Kale worked out the problems with the GD-ROM subsystem that prevented Dreamcast from booting in MESS. It goes something like this:

And you can read more from the man himself right here.

Stefano Teso meanwhile has been busy with Valkyrie, the Hikaru emulator with nothing to hide.

Samuele Zannoli has continued to plug away at the Xbox 1-based Chihiro hardware, with the result that OutRun 2 now boots and (very slowly) shows a few 2D screens. I don’t think it does anything more, but I could just be impatient.

UPDATE: Haze was more patient and got to this 4th screen, after which it crashes:

Moving on from the last post, Christian made some additional fixes to the effects processor so now the “rotating speaker” effect works. In case you’re unfamiliar with what that means, you’ll probably understand quite quickly listening to this. It’s a classic sound used in the blues, rock, jazz, and even electronica.

Christian Brunschen continued working on the Ensoniq synthesizer components and got the ES5510 effects processor chip working. Some bugs definitely remain, but by and large the effects programs for the 16-bit Ensoniq synthesizer drivers in MESS now do what they’re supposed to.

One standout example: the VFX has a patch called “GATED-DRUMS”. For those not versed in music production, “gated reverb” was the process used by Phil Collins and his engineer to make drums sound huge on 1980’s “In The Air Tonight”. This became *the* signature drum sound of the 1980s and gated reverb was widely used on records from about 1983 to 1992. Now, the VFX wisely saves ROM by using existing clean drum samples and using the ES5510 effects processor to apply the “gating” process for the “GATED-DRUMS” patch.

So without the 5510 working, that patch sounds like this.

With the 5510 emulation running, it sounds like this.

The difference is obvious 🙂