WinUAE 1.1.1 randomly crashing

[realmadman]

Has anybody else had any trouble with the latest version of WinUAE crashing and silently exiting?

I made up a 120Mb hardfile, and installed AmigaOS 3.1 on it, then installed P96 and MUI, finally I selected a P96 screenmode for workbench (800x600x16bit).

Now, at seemingly random intervals, I'll be doing something on the emulated Amiga, (68020, 2Mb Chip, 64Mb Z3 Fast, 8Mb RTG, AGA Chipset, 40.68 Kickstart, any more info just ask) and it just dumps me back at the Windoze desktop at random.

My first suspect was the JIT, so I turned that off, but that has made no difference.

The only thing I can think of is that the first time I used a p96 screenmode, a requester came up telling me to install the rtg.library from within the Amiga Programs directory within the installed WinUAE directory into LIBS:Picasso96/ so I did that, but by mistake I also installed that same rtg.library into LIBS:

Anyone have any ideas?

[InTheSand]

Odd! In theory, WinUAE shouldn't crash due to anything you've done on the Amiga side of things...

Does your PC have any strange hardware, specifically any odd SCSI devices that the emulated Amiga environment might be trying to poll?

Also, have you tried using a different version of WinUAE, or using the host filesystem rather than a hardfile?

And welcome to A.Org btw!

 - Ali

[realmadman]

InTheSand wrote:
Odd! In theory, WinUAE shouldn't crash due to anything you've done on the Amiga side of things...

Does your PC have any strange hardware, specifically any odd SCSI devices that the emulated Amiga environment might be trying to poll?

Also, have you tried using a different version of WinUAE, or using the host filesystem rather than a hardfile?

And welcome to A.Org btw!

 - Ali

Nah, nothing odd or fancy about my PC.

AMD XP2500 'Barton' CPU
ASUS a7n8x-x mobo
512Mb PC3200 RAM (2x 256Mb)
LG GSA-4120B DVD-RW
40Gb Seagate baracuda 7200rpm HDD
160Gb Western Digital 7200rpm HDD
128Mb Radeon 9600 Video
Leadtek Winfast DV2000 TV card
3.5" floppy drive

I've tried a few earlier versions of WinUAE, and the same thing has happened, I'll try using the the host filesystem rather than a hardfile, thanks for the idea.

Oh and thanks for the welcome.  I've still got my A4000 here, but it's no longer operational, thanks to a leaking battery

[realmadman]

I'll try using the the host filesystem rather than a hardfile, thanks for the idea.

Just tried it, same result

Might try a really old version of WinUAE (0.8. and see if that helps...

[stefcep]

On my PIII650 Win98SE it will not boot up with cdrom emulation and Nero: I can only have one or the other at the same time.  This was supposed to be fixed in this version but it is not.  I found that the most reliable version is 0.827

[Wayne]

realmadman,

note than new versions of winuae works fine only on winxp/win2k
which windows version are u using?
if you are on win98/winme don't expect that winuae work fine

bye,laser

[realmadman]

Laser wrote:
realmadman,

note than new versions of winuae works fine only on winxp/win2k
which windows version are u using?
if you are on win98/winme don't expect that winuae work fine

bye,laser

Ahh, yeah, sorry, I should have mentioned that.  Windows XP Professional, up to date with all the latest [d]hacks[/d]patches from micro$oft.

I think I've located the problem, sort of anyway.  I made a new hard file, and started from scratch, installed OS 3.1, installed MUI, installed P96, installed Photogenics, but didn't change anything other then putting the WB colour depth up to 8 colours, still in PAL:640x256, then restarted the emulated Amiga.  Completely stable, been using it like that for the last hour or so.

Until that is, I chose to use a P96 screenmode (800x600 8-bit, to be exact) in Photogenics.  No more then 10 seconds later, boom, but this time it was the guru visiting me, not WinUAE dumping me back to Windoze.

This is with WinUAE 1.1.1, I'll try some older builds later or tomorrow and see if they do the same thing with this setup.

It's really fustrating, I miss some of my old Amiga programs, particularly Photogenics, and would like to use them, taking advantage of P96 to give me decent screenmodes.

[Legerdemain]

I have experienced exactly the same with WinUAE, all different versions I've tried. Randomly (not all that often, though) it just shuts down and throws me back into Windows. It has got nothing to do with P96 in my case, since it has behaved this way both with and without P96 running.

Other interesting bugs I've encountered are the following:

Bug No. 1: If I run Workbench with the P96 drivers every now and then the pointer leaves trails and trashes the grahipcs on the screen. This bug has followed me since the very first time I tried WinUAE a couple of years ago and has also been true for all of the different systems I've tried WinUAE on.

Bug No. 2: If I run Workbench without the P96 drivers and without the filtering option turned on, the pointer radiates garbage on the left and right sides of the pointer, making the screen unusable as soon as I've played around a bit with the pointer. This bug appears not always, but in like 90% of the time.

Bug No. 3: What always happens when running under the same conditions as in Bug No. 2 is that the screen jerks around really much when I try to drag it up & down. With 'jerks around' I mean that the view jumps up & down, sometimes all the way up to the top of the screen, no matter how far as I have currently dragged the screen. As soon as I stop dragging the screen stops at the point I've dragged it to.

Bug No. 4: If I turn the filtering option on to avoid Bugs No. 2 and 3 the speed of the JIT emulation drops too much to be logical. Things like copying files takes ages compared to how long it takes without filtering turned on. So, working under WB without P96 installed, using the filtering option to be able to strech the view of Workbench, making it use 100% of the screen instead of having the ugly borders that comes when not using filtering, makes it at times even slower than my real 060 Amiga.

Bug No. 5: If this bug still is persistent I don't know since it got on my nerves to the point of me not bothering about using the very option that triggered it anymore. Anyways, when checking the bsdsocket.library option in WinUAE surfing the net didn't work. I thought. Until I realised that if I started up IBrowse, tried accessing a page, and then pressed the WinUAE configuration key (F12, is it?), it seemed to load a tiny piece of data during the time from the key was pressed until the WinUAE configuration GUI popped up. So, to be able to browse the net, transfer files over the net, or whatever the like I realised I had to press F12 and then ESC and then F12 and then ESC extremely fast and many many times to even load up a simple HTML-page. The last time I bothered to try was something like a year ago, and by that time all of my friends that I asked encountered the same bug (but they didn't know that they at least could get the data transfers to work somewhat by pressing F12/ESC, they just thought that bsdsocket.library emulation didn't work, but when I told them they tried and experienced the same thing).

All of the bugs mentioned above, besides No. 5 which I don't know if it still is there to be found, I've encountered on every system I've run WinUAE on no matter what version of WinUAE I've tried. Different processors running at different speeds with different hardware added to the motherboard.

I can't understand how come that these bugs haven't been adressed, since alhtough apparently not everyone, but many people have experienced them. It seems like on some particular setups WinUAE works like a charm, but not on one single of the setups I've tried (or my friends). So, what's the deal? Really?

[_ThEcRoW]

@legerdemain
Use the rtg.library in Amiga programs directory and replace the one that came with wb. I had the same screen trashing problem and all disappear by updating the rtg.library.
Also, the random crashes could be perfectly solved with the rtg.library as well.
Keep us informed.

[Legerdemain]

Use the rtg.library in Amiga programs directory and replace the one that came with wb. I had the same screen trashing problem and all disappear by updating the rtg.library.

Hm, but rtg.library doesn't come with WB as far as I know, it comes with the P96 package, though... if I am not mistaken?

Anyways, I'll check it out, but I do think that it only will solve the mousetrails and speed up the emulation when using P96 screens, not the non P96 related issues. It bothered me a little bit that it was so hard to obtain this information. A friend just told me that he got a requester telling one to replace the library when last setting up his WinUAE WB-install, but I have never got that requester, furthermore it doesn't say much in the WinUAE readme, only in the WinUAE 0.8.16 Release 3 history part of the same textfile. Though, I just saw it in the AmigaProgs.txt file, ooooooh... well...

[cecilia]

Hm, but rtg.library doesn't come with WB as far as I know,

he means the library that comes with WINUAE. look through the files that come in the various directories one of which is named:

WinUAE/Amiga Programs/

[Legerdemain]

he means the library that comes with WINUAE. look through the files that come in the various directories one of which is named: WinUAE/Amiga Programs/

Hehe, well... I think you misread my post.

What I was refering to was what he said concerning the "old" lib to be replaced. He said that that lib comes with WB, but it doesn't... it comes with P96.

That the "new" version of the lib, that should be put there instead of the "old" version, comes with WinUAE, that I never commented on... he was pretty clear on that very issue.

[cecilia]

i've used the rtg.library that comes with WinUAE (dated april 25, 2005). I've never had crashes with my emulation like what you describe. I am now using the newest WinUAE - in fact I keep updating almost as soon as they have a new version. I've been doing this for about 3 years.

I use OS3.9 and try to keep everything as updated as possible.

[Legerdemain]

i've used the rtg.library that comes with WinUAE (dated april 25, 2005). I've never had crashes with my emulation like what you describe.

Well, now when I do know that I should use the rtg.library that came with the WinUAE release I hope to avoid the bug with the mousepointer trails (the one that I refered to as Bug No. 1 in one of my earlier posts).

The other bugs I've listed, unfortunately for me, hasn't got anything to do with the rtg.library (this I say since rtg.library isn't used when not running P96 modes under Workbench).

[realmadman]

Ok, it definately seems to me - in my case at least - to be related to the P96 emulation.  I tried renaming the rtg.library to rtg.library.old and copied across the one from amiga programs, and it was still fine, nice and stable, until I chose a P96 screenmode, then again, within 30 seconds, boom, dumped back to Windoze

I'll try renaming the current rtg.library to rtg.library.new and then rename rtg.library.old to rtg.library and see if that makes a difference, my bet is that it will, but instead of crashing WinUAE, it'll guru instead.

Finally, I now have a whole stack of winuae_2006#?.dmp files in my WinUAE directory, all just slightly over 1Mb in size, is there anyone I could send these to who might be able to work out what is going on?