pSX stops reading gamepads problem

[onoff456]

Hello there! It's my first post here in the pSX forums. Before I say anything more though I want to congratulate pSX developer or devteam for a great job!

I am having a problem with pSX: stops reading any gamepad input for about 5-10 seconds. The symptons repeat every three minutes or so.

My computer setup is current and up to date: AMD64 FX cpu, 1GB of ram, sound blaster card, win xp pro, an nvidia 6200 card. Everything runs fine and has the latests drivers/updates installed.

I first spotted this problem when running the US version of Elemental Gearbolt. The gamepad would periodically (about every three minutes) get "stuck" on whatever direction I was pressing at the time. After getting stuck it wouldn't respond to any other button presses (eg, start, X, O, square, triangle, shoulder buttons).

At first I tought it would be a hardware problem, so I tried different pads. I got three USB gamepads/adapters: 1 logitech pc cordless rumblepad, 1 Trio-Linker USB playstation adapter and 1 adaptoid USB adapter (for N64 controls). In all cases, the problem was the same. I took all the troubleshooting steps possible to make it work:

* for every pad I started a clean install of pSX.
* for every pad I re-started my computer.
* for every pad I tried playing off a cd image and off the real cd.
* every pad was tried as the *only* pad connected to the machine.
* all pads were connected in different USB ports.
* Made sure there were no backgrounds programs running (eg, anti-virus, IM programs, etc.)
* No other USB was connected to the computer. Gamepad had the USB bus all for itself.
* all pads were connected both in the computer's own usb ports and also a self-powered USB 2.0 hub.
* I tried pSX 1.7 and 1.8 using SCPH1001 bios. Both exhibit same behavior.
* I tried different computers. pSX would still stop reading gamepads in the manner described above.
* I tried different games. I used Raystorm (U), Terra Diver (J), Galaxian 3(J), Metal Gear Solid(U), Soulblade(U), Wipeout 3 (U), Einhander (U). Gamepads got "stuck" in all games.

All of these games runs fine with the same pads on two different psx emulators (epsxe and psxeven). I am very confident my gamepads and adapters are in good and working order as they work without problem on every other PC game and emulator I have tried them on.

Though I could play these games on other emus, there is a strong incentive to use pSX: It's one of the few playstation emu's that can play music based PSX cd's off images without problems. I hope this information is useful to the developers of pSX. If there is anything I can do to help let me know.

[pSX Author]

Try this WIP build:

psxemulator.gazaxian.com/psxfin_wip.rar

[Ultima]

Hm, I don't know about the other games, but RayStorm just does that regardless of whether you're using a gamepad or not... I know because I tested RayStorm across several versions of pSX.

[onoff456]

So you think the problem affects keyboard input as well? Interesting.

Thanks for the quick reply. Maybe I am jumping the gun here but so far the WIP works fine! I tried it on a couple of games and have not experienced any input reading lapses. I will test it more and let you guys know if the bug still shows up.

[Shaolian]

Yes, I was having a similar problem with the game "SuperLite Series 1500 - The Tetris (NTSC-J) (SLPM-86581)". After a period of 2-3 minutes, the game won't register any input both from the joypad and keyboard for around 5 seconds. Needless to say, that was a FATAL problem in Tetris :-)

This problem, however, has only occur in the above game so far and not in every other game I've tested on pSX 1.8 so far.

[onoff456]

Have you tried the game you mentioned with the above wip?

[Shaolian]

Yeah, the problem seems to be gone from the WIP version! No more lag whatsoever. I've gone through the said Tetris game for almost 20 minutes (until I die) with both joypad and keyboard without it occuring. Bravo!

[patrickp]

onoff456 said:

Hello there! It's my first post here in the pSX forums. Before I say anything more though I want to congratulate pSX developer or devteam for a great job!

Incidentally, onoff456, the first person to respond to your post, pSX Author, is the pSX Emulator developer. Nobody else.

There are others contributing; TheCloudOfSmoke has contributed icons to the emulator, and there have been no less than 3 frontends posted for it (Ultima's, now at v 1.07 seems the favourite and most mature). But the emulator is entirely pSX Author's.

[Ultima]

(patrickp, you should update your link, as I uploaded an updated v1.07 of my frontend)

[onoff456]

Incidentally, onoff456, the first person to respond to your post, pSX Author, is the pSX Emulator developer. Nobody else.

Cool thanks. I am glad the wip fixes the problem. Wasn't expecting such a short turn-around! Thank you all.

[patrickp]

ultima said:

(patrickp, you should update your link, as I uploaded an updated v1.07 of my frontend)

Already done, Ultima!

[Ultima]

Nope, I uploaded a newer version of v1.07 is what I meant =o

It has the full icon group by TheCloudOfSmoke (increases the archive size by 5KiB), and checks if there's an "x" in the resolution thing before actually changing the size of the pSX window.

[patrickp]

Odd. I noticed that you'd mentioned about updating the Frontend, so I downloaded again when I made that last post and compared the MD5 with my original download/upload - they were the same...

Have just downloaded again (from your sig - GM's QuickSharing thing doesn't seem to work ); will check again.

Edit: ah! got it at last - may have been a poxy proxy problem (my ISP is excellent in other ways - 10Mb uncapped - but they require that their users go through HTTP proxies - which don't always update as often as they might... will amend.

[Gamesoul Master]

Not sure how you had problems patrickp... I just clicked my link, clicked "Download File" after about 2-3 seconds of waiting, and it downloaded for me instantly, without problem.

[patrickp]

Ah, I discovered what it was. Adblock+ was blocking some of the links on the page; obviously the page doesn't allow the download link 'till it's completely loaded.