Hard drive benchmarks

Here is how my new solid state drive and my new conventional drive compare to each other in terms of performance.

The SSD drive (Crucial CT064M4SSD2 R) :


The conventional drive (Samsung HD502HJ/ST500DM005) :

Dragon's Lair testing on Dexter rev 2

One thing I noticed when we were demo'ing Dexter rev 1 at CAX last year was that sometimes certain incorrect frames would show up at the beginning of scenes. What I wasn't sure of was whether the incorrect frame was due to overrun or due to the ROM seeking to the wrong starting position. Well, I have pretty solid evidence now that the ROM appears to be seeking to the wrong starting position for some of the scenes, such as the "colored balls" scene. My logging clearly shows that it is seeking to frame 26042 which you can see in this screenshot is the combination of the end of the previous scene and the beginning of the next. The thing that puzzles me, however, is, "Why have I never noticed this before?" Surely this must happen on original hardware but I've never noticed it. Has anyone else?

Here's the relevant log snippet:

lair: -> FF
lair: <- E4
lair: -> 8F
lair: <- 64
lair: -> FF
lair: <- E4
lair: -> 6F
lair: <- 64
lair: -> FF
lair: <- E4
lair: -> 3F
lair: <- 64
lair: -> FF
lair: <- E4
lair: -> 2F
lair: <- 64
lair: -> FF
lair: <- E4
lair: -> 8F
lair: <- 64
lair: -> FF
lair: <- E4
lair: -> F7
Search to 26042 received


Edit: Added frame 22738 which is another example.

New PC toys

My main PC is slowly dying (hard drive access is getting excruciatingly slow) and it's probably 4 years old by now so it's time to get some new hardware. Here's what I've ordered:

- Intel Core i5-2400 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz (3.4GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core CPU
- GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
- 8GB of DDR3 2133 RAM (I'll upgrade to 16GB later)
- Crucial M4 CT064M4SSD2 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (for OS)
- 500GB 7200rpm conventional hard drive for apps and temporary storage

AM EXCITED!

Neil playing Firefox with Dexter

Neil successfully plays a game of Firefox using Dexter rev 2 prototype (at least I think that's what he is doing, I've never played the game myself so I don't know). This is exciting because it proves that Dexter is a viable solution to replace the unreliable and rare VP931 laserdisc player. Now if we can see that Dexter works for Freedom Fighter, then that will be even better!

Dexter software released to testers

The long-awaited day is finally here. I've released some working Dexter software to the rev 2 testers. Woohoo!

Console finally working!

When I decoupled SDL from Daphne, I broke the console. I've finally got it working again (mostly had to rewrite it from scratch). What a pain! So glad it's done. I will be using this same code on the Dexter media server so all that effort will pay off :)

LD-V1000 port working again, media server progress made

I did some more tests in my garage this morning after applying Warren's suggested fix and am pleased to say the LD-V1000 port on the rev2 is working perfectly now :)

I also made some more progress on the media server and it should be ready Real Soon Now for rev2 testing.