FE3 issue with FE3 "software packs".

[highinfidelity]

Good morning everybody, please excuse the new dumb question and please think also to the most obvious answers, as I'm really not deep into these things.

I own a FE3 and I tried to copy on its SD memory card two different "complete packets" of cart dumps, programs etc. built up by two different users, each coming with a "loader" (and I suppose that the loader works fine on the other guy's VIC, with no need to edit it on my side).

It seems that I can't get the whole software package to work correctly on my FE3, only a part of it.

If I delete basically all but the "carts" directory, then the menu to access titles is correctly displayed by pressing F3, I can load cart dumps and play with them etc., everything seems perfectly fine.

But if there are other directories alongside with the "carts" directory, nothing appears by pressing F3. By pressing F3 the FE3 "thinks something" for few seconds, then it reverts back to the main menu (the one with the listing of F-keys funcions) and nothing happens.

Any ideas? Should perhaps anything be configured differently than the default (memory expansion? address?) to have the "full package" working?

[orion70]

I should add, one of these packages is my own, which is Ops's collection with an extra folder added containing additional stuff. It works like a charm for me, either pressing F3 (carts menu), or loading from the BASIC prompt with SJLOAD.

[srowe]

I own a FE3 and I tried to copy on its SD memory card two different "complete packets" of cart dumps, programs etc. built up by two different users, each coming with a "loader" (and I suppose that the loader works fine on the other guy's VIC, with no need to edit it on my side).

It seems that I can't get the whole software package to work correctly on my FE3, only a part of it.

If you have two collections each with their own loader file the simplest option is to unpack them to two separate directories then create a loader file in the parent directory which then chain-loads them.

So given two directories collectiona and collectionb save the following as loader

Code: Select all

10 "Collection A"
20 +@"cd:collectiona"
30 +reload
40 "Collection B"
50 +@"cd:collectionb"
60 +reload

[highinfidelity]

No, no... I have tried with one at a time. There is either "collection A" or "collection B" alone on the SD card.

Each of them doesn't work.

Is there something I am missing? It was described as an operation as easy as to copy all the files and directories to the SD card.

[srowe]

How are you preparing and copying the SD card? What OS and tools are you using? Could you try formatting the SD card then unpacking just one collection, does that work? What happens if you then add more files/directories? When you're seeing this problem what does a directory listing look like?

[orion70]

I read somewhere in the past that the Final Expansion fails to read correctly some modern (i.e., big) SD cards. Could find some very old cards (32 to 256 Mb) years ago via Ebay, and formatted them with a FAT32 file system. You can also sort entries with SDsorter, a freeware utility - this makes things easier to read on screen and maybe faster.

[highinfidelity]

The OS is Windows 10, supposing that this may have any effect (I strongly doubt it).

The SD card is indeed an old one with 256 Mb memory, but I've also tried with even older ones featuring 32 Mb (in this case with only sub-portions of the software packets, as the whole packet won't fit these ones) with no better luck.

The card is formatted FAT32 as per FE3 user's manual. W10 offers various options in the context of the FAT32 format, some of which work, some of which deliver an unusable SD card (and one then wonders why these options are offered at all...). Should anyone know any FAT32 sub-specifications that are "particularly" compatible with the FE3, I'd be glad to try them out (although again I believe this makes no difference).

All other questions were already addressed in my first post: yes single portions of the "software packet" will work - namely the "carts" subdirectory alone works like a charm - and what happens when the SD features the full "software package" is that by pressing the F3 key the FE3 "thinks" for a while but then reverts back to the main menu with nothing done and no possibility to access any menu to select the titles of the roms/programs.

[srowe]

I've used a number of 2GB SD cards without any issues. I have no experience with writing to them from Windows.

When reading the loader file with F3 fails can you then read the directory contents at all with $ at all?

[orion70]

The more I think about the issues you encountered, the more I guess they are due to a hardware problem. Hope not for you, of course.

[highinfidelity]

Why should it be so? It works perfectly with the "roms" directory. I have also (coincidentally) checked if it loads a single isolated program (invader.prg) which also needs adding 3K ram, and everything worked as a breeze.

[orion70]

Don't know, as I said it's just a guess. I'm not an hardware guy. Another guess could be that it's a firmware issue. Have you tried installing the most recent version?

[highinfidelity]

I tried to update the firmware. As usual the repository mentioned on the user's manual is long time gone and only a japanese (chinese?) writing appears. I then searched and found this other page which hopingly is not a mock-up:

https://ops.github.io/FE3-Firmware/

Apparently the firmare has been indeed updated, as some statements about the status of the process appeared on screen. However, nothing really changed in the end: I am still unable to get to the menu of the "full package", the only difference being that now the FE3 doesn't revert back to the main menu after having pressed F3, it freezes on the titles listing page.

A directory listing with "$" is correctly displayed when a partly working SD card is inserted (i.e. one with only the "carts" directory).

If an SD card with the "full package" is inserted, after typing "$" and return, the VIC freezes and needs to be reset.

[orion70]

What if this was a VIC's hardware problem? I have several VIC-20s, and one of them (only that one) can't load stuff from the Megacart. I can't explain why, as all the parameters are OK within the test cartridge. But it happens. Have you tried with another VIC?

[srowe]

What version of SD2IEC firmware do you have? What does @ show immediately after power on?

[highinfidelity]

73,SD2IEC V0.10.2,00,00