fauxscot Posted May 14, 2013 Share Posted May 14, 2013 Pix from this AM: https://www.dropbox.com/sc/vse5gh5719eusha/nR5QQq9nww Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gemintronic Posted May 14, 2013 Share Posted May 14, 2013 Pix from this AM: https://www.dropbox....usha/nR5QQq9nww What are those interference lines I see in the bowling screenshot? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fauxscot Posted May 14, 2013 Share Posted May 14, 2013 Hello, @fauxscot If you need help debugging, I am willing to help. I also have a Fluke 9010a with the 1802 pod. I have been working with the 1802 for years. You can see some of the things I have done here: http://www.cosmacvip.com I posted some pictures of the studio II that I built back on post #263. Here is a link to that post: http://atariage.com/...50#entry2733743 I don't mind point to point wiring or creating PCBs. If you would like my help, just ask. ED Well, I have to tell you... I am not easily impressed but you sir, are a rock star. I cannot believe what you have done! I am sitting here chuckling out loud! My god, what amazing work. You must drop me an email so we can talk more efficiently. Jumping jesus on a pogo stick. Amazing.... F Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fauxscot Posted May 14, 2013 Share Posted May 14, 2013 What are those interference lines I see in the bowling screenshot? Three sources of video junk.... one is the busted video chip (it's eating some graphic blocks), another is slightly out of tune RF modulator and the last is probably power supply noise. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt_Woloch Posted May 19, 2013 Share Posted May 19, 2013 Now I'd be curious about one thing... how does the color on the Studio III and clones work? If the system has 1K more video RAM, where is it located, and how would it have to be programmed? As far as I know, on the original Studio II, the CPU feeds the DMA data to the video chip as fast as it can (8 pixels come out in what corresponds to 1 machine cycle), so how does it manage to put out more data at the same time? Is the CPU faster or is there some different kind of DMA? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fred Posted June 6, 2013 Share Posted June 6, 2013 Any updates? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toymailman Posted June 19, 2013 Share Posted June 19, 2013 Any updates? Ditto. Also, I am up to about 40 shells for the multi-cart project. Do you think this will be enough to satisfy demand for now? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fred Posted June 19, 2013 Share Posted June 19, 2013 How much will carts be? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+thegoldenband Posted July 1, 2013 Share Posted July 1, 2013 I'd been idly following this thread, but it's taken on new relevance for me since I recently had an unexpected windfall of five RCA Studio II games that probably belonged to my fiancée's late father. We haven't found the console yet, but on our next trip to her family home, we'll look for it. Meanwhile I tried firing up the Studio II in MESS via the command line, and it turned out to be an ordeal to get it running. (I'm running OS X so other emus aren't an option.) I'll detail what I experienced in case anyone else has the same issues, or as a favor to my future self in case I forget: First MESS kept complaining that it couldn't find the system ROMs, even though they were exactly where they were supposed to be. It turned out that if you don't have the app in your Applications folder (mine was still in Downloads), it apparently can't find anything. As soon as I moved it to Applications, it would boot, but then I got a flashing garbage screen on bootup. Eventually I figured out that hitting F3 would make that go away (does the same thing happen on a real Studio II?). Then none of the files I downloaded would work -- they all crashed MESS -- until I realized that I needed to be loading .st2 files, not .bin files. Finally, even after all that, only two of the games I tried worked: Space War and Space Invaders. Everything else booted to a blank screen, graphic garbage, or similar stuff. Not even the built-in games seem to work, unless I'm missing something. Phew. Anyway MESS is living up to its name, but that's an aside. I'm excited to see what developments are brewing on the Studio II front. BTW is there a way to play multi-voice, multi-pitch music on the Studio II, as has been done with other highly audio-limited systems like the Channel F and the Apple II series? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BassGuitari Posted July 1, 2013 Share Posted July 1, 2013 Finally, even after all that, only two of the games I tried worked: Space War and Space Invaders. Everything else booted to a blank screen, graphic garbage, or similar stuff. Not even the built-in games seem to work, unless I'm missing something. You are probably just missing something. When you power on a Studio II, you get a beep and a blank black screen. From there you just need to know which keys to press. It isn't always intuitive, so I'd suggest you track down some manuals or directions if you don't already have them. The built-in games should just be keys 1-5 on Keyboard A IIRC. Anecdote: I displayed a Studio II at MGC back in March and most people thought it was broken because they'd press the reset button and then not read the directions I printed off (which were right in front of their face) for starting the games. (Similarly, I'd get people that couldn't figure out the controls of my Aquarius games, even though the keyboard overlays where literally right under their damn fingers.) As for Studio II emulation, forget MESS. Use 1802 Emulator instead. It also includes emulation (and software!) for some of the various 1802-based, CHIP-8-running computer systems, as well as color Studio II clones (honestly, most of the games don't look any better in "color" than they do in B/W, but it's there). IIRC they also include loading directions, which is very helpful if you're unfamiliar with the Studio II. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+thegoldenband Posted July 2, 2013 Share Posted July 2, 2013 You are probably just missing something. When you power on a Studio II, you get a beep and a blank black screen. I did try every button on both controllers to start the games that weren't working in MESS. I was mainly testing the new homebrews, which come with instructions as to how to start 'em up. Space War works, but when I try to play the built-in games in MESS I just get a blank screen with a single dot at the lower-left. EDIT: OK, I've been able to get Doodle to work. Not sure about the other built-in games yet...wait, OK, I've got at least some of those working. The UI is quite inscrutable, though! EDIT #2: I found a Studio II manual, and that helped a lot -- I just played a game of Bowling. So yeah, I was missing something! As for Studio II emulation, forget MESS. Use 1802 Emulator instead. Thanks for the tip, and yeah, I suspect some of the issues I was experiencing reflect the limitations of MESS. I'm running OS X (Snow Leopard) so 1802 Emulator is not an option right now, but I've been planning to install Windows and possibly Ubuntu as well, so if/when I do that, I'll check it out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toymailman Posted July 6, 2013 Share Posted July 6, 2013 I recently won a Toshiba Visicom-100 system on eBay. It took a while to figure out how to get the picture to come up on my TV, but when I learned that Japan Channel 1 = USA Channel 95 then I was set. Picture still seems fuzzy, but I think it may be due to not being perfectly synced. Anyway it worked, and I played the built in bowling with color! This is one of the nicest "Studio III" designs I've seen. The keypads have cords so you are not stuck so close to the unit. There is a joystick attachment to snap on the top of the keypad as an alternate way to play games. The console has a regular on/off switch. The RF cord is like most consoles so there is no switch box. The power supply also plugs into the unit like most consoles. and it has color! One downside is that the Studio II carts do not fit in the unit as the port opening is too narrow. Same width though. I think if I took the top off then I could put carts into the console, but that would be a bit of work. Here I was trying to figure out how to set it up. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+thegoldenband Posted July 6, 2013 Share Posted July 6, 2013 ^Ooh, very interesting! Any chance you could take some video of it in action? I haven't seen footage of any of the color-capable systems... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+evg2000 Posted July 6, 2013 Share Posted July 6, 2013 ^Ooh, very interesting! Any chance you could take some video of it in action? I haven't seen footage of any of the color-capable systems... check out this completed ebay auction, has pictures of screen: eBay Auction -- Item Number: 321141376151 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toymailman Posted July 14, 2013 Share Posted July 14, 2013 check out this completed ebay auction, has pictures of screen: eBay Auction -- Item Number: 321141376151 Hmmm...that one looks very similar to the one I have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TLD1985 Posted July 15, 2013 Share Posted July 15, 2013 The Thosiba Visicom Com-100 is interesting compared to the other clones. The MPT-02/M-1200/Apollo 80 machines are pretty much the same. They all share the same cartridge design (different labels). They all share the same library of games (altough some systems dont have certain games) They all pretty much have the same guts. They share instruction manual instructions. They mostly differ cosmetically.. different colour output and different cases (altough only 3 different designs). The Visicom Com-100 is very different. It has a unique library of games (mixture of previous games and new titles) It has a different catridge design Some games appear to have been reprogrammed for colour (opposed to just outputting mono colour) Generally appears some 'effort' has been put into the system. It may also not be compatible with Studio II/Other Clone games which again would mean there is something very different. So It is slightly important to find out if catridges from Studio IIs will work and visa versa. If they are incompatible then they have to be dumped another way and probably can't be part of the multicart (unless there is some kind of hack). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TLD1985 Posted July 15, 2013 Share Posted July 15, 2013 Comparison of the European and Japanese carts. They both have 22 pins however the Japanese carts pins 1 and 2 (or 21 and 22) have a unique shape.. I do not know what the purpose of that is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TLD1985 Posted July 23, 2013 Share Posted July 23, 2013 Paul is going to send me his old rom dumper and I am going to attempt to dump "Pinball" and "Speedway/Tag" (MPT-02). Anyone living in the London area? Just in case I have issues of some kind and we could try and dump them together. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles MacDonald Posted July 28, 2013 Share Posted July 28, 2013 I recently opened up a Visicom cartridge to confirm the pin assignments. It isn't the same as a RCA Studio 2 cartridge apparently. Inside is a Toshiba TMM331AP ROM, which is pin compatible with the Signetics S6831: http://www.datasheet...-datasheet.html The cartridge to TMM331 pin connections are as follows, with cartridge pin 1 being the leftmost angled contact: Pin 1 to ROM pins 12,13 (GND and E2) Pin 2 to ROM pins 24,15 (VCC and E0) Pin 3 to ROM pin 23 (D0) Pin 4 to ROM pin 22 (D1) Pin 5 to ROM pin 21 (D2) Pin 6 to ROM pin 20 (D3) Pin 7 to ROM pin 19 (D4) Pin 8 to ROM pin 18 (D5) Pin 9 to ROM pin 17 (D6) Pin 10 to ROM pin 16 (D7) Pin 11 to ROM pin 14 (E1) Pin 12 to ROM pin 11 (A6) Pin 13 to ROM pin 10 (A5) Pin 14 to ROM pin 9 (A4) Pin 15 to ROM pin 8 (A3) Pin 16 to ROM pin 7 (A2) Pin 17 to ROM pin 6 (A1) Pin 18 to ROM pin 5 (A0) Pin 19 to ROM pin 1 (A7) Pin 20 to ROM pin 4 (A10) Pin 21 to ROM pin 3 (A9) Pin 22 to ROM pin 2 (A8) Hope this helps anybody working with these carts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
etxmato Posted July 30, 2013 Share Posted July 30, 2013 Hi All, Very interesting info in the thread! I see an 1802 emulator mentioned, not sure which one you guys are using. I designed the Emma 02 emulator which does include a Studio II, Visicom and Victory / MPT 02 emulator as well. If you haven't seen it yet you can download a copy from: http://www.emma02.hobby-site.com/. I also have a beta Mac OS X version linked from my facebook page and here are the direct links: 64 bit: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3880958/Emma%2002/emma02-1.18-osx-x86_64-beta.pkg 32 bit: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3880958/Emma%2002/emma02-1.18-osx-intel-beta.pkg Note that I have not done much with these for more than a year..... I do not expect to be able to do any updates on these for the next few months either but will eventually continue with them. I also have been wondering about the Visicom cartridges; I have not been able to run any of the Studio II cartridges on the Visicom in Emma 02 as yet. As far as I can see in this thread they did have similar titles so I guess it should be possible. To fix this I would probably need schematics of the Visicom. If anyone has these or knows where to find them please let me know. Cheers, Marcel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sut Posted July 30, 2013 Share Posted July 30, 2013 (edited) Can anyone confirm if there was a specific UK model ? I know there was European ones which (if any) was released in the UK ? If there was a UK machine released I would also be interested in a Multi-cart in preparation for finding a machine. Edited July 30, 2013 by sut Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TLD1985 Posted July 30, 2013 Share Posted July 30, 2013 (edited) Can anyone confirm if there was a specific UK model ? I know there was European ones which (if any) was released in the UK ? If there was a UK machine released I would also be interested in a Multi-cart in preparation for finding a machine. Yes the Academy Apollo 80 was the UK Clone machine. I don't have the console but I do have 2 carts for it. I still need to take some scans of them.. but I had an issue with my scanner. Edited July 30, 2013 by TLD1985 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ranger_lennier Posted August 2, 2013 Share Posted August 2, 2013 It's pretty wild that everyone's suddenly working on this system, after a long time not hearing much about it at all. Charles MacDonald completed his Studio II dumper and was able to dump all of the MPT-02 games I sent him. I have been making arrangements to get the carts and systems I loaned out to Guru back in the USA and send them to Charles, but that may take a few months. The Visicom cart I send has some differences as Charles previously posted about, and hasn't been dumped yet. This should happen at some point, though. All the dumps which had already been dumped for some system were identical. There was previously some discussion about a unique serial number in MPT-02 dumps, but after I looked at the dumps in a hex editor, I realized that this was simply in the header added for the .st2 format, and is not actually present in the ROM on the cart. The identical dumps are the old Math Fun dump labeled as coming from the Victory, and my Math Fun which based on the instructions would seem to be the French release. Then there were MPT-02 versions of Speedway, Biorhythm, and Gunfighter/ Moonship Battle, which I believe were previously dumped from the USA Studio II. Charles had also previously matched the old Tennis dump with the dump of a US cart I sent him. Can anyone confirm that all of those old dumps were from USA Studio II carts? If we want to be extra thorough, I do have all the US carts either here or with Guru. I tried testing the new dumps in both MESS and Emma 02. The results were pretty much the same, except that I think Emma 02 matches the colors better. Neither emulator supports the plain binary dumps at the moment, so I had to add a header to put them in .st2 format, I don't think there's any way to load Grand Pack as two ROM files without changes to the emulators, so I haven't tested that one. I don't know of any other cart quite like it. Of the others, Bingo and Concentration Match appear to work fine. They'll play in color on the MPT-02, or in black and white on the Studio II. I couldn't get Pinball or Star Wars to work. It's probably an issue with the emulators, since previously no games released only for the MPT-02 family have been available. I've combined everything I got from Charles with my .st2 conversions of Bingo, Concentration Match, Pinball, and Star Wars. Feel free to check them out. http://www.mediafire.com/?w8tydhnqn4xo5l7 I'd be particularly interested if anyone is able to get Grand Pack, Pinball, or Star Wars working. And since games for these systems aren't always very intuitive, here are the links to my scans I posted awhile back. Clone Cartridge Instructions: http://www.mediafire.com/?ybzl5fm12tblbpb Studio II Cartridge Instructions: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?khuy39x2dzimy9r Clone cartridges: http://www.mediafire.com/?a6rvdkkd26zyyzc Studio II cartridges: http://www.mediafire.com/?wudbpn9erc98pw2 Owners and Service Manuals: http://www.mediafire.com/?7jod7m8a63za1n9 TV School House I Booklets: http://www.mediafire.com/?737ozbndlar93zw System Photos and System Boxes: http://www.mediafire.com/?5ebmvf28e73709c Cartridge Boxes: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?95wih39jrj6ow49 PeT Scans: http://www.mediafire.com/?ojxprk04sqwfihf 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ranger_lennier Posted August 2, 2013 Share Posted August 2, 2013 Hi All, Very interesting info in the thread! I see an 1802 emulator mentioned, not sure which one you guys are using. I designed the Emma 02 emulator which does include a Studio II, Visicom and Victory / MPT 02 emulator as well. If you haven't seen it yet you can download a copy from: http://www.emma02.hobby-site.com/. I also have a beta Mac OS X version linked from my facebookpage and here are the direct links: 64 bit: http://dl.dropbox.co...x86_64-beta.pkg 32 bit: http://dl.dropbox.co...-intel-beta.pkg Note that I have not done much with these for more than a year..... I do not expect to be able to do any updates on these for the next few months either but will eventually continue with them. I also have been wondering about the Visicom cartridges; I have not been able to run any of the Studio II cartridges on the Visicom in Emma 02 as yet. As far as I can see in this thread they did have similar titles so I guess it should be possible. To fix this I would probably need schematics of the Visicom. If anyone has these or knows where to find them please let me know. Cheers, Marcel. I like the emulator, Marcel. The best technical information about the Visicom that I know of is in the MESS source code: http://git.redump.net/mame/tree/src/mess/drivers/studio2.c My system is currently with Guru, and I'm planning to get it back here within the next few months. So it may be possible to answer some more questions about it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TLD1985 Posted August 2, 2013 Share Posted August 2, 2013 (edited) WOW! Great! I will make some videos of the new roms soon.. maybe today even! Bingo and Concentration match are the only ones that work for me too. So just to confirm the Euro-games are identical to the US-games and it's just header information that's been added later? If so that just leaves TV Arcade II: Fun with Numbers to be dumped.. Edited August 2, 2013 by TLD1985 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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