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MiSTer-devel / GBA_MiSTer

GBA for MiSTer
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After long play sessions with fast-forwards, game eventually corrupts and freezes/crashes #127

Closed Drakonas closed 1 year ago

Drakonas commented 2 years ago

I've only mainly played two games that are hacks on the GBA using the fast-forward feature a lot: Pokemon Emerald Double Plus and Mega Man Battle Network 3 randomizer. But I have also noticed freezes when using fast-forward sparingly after long sessions with Yu-Gi-Oh GX Duel Academy (No-Intro clean dump).

After very long (hours) play sessions, when using fast forwarding at all, it seems timing bugs occur that eventually cause the game (without notice) to crash and burn.

Mega Man Battle Network 3 randomizer crashed while it was transitioning between maps. At one other time, the music was also messed up where certain notes were not playing. Attempting to reset the core froze the entire core up. (Even the menu froze for a bit)

RobertPeip commented 2 years ago

I played through Firered at least 5 times with FF on all the time and never noticed any problem. Same goes for many other games, as i use FF very often. FF doesn't alter the timing and as the display output is independent of the framerate i cannot imagine what the problem shall be.

I don't say it's impossible, but i doubt it's a general bug of the feature, considering it was never reported and i haven't seen it in 50h+.

Overall it sounds more like SDRAM issues. Did you ever try to run with DDR3 to rule that out?

Drakonas commented 2 years ago

I ran a memtest for 4 hours when I got it and there were no errors. This RAM is from MiSTer Addons. I can try running a new test I suppose.

That's kind of the answer I was looking for to see if it's something on my end or if it's expected the feature is unstable. Should I be seeing video glitching like crazy when fast forwarding? The feed looks like it has warped lines in the sides... But generally runs fine-ish.

I have a 32MB stick too so I can test with that.

Drakonas commented 2 years ago

I talked with Porkchop to be sure it came from him, and I did a SDRAM test at his request, and it came up all green after a 10 minute Auto test. It settled at 150MHz for the majority of the test.

I meant to mention that Pokemon Double Plus ended up crashing randomly while walking. It went to a white screen and the audio literally threw up on my speakers. All incoherent noise that hurt quite a bit.

Drakonas commented 2 years ago

@RobertPeip I'll mention this here, but is it possible it is my De10-nano?

If it was the SDRAM, could the SDRAM make the GBA2P core output 1920x1080@44.5Hz through the HDMI port?: Screenshot

My vsync is 0, and everything else is default in my ini except composite_sync=1, ypbpr=1, and video_mode=8 (for 1080p). I've confirmed with the MiSTer FPGA support Discord. They don't know what could cause that, as it outputs 60hz for them.

RobertPeip commented 1 year ago

any new results on that one?

Drakonas commented 1 year ago

I think the longplay issues were due to a bad ram seating as far as I can tell. I still get weird audio glitches here and there. Not really sure but I think it may be something wrong with my De10-Nano at this point. I can close this.