DSL and disconnect/black screen problem

[momonpso]

I recently switched to DSL from dial-up. Everything seemed fine until I was playing PSO and got disconnected. But when I pressed start like it says to do, I get a black screen and cant get out of it. I have to turn off the machine, so because of that I lose everything not equipped. When I used dial-up, I got a lot of disconnects and FSOD's, but nothing like this. Plus it takes a long time to disconnect. I'll be in a game and all of a sudden people stop moving and I cant type words. I can still fight monsters, pipe to town, sell things, bank things and then finally I get the message that I was disconnected. I tried going to quit game when people freeze up but that just gets me the black screen faster. Any ideas? Should I call Sega about this or my DSL server?

[Rich_T]

eurgh, ive expeirienced that horible lag like disconections where it takes forever before the gamecube realises the conections been dropped.
Although on the odd ocasion its happened to me, after a while ive always been able to quit the game and then the saves kicked in, or its disconected me normaly (error 100)

When i get the error 100, the line has been disconected press start message, i normaly leave it, as after a second or so, it goes to the save screen anyway.

if your not getting to this screen theres a problem somewhere, and you need to do some basic fault finding.

first things first, what is the game saving to, i guess you have the gamecube version, if so look at your memory card.
is it an official card?
if yes, then maybe the contacts are dirty, or have a bit of duston them, take the card out, and blow on the contacts both in the gamecube and on the memory card.
if its a third party card ( not nintendo branded) this may be the root of your problems, PSO acceses the memory card a lot, and for some reason it doesnt like non nintendo cards - its something to do with how the game accesses the card, and how thrid party cards use various forms of memory compresion.

Next problem
your getting freqeuntly disconected, have you looked at hpw your gamecibe is conected to the internet source (router/modem/whatever)
starting from the gamecube end, remove the BBA and again blow on the contacts on the gamecube and the BBA itself, make sure that it is firmly back in position.
now look at the contacts for the ethernet cable on the BBa and the router/internet device, again blow these out.
next a cable test:
using a multimeter, set it to the highest resistance setting and test each contact on the cable.
you dont have a multimeter??
no problem, get the gamecube online, and shake the ethernet cable, if you get disconected each time you shake the cable youve got a faulty cable.

for blowing out the sockets, use compressed air at roughly 25PsI that has been filtered and is not oiled, or just use lung power.




<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Rich_T on 2004-01-10 13:59 ]</font>

[momonpso]

OK, thanks for the info. I will try doing the things you suggested. It happens with both of my memory cards, one official and one 3rd party, so its not the cards.

[Rich_T]

you can also try physicly removing the cable from the BBA if it appaers to have frozen, that should bring the "error 100" up pretty quick, then the save screen

[RoninJoku]

Is that really something that could fix this problem? Cuz i've been having this problem as well (in fact i was just going to post again about it) and I was told that i need to get either a router or to wire my gc through my pc via a network and crossover cable in order to fix it.

[momonpso]

Someone had told me to try a router as well, but when you go to Nintendos site they say if you are having any problems with online try removing your router. All I know is that for the first time since I switched to DSL I had a day where I didn't dc once and that was Sat. Of course I didn't play much, just did a lot of talking, so maybe that had something to do with it. http://www.pso-world.com/psoworld/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif

[momonpso]

OK, so heres the story...I called Sega, they said to contact my service provider, so I called Verizon and after setting some numbers on the computer I tried again and this time I couldnt even connect. So back to Verizon and they said to call Nintendo (pass the buck time lol)and also to try a router. So I call Nintendo and they said that there have been numerous complaints from people who use DSL with PPPoe (like I do) of disconnects and black screens, so they said, ta daaaa.... call Sega! I didn't bother calling Sega back, instead I went out and got a router and guess what? No more dc's! Problem solved! I went for a wired router since I didnt want the added expense of going wireless and it works great. Not only that but now I can play PSO while my son plays FFXI on the computer.
So the moral of this story is: If anyone has a problem with frequent dc's/black screens....get a router!