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ATAPI/IDE ODE Testing

nio said:
i cant open the facebook group
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there's no information there that isn't already here. In-fact there's more information on the device in this thread than anywhere else on the internet...

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Update ON this

I had a chance to try out the latest version of the firmware last night and I was able to boot and play Soul Calibur 3 for a good half hour :)
There are still some kinks to work out like it reset on me at one point in the character selection screen and some areas run a little slow, but it's very promising :)
 
Just received the 246 from Japan, had no idea if it even worked, so just slapped the 2x6 USB Dongle with Tekken4 in there, and loaded up my PCB with the right ISO.

IMG_0524 copy.jpg


I was told this was the most picky game, and there does seem to be one issue - occasionally, during the intro movie, it'll just go to a white screen. I assume it's the PCB not delivering data fast enough so the game's video player just decides to crap out. If you actually start the game it works fine, though.
 
electric_monk said:
I was told this was the most picky game, and there does seem to be one issue - occasionally, during the intro movie, it'll just go to a white screen. I assume it's the PCB not delivering data fast enough so the game's video player just decides to crap out. If you actually start the game it works fine, though.
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That's excellent news!

that seems similar to my experience with Soul Calibur 3 where it works but there are occasional spots where the response is too slow which causes issues.
 
It is surprising that it's too slow - considering a DVD drive with seek and acquisition time is just about the slowest thing out there... :) Is it slowness on the card side introduced from reading off the SD card?

And I will just mention again that I am *VERY* excited about this!!!! I am on the google page you had up a while ago @electric_monk to order - just waiting to hear!
 
Nice work @electric_monk :D

IIRC the reason why it is failing on the intro is that special ATA commands are sent to the drive.
This is the reason why Tekken IV is so picky when it comes to supported drives.
 
rtw said:
IIRC the reason why it is failing on the intro is that special ATA commands are sent to the drive.
This is the reason why Tekken IV is so picky when it comes to supported drives.
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in SC3 it usually fails to load the character models in the character selection screen. and if you let it sit on that screen for too long without changing characters it will eventually lock up (I don't think it ever successfully loads the characters).
The loading screen before the match takes a very long time to load, and it finishes 9 times out of 10 but 1 out of 10 times it will sit on that screen indefinitely.
 
rtw said:
IIRC the reason why it is failing on the intro is that special ATA commands are sent to the drive.
This is the reason why Tekken IV is so picky when it comes to supported drives.
Click to expand...
From some quick debugging it looks like there's no unimplemented commands/etc., but the game definitely thinks something is wrong. When the screen turns white, it also resets the IDE interface and gives up doing anything.

If I artificially slowed down the software, the game just doesn't play the movie at all, and if I slow it down during the movie, it just aborts playing the movie, so it does seem like there's a legit bug where the board's doing something the game doesn't like (and it's not just speed).
 
maybe the response to one of the commands is different than what it expects?

these games can be played from a CD-R/DVD-R with the multi-dongle, so maybe record the data stream with a regular drive and compare to your device? would make for a good speed/timing comparison too.
 
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Tekken 4 is DVD but a DVD-R will do the trick.

Exactly what @twistedsymphony said, if you have some way of recording the command and response from a working drive and compare it to your ODE that would be brilliant.
 
Don't worry - I have a special firmware for the board that turns it into a datalogger so I can see what the drive sent and received from another device on the bus - in this case, I have two of my PCB plugged in via a normal IDE master/slave cable, and I can see that my PCB has reacted weirdly to the 246 transmitting an ordinary ATAPI request ;)
 
Are those already available? I really need an ode!
 
On a somewhat related note, I do think there might be something slightly wrong with this 246 - the image slowly turns white, so after ~5 attract cycles it's just totally white. This makes it hard to see 'the screen going white', which sometimes takes more than 5 attract cycles to occur ;)

I googled a bit and found a reference to an RGB amplifier IC that might have some bad caps (and I mean, it does seem to be working, just drifting away from the correct gain), so can anyone direct me as to what I need to repair?
 
definitely sounds like a failing component drifting further out of operating range as it warms up.

start with the electrolitic caps as they're usually the culprit in these scenarios
 
Of course, I’m just wondering if anyone has any pointers on the approximate area such capacitors might be, or if I just need to start repairing the board from scratch
 
Are you using a video converter between the 246 and the TV? This is a common problem with the gonbas converters.
 
I am using a cheapy converter, maybe that’s all it is ;) after I moved house it was already malfunctioning pretty badly but still “generally okay”

I guess it’s time to try out the framemeister I bought!
 
You can adjust the clamp settings on the converter in the menu to fix the problem. I had to do it to work with my Sega System 24 pcb, 246, and Chihiro and Triforce.
 
Aha! Thanks for the help, messing with the values randomly didn't help, but finding the instructions and setting it to the "recommended" values of 03/04 seems to have fixed it. They were at 90/95 when I went into that menu (which was also in Chinese, since I hadn't messed with the settings before). I also set it to 1024x768 and it looks a thousand times better! Now I can definitely reproduce the issue ad nauseam ;)

It was pretty hard since one of the things that got damaged in the move was the 'menu' button, so I was just jabbing some tweezers in there.
 
So with the "how to fix the video" thing, I was able to confirm that Tekken 4 ran for 24 hours with my fix for the white screen bug, and I'm currently trying Soul Calibur 3, which has been running for 4 hours without any sign of a glitch so far! Hopefully that has addressed the issue.
 
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