Darksoft NG Multi is Released Feb 2018. Impressions Please.

ratson · Feb 23, 2018

Razoola said:
They are talking about pictures of what is inside the case.

I know bit he said pcb/cart so i thought i'd share. No pics seen of the pcb so far.

Fygee · Feb 23, 2018

NeoLucian said:
Been reading some more on the DS forum and users have been providing more feedback:

*insert of lot of flagrantly wrong things with the cart here*

Holy crap, that's a lot of flagrantly wrong things with the cart.

It's very clear this was pushed out of the gate way too early, and their testing and quality control for this is crap.

I was heavily leaning NeoSD prior to the release, but its clear as day what the winner is here. NeoSD will be getting my money.

phoenixdownita · Feb 24, 2018

Among all the issues is anyone reporting brilliant loading time?
Last video the thing took a good minute+ to just start up, the original sales-pitch was KOF2003 in ~20 sec .... now I understand that if the thing glitches, resets, reboots, locks, green-screens... it may not matter but has anyone reported that he/she can boot from scratch on an empty cart and in 20/30 sec load and play KOF2003?

GadgetUK · Feb 24, 2018

The big problem here imo is you get your core functionallity working rock solid before you start adding bells and whistles (Don't know about bells and whistles, at the moment they appear to have a tin can and and squeeky rubber duck...). ie. booting 1 game from 1 slot and test the full library against each MVS board revision - then add your "nice to haves". They can possibly fix it, but it looks like they've got lots of issues in lots of areas there.

Loading time of 20 seconds, then the graphics have a fit, CPU has a seizure, sound goes crazy...

If they can pull it off it will be technically impressive, but the Neo SD is already here and already a shinning example of an everdrive like SD solution for the MVS and AES.

Heinz · Feb 24, 2018

GadgetUK said:
If they can pull it off it will be technically impressive, but the Neo SD is already here and already a shinning example of an everdrive like SD solution for the MVS and AES.

There is only one thing the NeoSD doesn't do and that is instantly load an unflashed game. Whether you view this as a flaw or simply an operational requirement however is opinion but the latter is far more a level headed viewpoint.

wyo · Feb 24, 2018

Fygee said:
Holy crap, that's a lot of flagrantly wrong things with the cart.

It's very clear this was pushed out of the gate way too early, and their testing and quality control for this is crap.

I was heavily leaning NeoSD prior to the release, but its clear as day what the winner is here. NeoSD will be getting my money.

You're only now figuring this out? :keke:

Yodd · Feb 24, 2018

Makes you wonder on what magic setup this was tested to be working 100%. Cause there is way too many people posting issues and no real solutions being given.

fille1976 · Feb 24, 2018

Yodd said:
Makes you wonder on what magic setup this was tested to be working 100%. Cause there is way too many people posting issues and no real solutions being given.

I whas also thinking that yodd when i readed that thread on arcade projects,not a single person told their he has no problems or that all games where working,its a disaster.
Never saw such a shamefull product entered the market,and their solutions are crap,buy another sdcard,buy another psu,for god sake,those people's original games are working fine.
Or must you hire a group to power that flashcart??
Its clearly they bring their flashcart unfinished to their customers,and i don't understand they take all their bullshit solutions.
Some just buyed a new sdcard,copied eveything to their new sdcard and still its not working,their solution,just buy another 1,come on...,what a bunch off retards.
This is why we here @ neo-geo.com made the correct decission and buyed neosd,almost no problems,and once their are problems,you get a proper explanation what happened and their fix,like pro's.

oliverclaude · Feb 26, 2018

fille1976 said:
Its clearly they bring their flashcart unfinished to their customers, ...

Reality kind of dressed it in emperor's new clothes.

NeoLucian · Feb 26, 2018

Interesting update from one of their users:

Pulled the unibios out of the non working MV-4F and it's worked perfectly.

Tried burning the unibios onto another chip in case maybe it had been corrupt or something. Soon as we put the unibios back in it was exhibiting all the same crashes and refusal to get into the menu symptoms.

Put the stock bios back in and it works perfectly. I'm just leaving that in there for now.

This morning I tried putting the unibios in the MVH 4 slot, and it experienced all of the same crashes. Put back the stock bios and everything works fine again.

So now I have it fully working with 3 different 4 slots (two different models, MVH and MV-4F). But it outright does not work with the unibios.

so it seems its not playing nice with the Unibios according to them.
I find that one of the strangest things that they have come up with, if the Unibios had any incompatibilities im sure they would have surfaced before now.

I am not sure if the Unibios was coded from scratch or is an updated version of the original SNK bios but i seriously doubt thats the problem.
If all Original Carts + NeoSD work fine with the Unibios I cant see why their cart would suddenly cause issues with it.

Razoola · Feb 26, 2018

I think I have said what needed to be said on this matter earlier in this thread. I do also believe both darksoft and Mitsurugi-w understand the issue with multislots and their device is not down to the Universe Bios. You can't exactly say the unibios is at fault when its doing its job as expected in reporting system crashes as they happen. Every exception screen I have seen thus far show issues with game code crashing and nothing in the bios, the numbers in the error report show that clearly.

Part of the problem here is you have people with no knowledge on what an exception error is assuming it must be the unibios. Little do they know the official SNK bios works in the same way. The only difference is they do a silent system reset rather than reporting the error information first.

fille1976 · Feb 26, 2018

Razoola said:
I think I have said what needed to be said on this matter earlier in this thread. I do also believe both darksoft and Mitsurugi-w understand the issue with multislots and their device is not down to the Universe Bios. You can't exactly say the unibios is at fault when its doing its job as expected in reporting system crashes as they happen. Every exception screen I have seen thus far show issues with game code crashing and nothing in the bios, the numbers in the error report show that clearly.

Part of the problem here is you have people with no knowledge on what an exception error is assuming it must be the unibios. Little do they know the official SNK bios works in the same way. The only difference is they do a silent system reset rather than reporting the error information first.

Watch razoola,they gona blame now thats its the unibios fault why so many systems doesn't work with their piece of shit flashcart,i can say that i own my neo sd over more then a year and having unibios 3.3 and did not have a single problem with it.
Their explanations and solutions are full off crap,i never ever buy something from them.

Morden · Feb 26, 2018

fille1976 said:
Watch razoola,they gona blame now thats its the unibios fault why so many systems doesn't work with their piece of shit flashcart,i can say that i own my neo sd over more then a year and having unibios 3.3 and did not have a single problem with it. Their explanations and solutions are full off crap,i never ever buy something from them.

Same here. I have finally upgraded to the latest Uni BIOS, but I've been on 2.0 for years and years, and even that version gave me no problems. Neither with official games, nor with the NeoSD. I don't have any multi cartridges, but from what I know, they all work fine. Same goes for unofficially released games, such as NG.Dev stuff.

This pretty much means everything works, except for the DS cartridge. However, if people claim that the stock BIOS works fine while the Uni BIOS doesn't, it might be something worth checking. The problem is, Raz doesn't have a DS cartridge, and even if he did, assuming he'd be willing to do this, it would only solve the problems on the BIOS side. If they can be fixed on the BIOS side, that is.

He has already explained how the exception handler works, so each time you see that error box, it doesn't mean the Uni BIOS is at fault. It's just cool enough to inform you what went wrong.

phoenixdownita · Feb 26, 2018

Wild speculation, maybe they unknowingly rely on the stock BIOS to reboot on those traps and in doing so clean up some mess the DS sw may have left allowing then the game to function on second/third cycle with higher probability on those MVS versions.
They likely don't know they rely on that behavior but that's my speculation ... on another note they should have just tested the thing with Uni, the penultimate version is for free there's just no excuse being how popular it is.

So then again, are there any user without Uni that have reported brilliant load times and no glitches? And I really mean from system off with empty slots, to KOF2003 up and running in say 30sec?

Montatez · Feb 26, 2018

If that's the case then maybe DS should find a work around the unibios error page. Something is not meshing well, hardware or software, with their cart.

Razoola · Feb 26, 2018

Morden said:
This pretty much means everything works, except for the DS cartridge. However, if people claim that the stock BIOS works fine while the Uni BIOS doesn't, it might be something worth checking.

For sure and I have been keeping an eye on their thread for this very purpose. Each report I have looked so far confirms a non bios issue. You can be sure the kof98 issue somone is reporting will be an issue that most likely requires a FW update if the 'fpga' file in the dir for that game is correct.

Razoola · Feb 26, 2018

Montatez said:
If that's the case then maybe DS should find a work around the unibios error page. Something is not meshing well, hardware or software, with their cart.

There is one built into the unibios already. Simply enable the arcade protect mode (but make sure you have access to the testmode button before enabling it so you can disable it again). Bottom line though is the game will still be crashing, it will just be resetting the NeoGeo instead of giving the error.

Yodd · Feb 26, 2018

Just found this video via the Darksoft forum:

Watch how long it takes the Darksoft MVS cart to boot up and reach the game selection menu. Over 1 minute and 30 seconds.

They like to brag about their quick flashing time. Never mind the fact that when you boot the thing up it takes forever just to get to the game menu.

phoenixdownita · Feb 26, 2018

Thank you for sharing.
I clocked at 1:38 to get to the launch and around 2:03 to play KOF98 ... and the cart had just that one slot filled in. Ouch!

ChopstickSamurai · Feb 27, 2018

Wow. Just wow. What a freaking show.

Razoola · Feb 27, 2018

Just to be clear, that 68000 illegal instruction crash is not in the NeoGeo bios space.

Heinz · Feb 27, 2018

The whole thing looks unnatural for the Neo system... flashing and glitching about, hanging for ages to start up and then a crash!? terrible at least with the NeoSD you know why you're waiting and it's to flash a game without an exception error :keke:

NeoLucian · Feb 27, 2018

Yes those loads times are horrible and that's just to get to the main menu.

I have a question about the Unibios graphics that are all messed up at the top of the screen.
Is this because the graphics it uses to display are located on the cart and not the bios?
Im assuming that they are corrupt because the cart is not allowing the bios to access the resources it needs??

Razoola · Feb 27, 2018

NeoLucian said:
Yes those loads times are horrible and that's just to get to the main menu.

I have a question about the Unibios graphics that are all messed up at the top of the screen.
Is this because the graphics it uses to display are located on the cart and not the bios?
Im assuming that they are corrupt because the cart is not allowing the bios to access the resources it needs??

Yes the graphics for that (NeoGeo logo) are on the cart. The issue is the NeoGeo logo sprites in the C ROM space (RAM on their cart) is missing or not in the location reported by the program ROM header (I think in flash on their cart). Technically its very easy for them to fix this on MVS so I am unsure why such a simple thing was not fixed already before the final version started selling.

NeoLucian · Feb 27, 2018

Razoola said:
Yes the graphics for that (NeoGeo logo) are on the cart. The issue is the NeoGeo logo sprites in the C ROM space (RAM on their cart) is missing or not in the location reported by the program ROM header (I think in flash on their cart). Technically its very easy for them to fix this on MVS so I am unsure why such a simple thing was not fixed already before the final version started selling.

Thank you for the explanation I thought it would be something along those lines.
I figured it was to do with the loading times on the cart, as if the data has not been loaded into the RAM quick enough (due to loading the other bits) so the system cannot find it.

Darksoft NG Multi is Released Feb 2018. Impressions Please.

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