SF Rush the Rock link problem

DogP

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Hey,

I've got two SF Rush the Rock games which work great by themselves, but the link is very flakey.

<back story>
The last time I used them linked was about 2.5 years ago, and they worked perfectly. Then one hard drive died, and I never got around to replacing it, so I just played one player for the next year. Then I moved, and the cab with the bad drive sat in my garage for 1.5 years, until a few weeks ago when I moved it down with my other cab. The hard drive on the other cab also died a few months ago, so I replaced both of them with Compact Flash drives.
</back story>

They're linked together with a standard crossover cable, and what happens is about two out of three times when starting a race, the two cabs get out of sync and each cab plays by itself. I figured it was probably a bad cable, so I replaced the cable... but it made no difference. I checked/adjusted the voltage to the board, and made sure the Ethernet connectors are clean. I also swapped the hard drives to see if anything changed, but it didn't.

I found through the network test that everything claims it passes, though the network receive count on one cab is about half that of the transmit on the other, yet the other cab has the transmit and receive nearly identical. So, it seems that one board is having problems receiving, or the other is having problems transmitting.

Here's where it gets a little goofy. I decided to try putting a switch in place, thinking maybe it needed something to "condition" the line. Plugging in a D-link switch caused the one cab to still receive all packets, but the other received none, claiming it was waiting for link. Then I plugged in a Cisco switch and it seemed both were receiving close to perfectly.

So, with the Cisco switch in place, I tested the game, and the majority of the time it works perfectly, though about one out of five races it fails to link. So... I think there's gotta be some physical layer signaling problem.

Has anyone run into a problem like this, or have any ideas? My guess is maybe the Ethernet transformer (SF1012), though I think those are usually pretty robust.

Thanks,
DogP
 
When I first converted my Rock's to CF cards, I had trouble linking when I used the same CHD image for both machines (after changing the car colors) Are you using the same CHD for both games? Once I switched to 2 different CHD images it was all good again. Not sure its your problem, but thought I'd mention it.
 
Yeah, it's the same CHD image... is there another CHD image to use? I just grabbed the one from the MAME set.

I don't know whether it matters, but one is a Rush the Rock dedicated, the other is an Extreme that was converted to Rush the Rock (I didn't do the conversion, it was done a long time ago). AFAIK, the hard drive is the same for a dedicated as an upgrade. Like I said, it worked perfectly before the drives went to crap, but that was 2.5 years ago, so I guess anything could have broken between then and now.

Thanks,
DogP
 
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Yeah, it's the same CHD image... is there another CHD image to use? I just grabbed the one from the MAME set.

I converted my HD's to chd before they went bad, so I used the original hard drives (And to save high scores and settings) If you've replaced the cable, it sounds like one board set has a flakey network on it. I know on one of mine the connector itself was a bit loose so I had to glue it back in place for a more solid connection as well.




I used the same chd image for mine and have had no sync problems at all.

Yeah, It might not had anything to do with it.. Could have been just a bad dump the first time around too. I didn't take any chances.
 
Hmm... it's really strange. I captured the output from one machine with Wireshark, then played it back to the other machine and it received the packets without any problem. I tried a different switch and it seemed to work a little better, but still dropped some games. I pulled the board and resoldered the Ethernet connector, but there's nothing obviously wrong physically.

Nerbflong: Do you still have the CHDs that you burned your HDs from? Is there any way you could upload them to me (web storage, or I can set up an FTP), or could you burn them to a disc and mail them (of course I'd pay for disc/postage/time)? I don't think there's a problem with my drive images, but it does seem a little strange that it stopped working after making new drives. I also don't like that I had to kill the CHD process part way through, since the MAME CHD is from an 8GB drive, and I'm using 2GB CF cards. There's only 1GB of data, so it should be fine (and does seem mostly fine), but that still seems a little hacked.

I guess my battery did die as well (and I believe all scores/settings are saved in battery backed RAM), and the cab was physically moved, so there's other possibilities for what caused this. I did reset both cabs to all defaults (except changing the car color on one), but it didn't help any.

BTW, were both of yours dedicated Rush the Rocks, Extremes, or one of each?

Thanks,
DogP
 
Probably goes without saying, but you did run both of the disk tests with no errors? I used 2 gb cf cards so of course I had the "problem" with the 8 gb chd but they check out with no errors and I've seen no evidence of trouble with them.

Mine are original Rush's upgraded to Rock's btw.
 
I still have the CHD's for both games. Mine are original Rush the Rocks, dedicated. Each CHD file is 118,073KB and were copied from a 1.6GB drive so they fit perfectly on the 2GB without having to stop or deal with errors.


If you have somewhere I can ftp the files to, I'll be more than happy to send em your way.

Strange that its working better with a different switch. I've used several switches when testing and never had any issues with the switches.
 
Yeah, I ran the HD tests and everything passed without any problems. And yeah, I'm surprised about the switch, but I can definitely tell the difference in how fast the packet counter goes up in test mode.

I'll set up an FTP when I get home from work tonight and PM the info over to you.

Thanks,
DogP
 
I did reset both cabs to all defaults (except changing the car color on one), but it didn't help any.

It's not something like setting one to Master and the other to Slave is it ?
(aside from car color)
I honestly don't recall the whole setup procedure for those.
 
I don't think there's any sort of master/slave settings... it just uses standard Ethernet broadcast packets.

DogP
 
Well, thanks to Nerbflong for sending me his CHDs, but unfortunately it didn't help :( . Unfortunately, I threw out all my old 10 base-t hubs a while ago... maybe I'd have better luck with them than a switch. But I guess there must be a board problem, and it seems like it must be at the physical layer.

Here's a run-down of everything:
Game drops packets between cabs, self-test shows one machine is losing a lot of the packets, but the other receives them all just fine.
Some switches work better and some work worse than others... a crossover cable is mediocre.
Connected directly to my computer works almost perfectly (recording w/ Wireshark and playing back).
Its internal loopback works perfectly, and playing its own packets back causes the loopback count to go up, so it must be going through the same process of transmit, check sender address, add to that counter.

Any ideas? I think my next step is gonna be to try an external loopback to see if that tells me anything, test the resistors going to the Ethernet controller, and try to find an SF1012, though I don't expect that to be bad.

Thanks,
DogP
 
Sorry to hear that didn't clear things up, though I'm not surprised.

Just for fun have you tried an extremely short cable on the bad pcb going to the best working router? Like a 1 footer?
 
I didn't have/make a 1 footer, but I did try a 3 footer, and it didn't seem to make any difference. I actually don't notice a difference between a nice new short cable and the long crappy old cable that came with the games.

DogP
 
doubt it will make a difference but what category patch cable are you using? I assume cat 5e or 5 at the least. You can go with cat 6 if you are not doing so already. I suppose that might help.
 
Yeah, I tried every type I had laying around... 5e, 6, shielded, long, short, etc... the cable didn't seem to make any difference.

Thanks,
DogP
 
Just to update... I was digging through a box in my shed tonight (looking for coin door parts), and came across a brand new 4-port hub (I thought I still had one, but I threw away lots of other old networking stuff, and figured I must have thrown that away as well).

Anyway, I went to the basement and hooked it up... IT WORKS!!!!! I run in test mode and neither machine drops packets, and playing linked games actually works, rather than only sometimes joining the same race. So, there's obviously a marginal component on the one board, but with the right combination of hardware, it does actually work... which is good enough for me. Hopefully it stays working!

BTW, in case anyone runs into link problems like this, or is curious what worked... it's an Allied Telesyn MR415T like: http://www.amazon.com/Allied-Telesyn-Centrecom-MR415T-External/dp/B0000512S1 .

DogP
 
Fantastic, glad you got it rolling. Those machines seem to be a bit picky on switches/hubs.

I have mine running on a zonet hub and its fine.
 
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