Nightly Public Builds for the PlayStation Core

[midnightgamer]

Is there a known issue regarding rumble on the PS1 Controller (SCPH1200) or PS2 Controller (SCPH 10010)?
Cause I got no rumble support with both. Dual Analog Stick is working and I got rumble using my 8-Bitdo Pro2. Is this due to the core or due to wrong settings? I'm using the NTSC setting, if this is any help. Would be great to get some help with this.

[FPGAzumSpass]

I think the original PS1 controllers via adapter are still missing a driver that supports rumble.

[midnightgamer]

Just setup your DE10-Nano switches as show below.


psx-core-mister-dual-sdram-swithch-setting.jpg

Is the position shown on the picture the "on" position? Or do I need to set the switch marked in red to on to get a different picture then shown? The picture by itself is a little bit missleading.

[Xbytez]

Is the position shown on the picture the "on" position?

The picture shows all switches in the 'off' position.

[midnightgamer]

Thanks ... in this case I need to undo what I just did.

[Xbytez]

Thanks ... in this case I need to undo what I just did.

You are not required to have a dual SDRAM module setup on the PSX core any longer. If you are downloading the official PSX core release this now only supports a single SDRAM module.

[midnightgamer]

Thanks ... in this case I need to undo what I just did.

You are not required to have a dual SDRAM module setup on the PSX core any longer. If you are downloading the official PSX core release this now only supports a single SDRAM module.

Thanks for the hint, but I own a Dual Ram setup and would like to participate from it.

BUT even if I setup the switches correctly the "SPU Ram option" is still greyed out in the most current official core. It says DDR3 (but greyed out). Is there anything I can do to take full advantage of Dual RAM?

[Xbytez]

BUT even if I setup the switches correctly the "SPU Ram option" is still greyed out in the most current official core. It says DDR3 (but greyed out). Is there anything I can do to take full advantage of Dual RAM?

Nothing can be done if you are using the offical PSX core, a dual SDRAM setup is simply not supported.

If you wish to use a dual SDRAM version of the PSX core, you would have to compile the PSX core using Quartus. The files are in the project GitHub here:

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/PSX_MiSTer

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/PSX_MiS ... lSDRAM.qpf

The dual SDRAM version of the PSX core only provides an imperceptible improvement of audio sample accuracy.

[midnightgamer]

Thanks for the clarification

[Akuma]

I saw the core came out in my absence, congratulations @FPGAzumSpass. Can I retire my script? or are nightlies still being released?

[FPGAzumSpass]

yes, there have been some in the last 2 weeks and also more to come.

But it depends on if you want the newest changes or just play with the stable release.

[Akuma]

Updated Script: unstable-update_psx-nightlies to version 0.10

Its been a couple of months and I've been away, so I checked to see whats up. The script needed some updating, this is whats new:

• I replaced the BIOS update routine and added a softlink to the latest nightly called: PSX_latest. It will always point to the last download. So unless you want to run a specific version you can launch " PSX_latest"
• All known good bioses (redump) are used and stored in PSX/.bios and then softlinked to boot/1/2.rom.

  Code: Select all

  boot.rom  -> ps-41a.bin = SCPH-7001 USA/NTSC-U 
  boot1.rom -> ps-40j.bin = SCPH-7000 JAP/NTSC-J 
  boot2.rom -> ps-41e.bin = SCPH-7002 EUR/PAL
  

• You can change the softlinks manually to point to any of the bioses (24) currently in the biospack.

The script will update itself on next run.

edit: update the main MiSTer if things are not working for you.

[TobyRieper]

Even though i enjoy the new features of this nightly build i shall no longer use it as twice i have lost save games. Even though auto save on OSD was turned on. I load back up Dino Crisis 2 and Ive lost 2 hours of gameplay.

The release I was using was 22.10.17. Has anyone else experienced lost saves?

[FPGAzumSpass]

Did you open the OSD and it was saying "Memcard Status: saved" ?
OSD must be opened even with autosave.

There was no memcard change since the last official release.

[TobyRieper]

Hiya, yes it did say saved. It happened twice with Dino Crisis 2 and once with Silent Hill. Will let you know if it happens again.
On Silent Hill I saved, turned on the mister again and it said there was no save file. So I went into my virtual MC (used the empty memcard template) mounted that with my OG PS1 saves on and loaded silent hill save.

Mounted SilentHill.sav and it said 'unformatted memory card' formatted it and blam there my save file appeared. Seems to be with the .sav files my .mcd saves have been fine. I hope this helps.

[FPGAzumSpass]

So you mounted it yourself? Have you turned off automount then?

Otherwise your mount for slot 1 will be overwritten every time you load a game.

[TobyRieper]

Maybe that what did it? My save got overwritten with a blank Dino Crisis.sav? Can that happen? Say I start a new game with automount on, save on the auto generated sav file. I then for whatever reason mount another MC then forget to turn automount of. When it comes to load My Dino Crisis.sav it gets overwritten? Sorry if i dont seem to understand

[FPGAzumSpass]

If you leave automount on, it will mount a new memcard every time you select another disc/folder.

So if you select a memcard yourself and later switch the disc, this selection will be canceled and the other card loaded instead.

Best to either :
- never select a memcard yourself and leave automount on
- or turn automount off and select yourself
- or only select memcards in slot 2, which is never automounted

[TobyRieper]

Thank you bud. I'll only select cards in Slot 2. I only used the empty mem card images to fill full of saves from my OG mem cards.
Glad I know now and not later. Just having a great time with this core. It's perfect.

[held]

Turbo CPU? Are you kidding me. I must admit I jumped around a bit like Ross after I enabled it:

Thank you for awakening my inner child again

[Chris23235]

Turbo CPU? Are you kidding me. I must admit I jumped around a bit like Ross after I enabled it:

Thank you for awakening my inner child again

Seeing Alien Ressurection going up to 60 FPS in Widescreen mode (at least when the game is not streaming new assets from CD) is pretty nice.

[held]

I'm geeking out right now, and that does not happen very often. What a treat!

[PhDTenma]

Hi, I have noticed some audio micro stutters in some Squaresoft rpgs. For instance FFVII, VIII and IX, during a battle or just before the battle (I guess is when is reading the CD). I don't remember if this also happens with original hardware (maybe it was) but I have seen this problems with some emulators.

[FPGAzumSpass]

You can check if the problem is gone if you set "Pause when CD slow" to "off"
If yes, your storage is too slow.
(better don't actually play with this setting to off, as it can crash your game, just test with it)

If not, you need to describe futher what the issue is and maybe create a video, as i don't experience that in FF8. Didn't try 7 or 9 much.

[PhDTenma]

Thanks @FPGAzumSpass! I have checked and it seems that with the setting off I don't get that stutter. I'm using a 2Tb external HDD but it's usb 3.0 it should be fast enough, right? Faster than a CD in the PSX... It's formatted to exfat, not sure if there's a better format.

Any suggestion? Thanks!

[jca]

The DE-10 Nano is USB 2.0 so your HDD won't be faster than that. It should be faster than the PS1 CD.

[PhDTenma]

The DE-10 Nano is USB 2.0 so your HDD won't be faster than that. It should be faster than the PS1 CD.

That was my intuition that the CD reader of a PSX is slower. Any suggestion? I know that some HDD stops after some time without using and I used your solution for keeping it always on.

[FPGAzumSpass]

The issue is not transfer speed, but latency.
USB has latency and the HDD has latency and the transfer to the core also has latency, but every sector in double speed only has _6ms of time.

If you have this issue, make sure to use bin/cue and not chd, otherwise you also get the decompression in the path.

I can't really do anything about it otherwise. The game expects 150 sectors per second at exact points in time. Every time the data isn't ready, the core will pause for at least 1 frame, also pausing the audio, leading to stutter.
Turning that off, will make the CD drive present the data late, which can lead to all kind of random problems.

The FF games are usually very stable in terms of CD handling and probably can do that(not 100% sure!), but i know some other games that would just crash.

edit:
also leave you a comment from discord channel here. I have not validated it, but maybe it helps:

"Adding this as a followup to my message about a week back in case somebody runs into the same issue. I did end up picking up an external SSD (because my games are too big to fit on an SD card reliably/price-wise). The SSD fixed most stuttering, but I still had very rare stuttering in some games (Mainly Star Ocean Second Story) with the drive formatted as exFAT (default it came with), both bin/cue and chd. Tried formatting again to exFAT, same issue.

Not really sure why, but formatting it to NTFS actually made all the problems go away. Games run great now."

[Chris23235]

The issue is not transfer speed, but latency.
USB has latency and the HDD has latency and the transfer to the core also has latency, but every sector in double speed only has _6ms of time.

If you have this issue, make sure to use bin/cue and not chd, otherwise you also get the decompression in the path.

I can't really do anything about it otherwise. The game expects 150 sectors per second at exact points in time. Every time the data isn't ready, the core will pause for at least 1 frame, also pausing the audio, leading to stutter.
Turning that off, will make the CD drive present the data late, which can lead to all kind of random problems.

The FF games are usually very stable in terms of CD handling and probably can do that(not 100% sure!), but i know some other games that would just crash.

edit:
also leave you a comment from discord channel here. I have not validated it, but maybe it helps:

"Adding this as a followup to my message about a week back in case somebody runs into the same issue. I did end up picking up an external SSD (because my games are too big to fit on an SD card reliably/price-wise). The SSD fixed most stuttering, but I still had very rare stuttering in some games (Mainly Star Ocean Second Story) with the drive formatted as exFAT (default it came with), both bin/cue and chd. Tried formatting again to exFAT, same issue.

Not really sure why, but formatting it to NTFS actually made all the problems go away. Games run great now."

Just a question: If a certain game should stutter while loading from SSD, would runnig it from the SD help with the problem, introduces the SD port latency also?
I guess fitting whole libraries of CD games on the SD card wouldn't be an option for most people, but if it only affects certain games, maybe this could help.

[PhDTenma]

Thank you for the clarification, @FPGAzumSpass. Didn't think about the usb port lag! That makes a lot of sense. Just wondering if the usb purge script could help with this issue?

I'll do some testing using cue bin (I have my whole CD library in CHD ), also using NTFS and the secondary SD port too. Unfortunately soon I'll be out from my place and I won't have access to the MISTer but whenever I end my testing I'll post my conclusions so it might help other users.

@Chris23235 indeed not all games have this issue. Klonoa or Grand Turismo don't suffer for any stutter that I could perceive. Seems that the Squaresoft titles, since they were quite hard in CD use, are the worst for this. Also, I can confirm that FFVII has the worst case of stutter from all the FF games (and with the official PSX core, the stutter is even worse).

Anyways, I'll do my testing and probably in some weeks I'll post my conclusions .

Thank you again!