Disc drive sometimes stuck in reset loop

[bobrocks95]

I'm not sure if this is a Swiss issue or possibly a Cubeboot or Picoboot issue. I'm leaning Cubeboot but figured I'd ask here as well.

Occasionally when I start my console (which autoboots to Swiss and then autoloads from disc) I can hear the disc drive click and reset several times in a row, maybe 4-5 and then I am eventually kicked over to the SD card file menu from my Slot 2 cheapo SD Media Launcher SDGecko. Viewing file sources the disc drive isn't listed unless Z is pressed to show all, and then if I select DVD it resets/inits properly.

I am on a slightly older Swiss revision, I think 1458. I have the cubeboot force_fallback option enabled and will be testing some more with it disabled to see if the problem still occurs. Since it's an intermittent thing it's a bit hard to debug on my end...

EDIT: Occurs with force_fallback disabled as well. Could it be a race condition with the new disc autoboot/favoriting and settings loading? Swiss launches in 480i then switches to 480p, so it looks like it's loading settings while initializing/resetting the disc drive. My OSSC resyncs too slowly to see exactly when things occur.

EDIT2: With force_fallback disabled I have been able to trigger a "no such device" message when trying to load from disc after the reset loop/failure.

[emu_kidid]

The disc drive should reset the laser assembly to the inner most part twice when Swiss boots up. Once to reset the drive, another time to prepare it for patching if it's trying to detect a disc. Are you attempting to set a default device/directory as the DVD directory in Swiss? What does your recent list file look like in Swiss (either by pressing Start or providing the file here from the /swiss/ dir).

[bobrocks95]

I'm expecting 2 clicks as Extrems mentioned a hardware bug requires the reset to happen twice. But I'm getting like 8+ loud clicks in a row when the problem happens, then no drive detected.

I probably poorly described how I have it set up, but I just have the new options enabled from revision 1458 with the wildcard for disc launching. In the global.ini:

Autoload=dvd:/*.gcm

So Swiss boots up, immediately opens/loads the dvd drive, and boots the main executable.

Unfortunately I had the recent list disabled, but I'll happily re-enable it if it potentially provides a clue. All I've been doing with it lately is booting into the disc version of Pikmin 2 with Swiss patches. Maybe ~40% of boots had the issue happen.

[emu_kidid]

Repeated clicks sounds like the laser struggling and then resetting the placement of the lens to try again. Try it in BS2/Original menu if it's not a backup and if it happens there it just means your laser is having difficulties reading the disc.

[bobrocks95]

A very late update on this since I finally took the time today to test things a little bit. I'm wondering if ultimately this is an SD card speed issue sort of thing.
I use the SD Media Launcher's crappy SD Gecko with a full-sized 16GB PNY SDHC Class 4 SD Card. The thing has kind of always loved not booting quite right, so ultimately that could be it.

Testing with it out and the stock bootup, I did around 10-12 boots for Pikmin 2 and they were all fine, except the first one which hung on the GameCube logo for awhile before going into the game. Maybe more of a cold-boot sort of thing.

Re-inserting the sad excuse for an SD Gecko my first boot went okay, 2nd boot went into Swiss and then game me a "No DVD Drive detected!" error (hitting Z to show unconnected devices and loading the DVD drive again worked though), third boot gave me a PicoBoot(?) error of "HALT - No program loaded! (path=z.dol)", then a couple more boots went okay then another HALT error.


Needless to say my boots are inconsistent- could you recommend a decent SD Gecko option to try emu_kidid to rule that out first? My spice orange DOL-001 unfortunately has no SP2 port (though I am looking forward to the M.2 Loader for SP1 in the future).

[emu_kidid]

I can't make any recommendations because I haven't tried the new SD Gecko equivalents these days. They're all relatively cheap that you could buy a couple of different ones and see how you go though.