Stuck on "Waiting"?

[LamerDeluxe]

Cool, I'll try the fix.

I was working on my demo yesterday and had all the objects that used sprite translation fly off the screen, then the Vectrex crashed into Mine Storm which was corrupted and really odd things were happening on the screen.

I thought when you use translation the line sprites are clipped? Or do I have to set the display boundaries?

Sometimes when the Vectrex 32 crashes, or when it freezes while loading (this can happen even if saving was finished), the basic file will stay locked and can't be overwritten or even deleted anymore. I have to do a windows drive check to get the flash drive to be able to remove the files.

While working on the demo I've experienced some incorrect error messages (for instance about a missing '=', when the call command is missing).
And my session yesterday ended when I kept getting an error message about endfunction being an illegal command, even though the same command was used to end a function above it without any problems.

I've started keeping a list of odd things happening while developing, which I will share later on.

I really have to get used to developing in basic again. For instance adding a 2D velocity to a 2D position, you can't just add two arrays together.

[Vectrex32]

Clipping does not happen automatically. You need to set it up.

If a file is getting locked, it sounds like the crash must have happened during a save. Be careful not to do anything else during a save.

When the Call command is missing, BASIC assumes you meant to assign a variable to the result of a function, rather than assuming you were trying to call a subroutine. That's why you get the missing equal sign error.

If EndFunction is giving an error, it's probably because you're not currently in a function or because the EndFunction statement is inside a loop or IF statement. You can't have more than one EndFunction in a function. Function...EndFunction is a compile-time block.

- Bob

[LamerDeluxe]

Okay. This demo won't need any clipping, but that is good to know.
I'll keep an eye on what is going on exactly that causes files to get locked here.

That makes sense. Being used to other programming languages I tend to forget to add the call command.

I'll have a look tonight at what could be causing that, it is not one of those. It is just a normal function. Maybe the system got confused because I didn't get the syntax of one of the commands inside the function right.

[LamerDeluxe]

Well, the obscure error went away after letting windows do another drive check on the Vectrex32 storage device. I find I have to do this every time the Vectrex32 crashes now, which is pretty annoying, as it crashes easily. I have been doing drive checks every few minutes.

I'm starting to think my Vectrex32 might have some kind of defect after all.

edit: Loading even often freezes when waiting a good amount of time for saving to finish. Then I have to recheck the drive again. All this is making development slow and frustrating.

[Vectrex32]

It sounds like the flash drive has taken a beating. I'd copy all the files off it, reformat it, and copy the files back.

- Bob

[LamerDeluxe]

Thanks for the advice, I will try that. Will see tomorrow if it helped. It is time to stop programming now

Missilebreak Outvaders still crashes on first ball contact, found out it then works fine after a reset. Yankee crashes after briefly flashing a display.

[LamerDeluxe]

Come to think of it, a reset button on the Vectrex32 would really help. Then if it crashes, I don't have to turn my Vectrex off and on. I'm starting to worry about wearing the power switch out.

I don't know if one could be added to the current version somehow, or if that would also need a redesign of the board.

The 3D demo off-screen crash and similar crashes I've had seem to be caused by all sprites being off-screen. So there's still a sprite list, but no actual lines to be drawn.

[Vectrex32]

I no longer think that adding a WaitForFrame is the solution. There's something messier going on. I'm looking into it.

- Bob

[LamerDeluxe]

Cool. I hope you'll be able to fix it.

[LamerDeluxe]

I'm still getting freezes when loading my demo, even after waiting minutes after saving. It happens maybe one in five times, if I wait a long time before loading every time. If I then reset the Vectrex it is stuck on waiting. This doesn't seem to corrupt the drive.

EDIT: Strike that, it happens much more often. Trying to develop anything is taking ages this way.
EDIT2: And now the drive got corrupted again.
EDIT3: And now I've lost the demo I've been working on for a lot of hours the last three days. I'm giving up.

[Vectrex32]

I believe I've found a fix for the problems where Demo3D, MissileBreak, and Yankee crashed. I'm still having some problems with sound.

I've haven't been seeing the problems you describe with the disk. Is your USB cable plugged directly into your PC or is it plugged into a hub? Are you certain it's reliable?

I'm really sorry about the trouble you're having. If you want to return the V32, I'll certainly give you a full refund.

- Bob

[LamerDeluxe]

Good to hear you've found a fix.

My cable runs directly from the computer to the cart. I haven't had any other troubles with this port. I could try another cable, but I would need to find one first, because most of my cables are micro USB. Would that even explain the freezes while loading?

I lost my program because I thought of trying to switch between programmer's notepad and notepad++, during that switch the file got erased by the Vectrex32 after the drive got corrupted again. I should have made a back up on my PC.

I've tried undeleting the file, but there doesn't seem to be anything that could be undeleted.

I really just want this thing to work, because I liked the whole concept of it a lot. I was very much looking forward to completing my demo, it was starting to look pretty interesting.
At the moment I'm not looking forward to starting all over again, as development has been so frustrating.

[LamerDeluxe]

Ooh, good news. I found some obscure software that was able to recover the deleted file. Wow, what a relief, I was so disappointed. Going to find another cable and use Notepad++ to see if that improves things.
EDIT: That doesn't change anything. Still stuck at loading the second time I try to load my demo.
EDIT2: Wow, actually the drive got corrupted again with this load freeze and now after a drive check all the files are gone. This made me lose my earlier demos, but they weren't as much work to make. It is also unrecoverable now. Something seems to be very wrong with my cart.

[Vectrex32]

Can you send me your demo program? I want to try loading it on my system.

- Bob

[LamerDeluxe]

I will do that.

There's still a weird bug in there that makes everything fly off the screen after a short while (quit before that happens or it will crash). Maybe I'm using wrong syntax somewhere.