One of those debugging nights
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It must be a situation every programmer is familiar with – you write some code, you are pretty pleased with it, but it just doesn’t work and while you know it is only a small thing that is stopping it from functioning properly, but you just cannot track it down.
That is exactly where I am with my code for the “VMUFAT” file system – the file system for the Sega Dreamcast VMU. After a decade of trying (in fits and starts), I now have a code base which I think is good enough, or almost good enough, to post to LKML without me being burnt to a crisp by the subsequent flames.
But it just doesn’t work! Trying to list the files on the device gets a list of 200 copies of the same file (200 is the maximum number of files that a standard VMU can index in its directory blocks and the code throws an error when you exceed that).
The thing is, the old, ugly, code worked at this. But I cannot see what I am doing wrong with the new, clean, code. Indeed it seems to replicate exactly the same functionality. Last night I picked up a couple of bugs in the code quickly but, whilst they addressed one error, they did not fix the big one.
Time for a rotary debugger? Well, it will be a roti debugger in this house, this Friday evening.
Related articles
- There Was a Dreamcast TV Set. It was Both Hideous and Glorious. [Video] (kotaku.com)
- Working on filesystem code (cartesianproduct.wordpress.com)
- Dreamcast 2 Concept Shows What Could Have Been (escapistmagazine.com)
- SEGA Dreamcast Collection now available for free with OnLive PackPack Bundle (thesegasource.wordpress.com)
- Play the Dreamcast Half-Life That Never Was (escapistmagazine.com)
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