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alex_79

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alex_79 last won the day on August 31 2023

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  1. I'm happy for Al, and grateful for running the site in all these years and hosting this great community. And I wish him all the best for the future, But the site being owned by a corporate is incompatible with my idea of this community, and I think after 17 years this is the right time for me to move on. It's been a ride!
  2. I didn't imagine it a few hours ago, but I guess it's a bit ironic that I posted that on this particular day...😶
  3. The mod also provides a way to install an "extra" switch on the controller (instead of the "palette" one on the console). For that there's a 7 wires ribbon cable that you solder to some pins of the left controller port, as well to pins connected to the RESET and SELECT switch (see the diagram). If you installed that ribbon cable, independently from the fact that you actually put the extra switch on the joystick, note that it will cause issues with some controllers (e.g. trackballs) and also with games that use the ports as output. E.g. "Track & Field" is unplayable with those extra wires installed. The solution is to either do not install those extra wires put a toggle switch between pin 3 (or pin 4) of the left controller port and the mod board. With the switch open, you disable the extra functionality and you can use the problematic games and/or controllers.
  4. The RGB mod bypasses the TIA color generation and supports both PAL and NTSC palettes. It will autodetect which one to use based on the game framerate. If the game is in PAL60 format, it will be detected as NTSC and have wrong colors, but you can always manually change the colors using the "palette" switch of the mod. Best way to figure it out is to contact them directly and see if it can be arranged.
  5. I agree with all that. I think that it's mostly aimed to collectors who also buy the new cart releases form Atari. Compatibility isn't much of an issue in that case, as often both the carts and the console will end staying on a shelf. Sealed, to keep their value. I'm not interested in the 2600+ either. I know exactly what it is and I didn't thought it would have been anything different the very moment I heard about it. I have zero attachment to the Atari brand itself, or any company that owns that brand (or any past company that owned it), and whether this product is a success or a failure doesn't affect me in any way. I'm interested in this community that shares knowledge and creates new games and hardware for an old console I had as a kid. And because I care about this community, and I know that those who are not into the technical things don't understand the limitations of this device, and will keep hoping that a firmware update will defy the laws of physics and turn the 2600+ into a real console compatible with everything, I think it's important to keep pointing out those limitations. Over and over. Because an informed customer can make an informed choice. People who just like the fact that this thing has an Atari logo on it, and that is an "official" release could just stop reading these threads (what for? they'll buy it anyway), instead of complaining.
  6. The Harmony can already do that. There are two ways: Put a rom in the root directory of the SD card named AUTORUN.bin (firmware up to 1.05) or AUTOROM.bin (firmware 1.06). Then the cart will load automatically that rom when you power on the console. Anyway, loading the rom happens after the 2600 is powered on, and you'll see the spinning "ying yang" logo animation while loading. That won't work with a cart dumper. Use the Harmony software and flash the cartridge in single image mode through usb, which overwrites the normal firmware. In this case the cart behaves like a standalone one and, as long as the cart type is among those supported by the dumper, it could work with it (timing differences compared to a real console might be an issue, though). I used that method to test my 2600 cart dumper with bankswitching types for which I don't own any physical cart. And it worked. The dumper must be coded to recognize and dump that type of multicart, which is difficult. And the emulator must be coded to then emulate that too. Consider that such multicart should likely lock the bankswitch once a game is loaded, to avoid that the game code itself triggers an hotspot of the multicart bankswitch scheme. So the dumper's hardware would have to be designed so that it can power cycle the cartridge. And autodetection would be even more difficult and slow in that case.
  7. I think that to trigger FE you do something like this: put $01FE on address bus set bit 5 of the data bus: 1 = bank 0, 0 = bank 1 (*). The other bits are not relevant. change address bus (but keep the value on the data bus) to trigger the bankswitch Not sure if the last step is all you need to latch the bank number, or if you have to closely match the timing of a real console for it to work. ------------- (*) the order of banks in the "standard" FE rom used by emulators and flashcarts is reversed compared to the logical order they have according to the patent. The scheme also allowed up to 8 banks, but no game ever used more than 2.
  8. Please! The list of games marked with "pass" includes lots of extremely rare or even never released ones. They obviously never tested all those games. And anyone who knows a bit about Atari 2600 bankswitching schemes can easily see a pattern that indicates exactly what games the cart port can dump or not (also those that are not on that list).
  9. They could have used an existing "F6" board design, but with an 8k eprom(or rom) instead of a 16K one (same pinout, except for the A13 pin which is unused on a 8k memory). Then all four hotspots would work: $fff6 and $fff8 would both select the 1st bank and $fff7 and $fff9 would both select the second one. It would just be up to the programmer's preference which ones to use in the code. Now I'm curious to see the board too!
  10. I only have limited knowledge about the 7800 and its cartridge types. You have to search what scheme each game in the list uses to have an idea about what is supported. For the 2600 side, as already said, currently the dumper software seems to be as capable as the R77 one (which isn't much).
  11. The problem is the cartridge dumper, not the emulator. Obtaining a correct rom trying to autodetect the cartridge type is difficult and prone to errors. And if you don't get a proper rom, even if you have the most accurate emulator in the world, you won't be able to play the game.
  12. Correction: that would be 312. Because of how a PAL TIA generates the signal, PAL 2600 games must have an even number of scanlines, else they cause color issues on many PAL TVs (I think the phase ends up being wrong on every other frame). On CRTs you typically get either a B&W image ("PAL color loss") or wrong colors in the upper area of the screen, depending on the age of the TV. Newer digital TVs might not be affected by this, but I don't have much experience in running 2600 consoles with those. Again, this only applies to 2600 games. PAL Maria always outputs 313 scanlines and has no color issues. EDIT. And the color issues would only happens on RF, composite and s-video. RGB is not PAL anymore, and there's no "phase" of the color carrier that matters in that case.
  13. I built the adapter cable back then and I remember that auto-detection worked well and I could dump my original carts correctly with it. (link)
  14. Not all carts have both gnd pins connected. The Retron 77 relies on that and as a result fails to detect some carts that in theory it could dump.
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