A600GS Updates

[THX-1138]

Has development slowed down?   Don't see as many posts by 'amigakit' in recent months.

[Rusty Breadbin]

I installed the latest update .1529 today. I noticed that AmiBerry and the A600 core were both updated.

Afterwards, during testing, the system appears more sluggish than before.

I tried running Elevator Action ECS, and before the update it was just able to keep up without slowing down, but after the update playing this game it now has constant slow downs - I play with the status LEDs shown at all times, and am noticing that while playing EA, during gameplay the FPS counter is constantly dipping below 50, the % LED constantly over 100 and the leftmost LED is constantly flickering between 50 and 99, sometimes with a yellow tint, neither of which were happening before, which means it is slowing down.

I have noticed no matter what I am doing/playing, the leftmost light is still at the very least constantly flickering between 50 and 99, which did not happen nearly as often before, and most other games I am playing now show occasional or frequent slowdowns, none of which was happening before. Even just idling on the Workbench screen in my ClassicWB install the leftmost LED is constantly flickering between 50/99 and sometimes turning yellow, with the framerate frequently dipping below 50 (sometimes as low as 45), and even Amibench is now taking longer to load and feels sluggish than it did before the update. NONE of this happened before this latest update.

It also appears something must have happened to the DB9 support, as when I play Outrun Amiga Edition with any DB9 controller, either from the HD image installed in the start menu, or through AmiBench, my A600GS always crashes about 10 seconds into the game, just showing the AmiKit logo (as if the unit has just booted) but does not do anything else and I have to manually power cycle it to restart. This does not happen with USB controllers, and I have as yet not found any other game that crashes with DB9, but Outrun Amiga Edition WAS working with DB9 before this update.

It would appear as if something in either the AmiBerry update or the A600GS core update (maybe a combination of both?) is causing these slowdowns and the DB9 issue. Can you please look into this, this update is now making me wish there was a way to go back to the previous update, (I think it was .1486) as that was performing a lot better than this new update.

EDIT: idling in AmiBench, even there the framerate is frequently dipping to 47.

[Twiggy]

That's troubling. I'll see if I can recreate with something plugged into my DE9

[broadblues]

What's new with .1529?

6.2 1529 PUBLIC:

Add support for auto configuring external USB audio devices.

Add support for AHI recording, configurable through main GUI and in AHI prefs. Allows recording from USB or Bluetooth sound cards and also recording of system output via loopback monitors.

Fix race condition bug in DB9 handling that could cause a hang on shutdown, particularly on faster machines.

Add DB9 hard reset, hold DB9 fire button down for 20 seconds to trigger a hard shutdown. For use in rare cases when a crash causes the main menu to lock up.

Add new option to choose between GUI sound profiles for wigdet clicks etc
Current options are "Floppy Drive" and "Soft Retro"

Add new scoring system. Titles can now be allocated 0 to 5 stars by the user to rate them. A new filter allows to show only rated titles sorted higher score first.
Internal changes preparing for forthcoming A1200GS board.

[broadblues]

Has development slowed down?   Don't see as many posts by 'amigakit' in recent months.

No Im spending as much time writing code for this as ever, but a lot of it has been in areas that don't generate public facing updates. There will always be some ebb and flow with the update rate

[broadblues]

It also appears something must have happened to the DB9 support, as when I play Outrun Amiga Edition with any DB9 controller, either from the HD image installed in the start menu, or through AmiBench, my A600GS always crashes about 10 seconds into the game, just showing the AmiKit logo (as if the unit has just booted) but does not do anything else and I have to manually power cycle it to restart. This does not happen with USB controllers, and I have as yet not found any other game that crashes with DB9, but Outrun Amiga Edition WAS working with DB9 before this update.

I will look into the performance issues, I'm not seeing that here on my dev machine, I will check on my A1200NG which much more a user setup.

WRT to the DB9 crash, there have been some under the  cover changes, but they shouldn't affect released hardware except for the hard shutdown feature.   Does the outrun game require pressing the fire button continuously for an extended period?

[Rusty Breadbin]

Outrun Amiga Edition requires the use of buttons for acceleration and braking, so yes most of the time I am holding down the accelerate button. If you have put some sort of shutdown feature on the DB9 ports that would most likely explain the unexpected crash when playing from DB9 but not USB, and would also explain why I haven't experienced it in any other games using DB9 (as I'm not holding down fire in other games).

Maybe put something in that disables this while playing a game/AmiBench?

But I'm really unhappy most about this update making everything more sluggish (can't play Elevator Action when it's slow, and that's my favorite game). May have to go back to the Turbo Chameleon Minimig core if that's not rectified.

[broadblues]

Outrun Amiga Edition requires the use of buttons for acceleration and braking, so yes most of the time I am holding down the accelerate button. If you have put some sort of shutdown feature on the DB9 ports that would most likely explain the unexpected crash when playing from DB9 but not USB, and would also explain why I haven't experienced it in any other games using DB9 (as I'm not holding down fire in other games).

Maybe put something in that disables this while playing a game/AmiBench?

OK that explains tt, tried to make the setup really long, thinking most people pulse the fire button, didn't think of driving games, guess the beta testers don't play them either! It should have powered down though, not hung on the animation screen. The bug that causes that ought to have been fixed at the same time, and does appear to be here. Could be more than one cause I guess.  When it sticks on the anim shutdown linux should eventual get fed up and kill the process that's blocking it, that does sometime take a while though.

But I'm really unhappy most about this update making everything more sluggish (can't play Elevator Action when it's slow, and that's my favorite game). May have to go back to the Turbo Chameleon Minimig core if that's not rectified.

Testing this I don't see the type of slow down you describe with the CPU maxed out and yellow audio buffer LED flashes. Though I did notice that toggling audio off behind the scenes stops the slight flicker of FPS in AmiBench.

What FPS do you get from Elevator Action when running normally? Solid 50-Fps or about 40/45 fps (what I'm seeing) as I haven't played it before I don't have baseline to compare with.

[Rusty Breadbin]

I run Elevator Action from an ADF image, and have the setup as A500+ with 1MB RAM, this forces the game into ECS mode. If it runs in AGA mode it runs slow (has always done this in AGA mode, it would run over 100% all the time) but running in ECS mode in the past few updates has pretty much run almost always at 50FPS with only the occasional stutter/slowdown and the % gauge showing 90-95%, but as of the latest update it's running really bad, bizarrely the % is still showing 90-95% but it's running really slow, never getting to 50FPS and sometimes down to 40FPS.
Tried it in AGA mode too, as a comparison in the latest update the shows 105-110% utilization (which it always has) and the framerates in that go down as low as 35FPS. But as I said AGA mode has always run slow, I have been running it in ECS mode for speed.

I don't understand why this game in particular runs slow, (although try The Last Pixel, that runs so slow in game it's painful), but it has been running good in the last few updates, but with this update it's bad. But as I noted, it's not just that game, I've noticed it happening almost everywhere, in my ClassicWB install it's frequently momentarily dropping to 46FPS, and I notice it when playing some games under ClassicWB (for example the Metro Siege demo), and even after loading AmiBench and just sitting on the desktop I notice frequent framedrops to 47FPS. None of these framedrops used to happen before this latest update!

This is such a pity, as I've really been enjoying playing on my AGA600GS over the past few months, but with this latest update I'm more than tempted to go back to my Turbo Chameleon with the Minimig core, and with this current situation right now December 4 and the release of The A1200 can't come fast enough for me.

[broadblues]

I've located a potential issue, with theaded rendering being disabled for targets where is should be running. Will look in more depth tomorrow.