EDN8 OS v20-BETA. Large update incoming

[michiseiner]

thanks for the detailled explanation! Now I wonder how emulators or NT mini custom firmware handle this.. is there a list of such games? Hope I dont go too offtopic here..

[nuu]

Emulators often initializes the RAM (which is inaccurate behaviour), but lately emulators often allows options for randomizing the RAM for a more accurate behaviour. FCEUX and Mesen both have this lately. In Mesen you go into Emulation Settings and at "Default power on state for RAM:" you pick "Random Values". I don't really understand why it's not the default setting.


Not initializing RAM like Final Fantasy is doing, isn't exactly good programming practice though since it may cause problems on "exotic setups" (a flashcart is an example of an "exotic setup"). But the damage is already done in licensed games, so it's up to emulators and flashcarts to know about the problem.

[Theta55]

Any word on another rev or final release?
I herd somewhere that there may be another updated nes everdrive.

[Aether Knight]

Well hopefully something is mentioned and/or updated this month for the N8's 6th year anniversary.

[my2k2zx2]

After having zero success with the v20-rc7 (or anything newer than v16) on my US front loading NES (famicom version using a 60-72 pin adapter) I decided to order a Famicom.

The famicom boots right up to the everdrive menu, not freezing at OS INIT.

It sure seems to me that there must be some issue with the famicom version with adapter in the US front loader.

[linked]

After having zero success with the v20-rc7 (or anything newer than v16) on my US front loading NES (famicom version using a 60-72 pin adapter) I decided to order a Famicom.

The famicom boots right up to the everdrive menu, not freezing at OS INIT.

It sure seems to me that there must be some issue with the famicom version with adapter in the US front loader.

I did the same thing. All my famiclones were unable to use newer system than v16 (even these HQ ones). Some of them played for few minutes and hanged, some other couldn't even pass the menu (tried many power supplies too).
I ordered AV Famicom and it has literally no problem with anything.

[threecreepio]

Emulators often initializes the RAM

Even if they for some reason didn't initialize the NES RAM that would still be inaccurate. An emulator would need to initialize their memory in a way that matches the uninitialized states that an NES ram chip may start in (which is not random, and varies per console.)

Another issue with flash carts is that the PPU will be initialized before the game is started, which affects the RNG in quite a few games.

It'd be great if there were a way to boot directly to a given rom in an identical fashion to a real cartridge, but I don't know if that would be feasible. Would be helpful to ensure speedrunning games don't have any reason to disallow it, though.

[nuu]

Randomizing RAM is more accurate because it makes the RAM content unpredictable, which is far better than initializing it to a set value. The values in unitialized RAM depends on types of RAM chips, temperature and probably many other kinds of things related to physics, so it is very unpredictable and very hard to simulate accurately.

Yes it would be a great feature if a flahscart could boot a game directly without having to pass a menu. Besides solving any initialization problems it would also solve problems like Super Game Boy 2 linking (works a bit different from other Game Boys), GBA-GC linking (for some games that expects a certain cartridge), N64 Transfer Pak, GBA-NDS linking (inserting a GBA cartridge in slot 2 of a DS, linking with a DS game) etc.

The only Everdrives that allows bypassing the menu are those that use flash, if flashed with a game then booting without the SD card. But even those seems to load some kind of bootloader first that checks for the SD-card, so those don't count.

Some flashcarts that do allow bypassing the menu are: GB USB 64M Smart Card if only one game is flashed to it the menu program will not be flashed (although this flashcart is pretty low quality and has many other problems), and FDSStick this one also doesn't flash the menu program if only one game is flashed to it. I guess any simple menuless flashcart like Flashboy+ that just flashes the game to flash ROM also don't have this problem.

[Kobe]

Don't know how I missed this thread, awesome stuff here. Just to clarify, so RC7 will have all the features from all previous OS updates, correct?

[Adamcarter]

Anybody use the new firmware on a second generation analogue nt (not mini) wondering if all the bugs were worked out. I own a powerpak, but their hasnt been new progress with it, and i am thinking about getting an everdrive n8.

[Sarge]

Don't know how I missed this thread, awesome stuff here. Just to clarify, so RC7 will have all the features from all previous OS updates, correct?

Yes, although I wouldn't recommend using RC7.  RC6 is the best one to try first, and if it works well for you, stick with it.

My system behaves strangely with RC6 on several games, so dropping back to RC3 was the right call for me.  I lose the tweaked FDS audio, but everything else seems to be handling better now, including no more crashing in Batman.

[Missingno255]

Don't know where to post this, so can a mod split this post into it's own topic, that'd be great.

https://twitter.com/krikzz/status/1139924862728855558

Now we know why he stopped working on this update for a while! He must have run out of FPGA space for the update and Mappers. 16MB of Rom space, bigger FPGA, and an I/O controller of sorts.

[phoenixdownita]

Don't know where to post this, so can a mod split this post into it's own topic, that'd be great.

https://twitter.com/krikzz/status/1139924862728855558

Now we know why he stopped working on this update for a while! He must have run out of FPGA space for the update and Mappers. 16MB of Rom space, bigger FPGA, and an I/O controller of sorts.

Thanks for linking it, Krikzz himself says that OSv20 "likely will stay as is" ... so yeah .... end of the road, time for N8 Pro.

[SkinnyV]

This is disapointing but not really unexpected. This kind of things make me feel like switching my flashcarts for a MisterFPGA. It used to be that flashcarts were the best way to play retro game on the original console to avoid issues that came with emulation. But I am not so sure anymore as it seem it is getting more complicated nowaday with bugs from different firmware update creating issues in game using such and such mapper and you end up having to pay much more attention to forum to figure out which version is stable or should be avoided. I originally swapped my powerpak for the N8 as soon as it became available because I tought it would be more taken care of with updates and more support but the different everdrive version started multiplying shortly after and I feel it became an uphill battle with fixing bugs introduced with firmware update and game that used to work perfectly suddenly breaking. Ultimatly, I know it won't be a popular opinion but I feel I ended up with a less reliable experience than with my old Powerpak, which might have gotten way less update over the year but had very robust support coming from the third-party mapper pak. There was probably way less feature added but I rarely had any issues loading game using supported mapper and playing them.

[leonquest]

I know I've asked this before, but seeing as some time has passed since the FW versions were released, has anyone had the chance to thoroughly test each revision with the AVS? I never tested mine with v20-RC6 and I don't really have a lot of free time.