MiSTer Super Attract Mode (SAM) is now available - the first game screensaver for your MiSTer!

[mrchrister]

You would have to create a new folder and copy all files from both folders into the new one.

[jacob.pederson]

Hi Mellified!

Can we get a toggle in the ini file that causes SAM to shutoff until the next reboot when input is detected? The reason I ask, is since SAM is not able to detect all types of controllers or more than one controller, this would make it easier to walk up to the machine, press spacebar to turn off SAM, and then start playing the currently loaded game. As it is now. If I start playing a game, SAM always kicks back on after a while because I'm not using a detectable controller. Thanks!

[mrchrister]

If you're talking about keyboard input, that should always be detected by SAM.
We fixed a bug yesterday where SAM would kick in while you are in game, not respecting the menuonly=yes setting in the ini.

Please update and give it a try!

[rhester72]

Does the CD-ROM BIOS skip (with 'regular', unmodified BIOS) no longer work? It did for a little bit, but now PC Engine CD BIOS doesn't seem to be auto-bypassing anymore.

[jacob.pederson]

If you're talking about keyboard input, that should always be detected by SAM.
We fixed a bug yesterday where SAM would kick in while you are in game, not respecting the menuonly=yes setting in the ini.

Please update and give it a try!

Reinstalled the new script just now, and still having the same issue. If I have "Monitor" running, I can see SAM exiting when keyboard input is detected; however, it just pops right back on again in 30 seconds despite menuonly="Yes"

[mrchrister]

Ok strange.. Stupid question but did you restart after the update?
It would need a fresh start for the changes to take effect...

[Sigismond0]

This sounds like a similar issue I reported a week or so ago on GitHub, but you pushed a fix and I couldn't replicate after. I'll see if I can find some time to test today.

[mrchrister]

Thanks, Sigismond. I'll take a look as well

[Mr. Encyclopedia]

I've also had similar problems, including having SAM start while I'm in the middle of running update_all or not detecting the inputs when I try to start playing a game.

[mrchrister]

This should all be fixed now. SAM has a switch to not run when update_all is active. Unfortunately this switch was ignored because the script got started twice accidentally...

[jacob.pederson]

Just did another fresh install and keyboard input detection does seem to be working correctly now I have a new issue for you though When I enable tty2oled SAM sticks at "Clear tty2oled Serial Input Buffer" for almost 5 minutes. Not sure if it was always doing this and I just didn't notice it before?

Init tty2oled, loading variables...
Clear tty2oled Serial Input Buffer...

Edit: It appears to only stick there after a cold boot. Betcha that's how I keep ending up with two copies of the script running.
Edit2: It is also doing the whole starting while playing a game after correctly detecting keyboard input once thing again maybe that issue is tty2oled related also?

[venice]

Do you use SAM Autostart?
If yes, does the same happen if you start SAM by Hand?

[mrchrister]

Same thing happens for me when the tty2oled device is not responding, it hangs at that command. In my case that's because I start SAM with tty2oled turned on in the ini but it's actually not connected to the Mister

@venice do you see a way of tty2oled not stalling SAM when no input on serial buffer is received?
Maybe a timeout?

[venice]

Is this related to an enabled SAM Autostart?
Is it working if you start SAM by Hand with Autostart disabled?

I had updated my SAM install a few days before and
tty2oled with „ack“ was working fine for me but I don‘t use the SAM Autostart.

[jacob.pederson]

Not sure how to tell if AutoStart is enabled or not? I don't see it in the INI file anywhere, is it only available in the Sam Menu?

From my testing it appears that there is no tty2oled hang when starting Sam manually, only on cold boot with autostart enabled from Sam Menu.
Edit: actually if you start SAM manually close enough to a cold reboot, it seems to hang up for a while also.

Here is a ps aux I ran after starting Sam once, then pressing a keyboard input to exit, then Sam started back up after 30 seconds despite being set to menu only. Looks like there are still somehow 2 copies running? On further monitoring of watch ps aux, it looks more like the second copy of MiSTer_SAM_on.sh goes away after a sec, then pops up again every time the game changes, so maybe this is normal?

Code: Select all

 1105 root     {tmux: server} tmux new-session -s MCP -d /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/M
 1106 root     {MiSTer_SAM_MCP} /bin/bash /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer_SAM_MCP
 1116 root     inotifywait --quiet --monitor --event create --event delete /dev/input --i
 1119 root     inotifywait -r --quiet --monitor --event create --event delete /dev/input/
 1137 root     python /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer_SAM_joy.py /dev/input/js0
 1138 root     python /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer_SAM_joy.py /dev/input/js1
 1139 root     python /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer_SAM_joy.py /dev/input/js2
 1140 root     python /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer_SAM_joy.py /dev/input/js4
 1141 root     python /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer_SAM_joy.py /dev/input/js5
 1198 root     python /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer_SAM_keyboard.py /dev/hidraw5
 1277 root     sshd: root@pts/0
 1281 root     -bash
 1891 root     [kworker/0:0-eve]
 2001 root     {MiSTer_SAM_on.s} /bin/bash /media/fat/Scripts/MiSTer_SAM_on.sh start_real
 2095 root     {MiSTer_SAM_on.s} /bin/bash /media/fat/Scripts/MiSTer_SAM_on.sh start_real

# gamelists="Dynamic" means on every reboot, new gamelists are created. This might be slow but offers flexibility if you update your rom folders a lot.

Thanks for adding that feature !

# SAM game roulette is a mode available in the menu, where you only have a certain amount of time to play a game, before SAM shuffles to the next game.

Mine always works this way . . . Edit 2: 99% sure it's ttyenable causing the permanent roulette issue. Did a bunch of testing with reinstalls and changing only one ini value to figure this out.

[mrchrister]

The ps output is helpful tracking down the issue!
SAM is started multiple times which shouldn't happen and that's why it's behaving incorrectly.

If you start MiSTer_SAM_on.sh from ssh and push up, your get to the menu. Here you can disable auto start.

What I would suggest first though is do a cold reboot. Don't start SAM manually! Just wait 2 mins for SAM to start and it should work correctly. If you start it manually it somehow creates a copy of itself which seems to be an untracked bug. I'll look into it later!

[jacob.pederson]

There may be a bug in the menu item "Reinstall SAM and enable Autostart"

SAM will start after sec. after boot/tmp/MiSTer_SAM_on.sh: line 1748: [: ==: unary operator expected
whenever controller is not in use and show each game for 120 sec.

Code: Select all

Downloading from https://github.com/mrchrisster/MiSTer_SAM/blob/main/MiSTer_SAM_on.sh to /tmp/... Done!
 Continuing setup with latest MiSTer_SAM_on.sh...
 Stopping other running instances of MiSTer_SAM_on.sh... Done!
 Downloading partun - needed for unzipping roms from big archives...
 Created for MiSTer by woelper - Talk to him at this year's PartunCon
 https://github.com/woelper/partun
 Done!
 Downloading mbc - Control MiSTer from cmd...
 Created for MiSTer by pocomane
 Downloading from https://github.com/mrchrisster/MiSTer_SAM/blob/main/.MiSTer_SAM/mbc to /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/... Done!
 Downloading input maps - needed to skip past BIOS for some systems... Done!
 Downloading from https://github.com/mrchrisster/MiSTer_SAM/blob/main/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer_SAM_init to /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/... Done!
 Downloading from https://github.com/mrchrisster/MiSTer_SAM/blob/main/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer_SAM_MCP to /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/... Done!
 Downloading from https://github.com/mrchrisster/MiSTer_SAM/blob/main/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer_SAM_joy.py to /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/... Done!
 Downloading from https://github.com/mrchrisster/MiSTer_SAM/blob/main/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer_SAM_keyboard.py to /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/... Done!
 Downloading from https://github.com/mrchrisster/MiSTer_SAM/blob/main/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer_SAM_mouse.py to /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/... Done!
 Downloading from https://github.com/mrchrisster/MiSTer_SAM/blob/main/MiSTer_SAM_off.sh to /media/fat/Scripts/... Done!
 Downloading from https://github.com/mrchrisster/MiSTer_SAM/blob/main/MiSTer_SAM.ini to /media/fat/Scripts/... Done!
 Update complete!
 Enabling MiSTer SAM Autoplay...Add MiSTer SAM to /media/fat/linux/user-startup.sh

Done.
 SAM install complete.




 SAM will start after sec. after boot/tmp/MiSTer_SAM_on.sh: line 1748: [: ==: unary operator expected
 whenever controller is not in use and show each game for 120 sec.

[jacob.pederson]

The ps output is helpful tracking down the issue!
SAM is started multiple times which shouldn't happen and that's why it's behaving incorrectly.

If you start MiSTer_SAM_on.sh from ssh and push up, your get to the menu. Here you can disable auto start.

What I would suggest first though is do a cold reboot. Don't start SAM manually! Just wait 2 mins for SAM to start and it should work correctly. If you start it manually it somehow creates a copy of itself which seems to be an untracked bug. I'll look into it later!

Ok gotcha, complete reinstall again, starting sam from autostart, and everything functions correctly. Sam exits with keyboard input and does not restart again; however, after changing nothing in the default INI EXCEPT ttyenable="Yes" I am back to having two copies of Sam again (even with autostart). Which means I am back to Sam going back into shuffle mode while I am playing

Code: Select all

  980 root     {tmux: server} tmux new-session -s MCP -d /media/fat/Scripts/.Mi
  981 root     {MiSTer_SAM_MCP} /bin/bash /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer
  990 root     inotifywait --quiet --monitor --event create --event delete /dev
  993 root     inotifywait -r --quiet --monitor --event create --event delete /
  999 root     /sbin/gpm -m /dev/input/mice -t imps2
 1000 root     /sbin/agetty --nohostname -L console xterm
 1003 root     /sbin/agetty --nohostname -L tty1 linux
 1011 root     python /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer_SAM_joy.py /dev/inp
 1012 root     python /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer_SAM_joy.py /dev/inp
 1013 root     python /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer_SAM_joy.py /dev/inp
 1014 root     python /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer_SAM_joy.py /dev/inp
 1015 root     python /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer_SAM_joy.py /dev/inp
 1016 root     python /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer_SAM_joy.py /dev/inp
 1017 root     python /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer_SAM_joy.py /dev/inp
 1060 root     python /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer_SAM_keyboard.py /de
 2194 root     sshd: root@pts/1
 2197 root     [kworker/0:0H-kb]
 2204 root     -bash
 2220 root     watch ps aux
 2355 root     {MiSTer_SAM_on.s} /bin/bash /media/fat/Scripts/MiSTer_SAM_on.sh
 2391 root     [kworker/u4:2-ev]
 2445 root     {MiSTer_SAM_on.s} /bin/bash /media/fat/Scripts/MiSTer_SAM_on.sh
 2449 root     [kworker/1:0H]
 2453 root     [kworker/0:3H]

[mrchrister]

Thanks for testing Jacob. So tty2oled is really the culprit, interesting!
I'll look into it.

[mrchrister]

SAM will start after sec. after boot/tmp/MiSTer_SAM_on.sh: line 1748: [: ==: unary operator expected
whenever controller is not in use and show each game for 120 sec.

This should be fixed now, cheers!

[mrchrister]

tty2oled is fixed now
Two things needed some updates:
On exit, tty2oled sets:

Code: Select all

echo "MENU" > /tmp/CORENAME

which makes SAM think we're back in the main menu, so it launches again after samtimeout has passed. Easy, we just disable the command.

The other problem is the display stays dark on exit and that's a bit more complicated to tackle..

We're trying to launch a process "/media/fat/tty2oled/S60tty2oled start" and exit "MiSTer_SAM_on.sh". Now "MiSTer_SAM_on.sh" runs in a tmux session which makes this not very straight forward. When a button is pushed, "MiSTer_SAM_on.sh" exits which also kills all subprocesses spawned by the script. For now I'm running the ttydaemon in it's own tmux session on exit to get around this limitation. This isn't a very good solution but it should make it work.

tty2oled gets controlled by SAM through ttyuseack=yes. (venice also calls it full control)
If ttyuseack=no SAM just sends commands to the tty2oled daemon which can cause screen corruption but works much better with the way SAM works.

I hope down the road we can find a way to make ttyuseack=no the default and solve the issues people are having with screen corruption. With my device I don't seem to have these issues.

[venice]

Good catch with the „Menu“.
In added this to get the Menu shown again at „MiSTer_Sam_on.sh stop“.

Screen corruption is caused by timing issues.
With „ttyuseack=no“ tty2oled works normal, means changes on „/tmp/CORENAME“ are used to detect the actual core.
Depending on the core, the file is modified earlier or later (most arcades)
„Later“ can cause the screen issues if „/tmp/Corename“ is changed at the same time SAM sends the Text.

This should not happen as SAM uses the same mechanism (inotifywait) if „ttyuseack“ is set to „no“ to detect the corename change as the tty2oled daemon.

I will test again with „ttyuseack=no“.

[rhester72]

The screen corruption with ACKs off isn't just timing issues. When you have the display show game titles, it does interesting things like paint the title name twice, once in the center of the display and again at the top.

Could it be related to cable length? My USB cable to the LCD board is a good six feet.

[venice]

The text in the middle is normally shown only if the display receives a unknown command or just the corename was send.
But a unknown command can be everything if data is lost.

Is your display working normal with the tty2oled daemon script?
Which Hardware do you use (MCU/USB Serial Chip)?
Do you use the tty2oled mode with „ttyuseack=yes“?
Six feet is about 2 Meters, correct?

[rhester72]

Is your display working normal with the tty2oled daemon script?

Yes.

Which Hardware do you use (MCU/USB Serial Chip)?

How do I tell? It's the one sold here:

https://www.antoniovillena.es/store/product/tty2oled/

Do you use the tty2oled mode with „ttyuseack=yes“?

Yes, otherwise I get the corruption I described (double-printed text in the center)

Six feet is about 2 Meters, correct?

Yes.

[venice]

If it works so far the cable should not be the problem.

So the use of „ttyuseack=no“ with your display and MiSTer SAM cause the screen issue?

If yes I need to double check the device from Antonio.

The use of „ttyuseack=yes“ is fully working?

[rhester72]

So the use of „ttyuseack=no“ with your display and MiSTer SAM cause the screen issue?

Yes.

The use of „ttyuseack=yes“ is fully working?

Yes.

[mrchrister]

Lots of things have happened and I thought it's time for a quick update:

- Thanks to Paradox we now have C64 support!
- Paradox has also been busy with how game lists work in SAM. Game lists will now be recreated every week to catch all updates that happen to your rom folders. You can change these settings in the ini if you want them to always update for example.
- SAM's menu got an update

eFBpdde.png (47.98 KiB) Viewed 5906 times

- We now have a "Single Category" mode. If you only wish to show USA games or maybe games from the pinball category, this mode is for you.

CbWhgyn.png (47.44 KiB) Viewed 5906 times

- There is also a new exclusion mode in the menu if you wish to never show hacks for example

cdPRuSb.png (36.96 KiB) Viewed 5906 times

- For the time being, I disabled „ttyuseack=yes“ since there are still problems with SAM exiting cleanly sometimes. I can think of other ways of restarting the tty2oled daemon on SAM's exit but none of them are straight forward. Let's hope venice finds some time to look into it more.

[Wave]

Lovely new functionality!
I'm definitely turning off the random hacks, haha. They come up so darn often.

[venice]

…
How do I tell? It's the one sold here:

https://www.antoniovillena.es/store/product/tty2oled/

Do you use the tty2oled mode with „ttyuseack=yes“?

Yes, otherwise I get the corruption I described (double-printed text in the center)

Antonio sells tty2oled Displays with ESP8266 Processors.
This Processor is slower than the ESP32 I am using for my setup.

My tests showing that some delays in the SAM Script needs to be adjusted to get rid of the the double printed text.
This will slow down the text output but we are not in a hurry

I will test my findings with the latest SAM release and let you know.