Swiss 0.3

[alzen]

Emu, a quick question - is it possible for SWISS to work as a DVD laser reading problems? Sometimes, as my laser is in quite bad condition right now when playing a game I get an read error and I need to restart the cube.

Is it possible to start SWISS, put game's dvd in drive, run the game from SD card(with game's dvd inserted) and to make it work like dvd is primary source of the game and SD is like a backup that gets used when the drive cannot read the dvd? It just got to me that it would be cool, but maybe it's already possible, that's why I asked.

[emu_kidid]

alzen, anything is possible, whether it is practical is the real question. I'm hoping to have SD reads become a whole lot better, or near perfect, just need to work on the latest implementation I have in mind that should hopefully work flawlessly, or close to it.

[alzen]

Would be great, hope it'll get implemented in v0.4. Anyway, I will just wait until next SWISS release .

[Aressi]

When I try to play Ikaruga in select mode the game restarts

[wishmasterf]

is there anything i can try to get changing sd-card working (issue postet on May 25, 2013 3:46 pm and issue 104 on googlecode) in rev216?

[emu_kidid]

Nothing yet

[wishmasterf]

Thanks for your answer. I hope it will be fixed asap. Without that swiss is not useable for me with medialauncher, because 2GB sd-card is not very big (1 Game max.).

[LOCtronicz]

@emu_kidid

What does swiss check to display video? The ipl? or the av chip?

To explain more clearly:

When swiss loads it automatically sense which region the cube it so it displays in the right video format. Where does it check which region it's from to display in PAL or NTSC??

[megalomaniac]

Code: Select all

__SYS_ReadROM(IPLInfo,256,0);   // Read IPL tag

        // Wii has no IPL tags for "PAL" so let libOGC figure out the video mode
        if(!is_gamecube()) {
                vmode = VIDEO_GetPreferredMode(NULL); //Last mode used
        }
        else {  // Gamecube, determine based on IPL
                PAD_ScanPads();
                // L Trigger held down ignores the fact that there's a component cable plugged in.
                if(VIDEO_HaveComponentCable() && !(PAD_ButtonsDown(0) & PAD_TRIGGER_L)) {
                        if((strstr(IPLInfo,"PAL")!=NULL)) {
                                vmode = &TVPal576ProgScale; //Progressive 576p
                        }
                        else {
                                vmode = &TVNtsc480Prog; //Progressive 480p
                        }
                }
                else {
                        //try to use the IPL region
                        if(strstr(IPLInfo,"PAL")!=NULL) {
                                vmode = &TVPal576IntDfScale;         //PAL
                        }
                        else if(strstr(IPLInfo,"NTSC")!=NULL) {
                                vmode = &TVNtsc480IntDf;        //NTSC
                        }
                        else {
                                vmode = VIDEO_GetPreferredMode(NULL); //Last mode used
                        }
                }
        }

swiss reads the IPL
the IPL senses if a component cable is connected on pin 1 of the digital port to display PAL/NTSC progressive mode
if no component cable, the it defaults to interlaced mode for PAL/NTSC

[LOCtronicz]

Hmm I find this strange. I have a dalian good display ( yeah thats the name ) it doesn't like interlaced pal vga signals. It has a slight vibration to the picture. Very annoying at one point. However ntsc interlaced vga works perfectly.

Now I've been messing around with swapping ipl chips from a ntsc cube rev a to a pal cube rev a. I have succesfully transplanted a ntsc rtc and the other chip ( forgot what it was) and now have a ntsc cube which has the pal av chip and thuss have ntsc rgb available. It all works great as does the composite line. Then using a sync seperator (not the lm1881n, which only gives me a fake h sync) I get interlaced vga from the original av chip.

When I start uo the cube the menu does not vibrate making me realize that the ipl sends info to the av chip.

When I boot up the cube the menu now doesn't vibrate which makes me believe the avchip is sending out a ntsc interlaced vga signal. However when I load swiss the screen starts to vibrate in the swiss menu selection screen. When in game there is no problem. So for some reason the ipo is telling swiss it's pal but when it boots the ipl tells is ntsc.... I'm not quite sure why ut doesn't work. Any ideas??

[Ashen]

I've been interested in doing something like this for a while now. I was just going to transplant the PAL A/V chip though, and keep the legs lifted on the output side that need to be. Interesting results for sure. What sync separator are you using Zen? I was gonna hook up with some of these as they give a "true" H sync output, they're surface mount only though, no biggie I guess:

[LOCtronicz]

I'm using the wii vga cable you used in your ps2. I have some EL4583's on the way as they do the same job. The one you posted also seems to work. As long as it is a true H sync it should be fine. It seems not all displays work properly with the lm1881n so I would advise against using it.

Nice find on the diagram. Also switching the av chip would to PAL would do the same as what I have done. I just didn;t have a working ntsc board. That's why I replaced the ipl instead. Altough on the r,g and b lines there are some pulldown resistors and some resistors inline. I think it only reduces the brightness of the rgb signal though so should not be much of a problem.

[megalomaniac]

i had some similar ideas i wanted to try also with PAL AVE...i acquired a PAL board a few months ago but didnt have time to test any of my ideas...
plus i was also lacking which direction i wanted to head into this idea....
maybe its about that time to start investigating...

[emu_kidid]

Anyone with SD swapping/refreshing issues, please try r218.

[wishmasterf]

Can anyone share r218 - binary for gamecube with me? i do not have a pc to compile yet Thanks!

EDIT: Got. I am testing now!
EDIT1: Not working for me Is there an log i can enable to get more information?

[emu_kidid]

"Not working for me" doesn't work for me either. Tell me what it's doing.

[liquitt]

"Not working for me" doesn't work for me either. Tell me what it's doing.

hahaha - this! can we put this in the banner up there please?

[wishmasterf]

"Not working for me" doesn't work for me either. Tell me what it's doing.

Sorry! I know this information is not enough, but i thought there is no need of writing the same thing twice. I think
reports should be in the same issue i opened for that issue (see here http://code.google.com/p/swiss-gc/issues/detail?id=104). david already reported everthing i also got.

And now a detailed report:

I tried following steps:
First try:

1. start GC with SD Media-Launcher.
2. start rev218 of swiss
3. Swap swiss-start-sd-card with a 32GB SDHC - Card with about 10 Games
4 Select SD-Card

Result: I do not get a filelist like i get in rev174. I am not able o interact, because there is no reaction if i press a button on my controller. I see all other elemnt on the screen, but no filelist.

Next try:

Same as first try, but with another 32GB SDHC - Card which worls with rev174

Result: I do not get a filelist like i get in rev174. I am not able o interact, because there is no reaction if i press a button on my controller. I see all other elemnt on the screen, but no filelist.

Third try:

1. start GC with SD Media-Launcher.
2. start rev218 of swiss
3 Select SD-Card

Result: I do not get a filelist like i get in rev174. I am not able o interact, because there is no reaction if i press a button on my controller. I see all other elemnt on the screen, but no filelist.

Hope this helps. Is there any information i can collect with activating logs or anything?

Thanks!

EDIT: Retested with rev220 and another gamecube, another SD-Card, another GC-Medialauncher-cd and sd-card-adapter

[emu_kidid]

Thanks, I'll test via SDML shortly, there's a few issues around this area still.

[liquitt]

Thanks, I'll test via SDML shortly, there's a few issues around this area still.

should be there in less than a week

[Nukatha]

Just attempted to boot the current version (rev 174) via PSOload.

Both versions, compressed and standard, booted properly, and got to the point where I saw the glorious Swiss background, as well as the program recognizing the Phantasy Star game disk.

Shortly thereafter, I got an 'Exception (DSI) occurred!, followed by (I hope I'm saying this correctly) 32 GPR registry values, a Stack Dump and Code Dump.

Since the stack dump is short, here's what it said:

Code: Select all

 80026d80 --> 80026d58 

The rest of it is pretty much just a bess of hex characters that mean nothing to me. However, the problem is easily repeatable, if you want any specifics, I'll post them.

[emu_kidid]

I assume you have a BBA plugged in? there's an issue that's causing Swiss to die on boot up. I'll fix this shortly.

[Nukatha]

Yep, I've got a BBA, since I'm still stuck in my old ways of the Phantasy Star exploit.

I really should make a bootable DVD...

[alzen]

Emu, I remember some time ago I tried to use SD card as Memory Card and it didn't work very well(as far as I remember the game didn't see the saved game).

Currenlty I'm playing Animal Crossing and I'm into the game but I know that if I'm playing from SD Card it's impossible for me to travel to another city - another player's town(because SD card adapter takes one slot and there need to 2 memory cards inserted into the gamecube to travel).

That's why I got interested in using SD card as the memory card. I have one corrupted memory card and one that's ok. It also makes it impossible to have 2 towns as as far as I know there can only be 1 town save on a memory card.

Are you going to finish implementing the SD Card save feature in the near future? I thought, probably Saves will have seperate directory so players can switch towns by swapping the save files in saves folder, is that correct? And in that case I can put town saves into Memory card using gcmm I guess and load the game from save on SD Card to travel to another town that's written on working memory card in slot B. Is there any error in my reasoning? Because I guess if the SD Card save feature is implemented in 100% this kind of trick should be possible.

[wishmasterf]

Issue 104 is marked as fixed, but is not. Means that, there will never be a fix for swaping-problem?