Pseudo Saturn Kai official thread

[privateye]

@privateye : can you please try to load X-Men vs Street Fighter -> soft reset -> load Samurai Spirits Amakusa Kourin and see if graphics are corrupted or not ? If this problem can be reproduced I shall then prepare a beta build to check the status of A-Bus access registers.

I'm unable to test that because the 1MB/4MB RAM portion of my Action Replay cart no longer works with any of my Saturns. I'm guessing that the address pins for RAM access can't be read; if true, that's not surprising since the cart is in so-so condition.

It's important to note that these 1MB games have corrupt graphics when using an Action Replay*¹ or official 4MB RAM cart:

• King of Fighters '96 *²
• Real Bout Fatal Fury (not the special edition)
• Samurai Shodown IV

(*1) Not with all Action Replays, though. My AR (the one that is currently borked) used to work fine with all three games, but I can't recall if these (and other 1MB) games exhibited graphical corruption when loading a 4MB game beforehand.
(*2) 4MB hack is available and includes new features not found in the vanilla version (e.g. faster loading times, bosses already unlocked).

In most cases, loading Samurai Shodown IV (Amakusa Kourin) with an Action Replay cart will result in corrupt graphics, regardless of what game(s) you have (or have not) loaded beforehand.

The games that only support 1MB, like KOF '96 and Real Bout will have graphical corruption if a game like Vampire Savior has been run beforehand.

Do you confirm that these games have no graphical corruption when loaded straight away from cold boot? As I mentioned above, it's normal for these to have graphical corruption on official 4MB RAM carts and (most) Action Replays.

 

[draco]

It would appear that I get corruption on the very first power on walking up to the system. But after a quick power cycle it's been cleared. I can then soft reset among all 3 of those SNK games and even mix in loading of non-RAM games without issue, but when a 4MB games is loaded the corruption returns and will not go away until power cycled. It doesn't matter how many regular games, or even 1MB game that plays nice with 4MB (Metal Slug) I try. Cart is stuck in 4MB mode until hard power cycle.

This is anecdotal, as it's been many years. But I don't remember trouble with corruption from my old AR cart at all when loading something like Samurai amakusa from the actual disc.

As for your dead cart, it's possible the RAM section is fine but in just poor contact with the Saturn. This just happened to me when I dug out the old 2.01 cart. The menu portion loaded fine, but loading a RAM expansion game returned the cart required screens. I had to mess with cart positioning quite a bit for the menu AND the RAM to work.

The new cart actually took a dozen resets in the Saturn to work. Once I found a sweet spot, I took a fine point sharpie and drew a dashed line across the cart face even with the shell of the system. Like a depth gauge. So far, I can now take out and install the cart to work reliably by lining up this marker line with the top of the Saturn shell.

 

[cafe-alpha]

To sum up things simply, compatibility issues are weirder than expected 🙂 As it's not possible to do some testing, please wait for the next occasion privateye and me will have to use a cartridge featuring expansion memory.

 

[draco]

Again, not a problem. I can play the 1MB only games, just takes an extra power reset. Just thought I'd report it.

 

[Ace_of_DiscaL]

I observed some other odd behavior moving the cart to a spare Saturn. I currently have the new cart flashed with Memory Card Plus firmware to experiment with direct saving, but I imagine this new observation would affect PSK as well.

On the back up Saturn, first boot was to a 1MB game and got the corruption. Quick power cycle fixed it. Experimented with 4MB games and the results were the same as my first post.

Moved cart back to the main Saturn, and did a first power boot to a 1MB game, corruption. Power cycle fixed it.

Even letting the system sit offline for a while .. going back on first power up to a 1MB game would lead to corruption, with a quick power cycle fixing it.

So in my current setup, regardless of system. If I walk up to a Saturn and want to load a 1MB game, I need to power it up for a boot, and then do a hard power restart to ensure no corruption. It's definitely odd.

It's a little rude to say "back up Saturn", because NO Saturn is simply EVER a "back up" OK?

 

[Coyote676]

Hi there,

I hope I’m writing this in the right place. I’ve been all over the internet trying to find answers on this but keep coming up short.

I was gifted a Saturn with action replay this Christmas. The AR had Pseudo Saturn Kai Lite 6.314 pre flashed. I mostly play NTSC games so I haven’t had any real issues.

My question is this though - I’m trying to find the data manager feature because I keep running out of space on the systems internal memory but there is no option for the data manager on the PSK main menu.

Was this a feature added to a later version of PSK? If so, would a simple download and “flash” to the new version add this functionality?

Thanks in advance for any help

 

[privateye]

Lite firmware does not allow you to transfer save files to the Action Replay's cartridge ROM so Save Data Manager utility is not included. That functionality might come in the future once existing features are refined and higher-priority features are added (e.g. full support for Satiator ODE).

 

[Coyote676]

Lite firmware does not allow you to transfer save files to the Action Replay's cartridge ROM so Save Data Manager utility is not included. That functionality might come in the future once existing features are refined and higher-priority features are added (e.g. full support for Satiator ODE).

Gotcha - thanks for the quick reply.

Would AR support the non “lite” firmware or is there not enough space for that? I could have sworn I read something out there about the space on the AR being limited.

 

[privateye]

There's not enough space (full firmware is 1MB and Action Replay only has 256KB to play with) and AR doesn't have any additional features that the full firmware is designed to take advantage of (e.g. SD card for importing and exporting save data).

 

[TheIceberg]

Ok I want to post an issue with the latest version of PSK 6.483 and the game The Hyper Golf or Valora Valley Golf. This is tested on a white Saturn using PSK lite on an Action replay cart. This was tested using a real copy of The Hyper Golf. The system will boot to the Sega logo then will display a black screen and do nothing. The disc will continue to spin but will not access. This game worked in the previous version of PSK I used which was 6.274. Valora Valley Golf does the exact same thing.

Thinking possibly that Pebble Beach Golf Links might do the same thing since they are similar games software-wise I tested a real US copy of the game and there is no issues with that game.

Thank you!

 

[privateye]

@TheIceberg : As is the case with Pebble Beach Golf Links, The Hyper Golf and Valora Valley Golf (EUR / USA) require the JHL loader. Next version of Pseudo Saturn Kai will be fixed to make these games playable directly from the automatic loader but, for now, you must force usage of the JHL loader by pressing the Z button in Pseudo Saturn Kai's main menu.

@cafe-alpha : I have attached the header info of games to add to the JHL autoset list.

 

[cafe-alpha]

@TheIceberg : As is the case with Pebble Beach Golf Links, The Hyper Golf and Valora Valley Golf (EUR / USA) require the JHL loader. Next version of Pseudo Saturn Kai will be fixed to make these games playable directly from the automatic loader but, for now, you must force usage of the JHL loader by pressing the Z button in Pseudo Saturn Kai's main menu.

@cafe-alpha : I have attached the header info of games to add to the JHL autoset list.

Thank you 🙂


@TheIceberg : Compatibility settings will be updated in next release of Pseudo Saturn Kai. Until that moment, please push Z button while selecting "Start Game" in boot menu to run these games, as indicated by @privateye.

 

[sylph4]

Ok I want to post an issue with the latest version of PSK 6.483 and the game The Hyper Golf or Valora Valley Golf. This is tested on a white Saturn using PSK lite on an Action replay cart. This was tested using a real copy of The Hyper Golf. The system will boot to the Sega logo then will display a black screen and do nothing. The disc will continue to spin but will not access. This game worked in the previous version of PSK I used which was 6.274. Valora Valley Golf does the exact same thing.

Thinking possibly that Pebble Beach Golf Links might do the same thing since they are similar games software-wise I tested a real US copy of the game and there is no issues with that game.

Thank you!

Have the same problem with Thunder force gold pack 2, while 1 works. But holding Z doesn't help

 

[privateye]

Have the same problem with Thunder force gold pack 2, while 1 works. But holding Z doesn't help

Thunder Force Gold Pack 2 works fine for me with the default CWX loader in both the full and lite versions of Pseudo Saturn Kai. Are you booting the game from an ODE like Rhea/Phoebe or Fenrir, or from a burned disc? If it's the latter, please make sure to burn a good disc image (e.g. from the Redump set) to reputable media.

 

[sylph4]

Thunder Force Gold Pack 2 works fine for me with the default CWX loader in both the full and lite versions of Pseudo Saturn Kai. Are you booting the game from an ODE like Rhea/Phoebe or Fenrir, or from a burned disc? If it's the latter, please make sure to burn a good disc image (e.g. from the Redump set) to reputable media.

Burned disk, worked on previous firmwares, also works on pc in retroarch

 

[privateye]

Burned disk, worked on previous firmwares, also works on pc in retroarch

Before I tested Thunder Force Gold Pack 2 on my Phoebe ODE but, this time, I tested a burned disc with Pseudo Saturn Kai Lite v6.483 (latest public version flashed to Action Replay) and PSK full v6.502 (private beta version) - with both firmwares, it loads just fine with the CWX and JHL loaders and I'm able to play Thunder Force AC and Thunder Force IV.
How long ago was it that you verified the game to be working on a previous firmware? I'm wondering if your Saturn's laser has worsened over time...

 

[sylph4]

Before I tested Thunder Force Gold Pack 2 on my Phoebe ODE but, this time, I tested a burned disc with Pseudo Saturn Kai Lite v6.483 (latest public version flashed to Action Replay) and PSK full v6.502 (private beta version) - with both firmwares, it loads just fine with the CWX and JHL loaders and I'm able to play Thunder Force AC and Thunder Force IV.
How long ago was it that you verified the game to be working on a previous firmware? I'm wondering if your Saturn's laser has worsened over time...

Hm, will try to burn another cd-r, but no problems with any other disk at all on my saturn 🙂 Also to mention, if cheats are chosen, loader recognizes this game

UPD. no difference with another disc. Console is ntsc-j, later first grey model

 

[sylph4]

Before I tested Thunder Force Gold Pack 2 on my Phoebe ODE but, this time, I tested a burned disc with Pseudo Saturn Kai Lite v6.483 (latest public version flashed to Action Replay) and PSK full v6.502 (private beta version) - with both firmwares, it loads just fine with the CWX and JHL loaders and I'm able to play Thunder Force AC and Thunder Force IV.
How long ago was it that you verified the game to be working on a previous firmware? I'm wondering if your Saturn's laser has worsened over time...

I solved the problem partially by adding shield to my 4-in-1 red cart, game boots! The only problem now, that beginning FMVs play with shutter, but play fine, if cart is pulled out at game start, strange ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[bobrocks95]

Has anyone tried Super Tempo with Pseudo Saturn Kai? The game will boot, but fails to play the intro music, then crashes when trying to start the game from the main menu, with music looping in the background.

Could of course be a bad burn- I will double-check both loaders and what version I'm running tomorrow and edit this post!

EDIT: Same behavior with both loaders, Pseudo Saturn Kai version 6.408. It doesn't look like the 2 newer versions really do anything for game compatibility, but just add some Fenrir ODE features. If anyone else has this game available to test it would be much appreciated just because I'm so low on CD-R's ^_^;

I'm also just now finding out about testing C1 and C2 error rate on burned CDs and I wish I had a drive that could do so, but they're all quite old and the feature doesn't seem to be supported for roughly the past decade... I forced my drive to do it in Nero DiscSpeed but no telling if it's accurate or not, and it only read the audio tracks at the start of the CD, not the whole disc.

 

[privateye]

Has anyone tried Super Tempo with Pseudo Saturn Kai? The game will boot, but fails to play the intro music, then crashes when trying to start the game from the main menu, with music looping in the background.

Super Tempo works fine for me with the default CWX loader. If you're using one of those all-in-one cartridges then your first port of call is to add shielding in order to fix compatibility issues caused by electromagnetic interference: PPCenter :: Pseudo Saturn Kai Compatibility List