Cobra BiOS v1.1 -Review-

Written by Brakken, 2005

The time has come again for another exciting and memorizing review of one of the best GameCube BIOS around. Mental Cube sure did a hell of a job this time around with releasing a new version in a timely manner. I guess having some competition is good for us end users after all. Of course this will be a non-bias review as I wont let the [url=http://ps2banz.pxn-os.com][u]Cobra v1.1 release fiasco[/u][/url] influence my judgement; even though this time around it was very amusing indeed. Now lets take a close look at the *NEW* features.

WHAT'S NEW ?

Built-in Audio Fix, that could be Enabled/Disabled in the Config Menu for full backward compatibility with your old backups.

As promised long ago the infamous audio fix feature now arrives. No longer do you have to put up with half fixed sound! It works 100% and I can now play all the CDDA games perfectly! The only downside to this is that the prior audio patched games (which I warned people not to do) will produce yucky sound. Thank the heavens that you can disable this feature so that these games can be played with their original faulty fix intact. Personally I had been waiting a long time for this feature and am glad it has arrived!

Music Player in Disc Explorer! Select an audio file to play it. For now only ADPCM audio streams are supported (*.ADP, *.PCM, *stream*, etc.), the GC streaming format. Support for more formats, including MP3, is coming in a next release.

Pretty handy if you like listening to in game music and it works pretty well. If you want to test this out find any CDDA games that used to not sound right and test it out. MP3 would be kickass and I really like how they added "is coming in a next version". Basically this means it's coming, but they wont promise when; smart move.

Optimal DRE Handling, read more below.

This basically turns off more of the GameCube's laser protection mechanisms which would register DRE. Hopefully the did not turn off anything that would damage your laser as Ripper///GC warned of; time will tell. As for now some games that DRE'd still under v1.0 don't DRE anymore, but don't think that DRE will still not happen as like I say all the time that the BIOS only contributes to a few out of the fifteen possible DRE causes.

Improved Direct Boot mode Compatibility, now it should be compatible with every good media, including DVD+R

"It should be compatible" is good wording too as it's not 100% working correctly. In contrast I can say they didn't steal this code from the Qoob BIOS because the Qoob BIOS will direct boot +R that Cobra v1.1 still wont, but it's a good start and works about 75% of the time. I tried it with some Verbatim +R and it worked fine.

No need to enter Disc Explorer anymore to boot MultiBoot discs, just select Direct Boot Disc and the Cobra BIOS will detect automatically if you inserted a GC Original, DVD-R, DVD+R or MultiBoot Disc!

Feature works 100% and is pretty much self explanatory.

Fixed a MultiBoot compatibility problem. Now it should work properly with every images.

This seems to have been fixed, though I haven't been able to test all 160 releases on multi-image discs. The sad part is that the emulators are still broken.[/u][/url]

Upgrade with the Disc Explorer from Cobra 1.0 if you want to keep your AR codes and configuration intact. And some more bugfixes/changes.

As advertised this works 100% and is a great feature.

About Disc Read Error handling, we can't help you if you use a bad burner, media or if your laser is not tweaked correctly. But we've improved the error handling code A LOT. Here is a small experiment we don't recommend trying at home, except if you know what you're doing: You can remove the spinning disc for one second while it's playing a movie or loading data. This will trigger some serious read error with any other BIOS :-) Now put the disc back in quickly and it will continue loading, without a crash!

Yes this test works, but is bad for your laser. Also this also worked on v1.0, maybe they just forget to mention it before?

Overall I say the quick response to user input and the added features really make this version shine. I'm happy with this *stable* release and can now enjoy my games off of mute.

Major New Additions

Streaming Audio FIX (CDDA) - 100%
DVD+R Direct Boot Support - 75%

Bugs still need to be worked out/Features to be added

Multi-Disc (2+ disc) Games (broken since v0.1)
Broken Emulator Support Fixed (broken since v1.0)
DOL Loading Fixed (broken since v0.3)
Multi-Session Disc Support (broken since v1.0)
DVD+RW Disc Support (broken since v0.4)

What would be nice for future versions

More then 4k for Codes
Support for more media types using the DVD Browser

Links

www.teamxtender.com
- Team Xtender's Homepage

www.extreme-mods.com
- Great source in the USA for the Viper GC!

modthatcube.pxn-os.com
- The Mod That Cube Online FAQ

-=[Cobra BiOS v1.1 Review Discussion Thread]=-

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