CD-Rom crash

[zero]

I don't know if this would belong in the Eject CD thread so if it does, sorry.

My problem is, in pSX 1.5 when I try to load games via cd-rom (mounted or physical) it seems to crash. But not all games..only some.
For example, 2 of the 3 Duke Nukem games load. Those being Total Meltdown and Time to Kill. Land of the babes crashes. So does Castlevania SOTN.

Those are the only 2 I've found so far.

My settings: pSX 1.5 defaults..no changes made..even for game pad.

I tried forcing IoControl and ASPI.. both crash in same way.

SCPH-1001 bios.

[patrickp]

You don't say what OS you're running, zero; this makes a difference as to which method you can use to access your CD drive.

If you're running XP or W2K, zero, you can use IOControl, which would be the preferred method, but normally only in an account with administrative rights. You can get round this by downloading and running (in an administrative account) Nero's BurnRights, which will enable you to allow access to the IOControl driver in non-administrative accounts. Nero is at www.nero.com/eng/index.html; BurnRights is a free download.

You can use ASPI in most Windows OSs, but don't think it's incorporated at all in XP, W2K and NT, and the implementation in W95, W98 and ME is very poor - possibly to the point of not allowing the sort of access this emulator needs at all. If you want to use ASPI, you're better off installing a functional ASPI layer yourself.

ASPI was developed by Adaptec, and you can download it from their site for install; however, their released versions are not well regarded; both because of issues with their later versions (4.71.2 is the most recent, I believe), and because of issues with their installer: it doesn't install the full version, although it should be adequate for the purpose.

Your best bet is to google for 'forceaspi' - this is a version someone produced some time ago to install version 4.61 (which still seems to be the preferred version) fully.

[zero]

It doesn't matter what method, IoControl or ASPI even Autodetect has the same problem. I have the WINASPI32.dll right from Nero. Using Windows XP SP2 (Winborg 5.0). It worked fine in 1.4.

I AM the admin for this computer as I built it

Any other info you need?

[patrickp]

Perhaps you should check the compatibility lists, zero. According to that, one of the games you say crashes is down as not working, and the other has two versions listed, one of which runs and one doesn't. Did those specific games run with 1.4, then?

Might also help if you posted the Game ID numbers and versions (PAL/NTSC & country if appropriate).

The facts that the games you complain of not running are listed as not working with this emulator, that some games work for you and some don't, and that the games that don't work also don't when you try them mounted, would suggest that the problem has nothing to do with CD-ROM access.

[roushimsx]

I had this exact same problem when I was trying to play Tomba. Playing from the real cd or from a mounted image in Daemon Tools resulted in a crash but loading up the CDZ worked fine.

Fired it back up in v1.4 just to verify that the problem didn't exist then.

[smegforbrain]

Hmm. I just tested Tomba! with no problems in v1.5. I mount it with Daemon Tools. No crash.

[roushimsx]

smegforbrain said:

Hmm. I just tested Tomba! with no problems in v1.5. I mount it with Daemon Tools. No crash.

Weird, let me play around and see if I can fix it and then replicate it again.

[patrickp]

Possibly different versions? How about some Game IDs, etc? ;-)

[aksmet]

Actually, this seems to have nothing to do with the game itself. If you load from a CD Drive, sometimes it crashes, sometimes it doesn't. The crashing is completely random. This is only for pSX 1.5 though. This crashing problem isn't present in earlier versions. To play your game, just be persistent and run the emulator again if it crashes.

[The Siskoo]

aksmet said:

Actually, this seems to have nothing to do with the game itself. If you load from a CD Drive, sometimes it crashes, sometimes it doesn't. The crashing is completely random. This is only for pSX 1.5 though. This crashing problem isn't present in earlier versions. To play your game, just be persistent and run the emulator again if it crashes.

Same problem here.

[patrickp]

In that case, I'd recommend ripping your games to .bin/.cue images, which the emulator can read directly: since hard drive access is faster than CD-ROM access, this generally works better anyway.

[aksmet]

Well that's one solution. However, since I always use MDS/MDF images, I have to mount them to a virtual drive for them to work. The problem doesn't trouble me much though since I know that there are workarounds.

[patrickp]

Well, there are a few free ripping, burning tools around, aksmet; I use burnatonce, myself, from www.burnatonce.com/index.htm?news, works fine. The only limitation is that it doesn't do well with copy protected games; but there aren't a lot of apps that do, and they aren't free.

[aksmet]

I know, it's just that I like keeping my images in MDF/MDS format. I'm not a fan of CUEs, though I keep copies of them just in case.

By the way, I think I found another solution to this crashing problem. For my system, the crashing problem disappeared when I udated my wnaspi32.dll to a newer version. The older version didn't cause any problems with previous versions of pSX though. Well, I hope this information helps anyone experiencing the same problem.

Ok, after more testing, it seems that updating wnaspi32.dll doesn't fully solve the problem. It does, however, lessen the frequency of crashing.

[patrickp]

If you want to use ASPI, I'd recommend googling for 'forceASPI.' It actually installs an older version of ASPI (4.61 as opposed to the current 4.71 AIR). This, however, is a version that's very much favoured over newer ones, and forceASPI also installs the full ASPI version. Adaptec's own installers, I believe, only install a partial version.