Select Arcade Cores Not Working Properly (Black Screen, Visual Artifacts)

[jamjyo]

Hey all! I've been using mister for the past year, and recetly, some problems began appearing

-Dodonpachi (Japan) only shows black screen, while curiously, the main Dodonpachi core works juset fine.
-Super Street Fighter Turbo shows visual artifacts and flickering, while other cps2 cores seem to be working fine (haven't tested all of them).

I can't seem to find other people with similar issues, so I assumed that my ram expansion became faulty. However, it goes through memtest at 140Mhz just fine.

I've tried completely formatting & reinstalling from scratch, but the problem persists.
changing vsyncadjust and rotating the screens doesn't seem to help either.

I'm fine with purchasing another ram expansion, but I'm just not sure what is causing this issue.
Any help would be appreciated.

[SuperKeeks]

Not of much help but…

I also have the same issue with DoDonPachi (Japan)

I haven’t tried SSFT yet (will try later if I get some free time) I’ll look at passing the memtest too.

Would be great to know why this happens.

[jamjyo]

Found another person with the exact same issue on reddit. I directed the person to this thread. Here's hoping!

[Hobbesgoblin]

I ahve the same/similar issues.
DoDonpachi (Japan) and (Arrange) seem not to work.
First scrambled picture than black.
Changing to DDR3 seems to preserve the Picture of the previous core, or something.

SSF2T also has flickering for me, wich stops/is preserved when opening the Core credits (as it is a Jotego core)

Memtest is passing with 144MHz

[lamarax]

Try launching the .mras directly (from under 'Arcade').

I believe there's an issue with symlinks created by the arcade_organizer script.

[Hobbesgoblin]

Try launching the .mras directly (from under 'Arcade').

I believe there's an issue with symlinks created by the arcade_organizer script.

No difference.

[jamjyo]

Try launching the .mras directly (from under 'Arcade').

I believe there's an issue with symlinks created by the arcade_organizer script.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I always run arcade .mras directly. (Core menu > Arcade > Select title).

I tested more, and Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo rune fine "sometimes", while most of the times, it has artifacts
This is the image of the visual artifact:

blHM7Go.jpeg (360.13 KiB) Viewed 10553 times

Dodonpachi (Japan) straight up doesn't work consistently.

[lamarax]

OK, then maybe try these*:

DDP_latest.7z

(937 Bytes) Downloaded 234 times

*those are taken directly from my working setup

[Hobbesgoblin]

OK, then maybe try these*:DDP_latest.7z

*those are taken directly from my working setup

These work for me, with DDR3 and SDRAM

Begs the question what went wrong in the first place though....

edit: i just put bith .mra fiels through meld. (working on the right, nonworking left)

I can't read or understand the contents, but they are different for some reason.

[SuperKeeks]

Tonight I tried SSF2T. First 5 times or so it worked well. Then I switched to other core, and when I tried again, I did get those artifacts as well.

I didn’t have enough time for a proper memtest, but something strange happened. According to the doc, the test didn’t detect the 128 mb module I do have attached (showed a 0 as the left most digit of the middle line)… I’ll give it another go tomorrow, but looks suspicious.

Edit: Not sure if related, but sometimes (once every 5 runs or so) DoDonPachi runs at a very low framerate, like half speed. Any ideas?

[C-R-T]

Dodonpachi is finicky for some reason. For me it worked originally, then it didn’t work for like six months (black screen), then it started working again…

[retro]

Tonight I tried SSF2T. First 5 times or so it worked well. Then I switched to other core, and when I tried again, I did get those artifacts as well.

I had the same problem with SSF2 and SSF2T last week.

I deleted the ROM files, and then used the MAME Downloader part of the Update Alls script to redownload the ZIP files. Been working properly since.

[SuperKeeks]

Today I tried deleting both the DoDonPachi and SSF2T ROMs and cores, then ran update_all, but still no luck.

However, using the .mras lamarax posted fixed the issue with the DoDonPachi Japan core I had (thanks!!). It now starts correctly.

This is so strange... could it be some bug in the updater script?

[Hobbesgoblin]

Tonight I tried SSF2T. First 5 times or so it worked well. Then I switched to other core, and when I tried again, I did get those artifacts as well.

I had the same problem with SSF2 and SSF2T last week.

I deleted the ROM files, and then used the MAME Downloader part of the Update Alls script to redownload the ZIP files. Been working properly since.

This helped for me.

Wich is weird, as this was a fresh build from two weeks ago.

[Hobbesgoblin]

I did a little more experimenting
for one: the flickers in SSF2T are back (wich is weird)

but more importantly: update_all.sh AND update.sh (as in the official MiISTer update script) pull the same, nonworking *.mra file for DoDonpachi (arrange) and DoDonpachi (Japan)

The files the scripts download are different to those of github ( MiSTer-devel/Arcade-Cave_MiSTer)
wich begs the question: where does the script pull the files from?

[jimbodeanny]

Did anyone ever figure this out? I'm having the same glitchy/artifacts with SSF2 and SSF2T. I haven't had problems with any other game, including other CPS2 cores. Tried two different microSD cards, and ran memtest for 90 minutes without any errors. I'm baffled and frustrated.

Hoping someone has the answer. Thanks!

[jimbodeanny]

In case anyone runs into this glitch issue, I ran into it when using lastcore and having the timeout set to the default. Setting it to 30 seconds fixed it. For whatever reason Mister seems to need a little time to "warm up" before loading the Super Turbo core. If you haven't, try waiting a good 30 seconds before loading the ST core.

[AfterBurnett]

Late to the party but I'm having issues with SSF2T (graphical glitches), Turbo Out Run (major graphical glitches) and Super Hang On (bike shoots to the right and won't go back on the road). It seems I am ONLY having issues with Jotego cores - I'm using Update All - is there a better way?

[AfterBurnett]

In case anyone runs into this glitch issue, I ran into it when using lastcore and having the timeout set to the default. Setting it to 30 seconds fixed it. For whatever reason Mister seems to need a little time to "warm up" before loading the Super Turbo core. If you haven't, try waiting a good 30 seconds before loading the ST core.

That worked for me! Jumping from another core into the game, I get the glitches but if I leave it for a while it works. How odd! I'll try with Turbo OutRun etc too.