Unicorns season: Prince of Persia for the A8!

[Level42]

I’m inspired. Which version should I let run on SIDE3 for prolonged time to see if it crashes or not ? ?

[rensoup]

28 minutes ago, Level42 said:

By the way Rensoup, I didn’t provide any logs AFAIR, so the credit for that goes to someone else.

 

Right that was @Nickolasgaspar, those were very useful.

 

8 minutes ago, CharlieChaplin said:

Will do.

Besides, both SD and DD versions that did several retries worked on my PAL 800XL (under XL-OS Rev. 2) with 512k SRAM enhancement by tf_hh and 1050 with Speedy, very slow but they worked. The bugfixed SD and DD versions also worked on my 1050 with Speedy and much faster (approx. 4x faster than the version with lots of retries).

Thanks,

 

This is also interesting. The unfixed version worked on a real 1050, even though the number of retries must have been insane. that same version failed to load on modern SIO devices.

 

So I have tried to dodge retries with the newer versions because it's good practice and obviously much faster and as a side effect allows it to run on those modern SIO devices.

 

So your loop test wil be interesting... my guess is that it will work (can you leave it for 2 hours ?), because it will retry a lot less than the unfixed version anyway ?

[rensoup]

14 minutes ago, Level42 said:

I’m inspired. Which version should I let run on SIDE3 for prolonged time to see if it crashes or not ? ?

I've posted the pop_DDfastestmouse_notplayable2.zip at the very bottom of the 1st post for slightly better visibility, this is the latest test.

Edited June 28, 2021 by rensoup

[+DrVenkman]

2 hours ago, rensoup said:

btw what was the result of this ?

It ran without issue for about 75 minutes before I went to bed. So better than most of the prior experiments (*) but I didn’t want to let it run while I was asleep since I wouldn’t be able to note the duration of the test. I will try tonight, with my 576NUC+ and then my Incognito 800.

 

If the demo ATR can run indefinitely from the SDrive-MAX but *not* from the FujiNet, that’s an important data point for @mozzwald and @tschak909. 

 

(*) My 1200XL made it 2+ hours with the same demo version that crashed on my Incognito 800 within between 30-60 minutes despite loading from the same physical FujiNet device that I moved from one machine to the other. 

[Level42]

10 minutes ago, DrVenkman said:

It ran without issue for about 75 minutes before I went to bed. So better than most of the prior experiments (*) but I didn’t want to let it run while I was asleep since I wouldn’t be able to note the duration of the test. I will try tonight, with my 576NUC+ and then my Incognito 800.

 

If the demo ATR can run indefinitely from the SDrive-MAX but *not* from the FujiNet, that’s an important data point for @mozzwald and @tschak909. 

 

(*) My 1200XL made it 2+ hours with the same demo version that crashed on my Incognito 800 within between 30-60 minutes despite loading from the same physical FujiNet device that I moved from one machine to the other. 

Trying to understand as I don’t know anything about Fujinet: is the file you load arriving through the internet, or does the Fujinet contain internal memory and is it loading from the device itself ?

Edited June 28, 2021 by Level42

[Level42]

56 minutes ago, rensoup said:

I've posted the pop_DDfastestmouse_notplayable2.zip at the very bottom of the 1st post for slightly better visibility, this is the latest test.

Ah that’s great but the SIO version is not going to load from SIDE3 I’m sure

[+DrVenkman]

19 minutes ago, Level42 said:

Trying to understand as I don’t know anything about Fujinet: is the file you load arriving through the internet, or does the Fujinet contain internal memory and is it loading from the device itself ?

FujiNet can emulate a wide variety of SIO devices by way of its built-in ESP32. Among other things, it allows the Atari to load or save disk images. The disk images can be stored on a microSD card on the device, from one’s on LAN via a TNFS (Tiny Network File Server) server running on a PC, Mac or Linux box, or from other servers over the internet. I’ve tested most often from files loaded from my LAN via the server I have running on a headless Raspberr Pi Zero W, which as served in this role reliably for almost a year now with every other file I’ve thrown at it. I have tested some of the earlier versions with files stored on the SD card but had no better results.

[Yautja]

2 hours ago, DrVenkman said:

Sure thing, Mr. Wonka - absent bugs in the game, the file system or the loading device, the game SHOULD run indefinitely- days or years. Ever notice the burn-in on old CRT arcade monitors? That’s because the machine owners didn’t boot the game to make sure it loads, then turn it off. These machines and devices are deterministic. There’s no intentional randomness built into the hardware designs. Games should not crash with a file system error within 30 minutes of loading. 

 

 Now why don’t you go back to your chocolate factory?

Games are made to be played, not to be subject of corny "experiments" that try to put them to *test* -moreover when none has paid a single dime for the developers' effort. If some has free time to waste like that -thinking he/she is being "constructive" to the community, good for him/her.

 

 

[+DrVenkman]

11 minutes ago, Yautja said:

Games are made to be played, not to be subject of corny "experiments" that try to put them to *test* -moreover when none has paid a single dime for the developers' effort. If some has free time to waste like that -thinking he/she is being "constructive" to the community, good for him/her.

 

 

Sure, sure … 

 

People like you are why I spend a lot my working hours - for which I’m well-paid - finding and fixing the mistakes of the lazy, the careless or the simply confused.

[chevymad]

I've been using the old DD 20210610 file. Had my first error today dancing girl locked with left hip up. Reset the machine and it's been playing 2.5hrs with no hickups so far. 

 

1088XEL, VBXE, pal system loading via fujinet "1.3 fixed" from my tnfs on a win 10 machine.  

 

Other then the first lockup this morning, i've had no problems with the original file. 

 

I've also loaded an atarimax cart with the atarimax file and it hasn't had any problems either. But I haven't let it play like the DD file. 

 

I'll let this play a while longer, let you know if it ever locks up.

[Faicuai]

20 minutes ago, DrVenkman said:

People like you are why I spend a lot my working hours - for which I’m well-paid

Sounds like your true employers, then.

 

A little toast to celebrate them! ?

[Yautja]

24 minutes ago, DrVenkman said:

finding and fixing the mistakes of the lazy, the careless or the simply confused.

In other words, the team that develops this (awesome) port belongs to such selected "group". Interesting way  that you have to enlighten people -with your proton backpack!?

[rensoup]

1 hour ago, Level42 said:

Ah that’s great but the SIO version is not going to load from SIDE3 I’m sure

.CAR work 100% I believe...

 

30 minutes ago, chevymad said:

I've been using the old DD 20210610 file. Had my first error today dancing girl locked with left hip up. Reset the machine and it's been playing 2.5hrs with no hickups so far. 

You shouldn't use that one, could you try that one ?

2 hours ago, rensoup said:

I've posted the pop_DDfastestmouse_notplayable2.zip at the very bottom of the 1st post for slightly better visibility, this is the latest test.

 

[chevymad]

Allright, I'll switch. Never d/l'd any of the others before because I haven't really had issues with this one. over 3hrs now.. still going. 

[Level42]

1 hour ago, Yautja said:

Games are made to be played, not to be subject of corny "experiments" that try to put them to *test* -moreover when none has paid a single dime for the developers' effort. If some has free time to waste like that -thinking he/she is being "constructive" to the community, good for him/her.

 

 

10 GOTO 10
RUN

You utterly and completely fail to understand what's going on....

"Corny" ? "Experiments" ? I'll just link to what I said a few posts ago. 

UNLESS Rensoup says "it's enough" who are we to judge the process of ironing out bugs, or finding the cause of the crashes ?
 

 

Edited June 28, 2021 by Level42

[rensoup]

51 minutes ago, Level42 said:

UNLESS Rensoup says "it's enough" who are we to judge the process of ironing out bugs ?

By the way, I thoroughly believe these bugs are due to some software being used to load stuff in a non-standard way (which is funny because the developer of that certain software advocates only "standard" hardware.....) because the CAR versions all seem to run just fine endlessly....

All those extra pairs of eyes helped finding loading speed issues which were worth fixing but the crashing bug seems to expose a problem with the software used by those modern SIO loaders. devices

 

XBIOS is unlikely to be at fault, so far it seems to be fine with 1050, Indus/GT and XF551 drives.

Edited June 28, 2021 by rensoup

[a8isa1]

For what it's worth I ran the pop_DDfastestmouse_notplayable2 test for better than 4.5 hours without issues. 

 

Hardware is an NTSC 800XL with Rambo XL 256 an FTDI based SIO2PC-USB cable with Hias' Reichl's atariserver disk emulator.

[Level42]

50 minutes ago, rensoup said:

All those extra pairs of eyes helped finding loading speed issues which were worth fixing but the crashing bug seems to expose a problem with the software used by those modern SIO loaders. devices

 

XBIOS is unlikely to be at fault, so far it seems to be fine with 1050, Indus/GT and XF551 drives.

You are right, I realised that a bit later and edited it out.

Just had the last CAR file running for over 1.5 hours in demo, not a hitch, and my system is not exactly “standard” with AntiX on-board….

So far, all cartridge versions seem to run with “all” multi-carts, about all SIO devices seem to work fine too except Fujinet so it seems valid enough to say the issue is with Fujinet….

 

Thankfully, it still displays the weather forecast just fine……

Edited June 28, 2021 by Level42

[Mazzspeed]

1 hour ago, Level42 said:

except Fujinet so it seems valid enough to say the issue is with Fujinet….

 

I don't know how long you need to run the game for before any crashing is evident, but FujiNet-PC works fine at SIO 1x here.

[chevymad]

Over 2hrs now with the fastestmouse file running via fujinet. Still going no glitches. 

[Mr Robot]

How many people are trying to load this via fujinet from a tnfs server with hsio turned on? 
 

I can get problems loading from my local tnfs server unless I turn the speed down to div 6. 
 

I can’t get the weather app to load reliably from fujinet.pl at any fast rate.

 

the internet is just too variable. 

[Mazzspeed]

4 minutes ago, Mr Robot said:

How many people are trying to load this via fujinet from a tnfs server with hsio turned on? 
 

I can get problems loading from my local tnfs server unless I turn the speed down to div 6. 
 

I can’t get the weather app to load reliably from fujinet.pl at any fast rate.

 

the internet is just too variable. 

The lowest stable speed I can get on FujiNet-PC is divisor 5, anything below that and you start to get errors in the logs. I'm personally loading this game off a local machine via a home made SIO2PC cable at standard SIO 1x.

 

Interestingly, I can achieve HSIO divisor 0 reliably under RespeQt, but not running this game - This game has to load at SIO 1x.

Edited June 29, 2021 by Mazzspeed

[chevymad]

Haven't tried anything but divisor 6.

[mozzwald]

9 hours ago, DrVenkman said:

And to further detail, the newer test demo versions DO load and will run apparently normally for ~30 - 60 minutes before eventually crashing, usually with an animated mouse graphic on a blue background. According to rensoup, this is his “file not found” indicator. Since the demo versions do apparently load and only crash after some time, each test cycle involves a lot of waiting … 

I've been running PoP_DD_20210619_bugfix.atr for over 1.5 hours with no issue yet. Will let it ride until bedtime unless you have another test to try instead. This is what I'm using:

800XL 512k

No HSIO

FujiNet hardware v1.5, latest firmware

ATR on SD card

[+DrVenkman]

4 minutes ago, Mr Robot said:

How many people are trying to load this via fujinet from a tnfs server with hsio turned on? 
 

I can get problems loading from my local tnfs server unless I turn the speed down to div 6. 
 

I can’t get the weather app to load reliably from fujinet.pl at any fast rate.

 

the internet is just too variable. 

Most of my tests have been via my own LAN off my personal TNFS server. As another condition to test tonight, I copied the most recent demo to the SD cards in two of my FujiNets and tried it that way. Interestingly, it crashed on the first run through on the NUC+ booting from its integrated FujiNet yet tonight it's been running almost two hours on my Incognito 800 that previously crashed regularly at 30 - 60 minutes. I've had the FujiNet divisor set to as low as 9 and it makes no real difference. It would be good if FujiNet had an option to set stock SIO speeds but 9 is as low as it goes. 

 

On the Incognito 800, all of my tests have been with the PBI BIOS enabled to automatically suppress BASIC but HSIO turned OFF for D1:. My tests with the NUC+ have been booting with CTRL+ALT+~ to force stock OS without the HSIO patch.  

 

Currently trying another run with the NUC+ from the FujiNet's SD card to see if it the quick crash last time was a fluke.

 

BTW, and totally off the FujiNet topic, I've tried to copy the "bugfix" DD ATR from 6/18 as well as the most recent "fastestmouse" demo DD ATR to physical disks with Disk Wizard II. In each case, sector copier reports several bad sectors at the end of the ATR (5 in the case of the "fastestmouse" demo, 7 at the end of the "bugfix" full-game version.  In each instance, when I've tried to boot the disk on my 800, it gets through the first part of loading but as soon as the screen turns black it locks up. I'm using a Happy 1050 so that might have something to do with it. Don't know if xxl considers that hardware "pure" enough for him. ?