ZPH Streaming & Hardware Updates

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

Couple of technical updates while I have them on my mind:

 

1) OBS Studio FINALLY no longer requires me to fiddle around with the audio delay settings before I stream so there shouldn't be any more out of sync issues unless something changes. I tested this today four times, starting and shutting down the software repeatedly and at no point did I need to mess with the settings. I don't know what version fixed this, the changelog is fairly ambiguous in the wording if there was a fix, but one of the recent ones did. Hooray!

 

FALSE - See below.

 

2) I figured out what caused the audio sync issues with the videogame capture during the December 16th stream. It was switching between inputs on the RetroTINK 5X Pro (specifically from 7800 on SVID to Jaguar on SCART). Everything was fine on my side through the TV during the stream so it wasn't the RetroTINK's fault, it was the capture card's fault! For some reason the input switch threw it for a loop and it couldn't handle the video/audio changeover. I also found the fix: stopping and restarting the device through OBS, cleared it right up. I'm pretty sure I did this during the stream (maybe not?) but it worked multiple times today, came right back into sync.

 

3) I recently purchased a PAL Atari 800XL with U1MB and VBXE mods. I thought I would have to do a lot of testing and changes to the settings in OBS for streaming at 50fps but I left everything at 59.94fps and my setup is doing an incredible job at converting the framerate on the fly. Unless some issues crop up I'll be leaving it like this for ease of use.

 

4) I was taking a look at Task Manager (Win10) and WOW does the Chrome browser ever LOVE to eat up my CPU resources. I had a fair number of tabs open, but still it was chewing up like 20%+ of my processing power for some reason. I've since reduced my tabs down to two and it's almost idle now. That should smooth out any hiccups in streaming if it was affecting things. Firefox is purring along with... I don't know, like 40 tabs open right now? I'll keep the browsing duties with FF for now.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

More technical updates:

 

1) Audio Sync: Seems that the audio sync has NOT been solved as today the audio for the game was off again for the whole stream. The games we played made it hard to tell but after reviewing it I can see there was an issue. Oh well, back to the old trick I was using before the show.

 

2) Network Issue: People who watched today's stream found out the story of why we had trouble on Dec 23rd trying to stream. My download speeds were fine but my upload speeds were at absolute ZERO. I tried to troubleshoot by rebooting my computer, router and modem but that didn't solve it. It turns out it was my network card on the computer and it was only solved by unplugging the computer from power. I remembered about an hour or so after the failed attempt to stream that simply rebooting the computer doesn't completely stop power from flowing to the network card! After that the speeds were back up to 100%. Unfortunately just before I streamed today for the rescheduled show the network card was acting up again and I had to power down again to fix it. Time for a new non-motherboard network card!
 

3) Computer Crash: I had a computer crash about 25 minutes into streaming today. This may or may not be related to the streaming issue above. I think it's time I cleaned out the dust from the motherboard, reseated all the memory and cards. The computer is four and a half years old but is more than capable of doing everything I need so I don't think it time quite yet for an upgrade so hopefully a little TLC might make it happy again.

 

- James

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

GOOD technical updates!

 

1) I've relocated the S-Video connector on the Atari 7800 to the back of the case instead of the bottom and now it doesn't have to sit on that box any more! Finally I can say bye box!

 

2) I've improved the quality of the capture of all the consoles! I've changed the 'Color Range' from 'Partial' to 'Full' and now most of the consoles only need just a minor or no tweak to the colours inside OBS! So much better!

 

- James

[Thomas Jentzsch]

6 hours ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

1) I've relocated the S-Video connector on the Atari 7800 to the back of the case instead of the bottom and now it doesn't have to sit on that box any more! Finally I can say bye box!

Why would anyone put a connector at the bottom?  

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

11 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Why would anyone put a connector at the bottom?  

 

That fool was me. It was more on the right side all the way to the back and facing down. I thought there'd be enough clearance for the svideo cable to bend but I was sadly wrong but it's all fixed now! 🙂

 

- James

[+Nathan Strum]

On 12/22/2022 at 5:54 PM, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

4) I was taking a look at Task Manager (Win10) and WOW does the Chrome browser ever LOVE to eat up my CPU resources. I had a fair number of tabs open, but still it was chewing up like 20%+ of my processing power for some reason.

Chrome has always been a resource pig. It got so bad for awhile, we had to tell students to stop using Photoshop and Chrome at the same time.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

BSOD & Network Issues Update:

 

For those of you who regularly watch the streams live, my computer has been crashing randomly. It just crashed again today about an hour ago and I was able to catch the error message during the BSOD. Searching on that error code revealed what I've been suspecting, the network card.

 

During a recent stream my upload speed was at ZERO when my download speed was normal.  Here's the quote from above when it happened.

On 12/24/2022 at 3:18 PM, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

2) Network Issue: People who watched today's stream found out the story of why we had trouble on Dec 23rd trying to stream. My download speeds were fine but my upload speeds were at absolute ZERO. I tried to troubleshoot by rebooting my computer, router and modem but that didn't solve it. It turns out it was my network card on the computer and it was only solved by unplugging the computer from power. I remembered about an hour or so after the failed attempt to stream that simply rebooting the computer doesn't completely stop power from flowing to the network card! After that the speeds were back up to 100%. Unfortunately just before I streamed today for the rescheduled show the network card was acting up again and I had to power down again to fix it. Time for a new non-motherboard network card!

 

After looking up the BSOD error code, I now know that it's not a coincidence my computer has been crashing around the same time this Internet speed issue happened. I've ordered a new network card and will disable the onboard one as soon as it gets here. In the mean time I've taken the steps outlined on the page to try to mitigate the issue but I don't trust the onboard card any more.

 

SSD Overheating:

 

While poking around for reasons why my computer might be crashing I was checking the hard drives and boy oh boy, I think I found an issue. With the computer idling and no major reading/writing to the hard drive, one of my SSDs is in the red ALL the time. I'll have to look into reason to why this might be happening and hopefully a solution without having to replace the drive. Wish me luck!

 

- James

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Ouch, 67° is way too high for idle. How much does the value increase under load? 

 

BTW: Does your computer really have six disks?

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

13 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Ouch, 67° is way too high for idle. How much does the value increase under load? 

 

BTW: Does your computer really have six disks?

 

Under sustained load copying files for 5 mins I'm able to get it up to 78C. The offending drive is SSD #2 in RAID 0 for my OS drive. SSD #1 got up to 68C and is idle in the low 60s during the test. I expect they should share the load equally during copying and they're the exact same model of drive so I'll have to take a look physically at the drives today, clean them and reseat them.

 

I actually have 8 hard drives attached to my computer!

1 & 2 - 2x256GB RAID 0 SSD for OS Drive

3 - 180GB SSD for Media Editing Cache

4 - 8TB SATA for General Data

5-8 - 6TBx4 RAID 5 for Film Editing connected via USB

 

- James

[Thomas Jentzsch]

6 minutes ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

Under sustained load copying files for 5 mins I'm able to get it up to 78C. The offending drive is SSD #2 in RAID 0 for my OS drive. SSD #1 got up to 68C and is idle in the low 60s during the test.

Idle temp is too high for both and leaves too little room for increase while being active.

 

Where are the SSDs located? Are they getting heated up by something around? 

[RevEng]

NVMEs drives do run hot, but that's for sure on the overly hot side. Does it have a heatsink? Are the two drives located in areas with similar air flow and/or is one near another component trying to shed heat? (e.g. cpu, gpu, vrm)

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

Network Card Update: I've disabled the onboard network card and installed a new network card. Only time will tell if this solves the problem as unfortunately the crashes are seemingly random and VERY infrequent (not of late though). They do happen usually during broadcasts since there's a huge tax on my computer at that time in many ways: real time GPU video encoding, saving a copy of the show locally, CPU processing all the overlayed cameras and graphics etc..

 

 

3 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Idle temp is too high for both and leaves too little room for increase while being active.

 

Where are the SSDs located? Are they getting heated up by something around? 

 

3 hours ago, RevEng said:

NVMEs drives do run hot, but that's for sure on the overly hot side. Does it have a heatsink? Are the two drives located in areas with similar air flow and/or is one near another component trying to shed heat? (e.g. cpu, gpu, vrm)

 

Hot Hard Drives: The NVME drives are in the two slots I have on the motherboard ASUS Z370-G. One is mounted flush on the motherboard and one is mounted perpendicular to the motherboard. There aren't heatsinks on either of them and unsurprizingly the one mounted flush against the motherboard is the hotter one, with temps at 66C (flush) and 55C (perpendicular) just after having the computer off for a bit to install the network card.

 

It appears that heatsinks for NVME drives is a VERY common and a seemingly recommended thing to get! I would have never thought of that but it'll definitely be something I'll be buying. It's been running exactly like this since Jun 2018 but I don't need to upgrade the system anytime soon so I'd rather spend a bit on a heatsink than redo my OS and have to buy a new hard drive. I just watched a video on the heatsink installation and it's extremely simple. I might as well get two, one for each drive.

 

Thanks for the help @RevEng & @Thomas Jentzsch!

 

- James

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

Crashing Computer: So far my computer hasn't crashed since installing the new network card, even during the last stream. Of course I can only wait and see if it crashes as I'm not exactly sure what conditions are causing the crashing. Let's just hope this is the end of that nonsense.

 

Network Card Upgrade: Upgrading my network card to a new one *may* have solved the crashing issue but it didn't solve the ZERO upload speeds as it just happened again about 30 mins ago. I'll have full speed downloads but all of a sudden my upload speed will go to zero. To fix it, I've discovered that I don't have to shut down the computer and unplug the power, I can just disable/reenable the network card and that will get me back to full speed. I've tried my google-fu to see if I can find an answer to the issue but so far I've come up empty. Any ideas?

 

- James

[RevEng]

In the absence of more info...

 

Try changing your network cable and connect to another switch/AP port. If you can't swap the cable, maybe switch your network adapter settings from auto-negotiation to explicit speed and duplex. The only vague theories I can come up with to fit the facts - asymmetric affect on up/down, two different nics encountering the issue, and a network adapter restart fixing it -  involve some kind of occasional negotiation related failure, and the nic restart bounces the port and starts the auto-negotiation process over. Perhaps one of the wires in the TX pair is marginal, or a switch port is dying.

 

It might be helpful to run "netstat -s" before and after an issue, to see if any of the counts have unexpectedly gone up. Also try to observe the activity LEDs on the nic port and the switch port during the event. If the issue happens outside of a live stream and you're done collecting observations, see if merely unplugging+repugging the network cable from the PC fixes the issue.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

Thank you! All excellent suggestions and they help will narrow down where the problem lies. The issue happens *maybe* once a week so it's going to be a long and annoying troubleshooting process but I now know it's not the network card itself dropping the speeds to zero as it's been replaced.

 

- James

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

0 Mbps Upload Speed Issue: So it finally happened just recently. I unplugged the network cable on the PC, plugged it back in and it fixed the issue as anticipated (thanks for the suggestions @RevEng!). This is definitely not a network card issue, it seems like it's either network cable or a router issue. I'll try another method next time to narrow it down again. In the mean time I will either replace the network cable or try a different port on my router but I want to take it one step at a time so I know what the problem is.

 

Audio Stray During Broadcast: I was finding recently that the audio would stray more and more as time went on during the broadcast, when I turned off and back on the capture card, it would be synced up again but then would stray after a while, getting worse the longer it went. I did a little digging on the issue and found something that could be the solution. Some forums stated that the audio quality settings have to be the same all along the chain so that the video and audio stay in sync. It looks like at some point I set the audio stream output in OBS to 48kHz, as opposed to the other option of 44.1kHz, as I was trying to maximize the quality. I've set it to 44.1kHz and everything SEEMS to be working now but we'll see on the next broadcast.

 

- James

[+Nathan Strum]

Possibly not helpful, but I've been recently running into an issue where much of the internet would simply disappear. I'd get "server no longer responding" or "site unreachable" errors, but not for everything, and only once in awhile. Flushing the DNS cache did nothing. Restarting always fixed it, but that was really annoying. Ultimately, I tracked it down to the VPN software I use to remote in to my office computer at work - it was switching over to my work's DNS server rather than my ISP's. As soon as I disconnected from the VPN - bam! The DNS went back to my ISP and the internet reappeared. Maybe you're seeing a similarly-weird DNS-related issue.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

11 minutes ago, Nathan Strum said:

Possibly not helpful, but I've been recently running into an issue where much of the internet would simply disappear. I'd get "server no longer responding" or "site unreachable" errors, but not for everything, and only once in awhile. Flushing the DNS cache did nothing. Restarting always fixed it, but that was really annoying. Ultimately, I tracked it down to the VPN software I use to remote in to my office computer at work - it was switching over to my work's DNS server rather than my ISP's. As soon as I disconnected from the VPN - bam! The DNS went back to my ISP and the internet reappeared. Maybe you're seeing a similarly-weird DNS-related issue.

 

Good troubleshooting idea! During when I have Internet upstream issues there's just barely enough upstream bandwidth to do just about everything except stream and upload files. Things slow down but never completely stop if I'm only visiting websites or anything that doesn't need to send tons of data out from my computer.

 

I'm currently using Google's 8.8.8.8 DNS and haven't noticed any domain resolution issues. I also don't use a VPN so I can rule that out too. I'm almost certain it's something in my home network. I'm suspicious of the network cable since ONE of the cats (*cough* Atari *cough*) likes to nibble on cords from time to time.

 

- James

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

Two Issues Came Up / Two Issues Solved?

 

Unable To Run BASIC Programs on 800XL: In the last stream on Mar 28, 2023 I was having some trouble running games using BASIC on my PAL 800XL w/ U1MB & VBXE. No matter what settings in the U1MB or AVG cart I enabled/disabled or OPTION key combination I pressed down while booting it just wouldn't load BASIC to run the programs. I did some investigation and noticed that I was a little behind on my firmware for U1MB as it was on 4.0 with 4.2 being the newest. It took me FOREVER trying to figure out all the tools and software that was needed to do the upgrade. I had to figure out I needed a SIO2PC USB device and thankfully I remembered that one came with my NTSC 800XL. I also had to figure out the port settings for the RespeQt software that allowed communications with the A8, which took the longest as there were so many options (Ports / Speeds / Communication Possibilities)

 

Now my U1MB is updated to ver 4.2 and is successfully running BASIC programs without a fuss! Hooray!

 

No Video on Atari 7800:  On another note I was doing some beta testing of an upcoming game and all of a sudden the s-video stopped outputting anything! I could still hear games running but no matter what game or cartridge I tried it only gave the sound and no video. I thought I'd have to open it up and fiddle around with things.

 

The next morning I was prepared to put the console on the bench and check out if any video wiring was out of place or had come loose but I fired it up again, just to try. Guess what... everything is working again??? Very troubling. I think I'm going to upgrade my Dragonfly firmware first before I do anything as it was the cart I had in when things went crazy. I know it's a long shot but I'd just feel more comfortable with it upgraded, just in case.

 

- James

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

No Video on Atari 7800: The Sequel!

 

Well, it happened again and this time it looks like for good! The video is gone from my 7800 and waiting over night didn't bring it back. The video cut out about 5 mins into using it yesterday. Before it cut out there were "horizontal lines" all over the screen and the screen was going partly or fully low contrast and then POOF, all gone!

 

The sound is still coming through when booting but there's no video no matter what cart I put in. Because there's still sound I know the system is still working just not the video side of things. I fully suspect that it's my s-video mod and I just need to open it up and check the wiring. Sounds like a job for this weekend. Wish me luck!

 

Upgrade to the DragonFly Cart

 

Had some trouble with upgrading the CPLD on my DragonFly cart after opening it up and connecting it up with my USB Blaster to my computer. Ordered some new pin headers and everything worked out in the end.

 

- James

[RevEng]

54 minutes ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

No Video on Atari 7800: The Sequel!

 

Well, it happened again and this time it looks like for good! [...]

 

 

Good luck with the investigation!

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

No Video on Atari 7800: PT3

 

I plugged in the composite video on my 7800 before I started opening up anything and poking around. The good news is that there was a picture! It was in black and white but it was there, so that means there's luma but no chroma. This points to loose/disconnected wire(s) and should be relatively easy to solve, just a bit of tracing back connections to make sure things are still soldered up correctly.

 

Hopefully I'll be able to get to looking at this today, if not, then tomorrow. 🙂

 

- James

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

No Video on Atari 7800: PT4 - FIXED!

 

So... I opened up my 7800 and poked around inside but didn't notice any stray wires and everything passed the continuity testing with my multimeter. I then hooked up a TV to the system while it was open and... it all worked perfectly, both the svideo and the composite. WTH???

 

So I started poking around the wires while it was on and then it started acting flakey, the colour would go out on composite and the picture would disappear with svideo. I was able to trace it down to the chroma wiring in the screw terminal, it was barely hanging on to it. So I undid the screw, took out the wire, twisted it better, put it back in and screwed it back down. The result, perfect picture and no more flakiness when pushing around the wires.

 

We're back in business with the 7800! Awesome!

 

- James

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

Atari 5200 Controller Survey

 

I have five original Atari 5200 controllers that I had collected with systems over the years and I had noted as I bought them that there were problems with each controller. I had never marked on them exactly what the problem was with each of them, I just knew there was a problem. Today I set aside some time to test each of them out and here are the results.

 

Controller #1: Nothing working. Not surprising as all the screws were missing and it looks like I had taken it apart at some point in a futile attempt to fix it.

Controller #2: Joystick working but all buttons are bad.

Controller #3: Joystick and keypad working. Buttons and start/pause/reset are bad.

Controller #4: Joystick and keypad working. Fire buttons and start/pause/reset are bad.

Controller #5: Joystick, keypad and start/pause/reset buttons are working. Fire buttons are bad.

 

Looking at instructional videos on fixing Atari 5200 controllers it appears that I can probably get a number of these controllers going with very little effort so I'll plan to do that in the near future.

 

- James

 

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

100's of Broken Links in ZPH Stream Archive

 

Late last year I was updating my master list of ZPH episodes and proceeded to accidentally save my work with most of the entries deleted. Thankfully Albert was able to restore them from a previous backup and I got back all the entries! Sadly, the other day, I discovered that any link that referenced the AA forum in the restored part is pointing to the ZPH list itself rather than the game's discussion thread. 😞 

 

Soooo...... it looks like I have about 4 years of links to correct. This will be a very long term project that I'll have to chip away at, bit by bit. I guess on the bright side it'll finally get me motivated to link the games I played in the first six months of the show.

 

- James