Ultimate Cart XEX Loader Technical Issues

[flashjazzcat]

I just stuck a couple of NOPs in there so the colour change happens well inside the horizontal blank. Bothered me for years.

[ascrnet]

1 hour ago, flashjazzcat said:

I just stuck a couple of NOPs in there so the colour change happens well inside the horizontal blank. Bothered me for years.

it was perfect!!!! thank you very much for the help and for your time to improve this cartridge.

I tried all the reported games that didn't work and now they work perfect these are Air Strike, Air Strike II, Jungle Boy, Zaxxon, Bruce Lee, Flax and Kissin' Kousins.?

 

There is only one game that refuses to work Up'n Down.?

 

is it possible to share your modifications to the github or a zip file to add to what I am doing to release a more updated firmware?

[Wilheim]

1 hour ago, ascrnet said:

There is only one game that refuses to work Up'n Down.?

 

 

I looked into the XEX file of the Up'n Down game, and I can say that it has a problem from the game, not the XEX loader. In fact, if it loads on any system, is by pure chance.

 

Here's the XEX @ascrnet mentioned, as well as a patched version that should work better.

 

Upn-Down patched.xex Upn-Down.xex

[ascrnet]

1 hour ago, Wilheim said:

I looked into the XEX file of the Up'n Down game, and I can say that it has a problem from the game, not the XEX loader. In fact, if it loads on any system, is by pure chance.

 

Here's the XEX @ascrnet mentioned, as well as a patched version that should work

Thank you very much for reviewing, reporting and patching the game !!!!

 

I tested on the Ultimate cart and it works fine now ?, the previous one left the screen black.

[flashjazzcat]

8 hours ago, ascrnet said:

is it possible to share your modifications to the github or a zip file to add to what I am doing to release a more updated firmware?

Of course I'll share the updated sources here when I've tidied them up a bit.

[flashjazzcat]

9 hours ago, Wilheim said:

I looked into the XEX file of the Up'n Down game, and I can say that it has a problem from the game, not the XEX loader. In fact, if it loads on any system, is by pure chance.

I see you've loaded WARMST with 1 here, which - as far as I can see - causes a lot of agressive memory-clearing to be skipped in the game. Oddly enough, Upn-Down.xex runs from the SIDE loader, so once again I'm wondering why such modifications are needed with the Ultimate Cart loader.

 

Did you identify anything else in the skipped sections of code (such as timing-critical sections which might perhaps work indeterminately)?

[flashjazzcat]

OK - I'll admit defeat with Up'n'Down, since it works with the 400/800 Oldrunner OS, which leads me to suspect that the RAM-clearing code skipped by Wilheim's patch prevents random interrupt or timing related problems from occuring.

 

Here's the source, anyway:

Ultimate Cart Loader.zip

 

Changes over what we started with are basically as follows:

• BOOT? set to 1
• DLI flicker fixed
• CRITIC asserted during segment reads
• RAM clearing (including stack) beefed up

The last two are directly migrated from the SIDE loader.

Edited June 24, 2021 by flashjazzcat

[Wilheim]

4 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

I see you've loaded WARMST with 1 here, which - as far as I can see - causes a lot of agressive memory-clearing to be skipped in the game. Oddly enough, Upn-Down.xex runs from the SIDE loader, so once again I'm wondering why such modifications are needed with the Ultimate Cart loader.

 

Did you identify anything else in the skipped sections of code (such as timing-critical sections which might perhaps work indeterminately)?

That’s right. I forced to skip the memory cleaning routine. It’s too aggressive and it can hang the computer during a vbi. Because of that, I don’t think the UC xex loader need an adjustment.

 

This case remind me an issue about Tapper, another Sega title. It hangs with some memory expansions schemes, because it makes non-standard portb writes. Perhaps the Sega published titles didn’t follow the standards.

 

Besides that, i didn’t find any other issue. 

[ascrnet]

11 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

Here's the source, anyway:

Thank you very much for sharing it, I already uploaded it to the github so that it can be with the other contributions of the community.?

 

When you have time, can you test if these games work in SIDE? BC's Quest for Tires and Caverns of Mars ?

[flashjazzcat]

6 hours ago, ascrnet said:

When you have time, can you test if these games work in SIDE? BC's Quest for Tires and Caverns of Mars ?

Yes: just tested on real hardware with SIDE3 and they both work. Am I missing something?

[ascrnet]

17 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

Yes: just tested on real hardware with SIDE3 and they both work. Am I missing something?

thanks, it's just that I keep testing games in .XEX and those games fail in Ultimate Cart. As you commented that you compared both should not fail.?

[flashjazzcat]

10 hours ago, ascrnet said:

thanks, it's just that I keep testing games in .XEX and those games fail in Ultimate Cart. As you commented that you compared both should not fail.

I make no assertion that just because an XEX works in one loader, it is guaranteed to work in the other, just to be clear. But it appears that both titles mentioned do work in both loaders in this case.

 

Note: the issue with cursor keys when using TK-II and other PS/2 keyboard adapters will be prevalent in the Ultimate Cart loader, since different functions are assigned to CTRL+CURSOR and the same keys with no modifier. Someone might want to redesign that out of the loader if this is a practical issue.

[tane]

Can be added by default the code to enable the 512kb memory expansion?  There was an issue with Ultimate Cart and both were not working together.

Enable 512kb Memory (Rambo).xex Disable Memory Expansion.xex

[flashjazzcat]

24 minutes ago, tane said:

Can be added by default the code to enable the 512kb memory expansion?  There was an issue with Ultimate Cart and both were not working together.

The Ultimate Cart firmware does not (deliberately) write to $D1xx, so no: I think there must be some other reason for the issue. I followed the link through to a post from @Faicuai discussing some supposed contention regarding $D510 (which is indeed Ultimate Cart's FPGA control address), but I am at a loss to know what - if anything - this has to do with @tf_hh's 512K SRAM upgrade.

[ascrnet]

13 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

I make no assertion that just because an XEX works in one loader, it is guaranteed to work in the other, just to be clear. But it appears that both titles mentioned do work in both loaders in this case.

ok, I only inform that they do not work in a 130XE and do not load those games that I mentioned before, now I put some screenshots of other games that present incompatibility so that they are informed.

this one caught my attention as it clearly states that it is not an XL/XE

 

This one is also strange apart from the details of the screen the music is damaged

 

As far as I can see, this is a whole world of .XEX loaders.?

[Faicuai]

9 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

@Faicuai discussing some supposed contention regarding $D510 (which is indeed Ultimate Cart's FPGA control address), but I am at a loss to know what - if anything - this has to do with @tf_hh's 512K SRAM upgrade

Same here, to this day, since I could never test that specific expansion.

 

Only related thing I could test would be SysCheck-Ii RAM expansion, but that is through PBI, and I have no idea if it uses the same HW registers as the expansion mentioned. Not sure if it would be relevant, past that point.

 

 

[flashjazzcat]

7 hours ago, ascrnet said:

this one caught my attention as it clearly states that it is not an XL/XE

This message appears regardless of whether the game runs or not, but as it happens it stops dead at that point when launched from the Ultimate Cart. I have no idea why, since I was unable to get the Turbo Freezer debugger to appear once this game had hung up. Fix is left as an exercise for the reader (otherwise 'open-source' just means I still do all the work but also have to upload the changes to the source code).

7 hours ago, ascrnet said:

This one is also strange apart from the details of the screen the music is damaged

Seemed to run OK when I tried it, albeit using the PAL version on a PAL machine.

 

Both titles work perfectly well with the SIDE3 loader, as far as I can tell.

6 hours ago, Faicuai said:

Same here, to this day, since I could never test that specific expansion.

I have a spare tf_hh 512KB SRAM board somewhere; if no-one else is able to look into this, I might get around to investigating it some time. As for SysCheck: apparently that uses $D1xx, and I see nothing in the loader source writing to that address space.

[Faicuai]

2 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

As for SysCheck: apparently that uses $D1xx,

 

Still not sure if equivalent, but If that the case, I will try it today (via PBI), with Ultimate cart and report results.

 

 

[Faicuai]

4 hours ago, Faicuai said:

I will try it today (via PBI), with Ultimate cart and report results

Ok, back-tested loading PANG (final) and BOMMJACK with original _BOOT.ROM (previous version of .XEX loader for Ultimate cart).

 

HW platform was 800 / Incognito, with ram specifically set 64KB and SysCheck-II (version without battery) connected via PBI, and SysCheck's extended RAM enabled (verified first via System Info.)

 

The result is that both PANG and BOMBJACK titles load perfectly, without any problems.

 

[flashjazzcat]

That's great info - thank you.

 

[Faicuai]

On 6/27/2021 at 12:35 PM, flashjazzcat said:

That's great info - thank you.

 

Not a problem.

 

Now, I did ran some longer tests with new loader, and I am having trouble with the following titles (which some seem to work with PRIOR loader version?)

 

APX-Scramble.xex

APX-TypoAttack-CZ.xex

SIERRA-BC's Quest for Tires.xex

 

If you have a chance, on your busy schedule, these may be worth taking a look at (since they seem to be unintended "casualties", though...)

[flashjazzcat]

Yeah: they seem broken; the best way to diagnose would be to selectively undo changes to the original loader until the problem is pinpointed. As mentioned: this being an open source project, and Ultimate being time consuming to debug, I'll leave that for someone else to have a crack at (hopefully they have a running start now).

 

 

 

[ascrnet]

On 6/27/2021 at 5:10 AM, flashjazzcat said:

This message appears regardless of whether the game runs or not, but as it happens it stops dead at that point when launched from the Ultimate Cart. I have no idea why, since I was unable to get the Turbo Freezer debugger to appear once this game had hung up. Fix is left as an exercise for the reader (otherwise 'open-source' just means I still do all the work but also have to upload the changes to the source code).

I checked the case and it is a "does not check any of the hardware" splash screen, the .XEX has two $2E2 (INI) only loads the first one. I am still looking for a meaning as the previous version loads it without problems.

On 6/27/2021 at 5:10 AM, flashjazzcat said:

Seemed to run OK when I tried it, albeit using the PAL version on a PAL machine.

 

Both titles work perfectly well with the SIDE3 loader, as far as I can tell.

I am strange that once I got it to load well, it makes me think that sometimes it doesn't clean the memory well.

thanks for testing in SIDE3?

21 hours ago, Faicuai said:

Now, I did ran some longer tests with new loader, and I am having trouble with the following titles (which some seem to work with PRIOR loader version?)

that's what the colleague @flashjazzcat did is not definitive, there is still a lot of room for improvement.?

[flashjazzcat]

2 minutes ago, ascrnet said:

there is still a lot of room for improvement.

Yes there is. So - open-source fans - get improving.

 

[ascrnet]

On 6/28/2021 at 3:03 PM, Faicuai said:

 

APX-Scramble.xex 26.87 kB · 7 downloads

 

this version is incompatible, apparently it fails because there are many segments of .XEX, but all is not lost, this version does work!!!!. ?