Emulator

JMC asked me to narrow down builds that did and didn't work

Can you do that please?

Augh... Fiiiiiine.

Around what time was the IOS work done?

Y'know what? All the IOS changes have "IOS" in front of them, so I'll just test those builds.

It would probably be faster for you if you just did a regular binary search....

take the working build and the broken one, test the one in the middle. Take the result and make that your new working/broken build, and repeat.

Did build numbers start counting up from 1? If so, that's an okay idea, thanks.

The builds that come after 5.0 start at 5.0-1 (roughly).

5.0-3727 - bad
3699 - bad
3677 - bad
3418 - bad
3412 - bad
3004 - bad
2207 - bad
2204 - GOOD

Also, Dolphin hangs whenever you try to stop emulation while in the Gecko menu

Err... Wait...

I only got the error message once on 2207. BACK TO WORK FOR ME!

2431 is iffy. It doesn't flurry the messages to me on startup, but it certainly isn't playing nice with PM.

In any event, 2204 is a build with no issues.

I forgot to mention above, this is me executing boot.elf and then closing out of the Gecko OS menu.

The error messages start at 06:20:152

Please find the actual version that affects Gecko OS. There have been so many changes and fixes that it's hard and time-consuming for someone who doesn't know much about the issue to figure out what the problem is.

(The log doesn't show anything interesting, sadly.)

Aww man... I REALLY don't wanna go through all that digging again.

2204 was the best I could find though! And I know about as much about the issue as you guys do!

I guess this is another issue to go into the "too many variables" pile?

Well, I'll try again. But it's not gonna be fun what with Dolphin hanging whenever you stop emulation while on the Gecko menu.

Okay it stops at 3315, but I still get bad behavior.

I may as well note that starting at 3268 is when the options on the Gecko menu for "Launch Channel", "Launch Rebooter", and "Rebooter Options" disappear. They haven't been back since.

GeckoOS is still working for me in latest master so I can't really say much on this. I can even boot mods like Brawl Minus, use alt-dol, another interesting features properly.

Aww man... Why's it gotta be me?

What do I gotta do to fix this? What CAN I do?

I think one of the first things to do is to maybe start fresh with a NAND? Maybe yours got corrupted at some point. The second thing to do is to figure out why all these weird builds are affecting it. None of the bisects are making sense, and when my testing disagrees with it, that's problematic for anyone trying to look into it as we don't have a consistent reproduction of the behavior.

How do I get a fresh NAND? Does that mean losing all my save data along with it?

You can always create a second NAND, set it up, and then try that, while keeping your first NAND separate.

What files do I copy? Where are they? How do I create a NAND? Should I back up my save files? How do I back up my save files?

I'm in the dark, man.

Nothing to copy, since you're not going to use the fresh NAND for anything other than testing the issue... Just download the latest dev build, create a portable.txt file next to the executable (which will make Dolphin use a separate, clean profile + NAND), and try to reproduce your issue using that version and profile.

Btw, "Launch Channel" disappearing is entirely normal. It's the expected behaviour, and it matches what you would see on a real Wii when using an up-to-date IOS. (That should only be happening after 5.0-3274; looks like your bisect isn't totally correct.)

Well it appears that may have done the trick.

As I mentioned earlier, Gecko started up saying "Using IOS 58" below the selections and then it requested to download IOS 36. After downloading the IOS and having to manually reset (Pressing B didn't reset like it said it would...), things appear to be okay.

I got and still get flooded with "Invalid read from 0x0000000c, PC = 0x80e4ee9c" when booting Gecko and launching the game, but it appears to work like it used to, grabbing and everything. I also still get flooded with various error messages when closing out of the Gecko menu until Dolphin finally crashes, but I won't have to be doing that anymore hopefully.

What should I do next? How do I get a new NAND without losing all my save data?

I wonder if the invalid reads are from an incorrectly setup Project M...

I think you can copy the savefiles over as they're everything in the 00010000 Wii/Title

Want my sd.raw? It's 1GB, so it may take a while to send...

And as for my save files, isn't there an "Export all Wii saves" thing under Tools? Or do you think just copying over the 00010000 would go without a hitch?

Thanks for leaving me hangin' again...

http://www.mediafire.com/file/m3qtnh3gz4q6b4n/sd.raw

Have an SD card.

Well since I got left out to dry again, I did the work myself. Again.

I made a fresh .raw of Project M 3.6. Same errors, same bugged out music, same everything.

And if it was an incorrectly setup P:M then why would it be running perfectly on vanilla 5.0?

Listen, I'm at the end of my rope. Do you want video of it all happening so you can see it in real time? I just don't know what's going on or what I can do...

There are a ton of people who put stuff on the issue tracker all the time and I miss messages. I have no idea what to do from here on out.

Considering how much debugging would have to be done, it's imperative that a developer be able to reproduce this mess. I'll try loading your SD card and seeing what happens.

Yeah... I guess I've gotten too used to a snappy response time from you guys. Sorry if I was annoying.

If it's not the SD card, could it be something like my BIOS or OS or something? I mean, what else could it possibly be then?

Also, so I can put it down, I moved my title folder out of Wii and initiated a system update through Dolphin.

Still no dice...

I have the same issue with error messages. Not sure about buggy music/etc. I looked at the code and it seems intentional. It compares r3 to 0 and, if true, branches to an instruction that loads from 0x000c (r3), which would have r3 = 0. Is Gecko OS supposed to mess with the 0x00000000 region?

I tried in Dolphin 5.0 and it does the same thing, but Dolphin just ignores it rather than throwing errors. I don't know if someone without errors has the same thing running. The location for my code error is different than OP, so not sure if it's exactly the same.

@theincrediblemastere
What happens if you apply this AR nop code. Probably ignores the error, but does stuff break?
04e4ee98 60000000

I'm able to boot Project M just fine through Gecko OS when I boot that from the Homebrew Channel.

If the most expected way to boot the elf works... i don't know what to say.

I don't have the Homebrew Channel. I launch the .elf through the Dolphin game list.

The new Open Homebrew Channel has the anti-dolphin hooks removed, and will run in Dolphin. You can put that in the system menu, place the apps on teh SD card, and run it jsut like you would on a Wii.

I can't into github or building.

What do?

Thanks. It's cool, you're a busy dude.

Installed the .wad to my NAND and ran it through the Wii menu. Still suffering from the same issues... Even if I were to run it from the Dolphin launcher!

I'm not getting invalid reads, but the music is still messed up and I can't grab. Also, in the Project M launcher menu, I get "Failed to reserve memory for encoded texture upload" alerts.

Honestly at this point, I haven't the faintest idea what's going on... My build has worked before, and you personally said it checks out... Motherboard BIOS issues maybe?

Probably changes to Dolphin has made it work worse.

And I really liked playing P:M...

Perhaps one day this will all be made clear. That or we could do this all remote control tech support style and see if that makes anything stand out lol

WHY ME?

I don't know if this issue is the exact same problem I'm encountering but Gecko OS inconsistently throws panic alerts when starting the app. This problem has been around for a while and remains in 5.0-6203. I still haven't found a way to reliably reproduce the issue.

FYI, the specific problem I was referring to hasn't happened in a while and was likely fixed. I agree with JMC's update above.