[chaotic_thought]

I'm using epsxe 1.5.2 to play FF9 (FFIX), the US NTSC version and on DISC 1 right after Evil Forest becomes petrified, you are supposed to go south to the Ice Cavern. But to the west of that area there is a gate titled as "?" that you can enter with the "X" button: every time I try to enter the gate I get a black screen which never recovers (pressing the "START" button still shows/hides the "PAUSE" message, so the emulation appears to still be working).

I am not using save states, and I have tried running this part from the original CD as well as from an ISO that I created with CDRWin, and I have tried various plugin settings (right now I am using Pete's OpenGL 1.75 and Pete's OpenSource sound plugin, the one with the "PSX reverb" setting); the results of trying to enter the gate are identical in all cases I have tried.

I purchased this game used from a video store and I was thinking that maybe my disc is corrupt? But running from the original CD doesn't exhibit any of the normal signs of a bad disc, such as repeatedly spinning of the disc, and I had no problems creating the ISO with CDRWin. If there are no other ideas, maybe someone can post an MD5SUM of a working NTSC FF9 disc 1 so I can compare it with mine.

This is the only problem so far I haven't been able to resolve. I've searched and read dozens of other posts regarding other issues, but not this. I would appreciate any insight on this issue.

 

[hushypushy]

have you tried using another video plugin? Peops software plugin is probably the most compatible. use Eternal for sound, or Pete's DirectSound. if all else fails, you give up, and you dont mind skipping a bit of the game (hopefully you've played it before) then upload your memory card and i'll pass that part for you.

 

[fireblaster_lyz]

Maybe posting your plugin configurations might help? (along with your com specs)

 

[chaotic_thought]

Thanks for the suggestions, but I solved the problem. Apparently the problem I had was caused by bad blocks on the image. I've since ran into other scenes where this has happened and found bad data on the image to be the cause as well. I used dd to graft good data recovered from the CD on to the invalid blocks of the image and that solved the problem.