because more than half my games have pause or choppiness FMV issues when played from disk, and I just got tired of listening to the jet engine noise from the CD drive for those that don't.

Or, if you're really committed to running from CD you can get an internal CD-ROM drive for $35 USD, less than the cost of a new PC game.


Dan

 

[hushypushy]

Is it the ePSXe specifically that requires ATAPI or all psx emus in general?If so can a hack be created to support the external drive interface?

as far as i know, it's all CD plugins in general. they just need ATAPI to access data.

like dbhankins said, you should just buy an internal drive. they are extremely cheap.

 

[therock003]

Actually it is an internal drive but uts put on a case since the PC i'm running is a laptop,but anyway i got the idea.

When you say about compressing the isos you mean on an archive?Do emus support archive image support?

 

[dbhankins]

The Mooby2 plugin reads ISOs but looks like a CDROM to emulators (it's a CDR plugin). It will compress your ISOs and read compressed ones. I don't know if the built-in ISO support in ePSXe will read compressed ISOs or not, nor do I know for the other emulators.

What I do instead is use the compressed folders feature of Windows XP (also present in Windows 2000) to store the ISOs in a place where the operating system will compress them for me. To use this feature, in Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer) right-click on the folder where you're going to put the ISO (or already have it), choose Properties, then on the General tab click the Advanced button. On the resulting box check "Compress this folder's contents to save disk space", and OK your way out of everything. All the files in that folder and subfolders will get compressed, and anything you put in that folder from then on will also get compressed.

If you use that feature, you might not get as good compression as with the Mooby2 plugin, but you're guaranteed that that ISO will work no matter how you use it - directly, through Mooby2, as a virtual CD drive, whatever.


Dan

 

[hushypushy]

ok, since you're running a laptop, you're screwed, you have to get a "real" internal drive...if you cant do that you are seriously SOL man.

 

[therock003]

And at what compression rate are we talking about?Both Mooby and windows feature?

As for the CD-rom i'm SOL i guess!

 

[fireblaster_lyz]

BUY A DRIVE!
You have been 'SOL'ed..

 

[dbhankins]

Oi, you're on a laptop? Further analysis of your posts suggests your laptop has either a broken internal CD-ROM drive or a lost removable CD-ROM drive.

In which case you probably don't have that much hard drive space either. Which would explain why you're as interested as you are in which compression method gives the smallest files. All I can suggest there is that you do a properties on the WinXP-compressed ISO files to see the difference between the Size and the Size On Disk numbers. Then compress it using both Mooby2 methods to see what the Size number looks like on the resulting .bz or .Z file. Compare that to the previous Size On Disk numbers. A last note on this: I don't recommend using Mooby2 compression for multiple-disk games because switching disks can be a problem with Mooby2. See my earlier thread on Mooby2 in this forum for the gory details.

My next suggestion is going to require even more upfront work than the last, but is probably your best option given your machine's limitations.

Make an image of your Playstation game disk. Then (assuming you're using CloneCD or Alcohol 120%) burn the resulting .CCD, .IMG and .SUB files onto a CDR or CDRW. Then, when you want to play, put the CDR in and mount the image files as your virtual CD. This will work but you'll probably have the same pausing and FMV issues you get with a real CDROM drive.

Better is to burn these image-file disks for all your PS1 games, then copy the image files for just the game you're currently playing to your laptop HD, and mount that as a virtual CD.


Dan

 

[therock003]

Your damn right it has a broken internal drive!

There used to be an internal dvd-rw and at some point it started messing with the burning of discs,until it reached a point where it couldn't even read discs so i smashed that f***er!

Now the internal drive is disabled of course and i have external drive as e: and f: as the virtual one.

Well burning images into discs is going to result into lot of loading as you said,so i might as weel go with the compression?

Another idea:

I also have a nearby computer in lan,and it uses internal drive since it's a desktop.Will it be possible to use via lan its drive to load discs from there?

 

[dbhankins]

A networked CD-ROM drive is unlikely to work, for the same reason the external drive doesn't work: in order to read Playstation disks the CD-ROM software needs a kind of low-level access to the disk that's not available over external or remote connections.

Is that nearby desktop computer yours? If not, can you get permission to store ISOs on its hard drive? Because (if your network is fast enough) you could point your virtual CD-ROM drive at those remote images and that should work.


Dan

 

[therock003]

Yep it is mine but the hard drive is full there too!This whole situation is a no way out!

thanx for all the help thouh.