Issues with pp hdd driver, exacerbated by ScummST
Posted: 27 Sep 2023 16:33
I'm writing this more in case anyone else comes up against this - I got an ACSI2STM from masteries on AtariAge forums. Great little device and can't argue with that price... I doubt I could make one myself any cheaper unless I already had a bunch of the parts (which I don't). I bought the pp game collections along with the driver because that seemed to be what people do. Mostly worked without issue, though every now and again something would bomb out. Rarely enough that I didn't really think much of it.
I assumed this instability was caused by some other part of my system - it's a pretty beaten up STE; though I've done a lot of work to prolong it (recap, new PSU, new HC CPU, bus resistor change, DMA changer, dual ROM, HD floppy board, new RAM...), I wouldn't be surprised if there were undiagnosed issues left (and who knows, that may still be the case). I decided to try out ScummST and though it seemed to work fine (with full voice and MIDI soundtrack!), reasonably frequently it would bomb out when switching scenes in Monkey Island (either when going to new areas or during close-ups in conversations).
The consistency of when this was happening made me wonder if there was something up with the ACSI2STM rather than just general system instability and made me curious enough to try out different SD cards, different power supplies (no difference for either) and then ICD Pro. Setting up was a bit of a pain given you can't easily write to the drive outside of an Atari (Steem to the rescue), but now I'm back to where I was except there hasn't been a single crash since. I played on ScummST for an hour or two with no issues (previously it would have almost certainly crashed in that time). I needed to configure the driver to use less RAM than its default configuration for many games to work, but that's been it.
There's a chance that this may still just be coincidence, and if I find that to be the case I'll report back... But I suppose the TL;DR: If you're having odd stability issues with an ACSI2STM and you're using the ppdriver, consider giving ICD Pro a go instead. I'd be interested if anyone else using the ppdriver could try out ScummST and see if they have similar issues.
I assumed this instability was caused by some other part of my system - it's a pretty beaten up STE; though I've done a lot of work to prolong it (recap, new PSU, new HC CPU, bus resistor change, DMA changer, dual ROM, HD floppy board, new RAM...), I wouldn't be surprised if there were undiagnosed issues left (and who knows, that may still be the case). I decided to try out ScummST and though it seemed to work fine (with full voice and MIDI soundtrack!), reasonably frequently it would bomb out when switching scenes in Monkey Island (either when going to new areas or during close-ups in conversations).
The consistency of when this was happening made me wonder if there was something up with the ACSI2STM rather than just general system instability and made me curious enough to try out different SD cards, different power supplies (no difference for either) and then ICD Pro. Setting up was a bit of a pain given you can't easily write to the drive outside of an Atari (Steem to the rescue), but now I'm back to where I was except there hasn't been a single crash since. I played on ScummST for an hour or two with no issues (previously it would have almost certainly crashed in that time). I needed to configure the driver to use less RAM than its default configuration for many games to work, but that's been it.
There's a chance that this may still just be coincidence, and if I find that to be the case I'll report back... But I suppose the TL;DR: If you're having odd stability issues with an ACSI2STM and you're using the ppdriver, consider giving ICD Pro a go instead. I'd be interested if anyone else using the ppdriver could try out ScummST and see if they have similar issues.