Inconsistent behaviour across multiple features (SDRAM cycling, preset loading, picture location, wifi) #650
Description
Hello,
I noticed a few problems across multiple features, mainly regarding SDRAM cycling and preset loading, the whole mechanism seems rather inconsistent:
I'm connecting a Pal PS2 to my GBSC through a component cable, and a VGA to HDMI converter to output to a 1080p TV.
When loading default settings it correctly defaults to 1280x1024 and the picture is really sharp (as long as line filter is off of course), but I get the same issue described in #534 (random dots rapidly appearing across the screen, ot at least I think it's the same issue, there's no picture), I too was able to resolve it by setting SDRAM to 129Mhz as stated there.
Sharp, stil picture but random dots (I know, filming a TV with a phone is not the best method, but that's what we have):
IMG_7624.2.mov
I then adjust some other setting to my liking, picture is still sharp and still, and with no dots thanks to the SDRAM cycling thing, and then proceed to create a preset of these settings.
The issue arises when I load said preset: in a very inconsistent way (I fiddled with a lot of different settings and I wasn't able to infer a pattern of any kind) sometimes everything is recalled properly (including SDRAM Mhz, hence no dots), some other times everything is recalled but the picture is not "still" anymore, it flickers faintly (and thus it's blurry), in a very similar way to when bob deinterlacing is used, as opposed to motion-adaptive that results in a very still, clean picture.
Look at the little sun-clock icon especially (the flickering is way faster in person, like the one with the bob deinterlacing, in the video it appears slower probably due to temporal aliasing):
IMG_7625.mov
In fact if I then switch to bob deinterlacing the picture becomes weirdly darker with horizontal darker stripes across the screen (again please ignore the weird colors and not great picture, but trust me, it's way darker than normal in person):
The flickering is not the only issue that arises reloading presets, at times vertical 1 pixel thick lines also do appear:
And all kind of different artifacts, once it even got stuck like this (please mind: this is just with the PS2 browser and system configuration menu, not even games):
The same issues also appear when cycling SDRAM: doing a whole cycle of all possible values results in these (sometimes you don't even have to do a full cycle, just changing it once), sometimes it doesn't, as I said it is very inconsistent, but I NEED to change it to fix the dots issue because in game it becomes unacceptable (maybe 129Mhz could be made the default?).
The problem is: no amount of reloading preset, cycling SDRAM or fiddling with any other settings, or even power cycling, solve the flickering/artifacts issue, the only method working is resetting to default, and at times not even that.
To summarize how to maybe reproduce the issue:
- Load default 1280x1024 with a pal source (better yet reflash the whole thing new)
- Press "cycling SDRAM" once, to get to 129Mhz to fix the dots issue (this may be, at times, enough to get in the flickering/artifacts state)
then either:
- Keep pressing "cycling SDRAM" until a full turn of all possible settings has been set (this almost always results in the issue)
or
- Save a preset, then load it (or power cycle, or load a different preset then load this one, etc.. At times everything is recalled correctly multiple times in a row, but if you keep loading it you eventually get in the flickering state, and then only a reset to default brings you out of it).
This was one (two with the dots thing) issue, but it's not the only inconsistent behaviour I noticed:
When I first got my GBS and made the mods, when it was connected to my PS2 and on the default 1280x1024 preset the picture would not fill the whole screen vertically (as expected, as there should be 56 black lines at the top or bottom to get to the total of 1080), the picture would be located at the top of the screen with a black band at the bottom. Now after a few days of fiddling and experiments, and multiple full reflash of the ESP8266, the picture now fill the screen perfectly vertically when loading default settings or the default 1280x1024 preset (or any custom preset I derive from that) which is weird, the black lines that were at the bottom seems to get cut, the weird thing is it is not my TV doing that, nothing was changed on that part and I even did a factory reset of the TV, It looks like it's the GBSC doing that (between a couple of power cycling of the GBSC I managed to see it get back to how it was in the beginning, but it is not replicable intentionally and appear to happen at random), but even completely reflash the ESP8266 doesn't seem to affect this. I'm at a loss here.
What complicates these issues, and frankly renders the device almost unusable, is the wifi issues.
I know it's stated in the wiki that's a common issue and there's even a suggested fix, but what I experience seems to not be related to that specific issue, in my case it works like this:
I completely erase the ESP8266 with esptool.py erase-flash (this seems to be the only method to fully erase all wifi related settings and fixing the issues), then I reflash it, no errors, I then install it in the GBSC (I chose to have all connections detachable using dupont connectors for convenience), I connect to it in access point mode (and the only way it works from my iphone is using the ESP8266 IP, gbscontrol and gbscontrol.local don't work in this mode, as I reported in #649, and that is another issue), then connect it to my local wifi, switch to using gbscontrol or gbscontrol.local as now the IP doesn't work anymore, and now I can start fiddling with settings, I encounter other issues, as a consequence I have to do multiple reset to default, or ESP8266 reset, or power cycles, and the more I do the more problematic the connection gets, like if it was "accumulating" some kind of error and eventually it stops connecting altogether and I have to detach it, get it back to my pc and reflash it, and it starts working again, and the cycle repeats (and I lose all settings and any not backed up preset in the process).
That was a lot, sorry about that, maybe I should have separated it in multiple different issues.
Here's a few specs that may be helpful knowing:
My GBS board is a 8200 v4 20241009 (this, alongside a pal PS2 source is in common with #534, may be related).
My ESP8266 is a Weimos D1 mini, altough it is not visbly labelled Weimos.
My PS2 is a slim SCPH-77004 softmodded model (the softmod is not relevant to any of the above issues as they happen also when booting with no softmod) with aftermarket component cables.
here are the hardware mods I made:
- ESP8266: D1 to SCL, D2 to SDA, D6 to debug pin, 5V and ground to the white connector next to the barrel DC in.
- Si5351 Clock Generator: Center CLK0 to TrueView pin 40, left side of C48 to first pad of CLK2, right side of C48 to unlabelled capacitor on the Si5351, SCL to controller pin 25, SDA to 26.
- Removed and bridged RGB trimmers.
- Replaced C11 with 22uF, 16v electrolythic.
- Added removable 100ohm resistor between sync and ground (although, if I understand it correctly, it is not needed for component input? it's not really clear from the wiki, and everyone seems to be adding this).
Ignore the red/black couple of wires that come from behind the ESP8266 and seem to go to the controller chip in the picture, they actually go nowhere, I prepared them to power a future female USB port I will install in the future case to power the VGA to HDMI adapter, they are individually closed with electric tape.
I should also mention that when setting up the arduino IDE I tried using the libraries from the direct download in the wiki and installing them as zip, as well as downloading them from the library manager: the second method resulted in "compilation error: call of overloaded 'getparam(int)' is ambiguous" at compiling, the first method also resulted in the same error until I downgraded to version 2.10.8 of the ESPAsyncWebServer library as suggested in #613, this way it compiles and successfully upload to the ESP8266 board.
If anyone has any insight on any of the above issues and might have a suggestion on how to further troubleshooting them would be very helpful because in this state it is kind of unusable, if I want to use the board right now I have to either: have a clean empty board and making up the right settings by memory every time, painstakingly setting everything including a little stretch of the picture to get it to perfect 4:3 and that is very time consuming, or saving all this to a preset but then wrestling with the flicker/artifacts issue and doing multiple resets/power cycling until I get the saved settings to load correctly without the picture getting flickery/blurry, and then inevitably run into connection problems as a result, having to do at least a couple reflashing every time, thus needing to have a computer nearby every time I would want to do some retro gaming. I know it's a cheap upscaler, but this is frankly a dealbreaker.
Thanks.