Thinkgeek


lnx64

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Were the ThinkGeek Wiz's freezing on some emulators ever solved?

A friend is getting me the ThinkGeek Wiz to replace my dead Wiz. It's one that was just ordered from their site as PlayAsia no longer has them.
 
lnx64 said:
Were the ThinkGeek Wiz's freezing on some emulators ever solved?

A friend is getting me the ThinkGeek Wiz to replace my dead Wiz. It's one that was just ordered from their site as PlayAsia no longer has them.
I bought mine from ThinkGeek around the beginning of the year and have had no freezing issues except very rarely in PocketSNES. I've also heard that TG is great about returns.
 
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Well, got mine, and it locks up within 5 seconds at the menu on DrPocketSNES.

This is nonsens.

And I tried Ginge, 2fps is all I get with PocketSNES through it.
 
lnx64 said:
Well, got mine, and it locks up within 5 seconds at the menu on DrPocketSNES.

This is nonsens.

And I tried Ginge, 2fps is all I get with PocketSNES through it.
Which version of PocketSNES are you trying to use?
 
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The latest one on OpenHandhelds.org, http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/wiz.cgi?0,0,0,0,71,479

I think I found the cause, the menu looks like it runs at 200MHz.. The ThinkGeek Wiz's don't run that good at 200MHz. Even PicoDrive eventually crashes at that speed whereas the other Wiz wouldn't have a problem with that speed.

What they need is one where the menu works at the native 533MHz clockrate.
 
I want to see PocketSNES get a re-write. I'm not a programmer, just an IT person who likes to enjoy a game, not fiddle around with something.

If I race to a ROM, the games play just fine. But that's annoying. It's clearly a bug in the menu, and I seriously think it has to do with how it messes with the CPU clock.

The readme for the latest one even admits to setting the clock rate as low as in the 60MHz range..
 
I've been too busy to dabble with Wiz development, but I took a look at the PocketSNES source and am seeing a lot of calls in the menu code to change the CPU speed. I'm thinking the easiest thing might be to comment them all out and make it always run at the emulation speed.

If I get time I might try to compile the source, and if that works I'd then start hacking out the CPU speed changes. No promises though.

Source code is here in case someone else wants to take a shot at it: http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/caanoo.cgi?0,0,0,0,46,683
 
Got mine for Christmas and PocketSNES will NOT run unless it is through GinGE. I also cannot get FinalBurn to work despite a LOT of tinkering and help from a nice fellow here on the boards. I don't know if it's just my Wiz or if anyone else that got a Wiz from ThinkGeek over Christmas.

Inx64, download this version of PocketSNES: My link The new version runs very badly. With the old version from the link I provided you will get better results though GinGE, a lot better. I do think that it would run faster by itself, but I am grateful GinGE makes it run at all.

No one ever got an official word as to the cause. We think it was a bad batch, or one produced more cheaply to be sold at $99 for Christmas instead of the full price. I tried to return my Wiz to ThinkGeek recently because a button broke but they wouldn't do anything about it. Had to send it to Korea and the customer service rep I dealt with said they do not cover if emulators do not run properly, although it clearly is a defect somewhere.
 
Yea I don't think it's a bad batch, just that certain CPU's can't underclock so far as PocketSNES wants it to do.

If it was a bad batch, other emulators would crash too..

That's my theory..
 
lnx64 said:
Yea I don't think it's a bad batch, just that certain CPU's can't underclock so far as PocketSNES wants it to do.

If it was a bad batch, other emulators would crash too..

That's my theory..

CPUs are not the same for all wiz? I dont understand what makes the thinkgeek wiz fail, hardware is different?
 
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The CPU is the same, but they have different tolerances.

Just like how some don't overclock as high as others, I think some don't downclock as low as others either.

If anything, it could honestly also be a RAM thing, if the CPU goes too slow, memory timings get affected. I don't know the specifics. But I seriously have a feeling it's just a tolerance thing, and an odd reason for PocketSNES to use odd clockrates in the menu. The readme claims it's to save battery, but come on, your barely in the menu, it's just there to set it up and load a game..
 
Well the GP2X, Wiz and Caanoo versions of PocketSNES 7.2.0 are all built from the same source code, although there are of course checks in the code that cause it to behave differently depending on which platform it's building for. The CPU clock speeds to be used in the menus does appear to be one of those platform-dependent differences from what I remember seeing last night.
 
I just don't get the reason for an underclock on the menu, only to be overclocked for gameplay. You might as well make the menu a native clock.
 
lnx64 said:
I just don't get the reason for an underclock on the menu, only to be overclocked for gameplay. You might as well make the menu a native clock.
Running the menu at "native" speed sounds like to most reasonable approach to me too.
 
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I've gotten my Wiz from ThinkGeek as well, and I hardly have any freezing issues. The only times that my Wiz has frozen up were when I've been constantly saving and loading states in both my SNES and GBA emulators, but that'll usually happen, right? Aside from that, my Wiz has been great.
 
Shouldn't happen. My old Wiz never locked up saving and loading states..
 
lnx64 said:
I just don't get the reason for an underclock on the menu, only to be overclocked for gameplay. You might as well make the menu a native clock.
I would generally expect underclocking in a emulator menu, to save battery. The menu can be seen as a game pause function (if it's possible to return to the game). Especially for overclocked games, I would expect the clock goes back to default speed at least. But then, why not less than that to save battery (if it's within tolerance of all devices). Sometimes, I get interrupted while playing for more than a couple of minutes. In this case it's handy to pause the game and save battery. But maybe it's just me.
 
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Yea, but in this case, it may be causing the Wiz to freeze up which isn't worth it.

Since the Caanoo had a highly similar issue, I'm surprised no one caught the similarities and thought about the CPU clock causing the issue..
 
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