06671: calspeed, calspeeda, calspeedb: Random "File Queue Is Busy' crashes

ID	Category [?]	Severity [?]	Reproducibility	Date Submitted	Last Update
06671	Crash/Freeze	Minor	Random	Aug 31, 2017, 01:55	Sep 5, 2017, 01:55

Tester	mmarino4	View Status	Public	Platform	MAME (Official Binary)
Assigned To		Resolution	Open	OS	Windows Vista/7/8 (64-bit)
Status [?]	Acknowledged			Driver	midway/seattle.cpp
Version	0.189	Fixed in Version		Build	64-bit
		Fixed in Git Commit		Github Pull Request #

Summary	06671: calspeed, calspeeda, calspeedb: Random "File Queue Is Busy' crashes
Description	The game will crash from time to time with a black screen citing a "File Queue Is Busy" error. There does not seem to be any consistency as to when this occurs. Sometimes, you can play through the entire game ("Do The State" mode) while other times it can crash on the first course and everything in between.
Steps To Reproduce	There is no way to force this to always happen so you can only reproduce it by playing the game a decent amount.
Additional Information	Note: This is not a result of the recent changes made to the game in MAME. This problem has existed for me since at least MAME 0.162.
Github Commit

Flags
Regression Version
Affected Sets / Systems	calspeed, calspeeda, calspeedb

Attached Files	CalspeedErrors.jpg (51,826 bytes) Aug 31, 2017, 01:55 Uploaded by mmarino4 Examples of the crash
Attached Files	0000.png (7,642 bytes) Sep 4, 2017, 17:03 Uploaded by tedgreen calspeed filesystem check ROM v1.2

No.14147 Tafoid Administrator Aug 31, 2017, 02:51	Have you verified your copy of calspeed.chd is valid and whole? chdman verify -i calspeed.chd Seems like something that might happen with an image that wasn't properly downloaded or got corrupted somehow.
No.14148 Fujix Administrator Aug 31, 2017, 05:11	It's working OK here.
No.14150 mmarino4 Tester Aug 31, 2017, 09:46	I just ran the CHD's I have through chdman and they are verified.
No.14151 Tafoid Administrator Aug 31, 2017, 10:13	What type of device is your CHD stored on? Is it a normal hard drive or something USB plugable? Seems if it was even a wildly random occurrence it would have been reported seen some time ago by other people as well given the popularity of the game. Maybe the storage medium is not keeping up with the demands of some games using CHD?
No.14152 mmarino4 Tester Aug 31, 2017, 10:14	This video isn't mine and it's older but it does show it in action. Sometimes when you get the error you can pick the same course and repeat the error like in the video. This isn't always the case. When you clear your NVRAM, Diff, etc. it won't crash in the same spot. I can't reproduce the crash shown in the video and if they cleared their files, I don't think they would have been able to either but it would crash somewhere else down the line. Last night, I was able to play through the entire game. Then I picked a single course and it crashed. I cleared the files, started a new game and it crashed a few courses in. I have tried multiple downloads and revisions and even different computers but the results are the same.
No.14153 mmarino4 Tester Aug 31, 2017, 10:16	Yes, a normal hard drive on two computers. Never from a USB/external source.
No.14154 Haze Senior Tester Aug 31, 2017, 11:52 edited on: Aug 31, 2017, 11:53	yeah, this definitely happens. reminds me a lot of the other crashes / hangs we see in some other drivers, eg. the virtual pool hangs. all such bugs happen when loading files, in this case we're getting an error message for it from the game. I suspect it's the DRC and some of the PC peripheral emulations not playing along nice, I'd be surprised if you can crash this with the recompiler turned off. see if you can crash it using -nodrc
No.14155 mmarino4 Tester Aug 31, 2017, 23:10	I'll probably have to wait until I get a much faster computer to test with the -nodrc. It runs at about quarter speed on my current machine. I'll see if I can get it to where it crashes in the same spot every time and then switch to the -nodrc mode.
No.14157 Haze Senior Tester Sep 2, 2017, 19:48	-nodrc uses a different CPU core, so you're not just going to be able to save a state and load it, or even record a reply as the timings are likely to be different, you'll just have to play it in slow motion.
No.14160 tedgreen Developer Sep 4, 2017, 17:02 edited on: Sep 4, 2017, 17:05	Could someone please verify if this happens with the calspeeda set as well. Using the disk diagnostics in calspeed there were checksum errors indicated in the file system check (see attached screenshot). This happens both with drc enabled and disabled. Also note that the disk space is reported as 1.0G, but the filesystem needs 1.6G. By switching the ROM bios to version 1.4 from the calspeeda set the file system check passed with no errors. The disk space now gets reported as 4.2G. This seems to indicate there is a firmware bug in ROM version 1.2.
No.14163 mmarino4 Tester Sep 4, 2017, 21:38 edited on: Sep 4, 2017, 22:40	How do you switch it to version 1.4? I have the option of "No update Rom" and a 3-step disk update from 1.0x to 2.1a. Edit: I got the error on fairly quickly on calspeeda. I applied the 3 ROM update, played through the entire game (Do The State). I then picked a single course and it crashed a few seconds into the race. It almost always seems to crash on the first course I play after beating the game on any of the revisions.
No.14164 Haze Senior Tester Sep 5, 2017, 00:12	if you go through the update procedure with the clone set then yeah, you'll be running 1.4 boot rom with a drive updated to 2.1a (it's a bit of an awkward setup in MAME because cases like this where the manufacturer supplied updater roms was rare, so the only way to handle it as the time was by using the bios system, but there's also a boot rom slot, and MAME only has the concept of a global 'bios' option making it impossible to select both slots unless the HDD update roms end up using a software-list based approach instead now that one is available)
No.14165 tedgreen Developer Sep 5, 2017, 01:55	I believe that calspeeda defaults to "Cal speed update U32 boot ver, 1,4 5EF6", which is version 1.4. So it is just a matter of running the calspeeda with defaults.