DC-SWAT Forum

Have a DC which I piggybacked flashable BIOS, flashed the BIOS file, "sd_loader_with.bios" onto it. Had previously link83 BIOS, and it worked fine.

Built an SD adapter, and have a 1GB SD card, and tried putting the RC2 DS folder onto it, but initially got "can't find DS_CORE.bin", say it was called "1DS_CORE.bin", renamed it, and it halts at the "Executing..." message.

Tried again with the RC1 DS folder, same thing with the 1DS_CORE.bin file, but this time, the system goes through a repeating loop of "Detecting SD card, etc., etc., Executing...", then screen goes blank, and then repeats the messages, etc.

I then tried putting the DS folder from archive "DreamShell_4.0.0_Beta4_(From_SD_loader).7z", and it loads ok to the DS desktop.

RC1 and RC2 still don't load.

Can anyone tell me why this is happening, and reasons (hardware is unchanged throughout)? Any solution to get RC1 or RC 2 working?

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Forgot to say, I'm trying to load Dreamshell from the SD card, WITHOUT using CD in GD-ROM drive.

You need use DS_CORE.BIN (unscrambled), not 1DS_CORE.BIN (scrambled) for booting from any devices different from GD-ROM.
Download "DreamShell 4.0 RC 2 + Boot Loader", put DS folder from this archive to SD card and enjoy.

Many thanks, have that working now, easy when you know how!

Another thing I was trying to do, is run a GD-ROM disk from Dreamshell, is it possible, after loading Dreamshell from SD card?

Why you need to run the GD-ROM disk (physical?) through the DS? Region free? This function is not available.
DreamShell can run only image of the disk. But if it's really useful function, I can implement it.

No, I was just wondering. I can always switch back to the original BIOS if I need to do that.

With my current setup, the GD-ROM is still in there, but I'm planning on connecting up a CF card interface through the GD-ROM board (laser assembly removed).

My thinking is that it would be easier, and more easily transferable to another DC if necessary, to have the CF setup bolted to the GD-ROM chassis. I just needed to know and verify that *I* can boot DS from an SD card before going ahead with the CF setup.

I've also since read (if I read correctly) that the new BIOS can boot from the DS folder on HDD, so presume it should be possible from CF as well. That would probably be the final stage for me.

Thanks for all your work on this. Great to see such a great console still getting the attention it deserves.

The situation with the BIOS is ambiguous, it's described here - http://www.dc-swat.ru/page/dreamshell/firmware/

What do you mean when you say ambiguous?

Do you mean that there are (will always be) several interpretations/implementations, or do you mean that it's undecided how it will finally be?

Most of custom BIOSes not pass the Holly (ASIC chip in DC) protection checking, it's means the G1 devices can't works.
For now, from custom BIOSes, protection passes only sd_loader_with.bios. But this BIOS have some problem, see comment for it.
Once somebody can break down the BIOS protection checking, we will not have problem with the BIOS for any device on the G1 bus.
But so far, the situation is not good for IDE+BIOS mod users