PAL Wii - FDS games do not load on 3.5.6 but they do on 3.5.2

[albertaparicio]

Describe the bug

All Famicom Disk System I have tried using v3.5.6 of the emulator give a gray screen.

Reverting back to 3.5.2 makes them work again. This makes me think both the BIOS file and the ROMs I am using are fine and the emulator is the culprit.

In case it is relevant, I am doing everything from SD card, there is no USB involved.

Games Tested

The following games worked well (getting in game and being able to finish a level) on v3.5.2 but gave a gray screen on v3.5.6.

• Akumajou Dracula
• Baseball
• Bubble Bobble
• Donkey Kong
• Dirty Pair - Project Eden
• Famicom Grand Prix - F1 Race
• Golf
• Legend of Zelda 2
• Mahjong
• Metroid
• Super Mario Bros.
• Super Mario Bros. 2
• Vs. Excitebike
• Yuu Maze

I used the same BIOS file and the same ROMs for all the games.

To Reproduce

Launch an FDS game with v3.5.6 downloaded from the Releases page, get a grey screen.
Download v3.5.2 and install to SD card. Launch the same game with the same BIOS as before, the game launches.

Expected behavior

Running FDS games with no issues, like in v3.5.2

Relevant log output

Screenshots

No response

[albertaparicio]

I can edit the issue message and add logs if I can get some instructions on how to extract them

[dborth]

Can you name a game for me to try? This has been reported before but the games I've tried work.

[albertaparicio]

I have edited the initial message in order to add a list of games I tested with both versions

[dborth]

That's strange. I just tested a bunch of those FDS games on the latest build on Dolphin and they all worked fine.

I'm not saying that nothing has changed, just that this isn't an issue for everyone. Are you on PAL or NTSC? I assume the BIOS file is 8KB and in sd:/fceugx/disksys.rom ?

[dborth]

Other suggestions I have are - try a cleanly FAT32 formatted SD card straight on 3.5.6 with a new disksys.rom and no settings file.

[albertaparicio]

First of all, apologies for the delay

I ran some tests and I have some new information

New SD card

I tried a new SD card. I formatted it to FAT32 and copied onto it only the release files of v3.5.6, a few roms and disksys.rom.

The BIOS file is exactly 8KB in size (8192 bytes) and its MD5 sum is ca30b50f880eb660a320674ed365ef7a. It is placed at sd:/fceugx/disksys.rom.

I tried some roms and got the same gray screen as before.

PAL vs NTSC

I also did some tests regarding video standard, because you asked about PAL in your previous message.

Usually I use a PAL Wii, but I also have an NTSC-J one. I took the SD card from the previous test and without changing anything on it, I tried the emulator and it worked. I saw the BIOS screen and then the games booted and I was able to get in-game.

This makes me think that my usual Wii being PAL has something to do with this issue. I hope knowing this helps figure out the cause of this issue.

Like I mentioned in my first comment, if you point me to a way of getting logs from the app, I will get them and paste them here, if it helps.

Thank you for your time and help

[dborth]

what was the version it broke in? does it work in 3.5.3?

trying to narrow down the change that broke this for PAL.

[albertaparicio]

I have been running some tests regarding the version that broke

I have used my PAL Wii with the clean SD card from the previous tests and copied onto it versions 3.5.2 up to 3.5.6. They all share the same roms and BIOS

I used these games for testing:

• Baseball
• Donkey Kong
• Metroid
• Super Mario Bros.
• Super Mario Bros. 2

I tested these games and found:

• 3.5.2 All worked ✅
• 3.5.3 All worked ✅
• 3.5.4 None worked ❌
• 3.5.5 All worked ✅
• 3.5.6 None worked ❌

It looks like something broke on 3.5.4, it was fixed in 3.5.5 and then something broke again on 3.5.6

I hope this data is useful for narrowing the cause of the problem

Thanks for your work with the emulator port

[bikerb3n]

Thanks for the information. FDS games don't work on version 3.5.6 for GameCube NTSC. They do work on versions 3.5.2 and 3.5.3.

FDS on GameCube NTSC:
3.5.2 Worked ✅
3.5.3 Worked ✅
3.5.4 Didn't work ❌
3.5.5 Didn't work ❌
3.5.6 Didn't work ❌