DS-Xtreme support?

amoult · Post by **amoult** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 11:23 am

You were right.. works like a charm after I copied orinal speech file from CD.

So 0.61 version seems to be best for DS-X at the moment.

...And thank you for the great work

I really hope that DS-x people send you free sample as Scummvm is easily the best homebrew for DS.

Der_tolle_Emil · Post by **Der_tolle_Emil** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 10:36 pm

I tried the beta6 a lot the last 2 days and have run into quite some problems. There is a lot of corruption going on when files are written. This does not only affect game saves but also scummvm's internal files, ie. scummvm.ini. Linebreaks seem to randomly switch between 0x0D 0x0A or only one of the two (might not be a bug but an inconsistency with the coding) but I guess it is a bug because some characters are wrong too. Well, bug might not be the right term because this could be due to the nature of the DS-X. Here is a small excerpt of my scummvm.ini

[ds]
twohundredpepcent=false
disablepoweroff=false
xoffset=0
22khzaudio=false
unscaled=false
twohundredpercent=false
lefthanded=true
yoffset=0

[samnmax]
description=Sam & Max Hit the Road (English/CD)
music_volume=108
speech_volume=056
path=mp:/APPS/SCUMMTM/GAMES/SAMNMAX
subtitles=true
gameid=samnmax
language=en
talkspeed=85
sfx_volume=192
speech_mute=false

I highlighted the errorneous lines. I reads twohundredpepcent instead of twohundredpercent, the speech_volume should be 256 and the path of course /APPS/SCUMMVM instead of /APPS/SCUMMTM.

It seems like the second bit of some bytes is wrong (ie. r = 1110010 and p = 1110000). I have some corrupt gamesaves as well and I think I am experiencing the same problems with them. I don't think that the DS-X is defective because copying whatever various times back and forth always succeeds and gives no data corruption.

Since my Monkey Island 1 saves are gone forever (what a great game - a shame I never played it until now) and I don't really want to replay the last few hours again I will try 0.61 with Fate of Atlantis. (I tried it a few minutes with 0.9 beta 6 just to see if the speech works - which it does - and had corrupt savegames as well.)

I know that the DS-X is not officially supported but I thought I reported my problems anyway since I did not find any similar posts using the forum's search function - maybe this information helps a bit.

I'm off to test 0.61 now.

agentq · Post by **agentq** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 11:32 pm

Since ScummVM DS doesn't contain a DS-Xtreme driver it's a mystery to me how it works at all, but clearly whatever they're doing it doesn't quite work.

Perhaps they could make a firmware update to the DSX to fix it?

MetroidPrime · Post by **MetroidPrime** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 12:03 am

Der_tolle_Emil, can you try the new version 0.9.1?

agentq · Post by **agentq** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 12:05 am

0.9.1 is identical to beta6. The only thing I changed is the version number, so there's no point in checking that too.

amoult · Post by **amoult** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 7:48 am

Filed a bug to Ds-x error database and pointed them to this thread.

Der_tolle_Emil · Post by **Der_tolle_Emil** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 10:39 am

When booting up it simply sais "Found Flash Card Reader". I did not force any detection. Then again, I never tried it on any other device because I only own a DS-X and nothing else.

I played Fate of Atlantis (English CD, Speech) about 3 to 4 hours and used all 9 save slots. I tried to load them now, every single save works. I did encouter one crash though yesterday, quite at the beginning. There is this one sequence where Sophia shows you her necklace. During the sequence the game tries to load the script generated ATLANTIS.C99 and it failed the first time. I restarted and had no problems after that. Too bad I forgot to copy the .c99 save after the crash, it would have been interesting to see what the file looked like. I don't know exactly when the game creates this c99 file but judging by the timestamp and content this file must have been created more than just once (it also reads the name of my 6th save slot; I saved about every 30 minutes). I am going to continue play in a while and will let you know what happens.

Btw, I checked the scummvm.ini and there were no errors (and all the linebreaks were the same).

jelbo · Post by **jelbo** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 10:35 pm

Any news from DS-X about a possible FAT Lib release or a sample unit for you, agentq?

MetroidPrime · Post by **MetroidPrime** » Tue Oct 31, 2006 8:14 am

Der_tolle_Emil, are you talking about the latest version 0.9.1?

Der_tolle_Emil · Post by **Der_tolle_Emil** » Tue Oct 31, 2006 11:54 am

I am talking about 0.61 (which runs fine, all my saves survived the night so to speak). 0.9 Beta6 (which is identical to 0.9.1 according to the release notes) corrupts about every file it writes. I guess I will be able to finish Fate of Atlantis today, after that, I will try all the 0.9 Betas through. Maybe Beta1 still works too, should make it easier to pinpoint what code changes are responsible for the file corruptions. Although in the end the best solution will be a real driver for the DS-X.

MetroidPrime · Post by **MetroidPrime** » Wed Nov 01, 2006 9:45 am

This is what Chishm said about homebrew on DS-X:

As far as I can tell, it patches one of the card access sets of functions. It seems to work for gba_nds_fat (the old version), but I'm not sure about libfat, which uses a slightly different set of card access functions.

If they release drivers, I'll be happy to include them in libfat provided they are correct (ie, they work both on the intended card and don't interfere with other cards).

Maybe it helps to understand why 0.61 works and why the latest doesn't.

Der_tolle_Emil · Post by **Der_tolle_Emil** » Wed Nov 01, 2006 12:31 pm

Well, I finished Fate of Atlantis and tested older betas. I could not find Beta 1 and 2 of 0.9.1 but I tried Beta 3 up to 6.

Beta 3 finds a flash card reader, adding games works, but running games is impossible. Monkey Island 1 is the only game that doesn't crash before something is displayed. The LucasArts Logo is there, the music starts playing and as soon as I skip the intro the game crashes or freezes.

Here are some error messages, although I doubt they are of any use:

Sam'n'Max: (0:1:0x431) findObjectInRoom: Not enough code blocks in room 93
Monkey Island 1: (10:152:0x8A8): Value 68900 is out of bounds (0,799) (Variable 68900 out of range(w)) [or the game freezes]
Monkey Island 2: (0:1:0xF8): Invalid actor 26 in o5_putActor

Beta 4 is exactly the same as beta 3. Same error messages, but adding games/removing games works ok.

Beta 5 (shows up as Beta 4 when started, but definetly is beta 5 because I can switch M3 detection on and off) doesn't work at all. It does not find a flash card reader no matter if I switch M3 Detection on or off. Therefor I don't even get to the game selection screen.

Beta 6 works, I can play games, but as I posted earlier the written files get corrupted. Besides that it works quite well.

I hope this helps or at least is of some interest. I have nightshift on friday and will definetly take my DS with me and play a lot with v0.61. I really want to play Monkey Island again, I doubt I will encouter fatal errors as Fate of Atlantis worked flawlessly.

agentq · Post by **agentq** » Wed Nov 01, 2006 2:34 pm

Can you try turning on the SC SD detection to see if that helps it? It sounds quite a lot like the patch modifies the SC SD driver on the DSX.

Der_tolle_Emil · Post by **Der_tolle_Emil** » Wed Nov 01, 2006 4:23 pm

I tried 0.9.1 Beta 6 with SC SD detection and it sais SCSD!Found flash card reader.

I played Monkey Island and Sam'n'Max a little and used about 6 saves both with and without SCSD. Monkey Island worked in both modes (I could load all of my 6 saves) but my Sam'n'Max Saves resulted memory allocation errors when loading them.

It does not make any difference which game I use I suppose? Or is there actually a difference in writing/reading depending on the emulated game?

By the way, I donated some money. I hope everything worked fine, I never used PayPal before.

MetroidPrime · Post by **MetroidPrime** » Sat Nov 04, 2006 7:47 pm

A new DS-X firmware was just released with "Improved compatibility with a few homebrew using libfat". Maybe you could try the latest ScummVM DS with this new firmware and tell us the results?