Beta Hotfix 4 Beta 3 Released!

[Exophase]

I don't think undervolting increases lifetime. It can certainly decrease reliability while doing it, of course.

 

[notaz]

Will be good finally messing with the FIR coefficients, is the access method documented? Should I wait for a post from notaz?

Just wrote a bit about it here:
http://pandorawiki.org/Kernel_interface#Hardware_scaling_filter_control

 

[Tobriand]

I remember reading in the overclock/overvolt thread in hw hacking that 10 years applies if less than 24000 hours are spent in opp4/5, and the remainder is scaling properly between 1-3. I.e. the 100k hours applies even with a good chunk of opp4/5 - just assuming not all your time is spent there...

 

[canguy247]

Thanks for the release ED. Just one note. Are you sure TV-out is being enabled in NTSC mode? When I try this setting I get nothing, but when I try PAL mode I get what you would expect from a PAL signal on a NTSC TV. Just wondering..

Canguy

 

[Kimundi]

ED, I don't know if it is too late for this Hotfix, but could you add the utf8 option to the sd mountscripts?
Without it the Filesystem has trouble with for example japanese characters or our german 'äöü's, at least if the files come from a windows system. I've had it running with this change for several weeks without any problem, so I think it should be safe.

 

[EvilDragon]

Thanks for the release ED. Just one note. Are you sure TV-out is being enabled in NTSC mode? When I try this setting I get nothing, but when I try PAL mode I get what you would expect from a PAL signal on a NTSC TV. Just wondering..

Haven't tested it yet on an NTSC TV (as I don't have one at home )
Will do so

ED, I don't know if it is too late for this Hotfix, but could you add the utf8 option to the sd mountscripts?
Without it the Filesystem has trouble with for example japanese characters or our german 'äöü's, at least if the files come from a windows system. I've had it running with this change for several weeks without any problem, so I think it should be safe.

Thanks for reporting. If it works fine on my unit, it will make into the final.

 

[notaz]

ED, I don't know if it is too late for this Hotfix, but could you add the utf8 option to the sd mountscripts?
Without it the Filesystem has trouble with for example japanese characters or our german 'äöü's, at least if the files come from a windows system. I've had it running with this change for several weeks without any problem, so I think it should be safe.

Thanks for reporting. If it works fine on my unit, it will make into the final.

Doesn't that cause filenames on FAT to become case sensitive and breaking some programs?

 

[EvilDragon]

ED, I don't know if it is too late for this Hotfix, but could you add the utf8 option to the sd mountscripts?
Without it the Filesystem has trouble with for example japanese characters or our german 'äöü's, at least if the files come from a windows system. I've had it running with this change for several weeks without any problem, so I think it should be safe.

Thanks for reporting. If it works fine on my unit, it will make into the final.

Doesn't that cause filenames on FAT to become case sensitive and breaking some programs?

Encoding? Don't think so, it should just use a different character set for displaying characters - but that's what I'm gonna test.
My PC runs UTF-8 and doesn't care about sensitivity on an SDCard AFAIK.

 

[DaveC]

Will be good finally messing with the FIR coefficients, is the access method documented? Should I wait for a post from notaz?

Just wrote a bit about it here:
http://pandorawiki.org/Kernel_interface#Hardware_scaling_filter_control

Cool thanks for the work on this. Does this only work globally or can it easily be integegrated into apps? So for example if one would want 2X mode to use NNI, and for fractional use the filter in the same app?

Also is there some guide somewhere that even non-math gurus could understand to explain what does what when you change certain values? Either that or a bunch of examples that one could just test and extrapolate the effects from?

Thanks again for the great work.

 

[skeezix]

I think its (currently) set up so you can set a user preferred filter (or even define your own); applications could also call the script/interface to change it live for a preferred menu option .. but I would hope those apps are smart enough to restore to previous setting on exit too

As to notaz making it configurable enough to do certain things in certain times.. I think thats asking too much of the kernel.

jeff

 

[DaveC]

I think its (currently) set up so you can set a user preferred filter (or even define your own); applications could also call the script/interface to change it live for a preferred menu option .. but I would hope those apps are smart enough to restore to previous setting on exit too

As to notaz making it configurable enough to do certain things in certain times.. I think thats asking too much of the kernel.

jeff

I wasn't sure how and if apps could easily hook into the kernal for the filters. Not being a coder I don't know exactly how that stuff works. I guess in time I will find out as more make use if it.

 

[Pleng]

Folks .. recently added to this hotfix is minimenu's conf UI; hit the Select menu (I will set keys to different buttons another hotfix),

Is the select menu still on a black background? That really needs fixing as it becomes impossible to navigate on themes where the font is set to black. Any chance that the select menu could use the same background image that the panel usually uses?

 

[notaz]

Does this only work globally or can it easily be integegrated into apps? So for example if one would want 2X mode to use NNI, and for fractional use the filter in the same app?

It's global but apps can change it when they want to, similar like CPU clock. If you have HF4b3 installed, start up terminal and type:

sudo /usr/pandora/scripts/op_videofir.sh none

Then run ginge or psx4all or whatever.

Also is there some guide somewhere that even non-math gurus could understand to explain what does what when you change certain values? Either that or a bunch of examples that one could just test and extrapolate the effects from?

I doubt you can avoid that FIR theory here.. Default filter files are in /etc/pandora/conf/dss_fir/ .

 

[EvilDragon]

Does this only work globally or can it easily be integegrated into apps? So for example if one would want 2X mode to use NNI, and for fractional use the filter in the same app?

It's global but apps can change it when they want to, similar like CPU clock. If you have HF4b3 installed, start up terminal and type:

sudo /usr/pandora/scripts/op_videofir.sh none

Then run ginge or psx4all or whatever.

Ah, so EVERY app that uses hardware scaling via fb will use the filter the user selected?
That's good thing to add to the LCD settings

 

[skeezix]

Folks .. recently added to this hotfix is minimenu's conf UI; hit the Select menu (I will set keys to different buttons another hotfix),

Is the select menu still on a black background? That really needs fixing as it becomes impossible to navigate on themes where the font is set to black. Any chance that the select menu could use the same background image that the panel usually uses?

The select menu is on the main grid screen, it just takes over the 'detail panel' (usually on the right side); I didn't want to break existing themes, so it reuses the colour/font/art of the theme, so should always work. (IF the theme only leaves a tiny area for the detail box, or disables the detail box, it will probabyl break the select menu, but such is life.) The conf-UI uses the whole screen, but to avoid breaking themes again, it just re-uses the themes wallpaper. (Additionally, users can override wallpaper without modifying themes now, but that all still works.) One of these days I'm going to add dialog boxes and add artwork to themes to do it, but I'll probably make it so if the themes don't have dialog artwork, it'll fall back on some default supplied settings..

jeff

 

[Pleng]

The select menu is on the main grid screen, it just takes over the 'detail panel' (usually on the right side); I didn't want to break existing themes, so it reuses the colour/font/art of the theme, so should always work.

you might want to check that. The detail Panel reverts to a BLACK background, it does not reuse the background image for the detail panel. I've made several themes with black fonts, and the select menu is unusable on all of them.

 

[naples39]

Kind of surprised no one has mentioned this, but since installing this update, over clocking hasn't been working right for me.

I know for certain that when overclocking in minimenu then starting sdlmame or Zelda classic, the programs perform as if no overclocking was set. The fps stays the same whether you set the pandora to 500 or 800 MHz in minimenu. That definitely was not the case before this hotfix.

Those are the only two programs I can verify are affected, but i would guess it now happens with several other programs as well.

 

[skeezix]

pleng -- oh, heck, I just forget now I don't even 'see' it anymore, just focus on the bit I'm doing; IIRC, mmenu just darkens the background, no? or does it just plain outright use black? I should add a conf item for the skins to specify an effect or colour for the detail background when in menus, then.. but I'll have to check, I just don't recall.. thought it was darkening the background.

naples -- might be that the minimenu overclocking is just not working You're referring to the new clock-setting options in the Conf UI? or you mean using the Set Clock type stuff thats always been there? (which should work fine) AFAIK, setting cpu speed in mm conf ui works fine (setting speed within mm to 50 makes it crawl), so this suggests the end to end clock setting stuff works; but its possible ED's clock setting scripts that you see in the menus got broken..

jeff

 

[Pleng]

pleng -- oh, heck, I just forget now I don't even 'see' it anymore, just focus on the bit I'm doing; IIRC, mmenu just darkens the background, no? or does it just plain outright use black?

outright black

 

[naples39]

naples -- might be that the minimenu overclocking is just not working You're referring to the new clock-setting options in the Conf UI? or you mean using the Set Clock type stuff thats always been there? (which should work fine) AFAIK, setting cpu speed in mm conf ui works fine (setting speed within mm to 50 makes it crawl), so this suggests the end to end clock setting stuff works; but its possible ED's clock setting scripts that you see in the menus got broken..

jeff

Well I used to set cpu speeds using pleng's shortcuts or the default speed setting program, then launch a pnd from minimenu. When I try to do that now, it seems to still work as it asks me to confirm the speed setting and all, but it doesn't seem to take effect anymore. I'm just judging that by the simple fact that no matter what I set the cpu speed by that method now, the fps stays at levels I got at 500mhz pre-hotfix. I'm guessing there's something in this hotfix regarding program startup and speed settings that broke.

However, if I set cpu speed for a pnd in an ovr file, that does seem to work now (again, judging by fps attained).