Vice 2.0 (25 Jul 2008) Released

[Squirrel61]

First of all, Gnostic thanks for all your efforts to make this emulator really great! I really appreciate it!

But sadly, I've got serious problems getting it to work. I've tried it a million different ways, but basically it's like this:

• Copy the archive from post #1 of this thread to the SD card. After starting, I get the famous black screen, but the menu key is working and allows me to exit the non-working emu.
• Copy the fixed x64 #1 over the old one. Vice is working now.
• Copy x64 #2 to the SD card. Got this working once, but now every time I try it, I get a sequence of black screen, white flash, black again, sometimes followed by a yellow flash and black again. Finally it produces some graphic glitches on the black screen and that's it. I have to shutdown the GP2X because it's reacting to nothing.
• Copy x64 #3-#9 to the card: None of them is working, same symptoms as #2. The one time #2 worked, I went straight to #8 (because that's the one with the keymaps) which froze the GP2X. After copying #2 and replacing the original keymaps, #2 still didn't work.
• Everytime when I have a non-working version and copy #1 on the SD card, it's working again. I don't have to replace the original keymaps.

I'm using an F200 with firmware 4.1.1 and tried both battery and external power.

Am I doing something wrong or did I stumble upon a bug?

 

[GnoStiC]

x64 - 10

this should fix;
* f200 LCD brightness
* TVOUT (note that, switching to TV from vice is removed, you should enable tvout from gp2x menu)
* f100 low volume

 

[zakhooi]

x64 - 10

this should fix;
* f200 LCD brightness
* TVOUT (note that, switching to TV from vice is removed, you should enable tvout from gp2x menu)
* f100 low volume



Thanks for the update GNostic, your help is appreciated.

But..... now the USB joysicks don't work anymore (none of them).
Could it be you forgot to implement this in this release?

Hopefully it can be fixed....

 

[GnoStiC]

sorry about that, just re-download the latest file :}

Thanks for the update GNostic, your help is appreciated.

But..... now the USB joysicks don't work anymore (none of them).
Could it be you forgot to implement this in this release?

Hopefully it can be fixed....

 

[zakhooi]

Thanks GNostic, it seems to be fine now.
Both sticks work and the picture is nice and stable...

great job, thank you very much!!!

 

[Squirrel61]

First of all, Gnostic thanks for all your efforts to make this emulator really great! I really appreciate it!

But sadly, I've got serious problems getting it to work. I've tried it a million different ways, but basically it's like this:

• Copy the archive from post #1 of this thread to the SD card. After starting, I get the famous black screen, but the menu key is working and allows me to exit the non-working emu.
• Copy the fixed x64 #1 over the old one. Vice is working now.
• Copy x64 #2 to the SD card. Got this working once, but now every time I try it, I get a sequence of black screen, white flash, black again, sometimes followed by a yellow flash and black again. Finally it produces some graphic glitches on the black screen and that's it. I have to shutdown the GP2X because it's reacting to nothing.
• Copy x64 #3-#9 to the card: None of them is working, same symptoms as #2. The one time #2 worked, I went straight to #8 (because that's the one with the keymaps) which froze the GP2X. After copying #2 and replacing the original keymaps, #2 still didn't work.
• Everytime when I have a non-working version and copy #1 on the SD card, it's working again. I don't have to replace the original keymaps.

I'm using an F200 with firmware 4.1.1 and tried both battery and external power.

Am I doing something wrong or did I stumble upon a bug?

It appears to me that my problem could have been caused by the inclusion of minilib 0.C since version #2. Are any prerequisites required for vice, like a special directory, special files etc?

 

[GnoStiC]

x64-10 uses minilib 0.a so if that doesn't work for you, it's probably something else..

just to be sure;
1) download vice 2.0 from viceteam.org
2) install
3) just overwrite my x64 and keymap files

It appears to me that my problem could have been caused by the inclusion of minilib 0.C since version #2. Are any prerequisites required for vice, like a special directory, special files etc?

 

[Stouffa]

this new version seems to have fixed my screen problems too(thanks a million). Now I can get back to playing some of the classics....

 

[Squirrel61]

x64-10 uses minilib 0.a so if that doesn't work for you, it's probably something else..

Thanks for all your work and your fast action!

Version 10 is working when I copy it to my SD card. When I copy version 9 over 10, it's broken again. And when I copy #10 back, it's working again. So I guess it must be something with minilib 0.c. The strange thing is that other people have been using #2-#9 without problems on the same firmware.

QUOTE
just to be sure;
1) download vice 2.0 from viceteam.org
2) install
3) just overwrite my x64 and keymap files

That's exactly what I've been doing all the time. I've deleted the whole vice dir a couple of times and started over, but kept having the mysterious freeze.

Some more information: I used a cardreader to write my SD. I've tried two different SD cards, both SDHC (4 Gb SDHC and 8 Gb micro-SDHC using an adapter).
When I got my F200, firmware 4.0.0 was installed. I upgraded to 4.0.2 to 4.1.1 and had problems with some programs. Installed 4.0.2 again and upgraded to 4.1.0 to 4.1.1 with 4.0.2 coming from the archive and found that my touchscreen was broken. Installed 4.0.2 again, this time from gp2x.com and upgraded to 4.1.0 to 4.1.1 and had no problems this time. Downgraded to 4.0.0 because vice (blacky's version) was running slow and I remembered it as running full-speed when I first installed it. The 4.0.0 didn't fix the speed, so upgraded to 4.0.2 to 4.1.0 to 4.1.1 and that is what I still have now. I'm planning on redoing the full 4.0.0-4.1.1 path again and check a minilib 0.c version of vice on every firmware. Maybe I'll use Orkie's nandblanker before installing 4.0.0 to be sure it's a fresh start, because gmenu2x is sometimes acting strange too.

 

[zakhooi]

After a day of playing vice2x with 2 usb joysticks (thanks Gnostic!) I want to bring the following issues to your attention.

Please note that I came across these issues already when I was using the 'official' vice2x 1.22 so it's not because of Gnostic's work.
However I'd like to share this to you and maybe Gnostic even has a solution to these issues as well.

1.
When using TVout the picture looks like it's missing a horizontal lines on the screen.
So fonts seem to be flattened and graphics look a bit corrupt.
It's like every 5 horizontal lines 1 line is missing, so overall you can play games, but it's just missing some lines.
I hope you understand what I mean, it's difficult to explain.
It doesn't make a difference between NTSC or PAL, the problem is always there on TVout.
I don't know where this comes from because on the LCD screen of the GP2X it looks fine and no horizontal lines are missing. I'm not sure whether this issue is related to the TV or gp2x (somehow I think it must be the gp2x)


2.
When playing vice2x for about 10 minutes it all of a sudden crashes, the screen becomes black and the gp2x is not responding at all. By then the gp2x already has handled a lot of graphics, sound and joystick moves.
Only a cold start will recover from this. I can understand is very difficult to troubleshoot this because it's not easy to reproduce and we don't know the circumstances when this happens.
I think this might have something to do with the fact that vice2x is a bit buggy in general.

Maybe one of these issues have been solved by someone or someone has found a workaround for these issues. If so, I'd really like to know.

Thanks in advance

Zakhooi

 

[Squirrel61]

Maybe I'll use Orkie's nandblanker before installing 4.0.0 to be sure it's a fresh start, because gmenu2x is sometimes acting strange too.

To end all speculation: I've nandblanked my F200 and reflashed 4.0.0 and now all versions are fine! And the gpmenu2x peculiarities have gone too! So it seems my firmware somehow got corrupted and it's ok now.

Thanks for the help pinning down the problem.

 

[foleyjo]

2.
When playing vice2x for about 10 minutes it all of a sudden crashes, the screen becomes black and the gp2x is not responding at all. By then the gp2x already has handled a lot of graphics, sound and joystick moves.
Only a cold start will recover from this. I can understand is very difficult to troubleshoot this because it's not easy to reproduce and we don't know the circumstances when this happens.
I think this might have something to do with the fact that vice2x is a bit buggy in general.

Maybe one of these issues have been solved by someone or someone has found a workaround for these issues. If so, I'd really like to know.

Thanks in advance

Zakhooi



Whats your clock speed and are you using real are fast sid?? I have played for over an hour with no crash

 

[zakhooi]

2.
When playing vice2x for about 10 minutes it all of a sudden crashes, the screen becomes black and the gp2x is not responding at all. By then the gp2x already has handled a lot of graphics, sound and joystick moves.
Only a cold start will recover from this. I can understand is very difficult to troubleshoot this because it's not easy to reproduce and we don't know the circumstances when this happens.
I think this might have something to do with the fact that vice2x is a bit buggy in general.

Maybe one of these issues have been solved by someone or someone has found a workaround for these issues. If so, I'd really like to know.

Thanks in advance

Zakhooi



Whats your clock speed and are you using real are fast sid?? I have played for over an hour with no crash


Well, to answer that I have to go in detail:
One of my favourite games is 'Way of the exploding fist'.
It seems that vice(2x) has quite some troubles with this game since it's one of the few at that time that had digitized sound.
Running the game at 200Mhz won't work nice it's getting really bad at that speed.
Therefore I HAVE TO overlcock it to 250Mhz (> 250Mhz will make vice2x crash immediately).
Other games that have this problem are such as Commando, Defender Of The Crown etc etc
I think that vice(2x) doesn't handle that kind of 'heavy' games that well.
Changing the SID settings didn't really help, actually it's hard to even notice any difference after changing that setting.
Maybe you can try these games yourself as well en please let me know your findings.

Is this the information you wanted to have?

 

[Squirrel61]

Running the game at 200Mhz won't work nice it's getting really bad at that speed.
Therefore I HAVE TO overlcock it to 250Mhz (> 250Mhz will make vice2x crash immediately).

I think the overclocking is causing the crash. When you overclock a processor, it will heat up considerably more than it was designed for. It depends on the production quality how much you can overclock a processor before it crashes because of overheating. Therefore, when you take two gp2x's (or two pc's or whatever else that uses an overclockable processor system), it is well possible that one of them can be overclocked by 25% while the identical other can be overclocked only 10%.

I've tried my F200 with vice running at 280 MHz (just to test my gp2x) and it crashed after 10 secs. of gameplay. But I know at 250 MHz, it runs fairly well, although I haven't tested it while heavily playing for 10 mins yet.

Btw. It seems Vice is not very well-designed (by the Vice team, that is, I'm not blaming Gnostic). Frodo, despite being more buggy and less compatible, runs way faster. Eg. when I start Green Beret, the title music sounds like shit, with intermittent pausing, which had me wondering for several days if there was something wrong with my F200. But Frodo is playing the music seemless. And UAE, which emulates a machine at 16x the speed of a C64 and with much more sophisticated hardware, runs much better too!

 

[foleyjo]

Well, to answer that I have to go in detail:
One of my favourite games is 'Way of the exploding fist'.
It seems that vice(2x) has quite some troubles with this game since it's one of the few at that time that had digitized sound.
Running the game at 200Mhz won't work nice it's getting really bad at that speed.
Therefore I HAVE TO overlcock it to 250Mhz (> 250Mhz will make vice2x crash immediately).

Tried Way of the Exploding Fist
I overclocked to 250 and I still found it unplayable.

It was pausing every time I did anything.

I'm guessing the problem is the sid emulation. Vice has always seemed to have problems with the sound. Either making games pause for a second at random intervals or being out of sync with the action.

I think your crashing problem though is due to a high overclock. I never go past 240 for Vice. I could be wrong (I probably am as I'm not very technically minded)

 

[zakhooi]

Thank you for your replies.

I think we all agree on the fact the these crashes must have something to do with the design of vice.
I also found out before that frodo is more powerfull, however as you already stated it's less compatible.
We need to have the best of both.

I wonder whether vice can be improved on the SID part that easily. I guess Gnostic can tell us.

At the other hand, I wonder whether you gues have the same problem with the missing lines on tvout.
Did you check that issues as well.

Please let me know.

Thanks in advance

 

[vampire8bit]

Does these out of sync sound and pausing issues happen in a lot of games or just a few? Early on the thread foleyjo mentioned some games which ran at full speed with no problems. Does using a particular Gnostic update make a difference?

 

[zakhooi]

Does these out of sync sound and pausing issues happen in a lot of games or just a few? Early on the thread foleyjo mentioned some games which ran at full speed with no problems. Does using a particular Gnostic update make a difference?

Not all games have this problem but game such as the ones I mentioned above.
Gnostics version does not make any difference on these issues , that's my experience.

 

[vampire8bit]

Thanks for the reply, How does frodo2x compare? I know it is not as compatible but for the games it runs, does it run them at full 60 fps and no frameskip with sound?

 

[zakhooi]

Thanks for the reply, How does frodo2x compare? I know it is not as compatible but for the games it runs, does it run them at full 60 fps and no frameskip with sound?

Frodo is a bit more powerful as explained but with games like 'way of the exploding fist' you also will notice it's giving all it's got.