MiSTer FPGA Forum

To anyone who may be able to help,

SS5 (featured heavily on Robin's YouTube videos as 8BitShowAndTell) is busted on MiSTer, and I've thus far been unsuccessful in drumming up interest in fixing it.

See this bug report on Github:

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/C64_MiSTer/issues/156

I'm hoping the issue (and fix) is a simple one, but at this point I'd just like to be able to convince someone to at least look at it. SS5 is so iconic it'd be a shame if it were never to be fixed, and it sure would be nice to follow along with Robin on MiSTer.

Any takers? =)

Can you freeze and return indefinitely on real hardware with a real cartridge? I didn't have a SS back then, but I know my ISEPIC did not always freeze properly every time and you had to catch it just right.

It may also be because of the restore key trigger... that is odd.

I honestly don't know what behavior is on real hardware as I never possessed a SS5, but I know this doesn't happen on VICE (not that that necessarily means anything).

I've reached out directly to Robin Hebron asking him to help test this on actual hardware - no better candidate I can think of!

I use the SS5 cart and Snappy rom (since the latest update) all the time on MiSTer

Let me get it set up and I'll help you to solve the problem

ah. I've just read your bug report and I only ever run the PAL version.
I will get set up though and see if I have the same results with NTSC

ok, I can reproduce the issue however I have been doing F11 - 7 over and over in order to make it happen.
It happens far worse with the DolphinDOS rom running but I only tend to use stock C64 anyway.

I'll set up my C64 later and test it with my KFF cart to see what happens.

Honestly, I expect even a real machine to bug out if I do it over and over.

I use the SS5 cart pretty much exclusively these days (Thanks to Robins videos) and it has been rock solid for me so far. I use PAL mode and standard kernel too.
I was a die hard AR5 user previously and while I still love the cart, the SS5 cart suits me better these days because the machine code monitor seems more stable.

I recently converted the manual into Markdown format to make it easier for me to navigate. You can find it on the link in my signature if you're interested.

Robin tried on actual hardware (V5.20 A and SnappyROM) and could not reproduce after more than 30 cycles. Snappy crashes the MiSTer core in the same way, so it seems to be a real core issue.

Saves me a job then

You've also reminded me that I have to raise an issue too.

If you press the 0 then 9 keys quickly, it misses the 9. Also happens with a coupe of other keys that I can't remember right now.
Works fine the other way round and that also doesn't happen on real hardware.

Was not able to reproduce this with a real NTSC C64 and Super Snapshot 5. Not sure how to check the cartridge version, but mine does nothing if RESTORE is hit at the READY prompt, apart from a single-line glitch that appears for one video frame. So I was hitting the cartridge button then the 7 key in sequence over and over about thirty times and it's still running solid. The C64 has mainboard assy no. 250425, CPU is an 8500R3, VIC-II is a 6567R8, SID is marked 6581.