Hi Matt,
Just that you know, the problem seemed to follow that Hardware. I had this same Problem with all of the Roms, when it was doing it, and not just the DLE 2.1 Roms. So, I knew that it could not be a Rom Problem. Like I said above, I gave my Cable a Re-crimping and the problem is completely gone, now. I have since tested different Rom Boards, the Merlin-1000 Board with the Merlin-1000 Chip and Multi-Rom Chip, as well as switching between the different Roms of Dragon's Lair. And everything is working Great!
There is always a chance that when I find a problem, it might not be DEXTER at all, but being manufactured by faulty old equipment. This is why I test and retest. As well as ask advice on my findings to be sure. Knowing what DEXTER does and what it is suppose to do, helps in figuring out what the problem may be, even if it is not actually DEXTER that is the problem. In this way, it actually shows how Great DEXTER really is, because of all the Hard Work you have put into it.
I will continue my posting here for you to look at your leisure. This way you can keep track of my Testing Progress, while at the same time focusing on adding more features and getting DEXTER finalized, A.S.A.P. with out any interruptions.
Let me know if there is any particular Testing you want me to do. Or if and when there is an update for DEXTER.
Yours Truly,
Tony M Victorino
Matt Ownby wrote:
Lord_Victorino wrote:
Hi,
I asked Shaun Wood to look at the Freeze Frame Bug Video and here was his reply:
I just watched the new video of the freeze bug.
It's definitely a player return code mis-read.
When a search is executed, the player gives a return status code of 0x50 during the search, followed by a 0xD0, when the search is completed, followed by a 0xE5 when the player is in still frame.
Once a search is started, the DL board waits to catch that one instance of 0xD0 to begin playing again. My guess is that Dexter may be searching too fast for the DL Board, or you have a poor connection on the ribbon cable/board socket.
-Shaun
My Ribbon Cable has seen better days. I think that the Ribbon Cable or the Socket may be the problem and not DEXTER or the Merlin-1000 Board at all.
Yours Truly,
Tony M Victorino
I am glad I checked these forums as I did not know (or had forgotten) that you were posting feedback here.
I agree with Shaun, this looks like a problem with the DL board not getting the return code from Dexter. Having played Dragon's Lair with Dexter extensively, I am pretty confident that unless Shaun has further modified DLE v2.1 from its original form (where I believe the LD-V1000 I/O code was left alone), then it is a hardware problem. Dexter actually does return a few 0x50 codes (ie search busy) no matter what in order to satisfy the requirements of other games like Astron Belt, which freak out if they don't see that the search is busy. So even though the searches in Dragon's Lair appear instant, they are actually taking a few frames, which should be long enough for the Dragon's Lair ROM to not miss the 0xD0 when it comes back (although I believe that the 0xD0 will get spammed indefinitely until a new command like a play or search is received, which is different from what Shaun has said. I could be wrong about this).
re: the cable problem, the success response is 0xD0 while the error response is 0x90. I am pretty sure that Dragon's Lair does the "increment frame and retry the search" if it is getting a 0x90 response back. This suggests that D7 (assuming the data lines are numbered D1-D8) is bad on your cable, which would be quite a coincidence. But as you've said, you have replaced the cable, so this is just an interesting "what if" discussion at this point.