Failed Assertions

[Maratanos]

So while I have some programming experience, I really don't have enough to deal with what I'm noticing.

First of all, some statistics, in case it's important.

System:
Intel Dual Core 1.8 GHz
2 GB RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon x1400
Windows XP x86
Rev1106

Plugins:
DirectX
HLE
Simple

Probably most of that doesn't matter, but anyway. The problem is this: When the program is compiled into DebugFast mode, thus making certain messages visible, I repeatedly find myself facing the following failed assertion:

WARNING: Reset a not empty and not readable fifo.

It tends to occur when, at certain points in time during a game's execution, the framerate drops below a certain point.

What gives?

[shuffle2]

r1096 - dolphin-emu - Google Code

__________________
AMD X2 5200+(65Watt)@3.2GHz | GTX280 | 4GB RAM | Vista Ultimate x64

[memberTwo]

Originally Posted by Maratanos

Probably most of that doesn't matter, but anyway. The problem is this: When the program is compiled into DebugFast mode, thus making certain messages visible, I repeatedly find myself facing the following failed assertion:

WARNING: Reset a not empty and not readable fifo.

It tends to occur when, at certain points in time during a game's execution, the framerate drops below a certain point.

What gives?

Well, actually, this matters a lot. The fact that this debug assert msg happens a lot is not normal imo because it break fifo stream. It's due to a set/reset fifo cmd that shouldn't occur too often to be efficient.
It could be due to some games devs laziness... or more probably some kind of fifo's self-recovery behaviour that happens because the emulated fifo is still not correct atm
Anyway, I can't figure out what really request a complete/clean fifo flush and that's mostly why you can see this msg

Don't forget to mention which game have this msg/slowdown and if you use single/dual core mode plz.

[Maratanos]

As for which game, I only have access to Zelda: Wind Waker at the moment, but since this is a relatively new problem which I haven't had in earlier revisions of Dolphin, I'm assuming it's a problem with the emulator at the moment.

So far, here's what I've learned:

It occurs only when Dual Core and Dynarec are enabled.

It APPEARS to only happen some of the time. That is to say, in absence of more rigorous testing, it appears to happen under one of two circumstances.

1. It will occur with startling frequency if certain circumstances collide. I have absolutely no idea what these circumstances are, but the symptom that they cause is that, instead of the usual 50-60 FPS that the loading screens pass at, they pass at closer to 30-40 FPS. It's not exactly the actual FPS, though, because when, as a result of turning off some of the optimizations I mentioned above, it stops happening, it still doesn't happen even at low FPSs.

In this formulation of the error message, it would appear that it only appears when Idle Skipping and Lock cores are also enabled.

Now I confess, I'm kindof forgetful and for a while during the testing I accidentally swapped out DebugFast plug-ins for Debug plugins. Certainly it significantly slowed down the whole emulator. But I did notice something very odd. The error would occur with radically greater frequency. Still not quite sure what that means (could obviously mean absolutely nothing, too) but since I know about testing I wanted you to have complete information.

2. The bug will also occur regularly and repeatedly when the ALT key is pressed. Either ALT key will work, and it does not matter whether ALT is mapped to a Gamecube button.


Make of this what you will.