HOWTO Optimize your LD (or anything NVFS) for LJP

[arbrandes]

After lots of research and at least 5 months, I have finally gotten my LifeDrive with LJP 1.0 RC2 to emulate even SNES games smoothly. Here's what it took:

[edit] I have been told that the following instructions, with the obvious exception of step 1, will also work on a T|X.[/edit]

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1) Update you LD ROM to 2.0.

The update process is not necessarily a smooth ride, but I won't cover the problems here. It is necesssary, though, in order to be able to press multiple keys simultaneously. Get it here:

www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/lifedrive/lifedrive_update.html

[edit] By pouip:
By the way, for french users, I would like to indicate that - on the contrary of what is indicated on the site of Palm about the update of LD ROM to 2.0 - you can update you LD ROM without any trouble, even if you are using a french version of the LifeDrive : Palm forgot to update their page. So download the french update even if it's written "This update is for English-language devices only". So, don't worry and do the update. It must be the same thing for spanish, german or italian users, I suppose.[/edit]

2) Install LJP 1.0RC2 and your roms.

There are many threads here on how to do this properly, so I won't get into it.

3) Delete any and all unnecessary dynamic memory-hungry apps.

These include launchers such as Zlauncher and apps that like to run in the background. Maybe you think your paid-for ZLauncher is a necessary app, but then weigh it against running Mario Kart on your Palm, and decide.

[edit] You can, alternatively, try to move memory fragmenting apps to the card using, for instance, PowerRun. I had to do this with Picsel Browser. It eats up more than a megabyte of DBCache, and it WON'T free it even after a reset, if you don't move it to the card. Even after doing it, however, you will have to soft reset your LD after using Picsel Browser, in order to defragment the cache.[/edit]

4) Install and configure Dmitry's UDMH.

This wonderful piece of software will convert any free RAM into dynamic heap. You'd otherwise be stuck with just 6 MB, of which at least 2MB are always in use (remember, the LD only has 32MB true RAM, of which 12 or so are allocated to ROM). UDMH will give you something like 13 MB free, which is enough for many SNES games. It is shareware, but it only costs 10 bucks and you get a couple of days to test it. Get the latest beta (5.3) here:

www.palmpowerups.com/priv/UDMH_5_3.prc

After hotsyncing, it'll ask you to reset your Palm. Do it. After resetting, enable it. LJP should work with the default settings.

5) Install Dmitry's MemUnfragment (Free) or UnCache (Shareware).

You may have 100,000,000 GBs of free dynamic heap, but it'll be useless to LJP if it is all divided up into chunks of 1MB. Luckily, Dmitry thinks of everything.

UnCache does everything MemUnfragment does, but is more stable, more configurable and generally better. If you can afford 5 bucks, go for it. Just don't use both at the same time!!

You'll also need to softreset after hotsyncing.

Get MemUnfragment here (no icon will be installed installed; it stays hidden in memory):

www.palmpowerups.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=getit&lid=25

Or UnCache here:

www.palmpowerups.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=getit&lid=27

6) Install Imazeki's DBCacheTool:

LJP requires lots of free dynamic heap, but it also requires enough free DBCache memory (which is not exactly the same thing; read up on you NVFS if you're curious about the details). DBCacheTool will help you with this. The readme is in Japanese, but you can leave settings on their default values. Get it here:

www.jade.dti.ne.jp/~imazeki/palm/DBcT/data/DBcT02a.zip

Install both prc's. For stability reasons, I recommend NOT turning on auto-clear, but instead using the Desk Accessory (DA) interface to clear memory when you need to, i.e., before running LJP. For this, you'll need to install Hacker Dude-san's DALauncher, after which the DA icon will be available on the command-launch bar thingy. Get it here:

simple-palm.com/dal50/dal51b4.zip

It's not a problem installing DALauncher after DBCacheDA.

[edit] In DBCacheTool's configuration options, use "DB" as the "Clear type". Leave "Safe mode" ticked.[/edit]

7) Last mile:

Clear the DBCache. Reset your LD. Make sure UDMH is enabled. Run LJP and load a small SNES rom (such as Super Mario World) to test your setup.

[edit] pouip pointed out further down in this thread that once DBCacheTool and UDMH are installed, you might have to do the "last mile" in a different order for things to work: soft reset, clear DBCache, enable UDMH, play.[/edit]

[edit] Nowadays, I usually do it like this: clear DBCache, reset, clear DBCache again, play. This is for defragmentation reasons. And by the way, SNES needs at least 6,300,000 bytes of "Max alloc" (as seen by DBCacheTool) free, as pointed out by _Em.[/edit]

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That's it! I'll edit this post periodically with updated instructions. Special thanks to Yoyofr, Tinnus, Dmitry, Imazeki, Hacker Dude-san and _Em, all of whose advice and software (free or otherwise) made running SNES games on the LD possible.

Afoldo

[_Em]

Just as an aside, except for step 1 (which you can ignore), this is also the appropriate set of instructions for the T|X.

[mikechicago]

This is an awful lot to do just to get an emulator running on the LifeDrive. For example, NesEm emulates the original Nintendo Entertainment System without even updating the LD to 2.0, let alone adding a bunch of hacks, AND it has its own multiple button-push workaround. I've found it to be extremely stable. Still, I'm willing to jump through these seven or so hoops to get SNES on the LD. But, only if you can report NO random crashes within this emulator/within the games you think of as stable after these upgrades and such. Please share some of your experiences with LJP on the LD after the upgrades, including stability, speed, success with other consoles within LJP, particular ROM recommendations, etc. Thanks a lot for the information!

[angel]

Not only NesEm is a commercial program, which allow programmers to spend surely more time on it than someone having a work and providing a free program like ljp but :

- Ljp emulate a very larger number of gaming system, which mean it pretty more difficult to create.
- Ljp emulate the 16bytes gaming system, who need much more function and operation than the old pixelized nes with its crappy sound. A snes or a genesis system is much difficult to emulate compared to the old slow system sms and nes.

At last i can say than the 7 points you that you consider like harassing to do are not ljp specified. Each step is a part of a palm os lack (unable to defragment memory, unable to have more heap, unable to clean the bluetooth content in memory, upgrade you system with the last palm patch...).

[Tinnus]

Yeah, a NES emu runs even on a T|E without UDMH or anything

Oh, and it's better to have an OS fix for multiple key preses than a workaraound like NesEm has, because this sure makes the thing slower. Of course it doesn't make a noticeable difference for NES on a LD

[arbrandes]

To answer mikechicago,

All in all, my LD is much more stable now than before. The 2.0 ROM update is partly responsible for that, I'm sure. With regards to LJP, I can run SNES and Genesis games indefinitely, with no random resets before, during or after playing. I have tried forcing the system to crash by loading even big roms, but couldn't. At worst, the game wouldn't run due to emulation glitches.

Furthermore, I can even run ZDoomZ now! Haven't tried ZQuake and Duke3D yet, but I will. As a matter of fact, I'll do it now!

Afoldo

[mikechicago]

Afoldo, wow, now that's encouragement to upgrade! I tried LJP last summer on the LD with no hacks or upgrades and was met with very frequent resets and no reliability. Seems like things have really caught up, though, and the ability to run ZDoomZ is also encouraging. Sounds fun. So what SNES or Genesis games have you settled in with on the LD? Certainly nothing that relies on diagonal control, correct? Oh, and Angel, which specific step fixes the Bluetooth-cleaning problem? Thanks all for the information.

[angel]

The main use of BTClean is to remove from your palm memory the loads of informations a standard "bluetooth search" put in it.

When trying to synchronise an adress book to my phone in paris, my palm saved about all my worksmate bluetooth phones, poket pc, desktop computer and mobile computers... up to 20 or 25 devices.

Not only it takes some precious memory, but risk to fragment it (as the palm is unable to unfragment itself) and its a pain to choose my gps receiver with 20+ devices showed on the tiny screen.

More free memory + get ride of untrusted/useless devices is enough reasons for me to use btclean. Not everybody have to, but having it in the pref tab wont hurt.

(i cant prove it, but i'm sure i read some thing about palm os malfunction of some sort with many, many bluetooth devices, trusted or not registered, so i wont point about it...)

[arbrandes]

mikechicago,

I have been playing Mario World lately, but due to button layout issues I intend to play mostly RPGs and other non-action games. Two or three-button action games will be welcome, but not Street Fighters.

Couldn't get ZQuake to work, yet. It's a memory-hungry dinosaur... Wonder if I can get GameBoy Advance emulation going? I'll try it next.

[Tinnus]

Most likely not, most ROMs are 16MB. I think the smallest ones are 8MB... Only way would be if the emulator read them from the card.

[arbrandes]

Now THAT is an excellent idea. Probably not very easy to implement, but I wonder...

[Tinnus]

Easy to implement the slow way

[pouip]

My first message on this board !

Before all, I have to say I'm french, so my english isn't... hmm... very good ! ;D

Thank you for the team of LJP/LJZ : your work is excellent ! And thank you for this explications about the way to make LJP work on a LifeDrive, 'cause I have one.

I'd like to precise a little thing, about the last part ("7) Last mile") of this tutorial to have more free memory : once DBCacheTool and UDMH are installed, you have :
- first, to soft reset your LifeDrive ;
- then, to clear the DBCache memory (with DALauncher) ;
- then, to make sure that UDMH is enable (if not, we have to tick it) ;
- and, finally, you can launch LJP and enjoy it !

Because, I tried to "Clear the DBCache. Reset your LD. Make sure UDMH is enabled. Run LJP" as written in the 7th part, here, and it didn't work.


By the way, for french users, I would like to indicate that - on the contrary of what is indicated on the site of Palm about the update of LD ROM to 2.0 - you can update you LD ROM without any trouble, even if you are using a french version of the LifeDrive : Palm forgot to update their page. So download the french update here, even if it's written "This update is for English-language devices only". So, don't worry and do the update. It must be the same thing for spanish, german or italian users, I suppose.

[arbrandes]

Thanks for the input, pouip! I have updated the HOWTO accordingly.

[wantan]

Does any of the tools described here works on a T5...?

[_Em]

AFAIK, ALL of them do except for MemUnfragment. The T5 has slightly different issues, but using the above as a guideline for the T5 wouldn't hurt... especially the part about disabling hacks and background processes and doing a soft reset before launching LJP.

[wantan]

Thanks, I was asking just to test dbCache and the other tools that were used here... just to know what could I achieve with them...

[justinkho]

Help with the treo 650

I followed the steps to the dot but im still getting Out of Memory message then a soft reset. but before i run anything here are my mem details and the game im trying to run is only

Dynamic around 15000K
DBCache 6.6K free and 3.4K max
and for my main RAM have still around 11mb

super mario world

[Tinnus]

1) You don't have main RAM (hahaha ;D)

2) DBCache is still too low.

[_Em]

As posted earlier in this thread, DBCache has to have at least 7.3MB of unfragmented cache available to play things like SNES and Genesis.

By 6.6k and 3.4k, I presume you mean 6.6MB and 3.4MB... otherwise, you're going to be having major stability issues running ANYTHING that requires DBCache.

Try running the latest version of Resco Lock -- it puts a ! beside every app that receives a number of events that generally imply it preloads data into DBCache; disable (by deleting, compressing, turning them off) some of the apps and files listed, and you'll find your available DBCache increases dramatically. Notable DBCache hogs include Docs2Go, YAHM, VersaMail, NetFront, Blazer, and pTunes in background mode.

Just to clarify, it's the line that reads 3.4MB that has to be 7.3MB to play SMB.

[Tinnus]

BTW, make sure you're not using SharckCache or anything that locks an application in the cache...

[justinkho]

ah ic well these are the programs i have in my palam
agendus
docs to go
dataviz tech tool
isilo
palmpdf
penovate notes
splash id
splash money
tcpmp
converter
origami on the go
palmasutra
woman day
dbcache
meminfo
prefdoc
speedy
udmh
vfsmark
yahm (sync before reset)
backup man
da launcher
card export
uninstall manager
cleanup
screenshot5
zlauncher
memunfragment

how do you guys get to 7.3MB? i tried disabling uninstall manager, yahm, screenshot5 and prefdoc how else could i free up more dbcache?

I dont use blazer or versamail and how do i prevent docs to go from hogging?

[Tinnus]

Try a warm reset.

[justinkho]

Yup already tried that. but a warn reset doesnt help either

when i run resco lock the programs with a ! are card export, udmh, uninstall manager and zlauncher.

Hmm could it be possible that zlauncher is tqking up waaay to much DBCache?

[Tinnus]

Probably. I'd say likely.

[vertebra]

agendus runs in the background as well

[justinkho]

ayt maybe ill try living without zlauncher but i doubt that i could sacrifice agendus

[justinkho]

well to see if things work properly i backed up all my data and did a hard reset. then installed card export so that i could upload games. then followed the steps on the very first post.

Well thankfully it all works now. but everytime i load a game a few things appear

cannot sys_alloc 131072 Bytes

then

free ram 47/33

Then i get the Out of memory message but the game still proceeds.

but now if i exit LJP and wich to run another SNES game itll reset my palm. So before i play again i have to reset my palm first.

[_Em]

Are you sure you followed the step where you assign 19600Kb to LJP in UDMH? That's exactly what happens if you miss this step.

[justinkho]

yup did that already.