Secure Memory For Fst; Other Guidelines Regarding Accessing The Optical Disc Drive; Game Startup Screen; Various Causes Of Changes In Game Disc Access Time - Nintendo GameCube Manuallines

Optical Disc Drive Guidelines

4.7.5 Secure memory for FST

When a normal Game Disc is exchanged, the File Symbol Table (FST) is overwritten by what is on the
new Game Disc. If the FST of the new Game Disc is smaller than the FST of the Game Disc that was
swapped out, then there is no problem. But if the new FST is larger, then it cannot be loaded. An
ASSERT message will be output, and the system will lock up.
To prevent this from happening, either specify a large memory size when securing memory for the
FST, or use the MultiDisk function, in the latest version of GDEV, to store the settings to a mdf file.
(When multiple Game Discs are registered with mdf, the memory for the FST will be set automatically
to the appropriate size.)

5. Other Guidelines Regarding Accessing the Optical Disc Drive

5.1 Game Startup Screen

After the dol file is loaded by the boot program, data and program files are read from the Game Disc.
At this time, in order to shorten the time the screen is blank as much as possible, do not read any data
files. Use only the dol file to display the first screen.
Also, the dol file should use the error-handling routines described in Section 3.4 "
Type ". If there are no error-handling routines, there is no way to notify the user if some kind of
problem occurs with the read before the error-handling routine.

5.2 Various Causes of Changes in Game Disc Access Time

If a problem occurs with Game Disc access, the hardware will carry out a retry internally. This means
that even if a read has succeeded, it may have been the result of going through several retries.
Also, the calibration process requires a large amount of time, as mentioned in Section 3.5 "
Diagram ". Therefore, when a game player opens the Disc Cover while reading, much longer time is
required than just one read.
Furthermore, due to individual differences, the access may be completed slightly faster than with the
particular optical disc drive the developer is using.
Because Game Disc access time can vary for all of these various reasons, do not design processes
that depend on access time.

5.3 dol File Restrictions

Be aware that following two restrictions apply to the dol file (see Section 2.1
- The total section size must be less than 4 Mbytes.
In order to shorten the read time during startup, the total size excluding the BSS section (data
area for uninitialized variables) is limited to less than 4 Mbytes.
- Addresses that can be used by dol files are below 0x8070_0000
Addresses from 0x8070_0000 and on are reserved by the system so dol files can only use
addresses below this. Note that this restriction also applies to BSS section.
DOL-06-0026-001-A5
Released: 4/18/02
14 © 2001-2002 Nintendo of America Inc.
How to Get the Error
State
"Game Disc structure").