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Sorry @Ben from Plaion but would you perhaps be able to answer this for me? perhaps it was overlooked during testing? It only affects the team games in breakout where two players can play at once.

whackem_game.rom We're in the mid to late alpha stage. This demo lets you play one round with standard settings. Once it's finished, the game halts and needs to be restarted either with the reset button on the ColecoVision, or the appropriate option on your favorite CV emulator. I'm liking where this is going. I have the level logic for the first two stages set up, but it's not read yet, nor is that section of the game finished. Adjusting the level stats not only makes the game faster or slower, but can be used to create special situations ("sure shot" stages where players are given a limited number of targets, making accuracy a must, "speed round" stages where TONS of Byrons pop out of the holes, etc.). The original plan was to include bonus stages, but I haven't gotten to that yet... I imagine it'll be tricky. While I'm at it, here are a few conceptual scenes in the game. High scores are a possibility, but let's see where development takes us first. The red game over screen appears only when the player strikes a bomb... it's a little showy and may not be in the final build because of memory constraints. (I'm doing pretty well with ROM size so far, but there's still sound effects to worry about.) Anyway! Give it a spin, let me know what you think.

Increased my score a bit. I am playing on "normal" difficulty on that rom that has "Game 1"

Sorry for getting all AVGN on the Jaguar. I just really dislike the system, but each to their own

I suppose I am "quite wrong" about my use of a poorly constructed sentence in the bolded bits. What I meant to say is that this particular collection of Famicom games are all bootlegs, and these particular bootleg titles are dime-a-dozen bootlegs that are "not very collectible." But they do have value to someone who's gonna play them. And I suppose ANYTHING is "collectible" so long as there is someone who collects it. I am, however, confident that collectors of bootleg Famicom games are in a very small minority. Or at least, they should be. A lot of the luster of collecting Asian bootlegs (or any other bootleg, for that matter) wears off quickly when one realizes that purchasing bootleg games contributes to software piracy. It cheats the legal copyright holders of those games out of revenue they -- not the bootleggers -- richly deserve. Bootleggers = criminals. Just so you know. So yeah, I too am of the mindset that unauthorized = garbage. Not to start an argument or anything. I'm just saying I hold a different opinion. -Ben

Hi All, I've bene trying to find the Lo and HI TOS images for the ENG version of TOS 2,.06, I just need the two ROM version. Know where I can download so I can burn with my EPROM programmer? Thanks

When you select a game, the LTO issues the reset signal to the Intellivision. Some Intellivisions don't response so the LTO + Intellivision look hung. I have an Intellivision that does the same thing. Just do a quick tap on the Reset button and the game should start.

As noted, it means the signal on that line will be an active low. Lines without the circle will be an active high. Note also that sometimes active lows will be tied high voltage-wise to make the circuit respond as desired, and active high lines may be tied low for the same type of reasons. . .the important parts of this are that the circles at the chip do not prevent the line from connecting or being read at any point along the trace it is part of, they just tell us what kind of signal is there.

Evening all Perhaps someone here can be of some assistance with an issue I’m having. I’m trying to flash the core of my PokeyMax 2B but keep running into a brick wall. I found 2 different programs on line for this, found the correct core.bin files and used Altirra to put one (stereo + U1MB) into an .atr file, used my SDrive Max to mount the .atr, but for some reason neither of the programs is able to see the core.bin file, I either get a ‘file not found’ or ‘failed to open file’ error. It’s almost as if there is some sort of SIO issue, but I don’t believe there is a problem with any of my equipment. I wasn’t able to find any real documentation on how to flash the cores, so I was hoping someone here has had some experience with this. Btw, my set up is: XEGS U1MB/VBXE/UAV/64k SRAM/PokeyMax 2B Thank you, and please feel free to let me know if any additional information is needed. 👍

First of all the SD card reader in the Dreamcast expansion slots will not destroy your GD reader. Second of all Mac got rid of dual boot as early as Mac OS 12. They're currently on Mac OS 14. Anything with an "M processor" will not work with Windows. Let's just say I feared windows ever since the only way I could get someone to stop tapping into the windows portion of my Mac was literally physically unplugging the power cord in the computer and then erasing it clean from the Mac side. After that I vowed never again. When it comes to PC viruses I'm like Adrian Monk. I try to avoid them if I can't deal with them.

Could you post some 720p screenshot samples of the GSP GUI main screen, arcade screen and game details screen? Might be able to use them.

Just follow all the traces in the wiring for the 156. It goes to the 138 and the 259. And is the key in the memory mapping also with the diodes. The 156 along with the 241 that it is connected with as well is important it what gives you the rambo option and allows the ram to appear at the 6000 space in 8k chunks instead of the 5800 space in 2k pages. Also maybe the reason that led lights up right away when you turn on power if that circuit is messed up. As for the little circle it just means the line is active low, enabled, don't worry about that just map out the lines see my screenshot best to view it via a large screen not the mobile or print it out the schematic.

Do you think you also might be able to, while you are at it, open the GSP firmware in MiniGUI and edit it a small amount to change the buttons and add some libretro cores to its database for us GSP gamers? I could mock up some visual ideas for modifying the GUI.

Oh, this is fantastic, and at such a low price. Thanks for the link! -Ben

Like the others, I also thought that Atari800 used to emulate this but couldn't find any older builds that did so. I took a look at the Atari800 SIO and sound code and it looks like the existing SIO sound approach would need to be reworked. Fundamentally, the characteristic Atari SIO sound comes from the way that POKEY's serial port interacts with timer 3 and 4, particularly in asynchronous receive mode. This is a scope of when the Atari is transmitting a command frame over the SIO bus, specifically a type-3 poll. This is the farting you hear after DOS 2 boots or when no bootable devices are connected. CH1 (yellow/TX) is SIO DATA OUT, CH2 (cyan/RX) is SIO DATA IN, CH3 (purple) is audio out. During a send -- SKCTL=$23 -- timers 3+4 are continuously counting to provide the transmit clock for any bytes that are queued to send. It runs continuously regardless of whether a byte is actually being sent or not. Timers 3+4 are configured for a period of 1/38400th of a sec for 19200 baud and the OS configures channel 4 for square wave output ($A8), so the output tone is 19200Hz. This is inaudible, so the primary component heard is the change when timer 4 starts and stops, and not the tone output itself. This is also why the tone starts a little bit before and some time after the actual command frame bytes, since it depends not on the end of the last byte but when the SIO routine in the OS gets around to reconfiguring the serial port. Each command sent produces a single "putt" of sound. The farting noise comes from the OS SIO routine retrying the type 3 polling commands 27 times, with a timeout driven by OS timer 1. This is VBI-based with a timeout of 2 vblanks, so the puttering occurs at 30Hz for NTSC and 25Hz for PAL. During a receive, SKCTL is changed to $13 to enable asynchronous receive mode: This mode sounds a lot different than transmit because of the way asynchronous receive mode affects timers 3+4. In this mode, POKEY has to synchronize to the device's transmit clock, which is out of phase with POKEY's serial clock. Therefore, in this mode, POKEY holds timers 3+4 in reset while waiting for a start bit, and those timers don't run. At the leading edge of the start bit, timers 3+4 are started, and then count off half-bits in phase with the transmit clock so POKEY can sample in the middle of each bit. Upon sampling the stop bit, timers 3+4 are stopped again to wait for the leading edge of the next start bit. This process causes timers 3+4 to underflow and fire a pulse to the audio circuit 19 times -- which crucially is odd. This means that the output bit is toggled at the end of each byte, which you can see above in the gaps before and after the ACK byte ($41). The result is that the audio output has a fundamental square wave at half the byte rate of the transmission, with bursts of inaudible 19200Hz on top of it. The fundamental frequency varies based on the device, a bit higher or lower than the nominal 960Hz depending on the device. 810s, for instance, produce a slightly higher pitch than a 1050. Note that the byte rate is not the same as 10 times the bit rate, as devices often have a bit of a gap between the stop and start bits. It also means that the tone doesn't depend on the computer's clocks, which means that it is invariant to NTSC/PAL. What Atari800's SERIO_SOUND appears to be doing is rendering the 10 bits for each byte at channel 4 volume -- 1 start bit + 8 data bits + 1 stop bit. There is often a component of this in the audio output due to the SIO data leaking into the audio output, but it's faint and not subject to POKEY volumes. It's what you sometimes hear when a loader shuts off the main SIO sound and you hear still hear tinny buzzing during the sector loads that varies a bit in timbre depending on the data bytes being received. That's not the same as the stronger transmit/receive effects above, which are independent of the data bytes being sent and received. As far as I can tell, the sio.c/pokey.c/[mz]pokeysnd.c don't implement timers 3+4 being held for asynchronous receive mode, which is a main requirement for emulating this effect. Probably the simplest starting point would be to override the connection from timer 4 to audio channel 4 and drive audio channel 4 at 0Hz/960Hz when asynchronous receive mode is enabled, running it only when bytes are being received. It's an approximation but would go pretty far towards something representative. More importantly, it's compatible with cheaper asynchronous audio, so it's easier than the next steps of either properly starting and stopping timers 3+4 during async receive mode or driving audio channel 4 with machine synchronized timing. AFAICT Atari800 isn't set up for the latter anyway because it doesn't actually emulate device transmit timing -- it instead sends bytes at the rate that POKEY is set up to receive them, which is not accurate but works most of the time (though it allows some bogus configurations like receiving at the wrong baud rate). The majority of SIO devices send bytes back-to-back at a consistent pitch, though, so it's not necessary to emulate at that level to attain representative pitch. The nominal pitches for receiving from the 810 and 1050, based on the controller clocks and firmware loops, are 943.4Hz and 910.75Hz.

[Windows App Supplemental : Folder-based file triggers] If you want to optionally use folder-based file triggers to run alternative libretro core libraries, without needing to create database trigger records, or in addition to using database triggers, see the documentation include with this zip file. runme-056b.zip

A highlight of visiting a new city is when the wrong way turns into an unexpected treat. I still fondly remember wandering around a deserted part of Naples only to end up at the best dinner and service I had the entire trip through.

I need help determining a graphic on the schematic. I’m using the schematic diagram here and I found a lifted pcb feed to one of the 74LS156 pins tied all together so I’m checking other pins but can’t determine what the open circle is at pins 1, 14 & 15. Thanks for the help, that pin 14 of U7 goes off and should trace to pin 12 of U12 but I’m uncertain about the open circle and my boards don’t seem to trace to that pin.

The mystery deepens with the companion Space Raider.

Alright, but what if I want to use this in a live performance improv setting? Can I at least mute drum and synth sections and whatnot? Another thing I should note is that I'm probably gonna test this on a RetroN 77. The BW/COL button is in the back in that design and I might need an alt button to play sequences, like the RESET button for instance.

Did you get it to work? The bluescsi V2 is it internal? 50pin or external DB25. I am trying to get my external Bluescsi V2 working on my TT and no luck so far.. Term out or in. James

Nice work. Thanks for the update. The keycap adapters are always going to be the trickiest part to get right - the tolerances are very small. Mine worked well in PLA. I've since tried PETG and have found the retaining bumps on the adapter stem do seem to wear down. Is the main issue the connection of the adapter to the switches? or the keycaps? It sounds like the switches, but if it is the keycaps, the spacebar-specific adapter might work better. The only difference is the retaining bumps on the stems are 0.1mm larger. I might try and pick up a few different brands of switches to try as I've only tested the Akko switches linked in the repo.

I thought I would show these from Rockman: Deus Ex Machina:

I'm having an issue where now sometimes the power led flashes when power is plugged in.I can unplug it with batteries and it stops. Then it will be fine for a while if I plug it back in. Think I need to get in there and reinforce it.

Agreed. I should probably clarify that my intention in referring to the mod as 'prehistoric' wasn't a dig at Best (or Brad), but rather a description of the mod itself. It could have come from anywhere and would have still received the same description. Nothing wrong with the mod itself (though I do still believe it to be more involved than necessary compared to newer offerings); if it's what someone wants to use, that's their prerogrative.