Sega Saturn Xband

[SEGA RPG FAN]

I'm looking for someone with a little more Xband experience and/or Saturn knowledge than me to help me out. I've been experimenting with making the JP Saturn Xband titles direct dial with the Japanese modem. By swapping the JP Xband files with the US Netlink Xband files, I can get the game to boot into the Netlink OS, dial and connect to another system running the same modified game, exchange information and attempt to boot into the multiplayer menu. The point where I'm getting hung up on is after the modems connect and they should reboot to the multiplayer menu. It gets to the Sega logo, switches to a black screen and hangs.

I don't have the knowledge to try and troubleshoot what's going on at a low-level within the Saturn to find out why it's hanging. If you think you can help, let me know and I'll share what I've been able to figure out so far. I've been focusing on Sega Rally because it's nearly identical between the Netlink and Xband versions, but obviously different enough that simply swapping files fails.

 

[SEGA RPG FAN]

I'm going to necro an old thread, but since it's mine I think that's fair game 🙂

I got back into this project once I saw that the netlink documentation and sample files made their way onto the internet


Source:

Development Tools/Software (Sega Saturn)

Archive of technical documentation, tools, and software for vintage Sega arcade systems and consoles, to assist in research, development, and emulation.

techdocs.exodusemulator.com

I'm not going to be "that guy" and beg for help when I have basically zero knowledge of what I'm doing. I just want to drop this here in case someone in the future has the motivation and know-how to work on it.

Basically, the Japanese Xband titles needed to dial into a matching server, either receive the number of an opponent to dial or be told to wait for a call. After that initial setup they're direct dial. The US Netlink games are direct dial with no matching server and therefore still work. Unfortunately you can't simply swap the US Xband OS into a Japanese game as I tried above back in 2017.

The sample Xband OS included in the DTS CD (according to the documentation) is essentially the Japanese OS modified to work with the US modem and has direct dial functionality included for development testing. It's possible that this version of the OS and libraries could be compatible with the Japanese games.

I've hit a wall though. I can't get the Xband OS from the DTS CD to load. I even tried building the sample game disc from the CD using the included .scr file and VCDtools. It just hangs at the sega logo then resets the system. I'm not a programmer, so that's as far as I can get. Emulator debugging would mean nothing to me

sample game image:

 

[vbt]

the working xband cd demo is here :

Sega Saturn Sample by Sega

Thanks for the information. Were you able to trigger it in Yabause? Maybe we can get a state save and explore a bit.

segaxtreme.net

 

[SEGA RPG FAN]

Thanks for the disc image. I just needed someone to say "this one works for sure" because I was able to track down the issue I was having. If you have any existing xband save files, this version won't boot and just hangs. I assume it tries to load the save but it's incompatible. Deleting my existing saves did the trick!

 

[vbt]

Thanks for the disc image. I just needed someone to say "this one works for sure" because I was able to track down the issue I was having. If you have any existing xband save files, this version won't boot and just hangs. I assume it tries to load the save but it's incompatible. Deleting my existing saves did the trick!

you won't find many people who manage to recompile or rebuild valid saturn CDs.
Good to hear it did the trick.

 

[SEGA RPG FAN]

you won't find many people who manage to recompile or rebuild valid saturn CDs.
Good to hear it did the trick.

I still have more testing to do to verify everything works as it should, but I successfully replaced the JP xband OS with the one from the sample game and played a local game of Daytona with two Saturns, two Xband modems and a line simulator.

 

[vbt]

the xband aap is quite generic and uses the sega demo loader if i remember well, so it could even support a compilation of netlink games.

 

[SEGA RPG FAN]

the xband aap is quite generic and uses the sega demo loader if i remember well, so it could even support a compilation of netlink games.

That's correct, it does use the demo loader. The app is the same on all of the games, so the same substitution should work for all of them. When rebuilding discs do I need to worry about where files are located physically on the disc or is keeping the same folder structure enough?

Here's a video of Decathlete for SegaNet in action: