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Bug in the Pro Fighter X 2++ serie

 
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Mystic_Merlin



Joined: 15 Oct 2007
Posts: 496
Location: Bangkok

PostPosted: Tue Jul 13, 2021 10:11 am    Post subject: Bug in the Pro Fighter X 2++ serie Reply with quote

I believe I read a post recently mentioning an issue reading floppies on a PFX2 but I can't find it, it's probably related to this bug.

Anyway, I've noticed I was sometimes getting problems on my PFX2 displaying the TOC of some floppies that were perfectly working on other copiers.
Basically it would display something like "A Z T.." instead of the filename.

It turns out it's a bug that's plaguing all the copiers post PFX 2 such as the FX64, Smart Disc, Turbo X, any copier that has the bios with the scrolling flags in the background.

The issue is that these BIOS can't handle a mix of lower case and uppercase characters on the 8+3 filename.
Filename needs to be all lower or all UPPER.
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Trenton_net



Joined: 29 Jun 2006
Posts: 233

PostPosted: Wed Jul 21, 2021 6:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm supprised this wasn't identified sooner. I guess most would not experience this unless they renamed files by hand, as generally copiers use Uppercase letters by default?
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Mystic_Merlin



Joined: 15 Oct 2007
Posts: 496
Location: Bangkok

PostPosted: Mon Jul 26, 2021 6:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Indeed, copiers always save in uppercase as it's the only charset available.
I believe case must be ignored or automatically converted to upper in most BIOS dating back to the Magicom as it never caused any issue before.

I only realized it when I ran a batch conversion on a SNES set and many games were not displaying properly on the late pro fighter serie.


Another interesting bug regarding the charset is how some copiers are unable to load or display anything past digit 9.
If you split a rom in more than 9 files, the next digits will be ":", ";", "<" ...and so on. Even ucon64 will use these characters but the files won't be written on Windows as they're forbidden extensions, I haven't tried on Linux though.

Similarly, the Supercom Partner has a hidden memory test function when you hit B while resetting the machine. It will countdown from 512 with a 32M ram board and :024 with 64M.



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dbjh



Joined: 02 Aug 2003
Posts: 167

PostPosted: Tue Aug 17, 2021 4:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mystic_Merlin wrote:
Another interesting bug regarding the charset is how some copiers are unable to load or display anything past digit 9.
If you split a rom in more than 9 files, the next digits will be ":", ";", "<" ...and so on.

The limitation of maximum 9 parts in itself I would not call a bug. There is never a true need for more parts, because the sizes of the parts can be adjusted to fit the number of parts into 9 or fewer.
It is a bug that for example my SWC 2.8cc asks for the part that has suffix ".:" after loading 9 parts.

Mystic_Merlin wrote:
Even ucon64 will use these characters but the files won't be written on Windows as they're forbidden extensions, I haven't tried on Linux though.

That used to be true. The limitation is the filesystem. On Linux's native filesystems for example ".:" and ".;" are valid. Even on Windows's native filesystem ".;" is valid. The bottleneck is of course what filesystem the copier supports on diskettes, which is usually FAT12. FAT does not allow the characters you mentioned.
uCON64 has limited the minimum part size to 4 Mbit for a very long time, avoiding the issue for files up to and including 32 Mbit. The latest version finally also addressed it for the few ROM dumps that are larger.
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