Daedalus R14 Yuletide update: Be very quiet, we’re hunting audio bugs

For those of us curious about the state of development of StrmnNrmn‘s Daedalus, the Sony PlayStation Portable homebrew that smoothly emulates the Nintendo 64, here’s a special yuletide update from the developer himself.

Check out what StrmnNrmn’s up to at the full article.

Here’s some holiday news about one of the biggest homebrew applications currently in development for the Sony PlayStation Portable, the Nintendo 64 emulator Daedalus: it seems that StrmnNrmn is having a bit of trouble with the next release’s audio code. No, it’s nothing too major, but it’s one that’s got the PSP homebrew developer somewhat in a fix.

So, what’s the issue with the audio? Here’s a quote direct from StrmnNrmn’s blog, taken as is:

The issue seems to be a very odd synchronisation bug which causes the emulator to lock up when running the audio processing asynchronously. As with many of these types of bugs, it’s proving quite hard to track down because as soon as I change the code to debug the problem, the issue goes away. A true Heisenbug.

For those of us uninitiated in bugspeak, a Heisenbug is a computer programming bug that seemingly vanishes into thin air or changes its characteristics when you try to root it out. A veritable wellspring of frustration, indeed.

But fans of Daedalus should rest easy, as StrmnNrmn explains that he’s well on his way to squashing that particular bug. This is through the general-purpose ‘job manager’ application he’s writing that should help coordinate tasks between Daedalus’ Media Engine and the PSP’s main CPU.

What this job manager would do is to decide whether or not the Media Engine can take a specific processing task all by itself, or if it needs the help of the main CPU to do the task without any hitches. The audio processing issue would be one of the first tasks to take advantage of this job manager.

So, there’s really nothing to worry about, as far as the next release of Daedalus being a better and bigger Nintendo 64 emulator for your Sony PlayStation Portable is concerned. In any case, StrmnNrmn wishes all readers a Merry Christmas to end his Yuletide update.