v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Discussion of development and patch submission.
altheos
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by altheos »

I noticed a strange thing when DOS (MSDOS 6.22) is IDLE in prompt : emulation speed drops down using v15 (ie 49% with P300MMX). If I launch a game, or something else, emulation speed stay rock solid at 100%.
I need to say that it's more or less the same with v14. When DOS is IDLE emulation speed drops to 54% with P300MMX, and 100% if I launch something.

Can someone confirm this ?
Config used : Award 430VX, P300MMX, 8 Mb RAM, software renderer, v15 release build enabled
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SarahWalker
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by SarahWalker »

Known issue.
altheos
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by altheos »

SarahWalker wrote: Fri 17 May, 2019 4:05 pmKnown issue.
Ok. Thanks.
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leilei
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by leilei »

As K6 CPUs were just added to S7 boards however this will cause a CPU change in all existing 430VX (now Shuttle HOT-557) configs that use the WinChip and the Cyrix.and will cause no emulation as a processor is no longer selected since the list orders are now changed.

EDIT: Noticed the ASUS S7 boards but couldn't get the FDC going in either of them (single 3.5 1.44m) Have yet to try the Epox board
EDIT2: Epox is fine.
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SarahWalker
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by SarahWalker »

FDC fixed in rev 1471.
nerd73
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by nerd73 »

Code: Select all

Config: FIC VA-503+, AMD K6-2/300, 512 MB ram, ViRGE/DX 4MB, RTL8029AS
Bugs:

Windows Vista RTM-SP2: Severe instability in lsass, csrss, and winlogon causes frequent BSODs/system restarts. WIndows Defender/Search/Offline Files all tend to crash shortly after startup.

Broken:

Windows 7 (any version): Fails to load WinPE with STOP error 0x7F.
Hopefully this should clear up what the upper windows version limits are for v15.
UPerschke
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by UPerschke »

V15 release FIC VA-503+ shows something odd here: Clock defaults to 1/1/2000 if host sync is enabled.
It cannot be set to a future date nor past date even in BIOS. The year would just revert to 2000 if changed with PgUp/PgDown.
BIOS used: ftp://ftp.fic.com.tw/motherboard/bios/s ... JE4333.ZIP

config:

Code: Select all

gameblaster = 0
gus = 0
ssi2001 = 0
voodoo = 1
model = fic_va503p
cpu_manufacturer = 0
cpu = 23
cpu_use_dynarec = 1
cpu_waitstates = 0
gfxcard = mach64gx
video_speed = -1
sndcard = sbpci128
cpu_speed = 15
disc_a = 
disc_b = 
hdd_controller = ide
mem_size = 131072
cdrom_drive = 0
cdrom_channel = 2
cdrom_path = 
zip_channel = -1
drive_a_type = 7
drive_b_type = 7
bpb_disable = 0
cd_speed = 24
joystick_type = 2
mouse_type = 3
enable_sync = 1
netcard = 
lpt1_device = none
vid_resize = 0
video_fullscreen_scale = 1
video_fullscreen_first = 1
midi = 0
hdc_sectors = 0
hdc_heads = 0
hdc_cylinders = 0
hdc_fn = 
hdd_sectors = 0
hdd_heads = 0
hdd_cylinders = 0
hdd_fn = 
hde_sectors = 0
hde_heads = 0
hde_cylinders = 0
hde_fn = 
hdf_sectors = 0
hdf_heads = 0
hdf_cylinders = 0
hdf_fn = 
hdg_sectors = 0
hdg_heads = 0
hdg_cylinders = 0
hdg_fn = 
hdh_sectors = 0
hdh_heads = 0
hdh_cylinders = 0
hdh_fn = 
hdi_sectors = 0
hdi_heads = 0
hdi_cylinders = 0
hdi_fn = 

[3DFX Voodoo Graphics]
type = 0
framebuffer_memory = 4
texture_memory = 4
bilinear = 1
dacfilter = 0
render_threads = 2
sli = 0
recompiler = 1

[Joysticks]
joystick_0_nr = 0
joystick_1_nr = 0

[SDL2]
screenshot_format = png
screenshot_flash = 1
custom_width = 640
custom_height = 480
fullscreen = 0
fullscreen_mode = 0
scale = 1
scale_mode = 1
vsync = 0
focus_dim = 0
alternative_update_lock = 0
render_driver = gl3

[GL3]
input_scale = 1.000000
input_stretch = 0
shader_refresh_rate = 0.000000

[GL3 Shaders]
shaders = 0

[Sound Blaster 16]
addr = 544
opl_emu = 1
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omarsis81
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by omarsis81 »

I just downloaded the new version 15. I won't call it a bug, but the zip file doesn't have the folders for the new computers/motherboard's rom
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omarsis81
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by omarsis81 »

With the FIC-VA503+ selecting high clock rate for the K6-2 or K6-III result wrongly detected by the BIOS. eg. if you select the K6-2/533 it will display as if it were a 526 mhz - a 500 k6-2 the bios will see it as a 481 mhz
Zorix
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by Zorix »

I have been able to reliably reproduce a performance issue, might be specific to my system or possibly a Linux x86_64 issue. I have huge performance issues that can see dips as low as 4% and high as 102% CPU emulation speed, it's enough to cause audio and mouse lag bad. It is related to the CD-ROM device. If I leave the CD-ROM as empty, this will happen. If I select any image, instantly the problem goes away. I have tested this issue on the 430VX and the newer FIC VA-503+ system. This was tested in WIndows 98SE. This is possibly a device polling issue. I'm curious if anyone else can reproduce this behavior.
szadycbr
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by szadycbr »

Zorix , i have the same on linux 64bit , v14 does it to, but in v14 it jumps more or less to 40-100% on my hardware, but yeah v15 can drop to 4% and it is exactely as You said, i noticed this now after i read Your comment. With image in CD it is all ok. :)
neozeed
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by neozeed »

absolutely minor but machine->misc->about shows version 14.
tk421
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by tk421 »

omarsis81 wrote: Sun 19 May, 2019 11:00 pm With the FIC-VA503+ selecting high clock rate for the K6-2 or K6-III result wrongly detected by the BIOS. eg. if you select the K6-2/533 it will display as if it were a 526 mhz - a 500 k6-2 the bios will see it as a 481 mhz
I am glad to have had the chance to try PCem v15. It works fine in WinXP, which I ran within VMWare.

I was able to install and run the super socket 7 CPUs without much fuss.

I can confirm that selecting many of the higher end K6-2 and K6-III CPUs will produce errors in the reported CPU speed in the BIOS when the emulated PC is booted up. The lower end K6 cpus seem to be unaffected, but the higher end ones produce variances as high as 30mhz, which is unfortunate when trying to run a 400 or 550 Mhz K6.

I will do a little more testing to see what games work in v15, but until I buy a new PC, I am limited in what I can do with this AMD A8 laptop. So far I can say that PCem v15 offers great promise.
AnnaWu
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by AnnaWu »

Thanks for the cassette emulation (IBM PC and PCjr).
I miss the cartridge emulation for the PCjr.
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te_lanus
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by te_lanus »

Something that happened onight, I accidentally double clicked on a config in the PCem Config Manager, and pcem tried, I think, tried to launch the config, but crashed.

I'm on Kubuntu 18.04.2
jvernet
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by jvernet »

Amstrad PC1512/1640 and Hard Disk: I cannot initialize a 30 Mb (615/6/17). Using XTIDE emulation MSDOS 3.2 original disk image. Fdisk report a 61 cylinders hard disk, format failed to format.
Using a 86Box initialized HD image, I cannot boot on it, but can read if I boot from floppy.

Amstrad PC1512: a way to configure Langage, font shloud be added (even in config file) as PCem does.
A. Naim
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by A. Naim »

omarsis81 wrote: Sun 19 May, 2019 11:00 pm With the FIC-VA503+ selecting high clock rate for the K6-2 or K6-III result wrongly detected by the BIOS. eg. if you select the K6-2/533 it will display as if it were a 526 mhz - a 500 k6-2 the bios will see it as a 481 mhz
I only have up to K6-2/300-66 available, and the only one I can run at 100% is the Pentum MMX 233. The K6-2/300-66 maxes out at about 77% emulation speed.
rex_c
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by rex_c »

Deleted
Last edited by rex_c on Fri 21 Jun, 2019 10:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
I have nothing to lose now.
A. Naim
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by A. Naim »

A. Naim wrote: Tue 28 May, 2019 10:13 pm
omarsis81 wrote: Sun 19 May, 2019 11:00 pm With the FIC-VA503+ selecting high clock rate for the K6-2 or K6-III result wrongly detected by the BIOS. eg. if you select the K6-2/533 it will display as if it were a 526 mhz - a 500 k6-2 the bios will see it as a 481 mhz
I only have up to K6-2/300-66 available, and the only one I can run at 100% is the Pentum MMX 233. The K6-2/300-66 maxes out at about 77% emulation speed.
I thinkI have discovered the source of this. The tl;dr is that PCem seems to be using too few cores, at least on my Ryzen 2700X.

I am currently running (in PCem):

* 1 Pentium MMX 233 (1 thread).
* 2 Voodoo 2's in SLI (2 render threads each, for 4 threads).

I have set core affinity for PCem to provide 6 cores, and set its priority to realtime.

Task Manager usage shows heavy usage of 1 logical processor (#7) and moderate usage of another logical processor (#8). My guess is that the CPU and first two Voodoo 2 render threads are running on logical processor #7, and the remaining two Voodoo 2 render threads are running on logical processor #8. It is entirely possible I made a mistake in configuring PCem.

Anyway, hope this info is helpful.
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SarahWalker
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by SarahWalker »

You can see how much CPU time the Voodoo threads are taking in the PCem status window. The percentage before the frames/sec line is the FIFO thread (though I think this is a grotesque overestimate, and counts the time this thread waits on the render threads), the two percentages below frames/sec are the two render threads. My guess is that the Voodoo render threads are mostly idle, and either core #7 is the main thread and most other threads are run through core #8, or the main thread is being split between #7 and #8 and the Voodoo threads are either totally idle or being bounced through some of the other cores.

Windows will try to limit the total number of cores actively being used at any one time to keep the turbo frequency up. That's just how the scheduler is designed to work.
UPerschke
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by UPerschke »

SarahWalker wrote: Mon 03 Jun, 2019 5:22 pm Windows will try to limit the total number of cores actively being used at any one time to keep the turbo frequency up. That's just how the scheduler is designed to work.
How influential would it be to disable core parking and fiddle around with frequency scaling and/or affinity?
A. Naim
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by A. Naim »

SarahWalker wrote: Mon 03 Jun, 2019 5:22 pm You can see how much CPU time the Voodoo threads are taking in the PCem status window. The percentage before the frames/sec line is the FIFO thread (though I think this is a grotesque overestimate, and counts the time this thread waits on the render threads), the two percentages below frames/sec are the two render threads. My guess is that the Voodoo render threads are mostly idle, and either core #7 is the main thread and most other threads are run through core #8, or the main thread is being split between #7 and #8 and the Voodoo threads are either totally idle or being bounced through some of the other cores.

Windows will try to limit the total number of cores actively being used at any one time to keep the turbo frequency up. That's just how the scheduler is designed to work.
Alright, thanks. I'll test it under load and get back to you.
A. Naim
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by A. Naim »

Having trouble finding some CDs, and Interstate '76 is still crashing after less than a minute in play mode, so I don't know when I'll be able to get test data.
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leilei
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by leilei »

Is it the gold version or Nitro Riders/Pack? The Glide renderer in that only seems to behave well with V1's with older drivers (and has led to a bug report incident before with a V2 which turned out to be real behavior)
A. Naim
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by A. Naim »

leilei wrote: Fri 07 Jun, 2019 10:18 am Is it the gold version or Nitro Riders/Pack? The Glide renderer in that only seems to behave well with V1's with older drivers (and has led to a bug report incident before with a V2 which turned out to be real behavior)
The CD decal says "Interstate '76 Nitro Pack". And thanks; will try that. I'76 is just a very buggy game in general.

It's too bad GoG mostly only has downloads for the "fixed" versions of old games, otherwise I could test from there.
Zilog
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by Zilog »

Hi,
i have the problem with sb awe32 synth.

With Pcem v14 the synt function correcly without glich or slowest but with v15, whith itself conf, the synt of awe32,is slowly and have the glich.

The test have with games mk2 or doom, but simply with diagnose.exe of driver of sbawe32 on dos.

Thanks for help.
msteel
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by msteel »

Hey Sarah, thank you very much for all your efforts on this project! I’ve noticed one thing in V15, running the original nascar game by papyrus (1994) the emulation speed drops 30-60% during the opening scene. Once in the menu emulations speed restores to 100%. In game drops back down again. Initially tested with Shuttle HOT-557 and a Pentium 75, S3 Verge video and SB16 audio. 32mb ram running MS DOS 6.22 and a 500mb hard drive. Swapping out motherboards, video cards and removing sound hasn’t seemed to make any difference. Same HW configuration in V14 worked fine. Let me k ow if I can provide any more info. I tried on a few different host machines also, fastest being an i7-6700k at 4.7hgz but performance still dropped in the 30% range at its worst and when less vehicles were visible it seemed to run better but still not hitting 100%

Thanks.
Xanarki
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by Xanarki »

A. Naim wrote: Sat 08 Jun, 2019 12:09 am
leilei wrote: Fri 07 Jun, 2019 10:18 am Is it the gold version or Nitro Riders/Pack? The Glide renderer in that only seems to behave well with V1's with older drivers (and has led to a bug report incident before with a V2 which turned out to be real behavior)
The CD decal says "Interstate '76 Nitro Pack". And thanks; will try that. I'76 is just a very buggy game in general.

It's too bad GoG mostly only has downloads for the "fixed" versions of old games, otherwise I could test from there.
I76 is one of the main games I've been trying out on v15 and it works flawlessly for me under glide.

My only problem is with the net. Trying to join a multiplayer game, I'm able to get ingame for about 15 seconds, and then I'm automatically disconnected and booted. I tried using both net cards. Yet I can host a game with no problems.

If curious, a community still exists at interstate76.com and they play games every Tuesday and Friday nights, believe it or not. Roughly 4 to 9 people usually, but it's still something.
amalahama
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by amalahama »

Hi!

I just discovered PCem and what an amazing gate to my very fond memories!!

I'm crazy about flight simulators so expect mostly FS reports from my part.

My virtual system:
Config: FIC VA-503+, AMD K6-2/300, 128 MB ram, ViRGE/DX 4MB, Voodoo 2 SLI, SB Awe 32
I have to say that in my i5, GTX 970 it runs under 100% in desktop, but it can keep 100% in 3D accelerated games (weird...)

Janes F/A-18 - I wasn't able to see any evident visual bug, however the game runs too slow (I think it's related to my virtual specs, they are too low for the game) -> would it be possible to force higher MHz in the virtual machine?

Janes F-15 - speed wise it runs just fine, however I can confirm there are visual bugs with the skydome and some flickering in the terrain. It's really close to perfection! I hope it get fixed in future releases, it's one of my favorties of all time

A-10 Cuba! - It runs fine without evident bugs :)

Best regards
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omarsis81
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Re: v15 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Post by omarsis81 »

amalahama wrote: Thu 11 Jul, 2019 6:29 am would it be possible to force higher MHz in the virtual machine?
Sure! An AMD K6-II can go as high as 550 mhz

EDIT: also check if the game has a patch or has been optimized for 3D Now!
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