EDN8 OS v20-BETA. Large update incoming

[Koh1Fds]

This just was mentioned on best of nes marathon. I didn't found this reported anywhere on everdrive forum. So if this a repeat then i'm sorry.

Defender of the Crown game have inaccurate catapult sound effects on everdrive. On real cart and emulators catapult makes like chacka chacka chacka sounds. And on everdrive it makes straight psshhhhhhhh noise (no separate chacka chacka chacka sounds)
I tested same rom on everdrive v20 R7 and emulator and difference are there. So it isn't caused by different rom versions. Here is examples of the sounds:

https://youtu.be/cMJwAXHfRm4?t=93 - everdrive
https://youtu.be/3Ph1H56mNXY?t=67 - real cart

Also, Defender of the Crown are mmc1 game.

edit: if it's necessary i can post everdrive savestate for that part of the game. Makes testing easier

[James-F]

This is really strange since MMC1 does not produce sound on its own.
It could be that MMC1 emulation on the N8 does not send data to the NES correctly.
People have noticed sound (changing pitch) issues with Adventure Island 1 which also does not have expansion audio.

[brianvgplayer]

Does this happen on RC4-6, as well? RC7 made an unnecessary change to MMC3 and broke AVS compatibility.

[Retrothunder]

Just wondering if ever mapper 30 would be in an official krikzz firmware update in any near future? Mr. Krizz
 

[NewRisingSun]

I am pretty sure that Koh1Fds's problem is due to incorrect power-up state of the NES sound registers. At a minimum, the menu should write $00 to $4017 before jumping to a game's reset handler. Register $4017 affects the envelope counter in the sound card channels. Defender of the Crown is one game that does not initialize that register, so the power-up state matters.

My issue:
Waixing's Journey to the West II randomly crashed occasionally with RC6, and now crashes after just a few seconds (though not always in the same spot) with RC7. (The game will crash on a NTSC console when facing the first boss due to bad game programming, but should run perfectly until that.) There are also occasional colorful lines on the screen.

Also, Kasheng's Super Donkey Kong 2 (PRG CRC 0x0AE5B57F, overall CRC 0x6FB28AF7, depicted here) somehow displays incorrect mirroring on the Everdrive N8. There are several ROM versions of this, but the bug happens on all of them, making the game unplayable.

Edit: Added link so it becomes clear which game I am talking about.

[Sarge]

I am pretty sure that Koh1Fds's problem is due to incorrect power-up state of the NES sound registers. At a minimum, the menu should write $00 to $4017 before jumping to a game's reset handler. Register $4017 affects the envelope counter in the sound card channels. Defender of the Crown is one game that does not initialize that register, so the power-up state matters.

Definitely sounds plausible, as we know other games are affected by the initial state for speed run purposes, like Final Fantasy.

[NewRisingSun]

Waixing's Journey to the West II randomly crashed occasionally with RC6, and now crashes after just a few seconds (though not always in the same spot) with RC7.
(...)
Kasheng's Super Donkey Kong 2 somehow displays incorrect mirroring on the Everdrive N8.

After investigating this issue some more, I can report that adding "LDA #$80; STA $A001" to the game code through patching completely makes the crashes and the wrong mirroring go away. Apparently, the Everdrive N8 (RC7)'s MMC3 emulation goes nuts whenever the WRAM enable bit is not set by the game, especially if the game still accesses the $6000-$7FFF area (like Super Donkey Kong 2), but even if it does not (like Journey to the West II).

An issue that still persists with these games is that there is constant colorful noise in the picture. Normally, you could get away with saying that the cartridge connectors are just dirty, but since the noise does not appear with other games, that explanation is unlikely to be true --- cartridge connectors switch between clean and dirty with the same flash cartridge depending on which game is selected.

Please kindly investigate these issues.

[Koh1Fds]

That's not only mine issue as you can see. Also, i'm using 100% unmodified AV Famicom (console that was recommended on everdrive's buying page). Then make so everdrive's os properly initialize that address.

Also, that glitch was mentioned by YogiTheMonk. He said that if he uses original cart then everything sounds perfect.

[VanishingVision92]

I'm encountering some strange crashing with a few Konami games. Over the past few weeks, Jackal, Bucky O'Hare, TMNT Manhattan Project, and Rollergames have suddenly crashed with the music freezing on one note. No preceding graphical glitches, just an instant crash. The frequency is also inconsistent, as in Rollergames crashed within five minutes of starting a game, but after resetting, I was able to play for much longer without anything happening. Is there something common here that I'm not aware of? I'm using RC7. In between these crashes, I've run several other games from other manufactures, and while nothing happened, I can't tell if a crash is around the corner because there's no pattern for when it does happen. 

[NewRisingSun]

VanishingVision92's problem is the same problem as mine: MMC3 games that do not use WRAM, and therefore do not write $80 to $A001, will sooner or later freeze on v20 RC7. RC7 is therefore definitely not yet ready for release.

Another game affected by this is The Jetsons - Cogswell's Caper! (U.S. version).

[Great Hierophant]

VanishingVision92 also mentioned Jackal, which uses Mapper 2 and thus far more primitive.  Does that game have a spurious write to RAM at some point?

[yojc]

I can confirm there's some issue with Jackal, in my case it doesn't even boot, it just stays on the grey screen.

AV Famicom, No-Intro romset, EDN8 OS v20 RC7

[NewRisingSun]

I can confirm that Jackal will freeze at some random point during gameplay. Not booting at all suggests an incorrect ROM on the other hand; check the same ROM in a PC-based emulator for safety. Given that NoIntro only indexes the headerless ROMs, to my knowledge, I don't think pointing out that one used the NoIntro set is necessarily a sign of having good ROMs. Jackal has a correct headerless CRC32 of 0x1D5B03A5; the correct Mapper is 2, and the correct Mirroring setting is Vertical.

Does that game have a spurious write to RAM at some point?

No. And the MMC3 games do not actually have to have spurious writes to crash; just the fact that WRAM is not enabled makes them crash, and patching them to enable WRAM (adding writing $80 to $A001) fixes the issue for the game that I have tried. Mapper 2 (UNROM) games never have WRAM, so there is nothing I can patch to enable it.

[Sarge]

Hmm, I just ran into the Jackal problem myself.  I've finished it before on the EDN8, but just got to the last stage and it flat-out froze on me.  This is with RC6.  I last beat it on 5/23 of this year, so that means I was probably using beta 2 at that point.

I have no idea if some of the instability is caused by save states being enabled.  As I mentioned elsewhere, Time Lord is a game that behaves quite poorly with save states.

[F34R]

I've been having the OS Init freeze issue trying ever v20 OS.  If I just change it back to v16, it loads proper and runs proper.  I've tried all the suggestions in multiple threads on how to fix it.  I even used two brand new SD cards to no avail.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.