Exodus 2.1 release soon (Now available!)

Official support forum for the Exodus Emulation Platform

Moderator: Nemesis

HardWareMan
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Re: Exodus 2.1 release soon (Now available!)

Post by HardWareMan » Wed Sep 26, 2018 11:53 am

That's weird because hwm.us.to is my own home server. What kind of error you get when trying to download a file with that link?

Also you can try this one ("скачать" = "download").

I figured out what's going on with my home server. My ISP have some problems at IX point. They claim that they trying to fix that problems ASAP.

At last my ISP solved that problem. Previous link should work.

thedoug
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Re: Exodus 2.1 release soon (Now available!)

Post by thedoug » Tue Jan 15, 2019 3:59 pm

Hi, is there an way to trace to a file? The trace window only shows the last instructions, but I want to log everything to a file, like most debuggers do. How can I do that?

And how can I dock the Watchpoints windows inside the interface? Here it keeps only floating and I can't place it inside other subwindows. Is this a bug?

Thanks.....

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Re: Exodus 2.1 release soon (Now available!)

Post by Nemesis » Fri Mar 08, 2019 5:02 am

I was actually surprised to see I haven't added this feature. I've done this form of capture in the past, but I think I hacked it into dev builds for internal debugging before. I've just added continuous trace logging to an output file in a commit to the repository. If you're able to perform a build yourself, you'll be able to get your hands on this feature now. It'll be included with the next official release version.

As for the watchpoints window, the entire window docking system didn't exist in the past, and none of the windows were dockable. In order to become "docking friendly", the old dialogs often require rework. The dialogs I haven't done this for are currently marked as non-dockable. While I've converted most panels already, the watchpoints window is one I haven't gotten to yet. It'll become dockable at some point in the future (probably looking quite different afterwards), but for the time being it's set to not allow docking.

thedoug
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Re: Exodus 2.1 release soon (Now available!)

Post by thedoug » Wed Mar 20, 2019 6:42 pm

Thanks Nemesis...

I don't know if other people has this problem, but here the debugger crashes all the time randomly.
The only stable version is 1.0.0, but versions 2.0.1 and 2.1.0 crashes all the time.

I'm using it on Windows 7 64 bits and on Linux with wine. In both cases the emulator crashes randomly. To me version 2.0.1 is unusable.
Version 2.1.0 is a little better compared to 2.0.1, but after some usage the emulator crashes. The trigger seems to be play with the interface in some ways. For example, if I add a breakpoint sometimes it crashes immediately and sometimes after some seconds/minutes. If I only load the game the emulator works, but if I play with the debugger interface it crashes randomly.

Version 1.0.0 is much slower, but works fine. So right now I can only use version 1.0.0.

Do you know what could be the problem? It seems that you have increased the speed a lot in versions 2+ but something is getting out of sync.

Nemesis
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Re: Exodus 2.1 release soon (Now available!)

Post by Nemesis » Wed Mar 20, 2019 10:44 pm

I wasn't aware of these issues, and it's not something I've encountered. I'll try and reproduce it. For some more info though, when you say it "crashes", what exactly do you see? Does the program terminate with some kind of error, or does it "lock up" and become unresponsive? Do you have any crash reports that have been generated under a "Crash Reports" subdirectory of the emulator folder?

thedoug
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Re: Exodus 2.1 release soon (Now available!)

Post by thedoug » Thu Mar 21, 2019 1:03 am

Hi, when the problem happens the emulator locks up and become unresponsive.
Sometimes it freezes immediately after clicking in something in the interface and sometimes the fps drops, the sound start breaking for some moments and then it freezes.

And yes, there are some crash reports in the "Crash Reports" subdirectory. How can I send them to you?

Nemesis
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Re: Exodus 2.1 release soon (Now available!)

Post by Nemesis » Fri Mar 22, 2019 5:28 am

I thought you could send attachments here via PM, but it looks like I'm mistaken. Best way is probably using a file drop service like https://uploadfiles.io and PM'ing me the link. If the program hangs rather than crashes it won't usually generate a crash report, but you can create one manually while it's locked up. The next time (or two or three) this happens for you, when you're sure the emulator is totally frozen, open the Windows task manager, rightclick on the process and select "Create dump file". That'll spit out a .dmp file that I can use to debug what caused the lockup. You'll want to zip it up, as it'll be a bit big. Unlike the more "lean and mean" dump files that get generated internally when a crash occurs, these ones are set to dump the entire process memory block.

ryanfaescotland
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Re: Exodus 2.1 release soon (Now available!)

Post by ryanfaescotland » Sun Mar 31, 2019 4:38 pm

Hey Nemesis, great to see you still working on this. I've just managed to create a bit perfect disassembly of Fatal Labyrinth in less than an hour thanks to Exodus, and it has been instrumental in my Toejam and Earl disassembly as well so from the bottom of my heart thanks for the brilliant work on the awesome tool!

Now that I've got my T&E disassembly I'm getting really back into it in, splitting out the code and data, adding meaningful label names, commenting it up and all that fun stuff.

I have the same issues as above with the random crashes during active disassembly, so if you've got the time and the interest I'd be up for trying to get to the bottom of it. I've just updated to the latest build (2.1) and have checked and it still happens. I could also rebuild the previous build from source if needed (although it seems to run a lot slower when I build myself so I tend not to) so will go get the latest set up as well.

If we can get to the bottom of the crashing, and maybe the slower running, I'd happily add my dodgy C++ coding skill into the mix.

Nemesis
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Re: Exodus 2.1 release soon (Now available!)

Post by Nemesis » Tue Apr 02, 2019 4:09 am

I might have to check out your disassembly. TJ&E is one of my favorites from the Mega Drive, and the theme music is actually the current ringtone on my phone. :)

I'm certainly up to helping with the random crash problem. If you can give me a bit more info about cases where you're seeing the issue occur, and what you're doing at the time, I'll try and reproduce. If you have any crash reports, if you can send them to me as per the instructions I left for thedoug, I can make a start at looking at them too.

In terms of the emulator running slower when you do your own build, that's actually expected. You see, before an official release I use the "Profile-guided optimization" feature in Visual Studio, where I generate a special build designed to gather runtime information on performance. I then launch that build, and go through some parts of various games with throttling turned off (Good cases including Sonic 2 1 player, two player, water level, Vectorman intro, and other bits and bobs). That spits out data that can be fed back into the compiler to perform better optimization, based on where actual profiled bottlenecks were at runtime. This can do crazy things like make sure sections of code are co-located to avoid cache misses, as well as playing around with what's inlined where, what loops are unrolled, and so on. I see a healthy performance bump from doing this. I wrote up some notes on how to do this in the "Source Code" page on the website. Generally I instrument just a few cores together (IE, Z80 and 68K one time, YM2612 and SN76489 another, 315-5353 by itself, etc), as if you instrument the entire thing together it runs too slow to be usable, and throws off the actual performance characteristics too much anyway. If you perform this kind of optimization yourself, you should be able to generate builds which have equivalent performance to the release versions. I don't personally bother doing this except for official release builds though, as it's a bit of a pain. If I was doing more regular releases, I'd probably rig up some kind of process that can run through the test cases in an automated fashion, but I haven't gone to that level yet.

ryanfaescotland
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Re: Exodus 2.1 release soon (Now available!)

Post by ryanfaescotland » Tue Apr 02, 2019 12:00 pm

No crash reports generated so far, just becoming unresponsive and eventually displaying the typical Windows crash dialog. A couple of entries in the Windows Event log but nothing I think would be useful. I'll run it again tonight and see if I can generate / document anything useful. Away from home just now so have limited ability to upload videos and the like but I'm sure I can get something. I'll also make a separate thread to discuss it as I don't want to bring down the 2.1 release celebrations with my crashing! (It's here viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3005)

I'll also point out though that it could be related to my PC. I bought the latest Toejam and Earl game on Steam and it suffers the same problem, runs for a few minutes and then just gives up with little error information. I plan on dropping in some more RAM at a later date as it runs like a dog so once I do that all my problems may be solved (a guy can dream!)

Current stats for info though: Windows 7, i5 with 6GB RAM.
Last edited by ryanfaescotland on Sat Apr 06, 2019 11:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Nemesis
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Re: Exodus 2.1 release soon (Now available!)

Post by Nemesis » Wed Apr 03, 2019 1:08 am

Memory could be a problem. 6GB of RAM isn't a lot nowadays (IE, Google Chrome is using 2GB by itself right now on my laptop). Exodus uses large lookup tables to accelerate performance in some areas, and you should expect it to use up to 1GB of RAM in normal operation. Active disassembly however effectively has unbounded memory requirements, and it could easily consume several GB of memory when mapping out a ROM. Combine that with memory usage from other programs running on your machine, and you could easily be hitting memory limits.

I can suggest one thing though. When Exodus has crashed, leave it for a minute and don't click the option to terminate it. Instead, bring up the Windows task manager, find the process, rightclick on it and select "Create dump file". That'll spit out a full .dmp file for the process, from which I can debug what was happening at the time. Zip that up and upload it somewhere, and I'll be able to take a look.

thedoug
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Re: Exodus 2.1 release soon (Now available!)

Post by thedoug » Wed Sep 04, 2019 5:30 pm

Hi Nemesis, do you have any roadmap for updates? Right now I can only use version 1.0.0 (barely). All 2.x versions crashs all the time. I tried it in several computers but versions 2.x are unusable. The crashs are random and frequent.
Version 1.0.0 also crash sometimes but is more stable.

Right now I'm using gens_r57shell_mod_r665 and Exodus for Genesis debugging.
I'm using gens_r57shell_mod_r665 for general debugging and to tracing (exodus has no trace to file feature!) because it's stable. But this debugger has some bugs, like the dump to file feature, and has a lot of missing features compared to Exodus. So I use Exodus 1.0.0 for some missing features whenever I can (if I'm luck enough to not get a crash).

Exodus is an amazing project, but sadly it's almost unusable right because all these crashs.

Nemesis
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Re: Exodus 2.1 release soon (Now available!)

Post by Nemesis » Sun Sep 08, 2019 12:54 pm

When it crashes, do you get any crash report files generated? Check for a "Crash Reports" folder under the directory holding Exodus.exe. If there are crash report files there, send them through to me and I can debug the issues. I haven't seen stability problems myself.

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Re: Exodus 2.1 release soon (Now available!)

Post by Nemesis » Sun Sep 08, 2019 12:57 pm

I see I asked you the same thing in this thread earlier in the year. Unless I've forgotten though (and please forgive me if I have) I don't think I've got any crash report files from you yet though. If you could follow my previous instructions too about manually generating a minidump if the program locks up without crashing, I can debug that too. That's really the only way for me to address these issues you're seeing. If I can't reproduce it, there's nowhere for me to even begin looking without a minidump.

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Re: Exodus 2.1 release soon (Now available!)

Post by ryanfaescotland » Thu Jun 11, 2020 12:52 am

Hey Nemesis, how goes!? Been a while since I posted here and my how the world has changed! Hope you are keeping safe and well.

I have some exciting news, well kind of exciting, I finally splashed out and bought a new PC, a 16Gig i7, so I'm looking forward to getting Exodus up and running on it and hopefully getting stuck back into things.

Will let you know if performance has improved on the new rig and can hopefully help to keep Exodus growing.

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