Burning N64 emulator for original XBox

[Sandman]

HI,

In the past I've successfully burned Megadrive, SNES, Amiga, Master System, PC Engine, and other emulators with roms onto CD-RW discs that run on my original big brick Xbox.

I've a couple of N64 emulators (Surreal xbox and Project 64 xbox) for the Xbox, and the roms, but obviously these are too large a file size to burn onto CD-RWs.

Can anyone give me any tips on how to burn these (presumably onto a DVD?) so that they'll boot and run on my Xbox

Thanks

[^Katsu]

Assuming you have a modded box that you can get into the files with, you would just in theory have to re-write the Surreal Ini file to direct the games path to your DVD drive? I see there is also a 2010 version of Surreal about not sure what they changed, but tbh even if you have 128MB RAM installed the games wont all run and you have to do so much f***ing around with settings to make anything near playable

Personally I'd get a N64 or simply run from the hdd?

[charlesr]

There aren't that many good N64 games. Just put the ones you want to play on the HDD along with surreal.

[dvdx2]

the xbox really struggles to emulate most N64 games. I wouldny bother. I'm sure the PC does it way better.

Best option is to pick yourself up an rgb'ed jpn unit and enjoy


charlesr - not that many good n64 games, tut tut - i could name quite a few...

[charlesr]

I've got 20 essentials now. I've enjoyed a fair few others, but it's not like you need the entire back catalogue. Compared to other systems, there just weren't that many games. So fewer good ones. Hope that makes sense.

[dvdx2]

aye, i know what you mean

20 sounds about right

[Escape-To-88]

There is a more recent version of Surreal (think it's a modified version) which selects the correct emu's for each title i.e. it selects which of the three bundled emu's the game runs best on, but as has been said, none run particularly well - Mario 64 and Zelda Ocarina and pretty playable though.

[Sandman]

Thanks for the input so far gents, but my question still hasn't been answered! 8>)

Most of my old consoles (MS, Megadrive, PCE, & N64) are in the loft as I've only got the room to connect my XBox, Saturn, PS2, 360, and PC to my TV/monitor in the "office" at home. I've got the emulators running okay on my PC, but my grandaughter wants to play Mario Kart against me, and, apart from doing this on the DS, the best option would be to run these on the XBox. Sadly I lack the techie-ability to save and run these on the HDD on my chipped 'Box, hence my desire to run them from Disks.

Someone from another forum has sent me some hints - will try to test these out over the weekend. If they're successful I'll let you know.

Charlesr - nice to see you're still around, you've got to be one of the old-timers along with camps!!

[Escape-To-88]

They should work fine from disks, if memory serves me correct all a modded Xbox will look for is the default.xbe (or something like that) file. As long as you preserve the file structure so that is directly in the root of the emu folder all should be fine. I have an old copy of Kawa-X somewhere and that runs fine. Make sure you edit the .ini or config files to point to the rom directory on the disk itself. In short you should just be able to unzip the emulator file into a new folder e.g. 'Zsnes' and as long as the default.xbe is in that directory you should be able to burn it with Nero etc. and all should be fine. It's worth mentioning not all DVD trays read CD-R's etc. so you may be unlucky and have to try a few brands of media, CD, DVD etc. to get it working. Again there is a guide to tray types somehwere on the net.

You can then actually then copy directly from the disk to your HDD using the HDD copy program, which I've now forgotten what it's called, I used to do this sometimes when I couldn't be bothered to FTP stuff over. It will put the contents into a drive and you can use Xplorer (again, name may be incorrect) to put it where you want, like a P.C. To be honest barely any 'techie knowledge' is required to get the stuff onto the HDD, and FTP'ing things is very easy, and I'd argue it's more of a pain trying to run from DVD/CD. Good luck!

[fallenangle]

Re: Copying to the Xbox HDD: if you're running a recent version of the UnleashX dash the Copy Disc option is available straight from the main menu. Older versions don't have it but often installer packages included DVD2Xbox or HDDLoader as apps. If you can find the most recent version of AID that has everything you'll need and far more too but I doubt it has the most recent emulators.

[Sandman]

Wasted a bit of time on this over the weekend.

I've downloaded the latest surreal for XBox in it's own folder, I've put my roms in the Rom folder, I've created an iso using Qwix, and I've burned a DVD-R, DVD-RW, and CD-RW using dvd-dcryptor at 1x burning speed. However none of them work.

I put the Disk in, it goes to the X-Box/Microsoft logo, and there it stays!

I've got a modded xbox, fitted with either the enigma chip or the messiah chip (see, that's how old it is!!). It still has it's standard hard-drive, and it's just got the standard dashboard.

Am I trying the impossible, or have I made a mistake somewhere - as anyone ever got this running direct from disk? I can burn and run any number of game iso's, I've got other emulators working from disk with no problems, so this makes it even more frustrating.

[smouty]

The executable should be named default.xbe and be in the root of the cd/DVD.
The only other thing that should be needed is an ini file that points to the rom folder which I think has been mentioned.
Oh and it is an xiso?
I think enigmah and messiah were for PS2.

[Sandman]

Finally got this sorted thanks to the help from xcalibur from the forums at snesorama.us.

Tried to install a new dash, everything seemed to go through okay, however when I rebooted I got the normal retail dash. xcalibur nailed this down to my having the original enigmah chip, (installed as soon as the XBox was released in the UK), and suggested running all the xbes's in the surreal folder through an xbepatcher. Did this using C-XBox Tool 2 and now everything runs from disk (a DVD-RW).

Thanks for your interest and your replies, hope what I've gone through may help someone else.

[Sketcz]

Yes! very helpful, since I had the same problem (ended up getting a second Xbox for other reasons, and that fixed the problem).

So, can you comment on the N64 emulation? I've always been curious, but have heard it's not very good.

Does Pilotwings 64 work? The N64 is one of the few consoles I hand on to due to difficulty with emulation.

[Escape-To-88]

I think enigmah and messiah were for PS2.

Could be wrong but there was a variant of enigmah for the xbox 1 and yeah messiah was ps2 only, one of the first chips as I recall, having installed a couple.

So, can you comment on the N64 emulation? I've always been curious, but have heard it's not very good.

Still use my Xbox 1 mainly for N64 stuff, well it runs Zelda Ocarina and Mario 64 ok, the latter looks nice in hi-res, I'd argue if you have a capable laptop/lcd just hooking up the laptop/p.c to the LCD and running Project 64 through that. Starfox looks ok through the xbox also and mainy of the earlier titles run more-or-less fullspeed, to be honest I prefer the emu's (even the xbox one) as the original N64's fuzzy display hurts my eyes!