The BIOS exception handler ran interpreted for the life of every process,
1.22 billion instructions and 44.6% of all interpreted work in Breath of
Fire III, even though it is compiled and even though the stub that
unblessed it sat at exactly the address bios/SCPH1001.toml already
declared as an install slot. Two mechanisms existed and did not compose:
the emitter hooked the declared slot PC, while the runtime's bless
verifier memcmp'd the whole body including that slot, so the body was
MISMATCH forever and native code never reached the hook.
Three parts, none of which pays off alone:
1. Publish the declared ranges to the runtime. The emitter emits a
PsxKernelPatchRange table next to the kernel body table and routes it
through the backend descriptor; the bless verifier compares a body in
segments that skip them. CLEAN now means "every byte outside every
declared range still matches ROM", which is the claim the native code
actually depends on.
2. Generalise the slot model to what the patches are. The old model
assumed a 4-word lui/addiu/jalr/nop stub written over ROM zeros and
fired on `word != 0`. Measured against both images, only one of five
observed shapes fits: patchers also plant a `jr` over real ROM
instructions, rewrite an 11-word prologue and insert an `mfc0 Cause`,
and NOP out a driver routine. A slot is now a range with a length and
an explicit `resume` (jalr / fallthrough / none), detected by
comparing every word against its ROM-baked value.
3. Hand back from the interpreter at the range end. Kernel page 0 is
permanently dirty, because the handler saves registers there on every
exception, so straight-line interpretation would run the whole
function after the patch. The emitter registers the resume PC as a
continuation key and dirty_ram_interp surfaces there.
A PC inside a declared range must never be a native dispatch key: the
compiled bytes there are not what executes. Seven pre-existing
jal-return continuations violated that and wedged the boot at frame 0 in
an infinite dispatch loop (OpenBIOS RAM 0x357C). The emitter now drops
continuation keys inside a range so dispatch misses through to the
interpreter, and refuses to emit if a range covers a function entry,
which would silently remove a callable function instead.
Both profiles declare their measured ranges, and SCPH1001.toml finally
pins [program.image] sha256 to v2.2 (CRC32 37157331) so a v2.0 dump
refuses to generate rather than producing phantom discovery gaps.
Measured on Breath of Fire III (SLPS-00990, Psy-Q SDK 3.70), headless,
matched frames, PSX_KERNEL_PATCH_RANGES=0 for the OFF side:
OpenBIOS SCPH-1001 v2.2
bless mismatch 21 -> 0 74 -> 0
kernel bodies -87.7%/frame -97.8%/frame
all interp insns -42.6%/frame -94.2%/frame
The residual kernel-body work is exactly declared-words x entries on
every range, so nothing leaks past the hook. The A0/B0/C0 vector
trampolines are unchanged (+0.2%, noise): the profile excludes them by
design and they are a separate job. Card read traces are byte-identical
across the A/B on both images, all 32 entries, which exercises the two
ranges that replace the kernel's card handler.
Rule 18 holds throughout: the guest's patched instructions still execute
as written on the dirty-RAM interpreter. Only the code around them
changes backend. Nothing is synthesised.
Tests: runtime/tests/test_kernel_patch_ranges.c (new, the verifier's
accept/reject behaviour and the hand-back predicate) and the install-slot
range invariants in recompiler/tests/bios_address_model_test.cpp.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The launcher and studio ship as Retro Launcher and Retro Studio now,
from the RetroPortingToolKit org, so the old product name is gone from
display text, documentation and release asset filenames.
The split is by case, and it is not cosmetic. CamelCase RetComM was
always the product; lowercase retcomm and RETCOMM_ are identifiers --
the C++ namespace, the binaries, the data directories, the CMake and
environment variables, the Cloudflare service names, the readme markers.
Renaming those would orphan existing installs for no benefit, so they
are untouched: 1101 lowercase retcomm and 205 RETCOMM_ still stand in
the launcher alone.
Four things are deliberately still spelled RetComM, and three of them
would have been real breakage:
- RetComM-Data is CamelCase but it is a directory on disk --
<exe_dir>\RetComM-Data\{runtime,config,data} for a portable install.
Renaming it strands every portable user's config, toolchains and
catalog cache.
- TechnicallyComputers/RetComM-Launcher in readme_has_launcher() is the
historical half of a both-slugs test. Renaming it makes it a duplicate
of the line above and sends every port built before the transfer back
to reporting its launcher section missing.
- _LEGACY_LAUNCHER_RE matched "^## RetComM Launcher". A sweep renamed it,
which would have silently stopped it matching every README already out
there; it now accepts both headings.
- The portable-stub lookup gained the pre-rename filenames back as
fallbacks, because old zips stay on the releases page and a rollback
downloads one.
Release assets become Retro-Launcher-* / Retro-Studio-*. That is safe
for installed clients: pick_launcher_asset() gates on *linux*/*windows*/
*macos* plus extension and arch, not on the product name, and the
Windows portable stub is identified by its RCM1 trailer rather than its
filename.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_013DpaQqVguHFpBuCmdoFYWY
recomp-net, retcomm-rbengine (now rbengine), retcomm-toolchains (now
RetroPorting-Toolchains), the catalog and the launcher moved from
TechnicallyComputers to the RetroPortingToolKit org. GitHub still
redirects the old repo URLs, so nothing is broken today — but this repo
is what every port inherits its .gitmodules from, so the old owner
propagates into each new clone until it is fixed here.
.gitmodules now names the new URLs. The toolchain repo is updated in the
CI action default, the codegen host, fetch_toolchain.sh, toolchain_pack
and package_setup_host, and the scaffolder's recomp-net / rbengine
defaults follow.
Two things the mechanical sweep would have missed:
- render_launcher_block() held a second copy of the launcher slug split
across two string literals, so a search for the full slug did not see
it and every regenerated README kept the dead owner. It is now derived
from LAUNCHER_REPO, which is the only place the slug lives.
- readme_has_launcher() matched one exact slug. Pointed at the new one
alone it would report every port built before the transfer as missing
its launcher section, and append a second copy to any README carrying
neither the markers nor a "## RetComM Launcher" heading. It now
accepts both.
The scaffolder's default GitHub owner for new ports becomes
RetroPortingToolKit. Existing ports are unaffected — they carry their
own owner in the README and remote.
psxrecomp, snesrecomp and recomp-ui did not move and still point at
mstan. Submodule paths (lib/recomp-net, lib/retcomm-rbengine) are
unchanged: they are pinned by every port and are not repo slugs.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_018xfKkiEkh87zL1EpE5Ty55
Matched Ape Escape retail SCPH1001 LLE builds identify 0661ce77 as the visible boot regression: parent 155e269b reaches game code, while 0661ce77 stalls near BIOS frame 375. Revert its four dependent follow-ups too; retain PR #326 readback bounds and PR #328 Vulkan aspect changes.
The row-by-row raster dispatcher amplifies an existing malformed DMA list into massive GL work. Keep the broader CPU/DMA arbitration experiment separate for compatibility testing. Document attribution, validation, and the temporarily restored interlace limitation.
Validation: full Ape target reaches title/menu and frame 11669 on retail LLE; OpenBIOS control reaches frame 3701. Eight focused tests pass; retained GL readback fixture passes 71 checks at both 1x and 4x after linking local SDL with iconv. Beads: beads-iisy; DMA follow-up: beads-eio.3.122.
Pegasus