MiSTer FPGA Forum

Hello guys. I have a very peculiar problem. When I go to consoles and select the Ps1 core, the games load perfectly fine. But when I navigate to games first and select the game there, it starts the white bios sequence and then freezes.

Things I have done and tried:

• Turn on fastboot. Didn't work, still freezes. Also the fact that it runs via 'Console' tells me it's not a BIOS problem
• Tried different games
• Soft and hard rebooted and even pulled the plug for a few minutes
• Deleted the _games folder and made a new games menu via the script
• Deleted the _console folder and ran update_all multiple times and redownloaded the core
• Reset the settings of the PSX core to defaults
• Looked at the MGL file for some games and it seemed to point in the right direction, from what I could see at least

Is there a specific title?

I just loaded 007 - Tomorrow Never Dies from the Games menu and it loaded fine.

I am using CHD files

ETA-
Just tried Alien Resurrection and it worked too, noticed neither of them shows the Sony Computer Entertainment on load. That only shows for me if I load the core with no rom (also edited to add "or turn fast boot off" duh...)

Reset your core settings to default, then save settings, and try again.

dickhardpill wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2024 3:52 pm

Is there a specific title?

I just loaded 007 - Tomorrow Never Dies from the Games menu and it loaded fine.

I am using CHD files

ETA-
Just tried Alien Resurrection and it worked too, noticed neither of them shows the Sony Computer Entertainment on load. That only shows for me if I load the core with no rom.

There is no specific title. It happens with ALL of them. It does not happen if I load the core via console and then just open them via the menu but for whatever reason it does happen when I try to open the game via 'games'.

aberu wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2024 4:49 pm

Reset your core settings to default, then save settings, and try again.

I forgot to mention this. I did this and it had no effect. If I can't help it I may have to reflash the Mister OS.

What format are your game files?

dickhardpill wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2024 7:25 pm

What format are your game files?

CHD.

could you post the contents of one of the .mgl files from the _Games folder?

dickhardpill wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2024 8:15 pm

could you post the contents of one of the .mgl files from the _Games folder?

<mistergamedescription>
<rbf>_Console/PSX</rbf>
<file delay="1" type="s" index="1" path="/media/fat/games/PSX/USA/Final Fantasy VII/Final Fantasy VII (USA) (Disc 1).chd"/>
</mistergamedescription>

I don't see anything weird there

Would turning on Error Overlay provide any useful information?

dickhardpill wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2024 10:07 pm

I don't see anything weird there

Would turning on Error Overlay provide any useful information?

Yeah I don't either. I tried turning Error Overlay on but it didn't help. Nothing comes on screen. I also can't open the menu before it freezes, it's like it's destined to freeze haha.
At this point im all out of options it seems. I'll wait for tomorrow morning. If I can't find anything that fixes it by then i'll just reflash everything.

I guess I'll just reinstall the whole thing. I want to play my games and it would be quicker to just reinstall Mr. Fusion and copying the games over to my SD card.

What happens if you go to select a rom from the OSD after you launch the MGL? Does it take you to the folder with the right CHD file?

ItalianGrandma wrote: ↑Tue Sep 17, 2024 2:07 am

What happens if you go to select a rom from the OSD after you launch the MGL? Does it take you to the folder with the right CHD file?

I reflashed the firmware so at this point I wouldn't know anymore. So this topic can essentially be closed down. Everything works now as it should.

Phoenix91 wrote: ↑Tue Sep 17, 2024 10:24 am

ItalianGrandma wrote: ↑Tue Sep 17, 2024 2:07 am

What happens if you go to select a rom from the OSD after you launch the MGL? Does it take you to the folder with the right CHD file?

I reflashed the firmware so at this point I wouldn't know anymore. So this topic can essentially be closed down. Everything works now as it should.

UPDATE: I guess I spoke too soon, the same problem is happening again.

The only things that I can add that I think may be the root cause of this problem is that a friend and I have set CIFS on this system so I can load .CHD files from my NAS. The folder in the PSX folder that I created for this is "_NAS Roms". But I also have roms internally on the SD card, so it's not like I don't have anything locally.
So this system that I use is not connected to the internet at the moment (I think the CIFS is blocking the WiFi dongle for some reason as the WiFi wizard keeps telling me on the bottom left corner that it's waiting for 192.168.1.xx which is my local NAS' IP adress).

So I updated the gamesmenu serveral times and like I said before, when running the roms through menu it freezes and when loading them through console they just work even though I'm selecting the same games from the same folder.

Do you guys think that CIFS is somehow interfering with the locations or whatnot? Or that the .mgl files are somehow effected by this?

I don't think so as I posted what was in a .mgl file here and the path seemed absolutely correct, nothing that shows "_NAS Roms" or whatever.

I also use a TapTo NFC reader and when I boot the roms with that the same thing happens, it freezes, and when I look at the path that the NFC reader uses, it's the same LOCAL path and not the NAS folder.

Reflashing the SD card seems to have no effect so I have to solve this somehow.

Ever since we set up CIFS, when I plug my WiFi dongle in it searches for my NAS.

UPDATE: This is 100% a CIFS issue and not a PS1 one because I just noticed that the same problem persists with SEGA Saturn as well and I had used a _NAS Roms folder with that core as well.
Now I deleted all my _NAS Roms folders and even deleted them from _games and I ran the CIFS_unmount.sh script but unfortunately this didn't help the issue. I now need to figure out a way to remove all these 'files' that seem to persist on my microSD card that still refers to all this external NAS mounting files.

If anybody knows where these files live that I can delete, please let me know.

Phoenix91 wrote: ↑Thu Sep 19, 2024 1:37 pm

Reflashing the SD card seems to have no effect so I have to solve this somehow.

This simply cant happen. If you reflashed the card with Mr Fusion, then it would destroy everything on the card including any refereneces to the Network Share.

You must have not used Mr Fusion

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/mr-fusion

FPGA64 wrote: ↑Thu Sep 19, 2024 1:53 pm

Phoenix91 wrote: ↑Thu Sep 19, 2024 1:37 pm

Reflashing the SD card seems to have no effect so I have to solve this somehow.

This simply cant happen. If you reflashed the card with Mr Fusion, then it would destroy everything on the card including any refereneces to the Network Share.

You must have not used Mr Fusion

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/mr-fusion

I think I'm wording it wrong. What I meant to say was that even after using Mr. Fusion this problem 'came back'. So it wasn't just a bug in my previous attempt, it came back so reinstalling it for a 3rd time with Mr. Fusion and doing everything the same way won't solve anything, so it that sense it had no effect through no fault of Mr. Fusion. It's just that I am doomed to make the same mistakes apparently by following the same steps.

But I think I now solved it by removing the CIFS scripts, the CIFS ini file, the samba.sh script (which will probably just come back after I run update_all again so no worries there) and putting a "_" before the samba file in the linux folder.

Don't know which one of these appears to have fixed the issue but I'm just glad that it did (for now).

UPDATE: Believe it or not, my CRT was the culprit. Who would have thought? I have NO idea why it's happening, it doesn't happen all the time and when booting through console it still works. At this point, since the CRT was up for sale anyway I've given up trying to figure it out. I'm now using it without any issues on my LG G3 OLED.

Thanks for the help guys.

So I am experiencing the same issue, and not just with the PS1 core. It happens regularly with the SNES core and others as well. Because of this, I have to launch games from the console menu. I am not using NAS and I have a fresh install using Mr Fusion. This issue started cropping up a couple of months ago, after an update_all. It did not happen prior. I refreshed my install in an attempt to address the problem.

You mention that you think your CRT is the culprit, can you please elaborate on that? I am using a CRT as well, I don't see how a CRT can be causing the MiSTer to freeze up when using the game menu to launch games.

I’m using a CRT and I don’t experience these issues

Hello,

Same issue here: launch of some PSX .MGL files systematically fails.
The white PSX boot screen is displayed few seconds with sound then... it freezes. The Mister is unresponsive, Menu is not accessible. Linux part still runs ok.

My observations:

On cold boot, all PSX games launched by .MGL crash if:
• direct_video is enable in Mister.ini (direct_video = 1)
• A savestate for the game exists

Once a PSX game is launched successfully (using game without SS or launched from Core), all .MGL work, the issue is "solved" until next cold reboot of the Mister.

Can someone could confirm this behavior and/or identify who might help to fix this ?

Thanks for reading.
Sil

This is why I stay away from MGL files for the games and just load them from inside the cores as this always works.