region free DC Question

[Dreamcast]

Can you explain the process you used instead?

[Bad_Ad84]

The process is in this thread

The region free patch was extracted by me from a BIOS that has the retail animation. It's actually EASYPEASY to make a retail bios be region free.

But lol the original BIOS is BORING because everyone have that.


The patch for making MPR_21931_X2_1B5020A1_M000746___1_01d_01.bin (E10C53C2F8B90BAB96EAD2D368858623 MD5) region free follows:

Change value 1E B0 at offset 0x0000051E to 08 A0. :thumbsup:

That's enough to make the BIOS region free.

And if you want the old BORING boot screen, you can have it ... :rolleyes:

Have fun and happy hacking ! :thumbsup:

[eugene19]

The process is in this thread

There you go!
If you need further assistance with hex editing, and creating a custom dreamshell image, I am happy to help :)

[Annoying_one]

d552d8b577faa079e580659cd3517f86 md5 is for the BIOS region free

[APE]

Yeah sure, but its easy peasy to do it :)
I'll upload it and send you a PM, since distributing BIOS files may violate rules here.

We thought the same thing about Link83's BIOS and assembler didn't have an issue but it never hurts to ask first.

[Annoying_one]

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=HXB0YJ8Y

region free

[eugene19]

PM sent just in case :)

[Annoying_one]

eugene19

since the link bios was approved and its not current gen system i took the liberty to patch it and upload it. i hope you dont mind.

[eugene19]

Nah, I don't mind it.
Patching that BIOS is what anyone is capable of doing.

[RaZiel]

So how would one go about making a black swirl on a dev BIOS for flashing to my BIOS mod? The one I had done by APE is blue but I wanted to see what the black one looks like.

[APE]

So how would one go about making a black swirl on a dev BIOS for flashing to my BIOS mod? The one I had done by APE is blue but I wanted to see what the black one looks like.

The color of the swirl is determined by the region settings on the flash (seperate from the BIOS). Black is an option within the region changer portion of Dreamshell but to enable the ability to change settings you'd have to solder the appropriate wire and given you'd have to pull the motherboard out to do so I wouldn't advise it given you'd have to strip out most of the wiring I installed to do so.

[-=FamilyGuy=-]

So how would one go about making a black swirl on a dev BIOS for flashing to my BIOS mod? The one I had done by APE is blue but I wanted to see what the black one looks like.

I don't think a black swirl is possible on a devkit bios, as the "swirl color" is set in the flash memory for retail bioses (while devkit ones doesn't rely on flash at all iirc). Maybe there's a black swirl region code for devkit bios, but I doubt it. You can still get a region-free retail bios along with region changer mod in order to get a region-free DC with a black swirl, but you won't have the 3D boot-up animation.

Cheers,

FG

[PrOfUnD Darkness]

Don't the black swirl show up when no region is flagged on the flash?

[-=FamilyGuy=-]

For regular bios yeah. But the bios is also then unable to boot any disc at all.

However there's a special region code for each region with a black swirl, AND booting capabilities!

FG

[Shinebi]

Jumping on the wagon here...

Tried a couple a years ago flashing my boot swirl animation to blue
(I didn't intend to change the region, as there's a 'regular' modchip installed already).

The console's casing is PAL (blue logo, 220V power supply), but the MOBO is NTSC-J (the version with pipe cooling). Because of the MOBO's early build version, I'm apparently stuck with not being able to flash the BIOS to another region/color (there's no write-back possible as it's a different type of chip?). I tried 3 or 4 different versions already and had this answer replied to me on NTSC-UK way back.

I gave up going down that road since then... but the console is still in limbo, innards up for the OC & VGA-mod to finalize.

So, the only option to have blue colored boot-up animation (to match the casing and blue led) would be to install an optional BIOS-chip as shown above with retail/dev BIOS on it?

[Bad_Ad84]

VA0 boards (I assume thats what you have) can use the replacement bios.

However, the board tries to supply the chip with 5v (and the replacements are 3.3v).

DarthCloud covered wiring in the chip and using an alternate power source here: http://www.assemblergames.com/forums...&postcount=232

[Shinebi]

Thanks for pointing out.
While I'm at it, please check this request which I made 3 years ago....
http://cagames.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=842

Now tell me what would be possible regarding this subject?

[Bad_Ad84]

What you seem to be asking there is very different to the Region free DC bios.

You basically seem to be wanting to put your own application on the flash chip and run it from there? as far as I know, thats not been done.

This thread is about replacing (or complementing) the existing bios with a region free one - thats it.

The replacement bios isnt a "mod chip"

I think that answers your questions? unless you have more?

[Shinebi]

Huh? The replacement BIOS is on a piggy-back chip, right?
Thus, I'm just asking if it would be possible for that chip to have optional plug-ins...

[Bad_Ad84]

And I said no that has not been done.

The piggybacked chip has the entire bios on it, it doesnt run the bios from the original chip and then access additional space on the extra chip.

This is why its not a "mod chip" mod chips generally patch or manipulate the existing data flow.

But with this, its one or the other. Its just a patched bios running in full on a different chip.

What you are asking for is a complete DC replacement bios from scratch with extra features - this has not been done and likely wont ever be.

The existing region free bios is the dev bios that has been hacked up and patched - it wasnt written from scratch.