SD Gecko speed

[Xaranar]

So I've been fiddling with my newly WKF modded cube for a few days now, and one thing I have noticed is loading anything from my SD Gecko through Swiss is incredibly slow. Sound and video jitters, and sometimes, during certain game scenes, green artifacts will flash on screen for a split second. Even running not64 will crash after a little while, and the sound will be of a lower pitch than it's supposed to be due to it struggling to load fast enough. I'm using a class 10 SD card rated at 60MB/s, so that can't be the issue, I guess I just want to know if this is normal and one of the limitations of SD Gecko or something is awry here.

[andre104623]

So I've been fiddling with my newly WKF modded cube for a few days now, and one thing I have noticed is loading anything from my SD Gecko through Swiss is incredibly slow. Sound and video jitters, and sometimes, during certain game scenes, green artifacts will flash on screen for a split second. Even running not64 will crash after a little while, and the sound will be of a lower pitch than it's supposed to be due to it struggling to load fast enough. I'm using a class 10 SD card rated at 60MB/s, so that can't be the issue, I guess I just want to know if this is normal and one of the limitations of SD Gecko or something is awry here.

It's normal, the sd gecko is slow and that fact will never change. The IDE-EXI is even slower the problem with both these devices is that they can't do DMA transfers. To give you an idea run your homebrew though the WASP SD slot and see the speed of that. It's because it can do DMA transfers

[novenary]

If the homebrew isn't written for it there won't be any DMA.

[Xaranar]

Yeah I read that the Wasp has direct memory access. It's a shame really, the Wasp has direct memory access but doesn't support audio streaming, whereas SD Gecko does support audio streaming, but is slow as balls.

[tueidj]

SD Gecko doesn't support audio streaming, the software utilizing it does. The same software should be able (in theory) to emulate audio streaming with any device.

[Hucklebuck]

It would be really nice if Wasp/WKF gets audio streaming. That would be the BEST improvement (feature) for those devices. I would donate to such a project.

[tesla246]

emu_kidid was working on audiostreaming for wasp through swiss but apparently stopped, because it ''is not worth the effort''. (look at the last few pages of the swiss nighly builds thread)

So it either wouldn't work 100% as intended, with glitches/freezes due to the design of wasp, or there is a better solution at hand. I remember reading somewhere that there may be a self-made alternative to wasp/fusion, and perhaps that may incorporate audio streaming. This is all pure speculation on my part though, don't read too much into it.

[emu_kidid]

Yes, the WASP didn't behave like a proper DVD drive when it came to "faking" interrupts so in short I gave up. It's possible to make it work but it would be a lot of work and isn't worth the effort as I've stated before. At most I had it play audio from Waverace Blue Storm for about 5 seconds before the game crashed.

I would rather see an open source/community developed DVD replacement device that can support audio streaming via hardware. There's a few promising projects (even on this very forum, have a search) which are aiming at something like that so keep your fingers crossed for one of them to actually see the light of day and then I can add support to it in Swiss fairly easily. I'd try to tackle it myself but I am not that confident in my hardware abilities yet, maybe one day.

[meneerbeer]

I am planning when I have more free time to make a drive emulator utilizing a cheap FPGA. Hopefully with audiostreaming eventually.

[tesla246]

That is reassuring to read. Would be convenient if it will be compatible through an FFC cable connection with megadrive V3, V5 etc. thus negating the need to solder.