MiSTer FPGA Forum

Hoping someone else has seen this. I'm running into an issue where regardless of the game, the Audio and Video stutters twice (in sync) every 3-4 seconds while a game is playing. This is the first time I've tried the PSX core. I just ran the Update All script so I should be on the newest version. I tried loading games from both the internal SD card as well as a USB HD (Spinning Disk) with the same results for both.

Anyone have any ideas?

Stuttering means the game pauses, because the linux part(mister main) is not fast enough to provide CD data.

Possible reasons:

• something is running on your mister main in background. Some script, controller constantly connecting new, network transfer, ...
• your storage is too slow. This can happen with USB HDD, but typically not that often and i never heard of it with sdcards. Also it's unlikely USB HDD and sdcard creates the same level of slowness, it's probably something else

I would try the following: load a game from sdcard to some static state(e.g. ingame) where you see it happen. Then remove all connected USB devices and network, bluetooth.

FPGAzumSpass wrote: ↑Thu Jul 13, 2023 3:32 am

Stuttering means the game pauses, because the linux part(mister main) is not fast enough to provide CD data.

Makes total sense! Initially I was thinking this was a data read issue with CD audio since that would be read on the fly (original Playstation hardware) but since there was a video issue as well I incorrectly assumed that this wouldn't be an issue after loading.

Correct me if I'm wrong, But if the Linux subsystem is experiencing a performance issue then that would be apparent in any type of interface presentation since (I'm assuming) most of these functions are not directly interfacing with the FPGA but Linux acts almost like an abstraction layer (probably not correct term) for any peripheral interfaces.

TLDR - With WIFI disabled, I did not notice any video/audio stuttering. I only had a moment to test this morning but will verify again tomorrow. Thank you!!

Great that you found the reason.

When the linux is busy, you usually don't notice it at all as most cores run in FPGA only.
It's usually only the consoles with CD or computer cores with HDD access.