Picodrive 1.20

[notaz]

Who Shot Johnny Rock:- Its working quite good i think. Its a fmv game it gets a bit jumpy sometimes but it is playable

Slam city with scottie pippen :- Need to put better sync on then off again for it to work. Its an fmv game and is a bit jumpy but is still playable

Who Shot Johnny Rock chops (badly) every few seconds, but at least it actually runs now.

This is actually SD card access problem, the game constantly reads data, and as most of you know GP2X SD card DMA doesn't work and you get "jumpy" and "choppy" behavior. Unfortunately I don't know how to fix that Make sure you use 2.1.1 or newer firmware, it has better SD access then earlier ones.

shilpheed works at no noticeable gfx bugs!!! but cause the game uses PCM all the time it frezzes for a second every time at fixed periods(sound plays well).
[...]
silpheed has the same freze bug even with the pcm off

This is also SD access problem. Turning off PCM doesn't prevent game to read data..

How hard would it be to add GameGenie code capability?

Personally I would never use this feature, but I get asked about this every now and then. Would there be many people using this?

 

[Tobriand]

Mostly, these days, I don't like GG/Action Replay. But every so often, there comes a style of enemy that isn't beatable without cheating at my level of ability with a game. And I'd rather cheat than throw the game down in frustration and never play it again.

So yeah, GG would be nice to have available, even if cheating is distasteful...

 

[CABBAGES]

Im still on firmware 2.0 so i might upgrade and see if it improves

Heres a video of dragons lair. It looks a bit dark but i think thats somethin up with my capture card .

DRAGONS LAIR VIDEO

 

[Godmil]

OMG Night Trap... cant wait to test Thanks sooooo much!

 

[imhotep]

Heres a video of dragons lair.

Thanks for that. Gives me a good idea of how it runs.

notaz: Would a very fast SD card theoretically stop video occasionally stuttering?

 

[CABBAGES]

Heres a video of final fight CD :-

Final Fight video

 

[notaz]

notaz: Would a very fast SD card theoretically stop video occasionally stuttering?

I don't think so. The problem is that SD access on GP2X needs too much CPU power, which causes those slowdowns..

to all Game Genie requesters: I assume you want .pat files to be loadable in PD (which contain Genecyst or GG patches), like these here? Where can I find more such patches (for testing)?

 

[Goemon4]

notaz: Would a very fast SD card theoretically stop video occasionally stuttering?

I don't think so. The problem is that SD access on GP2X needs too much CPU power, which causes those slowdowns..

is this causing the out of sync audio in fmv's? or are you still working on that?

 

[Tobriand]

Don't know about standards of .pat or whatnot, but a simple convention (since codes are often available as just the codes - gamefaqs lists them as such, both GG and Pro Action Replay) might be a text file called nameofgame.extension.cht, with simple syntax, e.g.

<TYPEOFCODE decription="description here">CODE</TYPEOFCODE>

Then display them as a toggleable list in PD, automatically loaded when the game is. Or something like that. If a standard along those lines (maybe .pat would be fine), go for that, but if it's simple enough to add them to a text file as and when, then that would be enough, I'm sure.

 

[shinra]

This is actually SD card access problem, the game constantly reads data, and as most of you know GP2X SD card DMA doesn't work and you get "jumpy" and "choppy" behavior. Unfortunately I don't know how to fix that Make sure you use 2.1.1 or newer firmware, it has better SD access then earlier ones.

:unsure: Maybe if you use some kind of buffer, FIFO stack, or something to stream the data, that access issue is like the problem of the first portable cd players, when you bump them too much they skip track, the solution was to add a buffer to reduce skips on read errors, maybe somethig similar can be done in this case.

 

[DaveC]

notaz: Would a very fast SD card theoretically stop video occasionally stuttering?

I don't think so. The problem is that SD access on GP2X needs too much CPU power, which causes those slowdowns..

to all Game Genie requesters: I assume you want .pat files to be loadable in PD (which contain Genecyst or GG patches), like these here? Where can I find more such patches (for testing)?

Is that a hardware issue or a "bug" or deficiency of the firmware code?

Also I was wondering could these improvements be used in the older MD specific emu to speed up regular Genesis cart emulation? I remember you said to use the older version for cartridge games but it doesn't have the below updates.

"Changed the way 920 and 940 communicates (again), should be more reliable and give slight performance increase.
Some optimizations in audio mixing code."


Thanks again for the amazing emu.

 

[notaz]

is this causing the out of sync audio in fmv's? or are you still working on that?

No, sync problems are "just" emulator bugs..

:unsure: Maybe if you use some kind of buffer, FIFO stack, or something to stream the data, that access issue is like the problem of the first portable cd players, when you bump them too much they skip track, the solution was to add a buffer to reduce skips on read errors, maybe somethig similar can be done in this case.

Yeah, buffering should help, but it will probably cause occasional longer pauses instead of many short ones.. This problem could be fixed completely by loading up the whole ISO into memoty, but that would need too much RAM (some games take hundreds of megabytes).

notaz: Would a very fast SD card theoretically stop video occasionally stuttering?

I don't think so. The problem is that SD access on GP2X needs too much CPU power, which causes those slowdowns..

Is that a hardware issue or a "bug" or deficiency of the firmware code?

I have no idea. There is MMC/SD DMA request number listed in MMSP2 docs, so maybe it is just a problem of firmware?

Also I was wondering could these improvements be used in the older MD specific emu to speed up regular Genesis cart emulation? I remember you said to use the older version for cartridge games but it doesn't have the below updates.

There were only two reasons to use older version: (1) broken support for Street Fighter II Special Champion Edition and (2) slight performance decrease due to some disabled code. Oh and maybe because of untested code which may misbehave. (2) should now no longer be important because of other improvements, so I think you can "safely" use latest version, unless you need (1).
Things changed quite a bit in latest versions, so it would be a bit painful to backport the new stuff.

 

[DynaMight]

Just tried Night Trap again, it's working alot better now and hasnt locked up at all! although the video and audio is quite jerky. Awesome work though.

You mention SD access problems slowing it down, how does PSX4GP2X do it? Surely a PSX would need more data than a MegaCD?

 

[notaz]

You mention SD access problems slowing it down, how does PSX4GP2X do it? Surely a PSX would need more data than a MegaCD?

What made you think so? FMV games fetch every frame from CD (constantly loading data), non-FMV ones just load up everything into RAM and run from there. Which PSX FMV game works better with PSX4GP2X than SegaCD ones with PD?

_________________________________________

Ok, now listen up all cheaters, I glued up a quick patch/GG support into PD. Download a test version here (nothing else was changed in that version).

To use GG/patch codes, you must type them into your favorite text editor, one per line. Comments may follow code after a whitespace. Only GameGenie and Genecyst patch formats are supported. Examples:
Genecyst patch (this example is for Sonic):

00334A:0005 Start with five lives
012D24:0001 Keep invincibility until end of stage
009C76:5478 each ring worth 2
009C76:5678 each ring worth 3
...

Game Genie patch (for Sonic 2):

ACLA-ATD4 Hidden palace instead of death egg in level select
...

Both GG and patch codes can be mixed in one file.

When the file is ready, name it just like your ROM file, but with additional .pat extension, making sure that case matches.
Examples:

ROM: Sonic.zip
PATCH FILE: Sonic.zip.pat

ROM: Sonic 2.bin
PATCH FILE: Sonic 2.bin.pat

Put the file into your ROMs directory. Then load the .pat file as you would a ROM. Then Secret Cheat Menu Option should appear in main menu Have fun!

 

[Goemon4]

is this causing the out of sync audio in fmv's? or are you still working on that?

No, sync problems are "just" emulator bugs..

ok then, ill wait for the next release (ty again)

 

[SpaceJellyfish]

Thanks SO MUCH for accomodating us filthy cheaters notaz!!

 

[Jaguarandine]

lol, did I even read what was going on around me? Ignorant post deleted...

 

[Squidge]

I don't think so. The problem is that SD access on GP2X needs too much CPU power, which causes those slowdowns..

Is that a hardware issue or a "bug" or deficiency of the firmware code?

The MMSP2 supports DMA mode for SD which vastly speeds up the reading or SD cards and lets the ARM concentrate on other things whilst the DMA is handling the SD card. However, the DMA doesn't work, so it turns into a very processor intensive task.

GPH have not screwed up the firmware - the MMSP2 silicon has the problem. DMA's to SD just don't occur. MagicEyes seem to know about this, as all the DMA to SD registers were in the 0.95 datasheet, but were removed completely from the 1.0 release.

That said, it is possible to create a faster SD card reader - Rob Brown has created one, but it will take a lot of work to actually get it to run as part of the kernel (Rob's was written for HH mode), and its currently unknown how much faster it'll be with the rest of linux leaning on it.

 

[TelcoLou]

* snip *

That said, it is possible to create a faster SD card reader - Rob Brown has created one, but it will take a lot of work to actually get it to run as part of the kernel (Rob's was written for HH mode), and its currently unknown how much faster it'll be with the rest of linux leaning on it.

I was just looking up prices for SD cards, and the 150x ones are a fair bit more $$ ... looks like I'll still go for the slower, cheaper cards.

I just made a SegaCD-specific SD card that auto-boots into PicoDrive ... and from the looks of it, 1GB just won't cut it anymore

 

[DaveC]

* snip *

That said, it is possible to create a faster SD card reader - Rob Brown has created one, but it will take a lot of work to actually get it to run as part of the kernel (Rob's was written for HH mode), and its currently unknown how much faster it'll be with the rest of linux leaning on it.

I was just looking up prices for SD cards, and the 150x ones are a fair bit more $$ ... looks like I'll still go for the slower, cheaper cards.

I just made a SegaCD-specific SD card that auto-boots into PicoDrive ... and from the looks of it, 1GB just won't cut it anymore

I am struggling with my puny 4 GB card God I wish the 8GB cards worked