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Back to harmony menu without power off/on ?


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While I agree that having the ability to remote reset the system would be convenient for the Harmony cartridge, I don't think the 2600 is "smart enough" to do so. Plus, the controller is also limited in what "button combinations" it could do in order to initiate such a reset. I mean think about it, in most 2600 games, by just moving around & pressing fire, your pretty much pressing them all, so your game would be constantly resetting. Even a "holding buttons" style reset would be an issue with most games.

 

It would have to be a separate button or wiring cable harness, etc. from the cart or console which would not look pretty.

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A lot of systems' cartridge ports have a reset line which, as the name suggests, will reset the system.

 

This PDF has the pinouts for all the ports on the Commodore PET, VIC 20 and 64. The cartridge(expansion) ports have the reset line on Pin X (Vic) and Pin C(64). I had a cartridge port expander for my Vic 20 that included a reset button, used it all the time.

 

Looks like the Turbo Grafx-16's is on pin #36.

 

The Atari's cartridge port does not have a reset line.

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Nah… 5v ain't gonna do shit, but probably act as a crude reset line in the 2600's cartridge port. ;)

Smoke your 7805 regulator, necessitating costly repair. Is it really worth the risk to your console when you can just toggle the power switch? :ponder:

Edited by stardust4ever
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Well, I did think of one idea actually.

Plug the AC power adapter from the 2600 into a power extension chord bar. The ones that have the on/off toggle switches. And using an extension chord you can keep it right by your side and simply turn the power on & off without having to get up to use the power switch on the console.

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Well, I did think of one idea actually.

Plug the AC power adapter from the 2600 into a power extension chord bar. The ones that have the on/off toggle switches. And using an extension chord you can keep it right by your side and simply turn the power on & off without having to get up to use the power switch on the console.

or this:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Etekcity%C2%AE-Wireless-Controlled-Electrical-Included/dp/B0087EIDRS/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1437882541&sr=8-2&keywords=wireless+remote+outlets

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Well, I did think of one idea actually.

Plug the AC power adapter from the 2600 into a power extension chord bar. The ones that have the on/off toggle switches. And using an extension chord you can keep it right by your side and simply turn the power on & off without having to get up to use the power switch on the console.

 

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Well, I did think of one idea actually.

Plug the AC power adapter from the 2600 into a power extension chord bar. The ones that have the on/off toggle switches. And using an extension chord you can keep it right by your side and simply turn the power on & off without having to get up to use the power switch on the console.

But you still have to get up off your keaster to hit reset for those games that don't let you restart with the Fire button.

Edited by stardust4ever
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Exactly.

Plus you often need or want access to all the other console switches as well, so the reality is that you want the console itself close by for long gaming sessions anyhow so what's the point. Better to simply have longer cables & extensions for the power & video and keep the console next to you with the bag of chips & soda.

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I dont know, if its possible from the hardware-side of the Harmony to make such a software-reset. For example, my "Everdrive-MD" can not do this on the Megadrive (Genesis), while the newer model, which is called "Mega Everdrive" can do it. I can remember, that some time ago, in the Everdrive-Forum an user asked Krikzz (the Everdrive Produver), if its not possible, to integrate a special button-combination on the Megadrive-Joystick, that this also works on the Everdrive-MD. Krikzz answered, that this is not possible from the hardware-side of the Everdrive-MD to do this. On the other side, the Everdrive-MD is more compatible to clone-systems, like the "Retron 3" for example, while the "Mega Everdrive" dont work there. But i think, this is more a question of the hardware, than a question of finding a good button-combination to do such a software-reset and i dont think, that this will work on the Harmony and Atari-2600 hardware at the moment.

 

But if this would be possible, a good way to go to the menu, would be like it works on the Minimig. The Minimig-Firmware offers the possibility to go to the Minimig-Menü, by steering "up" and "down" with "Joysstick 1" at the same time. There are two possibilys to do this. First is to make a little modding on the Joystick, so that its possible to steer in both directions at the same time. Second way, and this is how i do it, simply connect a Y-cable on the joyport-1, which gives then the possibility to connect two joysticks to this joyport and then you can steer "up" on one and "down" on the other joystick. This is a buttoncombination which is not possible in normal playing, so it can be used good for things like this.

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The basic issue here is the Harmony only has access to address and data lines. No reset line, no interrupt line, no clock or control lines, nothing. It makes doing something like this very difficult.

 

The only way to do anything out of the ordinary is to inject code into the game itself. On the 2600 you can't just inject code arbitrarily as the timing is tight in many places. There is probably no way to detect when it's always safe to inject code, and in advanced bankswitching methods, there is no time to detect anything anyway.

 

I can think of some heuristics where you might get maybe 75% of games to be able to reset, but those odds are not good enough to implement it, especially since the act of detecting itself could make some of the remaining 25% of games not even play at all. It's a very hard problem to solve, and it has little payoff, because if you're going through the trouble of custom wiring, why not just wire in a remote power switch?

 

You don't even need to wire things. You could just buy something like this:

 

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Etekcity-1-Pack-Wireless-Controlled-Electrical-Switch-Socket-Outlet-with-Remote-Battery-Included/43350342?action=product_interest&action_type=title&item_id=43350342&placement_id=irs-105-t1&strategy=PWVUB&visitor_id&category=&client_guid=70c80540-c88f-4cde-8c86-71ba96c0b8e7&customer_id_enc&config_id=105&parent_item_id=17117726&parent_anchor_item_id=17117726&guid=a30f6270-ff06-4ae9-a87d-f4484f6426bc&bucket_id=irsbucketdefault&beacon_version=1.0.1&findingMethod=p13n

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Does it kill people to just toggle the power switch?

 

@Batari: Another question I'd like to ask. Many flash carts have an option to load the previous game without reflashing. PowerPak and all the Everdrives that use flash memory allow this. Since I'm sure the Harmony uses 32kb flash memory to store games, is there a way to be able to simply load the previous loaded game without locating it in the file system and reflashing? Maybe hit reset or something to autoload the last loaded game.

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Some games reside totally in flash, but 32k games are partially loaded to RAM because Harmony needs to keep its bootloader in flash. Plus there's the issue of Encore RAM which is wiped on reboot. You would generally need to reload the game anyway.

 

If you want to play the same game, or play one game after another in a list to try them out, I can understand the annoyance of having to navigate to the game again and load it. Years ago, we talked about a way to remember the last menu position on a power cycle and boot there, so it would be easy to reload the same game or play games sequentially. I could look into it again if anyone can suggest a good way to inform the console on boot that you want to start at the last menu position.

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Some games reside totally in flash, but 32k games are partially loaded to RAM because Harmony needs to keep its bootloader in flash. Plus there's the issue of Encore RAM which is wiped on reboot. You would generally need to reload the game anyway.

 

If you want to play the same game, or play one game after another in a list to try them out, I can understand the annoyance of having to navigate to the game again and load it. Years ago, we talked about a way to remember the last menu position on a power cycle and boot there, so it would be easy to reload the same game or play games sequentially. I could look into it again if anyone can suggest a good way to inform the console on boot that you want to start at the last menu position.

Thanks for the explaination. I wasn't aware of what goes on under the hood except that it flashes each game. I did not know that 32k games could get split up.

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Does it kill people to just toggle the power switch?

From the point of effort to turn-off the console, it`s absolutly no problem for the most people i think. It`s not much work to turn Power off and on. But i think, that some people have fear, that often turning-on and turning-off the console to play different games, could harm the Atari in the long term. I have little fear sometimes, when for example, i want to test 10 new roms on the Harmony, because this also means 10 times turning off and on the console. Don`t know if this is good for the Atari. Back in the days, it was not possible to play roms and most people dont have lots and lots of game-modules, so turning off and on was made not so often like now. At least for me this is the case.

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  • 3 weeks later...

If I had the games on separate cartridges and wanted to swap games, I would have to power cycle the unit to swap games.. No one in their right mind would pull a cartridge while the game is on.

 

Yet some how power cycling the device to change games in a Harmony cartridge is too much to ask? Really?

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