Hacking Nintendont

[rorro]

Have you guys tried with a non-sleepy hard drive?

Sadly i dont have another external hard drive... but i really dont think that the issue is that the drive is sleepy, i mean, i dont think that the drive is put to sleep under 10 seconds.... is that even possible?

 

[Adeka]

Sadly i dont have another external hard drive... but i really dont think that the issue is that the drive is sleepy, i mean, i dont think that the drive is put to sleep under 10 seconds.... is that even possible?

If I remember right Nintendont will check a random sector of the drive every 10 seconds if you have a sleepy hard drive. It seems like it is the likely cause to me.

 

[Edu64]

Ok, i can confirm that is the issue, because i count how many seconds between beeps and freezes, and its exactly 10 seconds. It only happens if theres nothing "new" to read, for example, in middle of a battle were nobody is speaking... as long as someone is speaking, or playing a video, etc, the issue doesnt happen.

I tried using a version before that 215, but it doesnt recognize my drive for some reason, so in the meantime i think i will need to play the game with a SD card... i just hope that this is not that common with other games... because this is the first game i try with nintendont and this happens....

I tested many games and only in those cases have that problem.
Maybe in Rogue Squadron III occurs also, very similar menus to Rogue Squadron II.
I'll do a test burning an disk with the ISO of the game(in nintendot 292), my Wii read backup disks.
The problem not ocurre exactly to the 10 seconds and not in all parts of the game, but in revision previous to the 215, these games runs smoothly.

Have you guys tried with a non-sleepy hard drive?

with 2 hard drives (160gb and 1tb) and they do not sleep.
Fat32, 32kb cluster and different cables.
1tb HDD, the problem is most noticeable

 

[rorro]

If I remember right Nintendont will check a random sector of the drive every 10 seconds if you have a sleepy hard drive. It seems like it is the likely cause to me.

Yeah, basically if nintendont is not reading any data from the drive after 10 seconds, its going to read a random sector. The thing is, that there are some games (like rogue squadron) that dont require to read data at certain moments... for example, when the mission is starting and everyone is talking, i can see my drive flashing because nintendont is reading that info, but, once the battle starts, it doesnt need to read more data and after 10 seconds the "beep" and the freeze are going to happen....

I think that the "random sector read" happens when there is nothing to read and after 10 seconds, but games are going to react differently... for example, with some games its not going to be noticeable, with other maybe a small freeze, and with rogue squadron 2 the small freeze and beep each 10 seconds...

 

[Edu64]

If I remember right Nintendont will check a random sector of the drive every 10 seconds if you have a sleepy hard drive. It seems like it is the likely cause to me.

If the HDD is sleeping...in rev 204 the game not run after of a time...and not, Runs flawlessly
Tested more of 1 hour continuously xD

 

[shoemaker]

Rogue Squadron 2 stutters for me as well. Rogue Squadron 3 has no issues.

 

[ccfman2004]

A small stutter here and there is better than the game completely crashing due to a sleepy HDD.

 

[strikerdark]

A small stutter here and there is better than the game completely crashing due to a sleepy HDD.

honestly i think the best solution is to add an option in the settings something like "ping hard drive yes/no"

 

[VinsCool]

honestly i think the best solution is to add an option in the settings something like "ping hard drive yes/no"

I vote for this compromize

 

[Adeka]

I feel like that will just cause many false reports here

 

[strikerdark]

I feel like that will just cause many false reports here

you avoid that by making the setting Yes by default

 

[pedro702]

tbh played rogue squadron II beggining to end on 285 all missions on a single day on my hdd(75GB only) it never stutered one time my guess is it might depend on the size of the harddrive itself maybe the poke is bigger when the hdd is larger and usualy has a bigger sector size and doesnt affect smaller hdds but yeah taking out the poke would be really bad we would get noobs left and right saying the games would randomly freeze every few minutes like we did before. a toggle on the options isnt still noob proof becuase they wouldnt toogle it or would turn it off without knowing what it was since 99% of the ppl dont know if the hdd is sleepy or not.

maybe increasing the poke to like 5mins would be more tolerabe i dont think any hdd goes to sleep under 5 mins does it?

 

[ccfman2004]

It wouldn't make sense for a HDD to fall asleep too quickly as it would take a few seconds for it to spin up again.

 

[pedro702]

If the HDD is sleeping...in rev 204 the game not run after of a time...and not, Runs flawlessly
Tested more of 1 hour continuously xD

just to make sure its the poke try this dol
http://www.mediafire.com/download/6ya1ct0ogm16z7t/bootnopoke.dol
just rename it to boot.dol and replace your nintendont dol its always better to confirm this isissue before doing something about it.

its the latest nintendont with the poke code deleted try it and see if you fell the stutters on those games.

Rogue Squadron 2 stutters for me as well. Rogue Squadron 3 has no issues.

rogue squadron III is constantly acessing the hdd if i remenber correctly so it doesnt even let the poke begin try the dol abode to confirm the issue still remains or not so we can confirm the poke is indeed the culpright.

 

[Edu64]

just to make sure its the poke try this dol
http://www.mediafire.com/download/6ya1ct0ogm16z7t/bootnopoke.dol
just rename it to boot.dol and replace your nintendont dol its always better to confirm this isissue before doing something about it.

its the latest nintendont with the poke code deleted try it and see if you fell the stutters on those games.



rogue squadron III is constantly acessing the hdd if i remenber correctly so it doesnt even let the poke begin try the dol abode to confirm the issue still remains or not so we can confirm the poke is indeed the culpright.

With this dol, the problem is resolved.
Tested Rogue Squadron 2
And yes, depends on size of HDD ... the problem is more noticeable.
Tested on 160 gb HDD and 1TB HDD.
Both Fat32 and cluster 32kb
Perhaps the best solution is to add an option in the settings something like "ping hard drive yes/no" with "Yes by default"
Thanks for the fix

 

[FIX94]

So after a long time of searching I made some progress with the triforce games, I was actually working on these changes for quite a while now already:
-wrote up hacks to allow exiting the test menu in the 4 triforce games
-fixed a bug in SIInit which always lead to the test menu booting up twice because of a not cleaned up status
-wrote up hacks for ax and vs4 which will allow the game settings you set in the test menu to actually be used ingame, it will even write a file so on the next boot it will remember these settings
-set the random hdd read time to 4 minutes instead of 10 seconds, that should still be more than enough time to not spin down
-moved the Mario Superstar Baseball arstartdma exception

 

[ccfman2004]

You the man FIX94

With this dol, the problem is resolved.
Tested Rogue Squadron 2
And yes, depends on size of HDD ... the problem is more noticeable.
Tested on 160 gb HDD and 1TB HDD.
Both Fat32 and cluster 32kb
Perhaps the best solution is to add an option in the settings something like "ping hard drive yes/no" with "Yes by default"

Thanks for the fix

Try the newest revision as FIX94 changed the HDD poke to 4 minutes.

 

[VinsCool]

Excellent work as always FIX94! Also thanks Perdro702 for the drive poke and mario baseball solution

 

[AbdallahTerro]

So after a long time of searching I made some progress with the triforce games, I was actually working on these changes for quite a while now already:
-wrote up hacks to allow exiting the test menu in the 4 triforce games
-fixed a bug in SIInit which always lead to the test menu booting up twice because of a not cleaned up status
-wrote up hacks for ax and vs4 which will allow the game settings you set in the test menu to actually be used ingame, it will even write a file so on the next boot it will remember these settings
-set the random hdd read time to 4 minutes instead of 10 seconds, that should still be more than enough time to not spin down
-moved the Mario Superstar Baseball arstartdma exception

Fix, Thanks for the update, working great as usual
Is there a way to make use of "HIDP_CTRL_SUSPEND" after "BTUpdateRegisters();" in order to save wiimote batteries after launching games using the wiimote
many times we don't need to use BT and we need to hold power button manually to turn wiimote off

 

[Xenon Hacks]

Im trying to play tales of symphonia but I cant save because Nintendont's settings keep resetting every time I back out of the setting menu. I need to enable gamecube memory card emulation :/