Announcing the 64drive nearing completion

I infidelity hit reset. If I hadn't, then I would have only lost that sessions progress.

And no I did not play a week straight :drool:. Over the course of a week I likely played 4 or 5 hours. And now I'm just using cheat codes in-game to skip to where I left off, but it's still annoying.

As said, I'm pretty sure a glitch in the game caused the save to be erased. Once I hit reset, I overwrote my previous days save with the new bugged one. Having an incremental backup of the .save files would be useful in this case.

 

It took 7 months, I finally got it

 

I'm experiencing freezing with my 64drive when selecting a ROM to load. Normally, when a ROM is selected, the "Loading Image" prompt appears and then a wait time of a few seconds or so goes by before boot. When I select a ROM, the menu freezes and no prompt appears. It stays frozen for 40-60 seconds and then finally the "Loading Image" prompt appears, followed by the usually couple seconds or so before a normal boot. This used to only affect a handful of games, I would normally just get the quick, standard loading on everything else. Now, it affects basically every ROM, and while not really a problem since the 64drive is still functional, it's mainly just an annoyance.

I asked Marshall about this last year. He was not sure what to make of it, so he was kind enough to send out a replacement. The issue still persists. I've tried it on multiple consoles with differently sized storage mediums and varying brands to the same effect.

Is anyone else experiencing this? My only guess is because I have a large amount of thoroughly organized & alphabetized ROMs, about 14-15GB total, that is what's causing the issue. I enjoy the convenience of having everything available in one location. Strangely, even when I put just a few ROMs on the root directory of a card, it will freeze but for a much shorter time, about 4-5 seconds. I'm open to suggestions.

 

Um, instead of just putting a few files on the /root/ directory, try it with only a few roms on the entire CF or microsd cart. Why do you need every rom from every region?..

 

Perhaps I wasn't thorough enough. When I said I only put a few ROM files on the root, that was all that was on the card, just a handful of ROM files on the root directory, nothing else.

What difference does it make if I have every ROM, just one region of ROM or just a few ROM? That should be irrelevant to performance; I'm only selecting & playing one ROM at a time. I organize my PowerPaks, EverDrives, etc in the same manner on larger cards and that does not affect their performance; select & load. All N64 ROM that I have chosen to include in my library fit on a 16GB card and 16GB card compatibility is proudly touted on the FAQ page, so I'm confused why it is doing this, as if it's screening the entire card's library before it loads or something, or maybe seeking "Save" folders and/or scanning all the subdirectories... idk...

 

Have you tried with another CF? Perhaps it's the card.

 

Yeah, I've tried 2 brands of CF and 2 of microSD, but thanks for reminding me, feder. I think I'm gonna try another 2 of both and see if that will resolve the issue.

 

Well loogs, Marshallh can't help you since he hasn't been online since last year.

 

Yeah, that's why he's on AIM right now.. He's not active much on aG, but you can email him from the email supplied on the site where the 64drive was ordered. I'll also relay him a message about the issue loogs is having.

 

I just tried another brand with the same issue. So, I noticed the latest firmware (1.03) was available. Just now, after upgrading, that has seemed to possibly alleviate the issue, temporarily. Everything is loading perfect, even on the original 16GB w/full library (tried 6 titles that were freezing before, now solid). Then I thought to myself, "Well, better try the ROM I first noticed the issue with", which was Killer Instinct Gold (1.0). Froze again

I'm not sure if it's a progressive problem, where it affects more ROMs over time and use. Code piling up after use, causing progressive freezing, is that a logical hypothesis? I can recall the last firmware update had the same effect, seemed to alleviate at first then freezing progressively affected more and more ROMs. I will keep tabs on the performance and report back. I'll also try different menu versions with & without custom backgrounds. Now, I'm wondering if by initially accessing V1.0 of Killer Instinct Gold, that is causing all of this... can anyone confirm they get a perfect load with this title?

 

Have you tried upgrading the Menu and the Bootlader also? I don't know what could be wrong.

 

Ok, just a few more minutes of tinkering and I seem to have something solid, for the moment. Everything is loading perfectly, including Killer Instinct. FW 1.03, Menu 1.08 and BL 1.01, all the latest. feder, I think 1.01 is the only version of bootloader?

When Marshall had sent me my replacement, he was in possession of my CF. He snuck a 1.08b (beta) menu on there, and I noticed it as soon as I got it. Compared to 1.08, 1.08b featured a Controller Pak save option, my guess directly to the CF or microSD (awesome!) but I never figured out how to get it to work. Granted, I didn't spend much time with it as I was really busy at the time, it sat for awhile and I forgot all about it until now. I had been using 1.08b for all the cards, assuming it was the latest. So, now with the stable release menu, everything seems normal. I'll drop Marshall a line and see how the Controller Pak save function is coming

 

I'm pretty sure the controller pak features will be the reading and writing of the pak from the 64drive's menu.. It's not meant to replace the need for the memory pak..

 

What I might understand by looking at this is you will probably still need just (1) Controller Pak, but just as the temporary medium to hold the saves, wherein they can/will be dumped to the CF/microSD, possibly upon reset? "Create dedicated slot for each game" is the what leads me to believe this, but we'll just have to wait 'til the actual release. The fact it is labeled "Controller Pak saving" is also a strong indicator, and not just "Controller Pak tool" or "Controller Pak reader".

 

Considering that I've used the beta menu that you have as well, and I've talked to marshall about the feature... Maybe you shouldn't argue with me on this one? I used it when testing the save fix for the clean rom of DK64.. Besides, the feature is completely unfinished from what I understand, at least in the release you have. Therefore, the labeling probably isn't finalized..

 

Speculating is what people do on forums and in real life and does not mean someone is arguing with you, Kronos.

In other 'Kronos' news...
Kronos is a personal favorite death metal group from Lorraine, France. Technical & punishing music.

I wonder if Marshall would ever integrate online multiplayer w/modified ROMs via the Mini-B, hmm... that would be interesting!

 

The "Kronos" bit in my username is a play off of the Greek Titan, Cronus.. Also known as the Roman God, Saturn.

Also, while it would be an awesome feature, it's just not possible for online multiplayer through USB.

 

One feature that would be nice is the ability to delete a file in the menu. So for example, you select a file and in the screen where it shows the info, to the left of "Load" there would be "Delete". If you select it it would give you a confirmation message of "Yes/No" and would do the appropriate action.

 

Anyone working on adding cheat support? This is the only thing i wished this thing had.

 

I've got some first gen cheat support in the N64 Myth cart menu. It's open source, so I hope KRIKzz checks it out and works it into his menu. Just as a reminder, the NeoMyth Menu google page is:
http://code.google.com/p/neo-myth-menu/

All the menu code for different Myth carts is there, and the code is all MIT license, so there's no problem in taking bits for other projects.

N64 cheats is pretty interesting - I went through a crash course when adding it to the N64 Myth. You need to move the original general exception code from 0x180 down to 0x120, then put the cheat engine code at 0x180 followed by a jump to 0x120 at the end. You need to set WatchLo/Hi (the data access breakpoint register) to trap on writes to 0x180. When the Nintendo library replaces the default exception code at 0x180 with new code, it triggers a watch exception. The new exception code at 0x180 looks for the watch exception, and when it occurs, changes the register from 0x80000180 to 0xA0000120. That makes the Nintendo library store the new exception code to the place the cheat engine jumps to when done.

At that point, it's a matter of converting GameShark codes into MIPS code to do the operation. The menu loads the boot segment into ram, then generates the new exception code (some GS codes will patch the boot segment code loaded), then moves the boot segment to the right place and starts the game. My current code has some problems - I don't know what some of the GS commands are, and the word commands need to handle odd addresses - but it works on a number of games. It's a place to start... with more info than I had when I did my cheat engine.