Nvidia Shield Portable won't run lots of games

[sacasoh]

Hello,

I'm have some issues with the Nvidia Shield Portable (Tegra 4).
First of all, I tried loading the games below on many versions of the apk (I'm in the community beta too), and even flashed 2 different roms on the Shield (Kitkat, Lollipop, and a CM13 Marshmellow), and I tried every setting in the app: I can't load games like Pokemon heart gold, Shiren the Wanderer, Golden Sun - Dark Down, Mario & Luigi - Bowser's Inside Story... Though I can run perfectly games like the Ace Attorney series, Castlevania, and 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors.

Even with the v 2.3.0.3.a (the one that started compatibility with the Shield) I cannot run the games. Some, like Pokemon, I get both white screens, some like Shiren I get some corruption and then Drastic crashes; Golden Sun starts and crashes a few seconds in; amd Mario simply won't load.

All roms work fine on my galaxy S5 - my Shield is on Android 5.1 right now, rooted.

Can you guys help me?

Thank you!

[Exophase]

Did you purchase it from the Play store? I would assume you aren't since you're using an old version APK.

[sacasoh]

Yes, I did. I think there's no other way to get in the community beta, I'm right?

The older apks I found from some user in nvidia forums.

Edit: Also, just to be on the safe side of things, I just installed the demo version and got the same errors...

[Exophase]

Sorry, I missed that you used the beta.

I wouldn't know if APKs uploaded somewhere are untampered with, so that might not be reliable.. not that you should need to use an older version (but if you do we have them on google drive somewhere)

But since you get the same problem with the beta that's probably not the issue.

Was a crash dump text file output? If so could you attach it?

[sacasoh]

Where can I find the crash dump?

I'm now using the 2.5.0.0 agains, there's no difference in compatibility for me from older apks - Super Mario 64 DS runs on both (only ganme with 3D graphics that worked so far).

[Exophase]

The crash dump file is located at /sdcard/DraStic/crash_dump.txt

[sacasoh]

Just tried to start Pokemon on last beta: I only got the loading spinning symbol, and no progress in the bar below.

The conts of the dump are:

"Unhandled SIG_SEGV in '4780 - Pokemon HeartGold (U)(Xenophobia)'
caused by instruction ldr lr, [r12, #4] (at a2361df0), address 63800205
Version: r2.5.0.0a build 86
Arch: ARM-NEON
Reference: A2334F5C
Registers:
r00: A4220188
r01: 0236BEEC
r02: A24FE000
r03: A4222188
r04: 00000000
r05: A382DBB0
r06: 00000000
r07: 00000000
r08: 008DAFBB
r09: A4220208
r10: 000003BB
r11: A4222508
r12: 63800201
r13: A11C25E8
r14: E128F000

Emulated ARM9:
Mode 00, IRQ 00000000, CPSR 0000001f, PC 02000800, cycles -0000001
r0: 00000000
r1: 027e000c
r2: 00004000
r3: 00000000
r4: 00000000
r5: 00000000
r6: 00000000
r7: 00000000
r8: 00000000
r9: 00000000
r10: 00000000
r11: 00000000
r12: 027e4000
r13: 027e377c
r14: 02000878
r15: 00000000
Debug instruction count: 0

Emulated ARM7:
Mode 00, IRQ 00000000, CPSR 0000001f, PC 02380000, cycles -0000001
r0: 00000000
r1: 00000000
r2: 00000000
r3: 00000000
r4: 00000000
r5: 00000000
r6: 00000000
r7: 00000000
r8: 00000000
r9: 00000000
r10: 00000000
r11: 00000000
r12: 00000000
r13: 02400000
r14: 00000000
r15: 00000000
Debug instruction count: 0


Translation cache details:
main: 0xa24fe000 - 0xa34fe000
main: 11364848 + 6198844 bytes
itcm: 0xa34fe000 - 0xa35fe000
itcm: 0 + 0 bytes
alternate: 0xa35fe000 - 0xa37fe000
alternate: 596 + 272 bytes

0 texture cache bytes allocated, 0 texture cache el"

[Exophase]

I can't look too much into the crash right now (internet connection at home is down :/) but it looks like the translation cache is overflowing and pretty early on. That wouldn't happen normally, so I'm skeptical that they're being read correctly.

A couple things to look into:

1) Are you using compressed or uncompressed files? If compressed, can you try switching to uncompressed?
2) Can you get the md5sum of the uncompressed ROMs?

[sacasoh]

When you said to check the CRC I redownloaded the game (pokemon) directly from the shield onm the internal storage, then copied to external, then extracted... all versions worked (compressed and uncompressed). Golden Sun also worked.

I'm starting to think that the shield is having issues reading from the external SD: I'll swap for another, recheck and post back to confirm that this was the issue - thank you very much for your help.

Edit: That was the problem! The card wasn't corrupted (cheksums were not altered by copying and pasting to/from SD Card), but Nvidia Shield Portable oonly supports SD Cards up to 32gb. To use my 64gb I had to set allocation size at 2kb (instead of the usual 32kb) - probably that was messing with the emulator. I installed some PSX roms and got similar issues too, so that settles the matter.

Sorry to bother you with an issue caused by my device. Thanks again for the help!