Gradius II Japan Not Booting? [Solved]

[colonel panic]

Is Gradius II not working for anybody else? I tried to play it today and it just boots to a blank screen. The core's all up to date and I'm using the rom from the Everdrive pack on the internet archive. Never had a problem with any other rom from those packs. I think I remember this game working in the past but it's been a while since I've tried it. I usually play the PC Engine version

[AngelicLiver]

Works absolutely fine here. Make sure your ROMs have the proper iNES or NES2.0 headers.

[colonel panic]

Hm. Just tried again today and that same rom booted to the title screen, then completely glitched out. So I tried a few other Gradius II roms from different romsets (No-Intro headered, GoodNES etc) and they all glitched out immediately on boot, with both garbled graphics and strange "fax machine" sounds. I opened one up in a hex editor and it appears to have the correct header (the first four bytes are 4e 45 53 1a), but it glitched out anyway. All my other NES roms still work without issue. Anyone know what the problem could be?

Edit: If anyone else tries this and theirs works, if it's not too much trouble could you post a checksum of some kind for the ROM you used? This way I know if it's the ROM or something else in my setup

[colonel panic]

I thought it may be some kind of mapper issue, so I tried the other games on this list of VRC2 and VRC4 games and they all crashed or wouldn't boot at all for me. They're supposed to be supported though, right? Other games with special mappers like Japanese Castlevania III and Lagrange Point still work fine as far as I can tell, it's just those two chips that make things crash. Is this happening for anyone else at all? What gives? Lol

[FPGA64]

I thought it may be some kind of mapper issue, so I tried the other games on this list of VRC2 and VRC4 games and they all crashed or wouldn't boot at all for me. They're supposed to be supported though, right? Other games with special mappers like Japanese Castlevania III and Lagrange Point still work fine as far as I can tell, it's just those two chips that make things crash. Is this happening for anyone else at all? What gives? Lol

The Nes core requires the INes II headers.

if you want an update script to do this. One of the Mister Core Developers has written this

https://github.com/Kitrinx/NES_Header_Repair

If you dont have the version 2 headers the core will not function. Its not a mapper issue its just the Mister requires proper headers. Try that tool I linked on your roms and then try again.

[colonel panic]

Thanks. I just tried it with Gradius II. I redownloaded the ROM from the "htgdb-gamepacks" Everdrive/MiSTer pack on archive.org, just to be safe, and used that with the patcher. Although it did change the header, the behavior with the patched ROM is still the same. Sometimes I can get past the title screen, but it crashes before I can get in-game. Other times it just boots to a blank screen. I set the script to verbose and copied down the output when I patched it:

Code: Select all

Updating header for SHA1:6A493CC7A3745F44E2EC4BA0FA71BFA89FF5CF37 File: Gradius II (Japan).nes
4e 45 53 1a 08 10 90 10 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 (old)
4e 45 53 1a 08 10 90 18 10 00 05 00 00 00 00 01 (new)



Processing complete.

...but still no dice.

Anything else I could be doing wrong?

[djsquare]

I can also confirm Gradius II works fine, although I suck and can't get very far into the first level. I didn't even know a sequel came out on famicom.

I don't know what to tell ya but it works over here just fine

[Chris23235]

Thanks. I just tried it with Gradius II. I redownloaded the ROM from the "htgdb-gamepacks" Everdrive/MiSTer pack on archive.org, just to be safe, and used that with the patcher. Although it did change the header, the behavior with the patched ROM is still the same. Sometimes I can get past the title screen, but it crashes before I can get in-game. Other times it just boots to a blank screen. I set the script to verbose and copied down the output when I patched it:

Code: Select all

Updating header for SHA1:6A493CC7A3745F44E2EC4BA0FA71BFA89FF5CF37 File: Gradius II (Japan).nes
4e 45 53 1a 08 10 90 10 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 (old)
4e 45 53 1a 08 10 90 18 10 00 05 00 00 00 00 01 (new)



Processing complete.

...but still no dice.

Anything else I could be doing wrong?

Are there other cores that make problems? To me this sounds like a SDRAM issue.

[FPGA64]

Thanks. I just tried it with Gradius II. I redownloaded the ROM from the "htgdb-gamepacks" Everdrive/MiSTer pack on archive.org, just to be safe, and used that with the patcher. Although it did change the header, the behavior with the patched ROM is still the same. Sometimes I can get past the title screen, but it crashes before I can get in-game. Other times it just boots to a blank screen. I set the script to verbose and copied down the output when I patched it:

Code: Select all

Updating header for SHA1:6A493CC7A3745F44E2EC4BA0FA71BFA89FF5CF37 File: Gradius II (Japan).nes
4e 45 53 1a 08 10 90 10 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 (old)
4e 45 53 1a 08 10 90 18 10 00 05 00 00 00 00 01 (new)



Processing complete.

...but still no dice.

Anything else I could be doing wrong?

Are there other cores that make problems? To me this sounds like a SDRAM issue.

It could be PCE is optional on memory. Nes requires it and the Original Poster hasnt stated they have a memory expansion

[colonel panic]

So I was able to borrow my brother's MiSTer to run some tests, and believe it or not, as far as I can tell, it's my DE10-Nano itself! I swapped RAM, Add-on boards, SD cards etc and kept eliminating variables until I was down to just 2 bare DE10-Nanos. No matter which RAM module I put in, my brother's board ran the game, and mine wouldn't.

We've both had our setups for 3 years now, and neither of us have ever had an issue like this before. The strangest thing is that every other core/game works just as well as it does for everyone else, as far as I can tell, except for this handful of VRC2 and VRC4 games on the NES core with my board. It feels absurd, and I have no idea how to go about fixing it, if that's even something that's possible at this point. I guess I just have to live with it? Lol

Edit: anyone have any idea if there's something I've missed? Maybe the dip switches or something? I haven't touched them since it was mailed to me directly from Terasic. Or maybe it's a problem with the RAM built into the board? I'm just concerned this may be a symptom of a larger issue, even if I haven't had any other problems as of yet

[FPGA64]

So I was able to borrow my brother's MiSTer to run some tests, and believe it or not, as far as I can tell, it's my DE10-Nano itself! I swapped RAM, Add-on boards, SD cards etc and kept eliminating variables until I was down to just 2 bare DE10-Nanos. No matter which RAM module I put in, my brother's board ran the game, and mine wouldn't.

We've both had our setups for 3 years now, and neither of us have ever had an issue like this before. The strangest thing is that every other core/game works just as well as it does for everyone else, as far as I can tell, except for this handful of VRC2 and VRC4 games on the NES core with my board. It feels absurd, and I have no idea how to go about fixing it, if that's even something that's possible at this point. I guess I just have to live with it? Lol

Edit: anyone have any idea if there's something I've missed? Maybe the dip switches or something? I haven't touched them since it was mailed to me directly from Terasic. Or maybe it's a problem with the RAM built into the board? I'm just concerned this may be a symptom of a larger issue, even if I haven't had any other problems as of yet

Dipswitch settings

https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_M ... eshooting/

also you should run MemTest core and report the results

[colonel panic]

I checked the dip switches and they all look correct (I usually have an analog I/O board installed so those other 4 switches are correct as well):

0316231431_HDR.jpg (5.27 MiB) Viewed 11279 times

The MemTest only checks the SDRAM add-on, and I've pretty much ruled that out as the culprit, since my RAM board ran Gradius II without incident when it was inserted into my brother's DE10-Nano. But I ran the test for an hour anyway, with my RAM inserted into my DE10-Nano, just for the sake of curiosity:

NODATE-screen_0001.png (29.88 KiB) Viewed 11279 times

...and everything seems legit.

My current guess is that it may be some issue with the RAM built into the DE10-Nano itself. Unfortunately, as far as I'm aware, there's no way to test that. Maybe some app from Terasic? Like I said before, just being unable to play those 8 or so Famicom games isn't really that big of a deal for me, since everything else seems to be running smoothly (I just beat Resident Evil 2 on the PSX core a few weeks ago, and I played some big Neo Geo games the other day just to stress-test it, and everything ran fine). My only concern is if this is the first symptom of some bigger issue that may become more of a problem down the road

[colonel panic]

Now that I'm thinking about it, there was one other strange thing I noticed. After the RAM test was done (from a cold boot), I jumped straight into the NES core to check things out one more time, and instead of the standard gray screen, it was a snowy mess, with random chunks of the screen from the RAM test occasionally showing up amongst the snow (haphazard cell phone pic shown further down). I launched a random game that I know usually works fine (the US version of Castlevania III) to see if it would clear things up by flushing the RAM, and even though the game booted and the audio was correct, the visuals were still very snowy, like trying to tune into a TV signal with bad reception back in the day. After a hard reset the game booted normally. I had assumed this may have been some side effect of the RAM test, so initially I didn't bother to mention it.

Again, now that I think about it, I've always had minor issues with the default gray screen showing up somewhat garbled on the NES core when switching to it after using a different core, but they always went away once I launched a game. Does that happen for anyone else? With the VRC2/VRC4 games I've been trying now, they all usually at least boot to the title screen when testing them from a cold boot, but they often won't run at all when trying to switch to them after I've already loaded some other game. Maybe it's some quirk in the way the NES core handles memory that only effects a small minority of boards?

0316231546_HDR~2.jpg (2.37 MiB) Viewed 11208 times

The gray screen from the NES core will sometimes glitch out for me after switching to it from another core, but usually not as bad as shown above. Does anything like that ever happen for anybody else?

[Marubo]

Hi, have you ever resolved this issue? I'm having similiar problems with Boku Dracula-kun (Kid Dracula) and Gradius II. The games are working fine at the beginning but after a while they just crash. Both of them crash in the middle of the first stage.

EDIT: I found a solution. I had to install older release of the core. The games crash on the newest release (20230223) but they work perfectly on the older one (20221002).

[mambrino]

Same problem with "Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa", although in this case you have to play for a while to make the game crash (two or three levels).

I have reported it on github, hopefully it can be fixed for the next release:

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/NES_MiSTer/issues/356

[jd213]

FWIW, I played through my own dump of Gradius II the other day on the 20230223 version and didn't experience any crashes.

[colonel panic]

I found a solution. I had to install older release of the core. The games crash on the newest release (20230223) but they work perfectly on the older one (20221002).

Great idea. Everything works fine with that older version for me too. I put that RBF in a separate folder so update_all won't touch it

I have reported it on github, hopefully it can be fixed for the next release:

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/NES_MiSTer/issues/356

That's great. Good to see that there are known conditions to replicate this behavior now on other people's systems so that a proper fix can be found and implemented. I thought I was going crazy for a while or it was some kind of unique fault with my particular board (that's just my luck lol)

Sorry for the late responses. I kinda gave up on this thread after a while since there hadn't been any new posts for a few months. Glad to see that it's basically resolved at this point

Edit: I guess I'll mark this as solved, since there is at least a temporary fix using the old RBF

Much later edit: the latest NES core (23.12.04) completely fixes this issue