flashjazzcat Posted December 24, 2015 Author Share Posted December 24, 2015 Loader was tested with numen.xex so hard to say what could be wrong. Does the HDD pass RWCRC test? New loader is not forgiving of dropped reads. It issues a multi-sector read of the cluster size and may burst the entire buffer into RAM. I'll add a slow option with retry and DRQ checks later. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
w1k Posted December 24, 2015 Share Posted December 24, 2015 whats new in that rom? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jk40001 Posted December 24, 2015 Share Posted December 24, 2015 Loader was tested with numen.xex so hard to say what could be wrong. Does the HDD pass RWCRC test? New loader is not forgiving of dropped reads. It issues a multi-sector read of the cluster size and may burst the entire buffer into RAM. I'll add a slow option with retry and DRQ checks later. Hi Jon, it does not seems to be anything related to the card inside of side2. Just tried to run my games from sio2sd and none of them can be loaded too. These were fine yesterday. Should I try to repeat some of parts of the flashing process just for the case something went wrong during that process? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted December 24, 2015 Author Share Posted December 24, 2015 Hi Jon, it does not seems to be anything related to the card inside of side2. Just tried to run my games from sio2sd and none of them can be loaded too. These were fine yesterday. Should I try to repeat some of parts of the flashing process just for the case something went wrong during that process? As long as you updated all three components (main BIOS, PBI BIOS and loader) there should be no problem. Flashes cannot be corrupted since they are verified, unless original file was somehow corrupt. whats new in that rom? Read the release notes for the latest Ultimate BIOS/Loader. This loader for SIDE is identical to that one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jk40001 Posted December 24, 2015 Share Posted December 24, 2015 (edited) Hi Jon, it does not seems to be anything related to the card inside of side2. Just tried to run my games from sio2sd and none of them can be loaded too. These were fine yesterday. Should I try to repeat some of parts of the flashing process just for the case something went wrong during that process? pic.JPG Sio2SD load xex problem vanished after switching off and on the machine. Sorry, this was misleading. The problem with side2 loader and launching xex files is still here. These always freeze. I was trying to put side2 cartridge into unmoded 130xe and had the same problem. Then I flashed back the side2 with previous firmware and used it again in unmoded 130xe...then xex files loaded just fine. As you mentioned Jon, looks like new loader seems less forgiving to possible errors on cards inserted. Edited December 24, 2015 by jk40001 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted December 24, 2015 Share Posted December 24, 2015 Sio2SD load xex problem vanished after switching off and on the machine. Sorry, this was misleading. The problem with side2 loader and launching xex files is still here. These always freeze. I was trying to put side2 cartridge into unmoded 130xe and had the same problem. Then I flashed back the side2 with previous firmware and used it again in unmoded 130xe...then xex files loaded just fine. As you mentioned Jon, looks like new loader seems less forgiving to possible errors on cards inserted. I'm wondering if this sensitivity to problems with the card is what caused my issues during the flash. In the past I thought my CF card was written off, but I managed to breath new life in to it through a low-level reformat under Linux. After that it read, wrote and checked out fine. However... It makes me think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted December 25, 2015 Author Share Posted December 25, 2015 Unless the HDD passed an RWCRC test, I'd be dubious about flashing firmware from it. The PBI BIOS contains the exact same double/missed read detection as found in the IDE Plus 2.0 BIOS, but by its very nature even that heavily unrolled code will not catch an equal number of dropped and repeated bytes on an unstable interface. Use of the original loader is therefore recommended in such cases. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted December 25, 2015 Share Posted December 25, 2015 Is it possible to use the new BIOS and PBI BIOS without the new SIDELoader? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted December 25, 2015 Author Share Posted December 25, 2015 (edited) It should work just fine. Out of interest, what brand of CF cards are exhibiting issues? Edited December 25, 2015 by flashjazzcat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted December 25, 2015 Share Posted December 25, 2015 It should work just fine. Out of interest, what brand of CF cards are exhibiting issues? I have only got the one CF card - which is that one Lotharek sold me; a 4GB "SanDisk" consumer brand. To be totally honest I cannot say if this absolutely was the problem, but from what you have said it sounds possible. Whatever the case I have never seen that 'SystemError' message come up before. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted December 25, 2015 Author Share Posted December 25, 2015 If you have an SIO2XXX device on which to host flash ROMs, it should be simple to eliminate the brand of CF card as the cause of mangled BIOS ROMs. Uflash exploding mid-flash suggests some rather disastrous stability issues, however. The software was tested here on half a dozen PAL Ataris using SIDE2 and Sandisk CF cards. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted December 25, 2015 Share Posted December 25, 2015 If you have an SIO2XXX device on which to host flash ROMs, it should be simple to eliminate the brand of CF card as the cause of mangled BIOS ROMs. Uflash exploding mid-flash suggests some rather disastrous stability issues, however. The software was tested here on half a dozen PAL Ataris using SIDE2 and Sandisk CF cards. You are probably right; I have not had an easy time getting any of my 3 decrepit 800XL's to run at all. Initially, way back at the beginning of my adventures in hardware modding I could not get the SIDELoader to recognize the CF card contents. That seemed to be a PHI2 issue which a new 74F08 chip appeared to cure. However, it is possible the machine as a whole is not up to the demands of the new software where other, more robust systems can cope. One of the chaps mentioned it was a phenomena that some 800XL's for whatever reason have bad PHI2 propagation and cannot be modded. Perhaps that is why it flashed in the past but failed when using the new BIOS's and Loader. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
w1k Posted December 25, 2015 Share Posted December 25, 2015 many many many games/demos doesnt working with SIDE LOADER.. why? voice of silence III, IV, etc.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted December 25, 2015 Author Share Posted December 25, 2015 You list two. I need to know what "etc" refers to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
w1k Posted December 25, 2015 Share Posted December 25, 2015 http://a8.fandal.cz/- VOICE OF SILENCE III, IV.. why dont work? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted December 25, 2015 Author Share Posted December 25, 2015 So that's many, many, many? Right: I'll look into it anyway. Anything which doesn't run, if posted here, will be checked out. Note that the thread charting development of the original loader ran for a long time, and since the new loader is not based on the old loader in any way shape or form (being an original, ground-up rewrite) and has only been out for a couple of weeks, it's not going to be "mature" for a while yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
w1k Posted December 25, 2015 Share Posted December 25, 2015 hm, if i creating something, first i test many software, testing - testing testing - and then release.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemiel Posted December 25, 2015 Share Posted December 25, 2015 (edited) We do not wan't another flamewar. It is tested as much as it could be for this moment. Like Indians says: Howgh! Edited December 25, 2015 by lemiel 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemiel Posted December 25, 2015 Share Posted December 25, 2015 (edited) Double post. Edited December 25, 2015 by lemiel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
w1k Posted December 25, 2015 Share Posted December 25, 2015 sorry, but thats developmnent reality testing.. testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..and then release Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greblus Posted December 25, 2015 Share Posted December 25, 2015 @w1k: have you ever heard about "release early, release often" philosophy? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jk40001 Posted December 25, 2015 Share Posted December 25, 2015 (edited) sorry, but thats developmnent reality testing.. testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing..testing.. and then release Edited and my comment to w1k deleted only because it is Christmas Edited December 25, 2015 by jk40001 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted December 25, 2015 Author Share Posted December 25, 2015 (edited) You should have left it: as a confirmed Bah Humbug, I would have enjoyed reading it. If his bug reports were delivered in a less abrasive, belligerent and vague manner I wouldn't have to ignore them going forward. In the meantime, I downloaded and tested the mentioned demos and as far as I can tell they appear to work fine. Regarding those which don't, or perhaps display screen corruption, etc, this is usually the result of the game or demo failing to initialise RAM. I tested a couple of demos during development which crashed if the screen editor was opened prior to loading simply because the display list area wasn't completely filled with $00. This is pretty shabby coding but doesn't usually get caught with software tested primarily with the emulator's XEX loader. Of course we can do our best to make the loader work around such issues (hence the as yet unimplemented "Open Editor" option), but I'm not going to accept the failings of lazily written software as criticisms of the loader. I'm really appreciative of the people who wish to help and who acknowledge that I can't personally sit here and test every XEX in existence. The hope is that people will try the loader and come back with some sensible feedback to help me correct faults and make improvements. Otherwise - Candle's loader being perfectly functional - I can quite happily abandon it and leave the thing languishing in an unfinished state, since there are plenty of other things vying for my attention. Edited December 25, 2015 by flashjazzcat 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted December 26, 2015 Share Posted December 26, 2015 hm, if i creating something, first i test many software, testing - testing testing - and then release.. So what have you developed and released to the community - recently or ever? 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted December 26, 2015 Share Posted December 26, 2015 So what have you developed and released to the community - recently or ever? I wish it was possible to give a post a double "like" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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