Skunkboard stability

[Cyprian]

I have Skunkboard v2 (Sillyventure version) and I have faced a problem with skunkCONSOLEWRITE. After few  jcp "run from ram" times following code causes a red screen after Jag reset ( "jcp -r")

			bsr		skunkRESET
			lea		Napis,A0
			bsr		skunkCONSOLEWRITE
			lea		Napis,A0
			bsr		skunkCONSOLEWRITE

 

Below My Skunk rom and jcp version:

jcp v02.04.02 built on Jul 10 2016

Boot version 03.00.02, Serial 6510

Should I upgrade jcp and Skunk rom?

 

 

 

 

Edited April 10, 2021 by Cyprian

[swapd0]

I got an older version and works flawless.

 

Boot version 02.00.05, Serial 2043

Maybe you can try with another USB cable?

 

[Cyprian]

actually the connection is stable, I'm able to reset the Jag with jcp -r

I need to investigate that issue further, but it seems that banging Sunkboard with skunkCONSOLEWRITE can sometimes screw it.

[ggn]

This reminds me of the "fun" I had while adding support to the JagCD encryption program. My first try was to call skunkFILEWRITE with the maximum allowed size, which would freeze the machine. Once we ruled everything else out I just went ahead and reduced the write size to 32 bytes just to see what happens. The transfer became slower but we didn't mind. I mean, how many JagCDs are you going to encrypt in a single session? More than one?

 

So yeah, probably try sending less messages or apply a rate limiter.

[Cyprian]

ok, I'll check that.

 

[+cubanismo]

Yeah, I also recently found that if I call skunkFILECLOSE() then skunkFILEOPEN() one right after the other, the Jaguar jumps off into nowhere. I should debug, but if I put a skunkCONSOLEWRITE("hello world") between the two, it works fine, so I didn't bother. There's something not quite right in these routines, but I haven't been able to track it down by inspection thus far.

[Tursi]

Those old console routines I wrote are long suspected of being a little unstable, and there were definitely some 16/32 bit issues in the earlier versions. But if you suspect timing just drop a skunkNOP between them and they will probably work.  (That's there to guarantee order of delivery between the two buffers, otherwise it's somewhat unpredictable.)

 

As for the red screen - IIRC accessing the HPI to communicate with the USB disables reads from the flash, so if you crash/reset while in that state, the Jag won't have a ROM to boot from. If a power cycle clears it, that's a good confirmation.

 

And obviously, make sure your buffers are word aligned and your strings are terminated with a zero byte.

 

(Also: nothing to do with the Skunkboard ROM. The console functions talk directly to the hardware.)

 

Edited May 10, 2021 by Tursi