Viso
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Posts posted by Viso
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It can be used to save progress, but the game must support saving and restoring. For games that don't support the module, the controller pass through will be active the whole time. Also, the module keeps a simple file system to make it easy for multiple games to save data.I agree, this product is fascinating and I can't wait to see it completely, but I wonder what it will be used to save? High scores, I suppose, or will it be able to save progress somehow (like for Pitfall II or some such).I'm hoping this will make it easier to produce games that have such large scope as the popular Mario games on the NES. I have seen some old games get around the problem by presenting a screen full of text that the player must record and re-enter to continue later. That seems like a major bother.
This is the first I've heard about the AtariVox device. I can't find much information about it on the web. The only image I found looks like it has a serial EEPROM that seems to be directly connected to the controller port. Is that right?I think you should focus on the 2600<> 2600 or 2600<> PC bridge rather than game saves.The reason being that the AtariVox is already going to have a game save feature. That may not have a pass-through, but it is still a duplication of effort. Since you are so close to doing the serial communications why not go the whole way?
Anyway, I'm not very close to having console to console communication working. The firmware wasn't made to support it, and the hardware I put together cannot handle it. I did think about it, and it would definately be a new and different project requiring more design work and testing. Because of other things I have to spend time doing, I'm not going to get the chance to start a new project for at least 6 months, but I think I can find the time to make a few modifications to my existing board design and test it over the course of 2 months or less.
But, when I can spend the time on it, I could make a cool communication gizmo. I'm thinking a simple network between 2600's, 7800's, and PC's may be possible. It'll be a while, but it'll be better than just a couple of 2600's talking to each other.
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Right now, the module cannot be used to enable communication between two 2600's or between a 2600 and a PC. The reason is that I used the same USART on the microcontroller for communication with a 2600 and with a PC. It let me pack in more functionality without having to add more components or a larger and more expensive microcontroller. I figured I should make it as inexpensively as possible yet robust, so anything other than memory module functionality had to be cheap to add. For instance, the playstation controller interface needed a connector and two resistors; everything else is software. The design gives dual purpose to several pins on the microcontroller and every pin is used for something.
In better news, I designed the serial protocol for communication with the 2600 to support different devices on the same controller port. So if/when I do make a module for 2600 to 2600 or PC communication, that device could be connected along with the memory module on the same port.
As for the pass-through connection, it has been working well. I designed it to work with all the 2600 controllers for which there were schematics for on AtariAge, and with the 7800 joystick. All have have to test with, though, are joysticks and a keypad.
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I'm working on a project that I think some homebrew games could benefit from. It is a memory module for the 2600 and 7800 that allows supporting games to save data for later retrieval. I think it could help new games that need a long running game from start to finish because the hardware to save the game could be my module instead of some stuff on a special cartridge. The module provides a fairly easy to use interface for the game software and takes care of a file system so that multiple games can use the module.
I've already made the first attempt at a PCB for the module, but I botched a few things. I hope to have a revised PCB design within a week, and hopefully I'll find time to populate and test the new board within a couple months. The firmware seems to be fine -- it passes all the tests I made for it -- so it is probably final.
It plugs into a controller port, has a controller pass-through connector, a serial connection for access from a PC, and a Playstation controller connection (requires special cable) for emulating a joystick (great for 7800 games).
Just wanted to see how much interest there was.
You can find all the details at: http://home.hiwaay.net/~jeffj1/projects/amm/index.html
Have fun!
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I don't know where I read that 56KB number for the ROM. Did seem rather strange.
Anyway, with 4KB ROM and everthing else, the 7800 must have more than 65592 bits lurking within its hardware.
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The 7800 has certainly got more than 8 bits -- it has a whole 4KB of RAM. Thats 32768 bits and still doesn't include the ROM (56KB? that would be 458752 bits) or registers on the various chips. Sure, it has an 8-bit processor, but the processor has more than 8 bits. It has several 8 bit registers (A, X, Y, S, P) and must have a 16 bit instruction pointer. That totals 56 different bits. I've never programmed for it; I'm sure someone else can give a better number.
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Thanks Tsukasa! They're not really cheaper per board, but I don't need 4 or 5 to test with. The lower minumum should cut the total cost in half.
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Now that I'm getting fairly close to having what looks like a good layout, I'm going to need to send that layout to someone who can make a nice 2 layer PCB. I've made single layer boards, but 2 layers is a bit beyond what I can personally do.
Who will make a board inexpensively for me? So far, it looks like http://www.pcbfabexpress.com is the best choice.
Thanks for the help!
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Thanks for the input; I have a much better idea of how to proceed now. I picked up what seems to be the Serpac 131 enclosure so I can get a better feel for its shape. I was planning to use the Serpac 032, but I think the board shape and layout will be identical.
I'm going to fit the 7805 and a common power connector (needed to power the gizmo while connected to a serial port). I realized I can make the board a bit larger, so I think it won't be a problem. While I'm at it, I'll try to get the placement of the DB-9 connectors right.
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Yes. It would be very nice to have some new modes so that if someone wants to write a large and ambitious 7800 game, they could. I just started playing Final Fantasy Tactics and was thinking that a game with similar mechanics might be possible. Now I just need more time . . .
Sounds pretty cool. Right now the only thing I can think of is having a few new useful bank switch modes possibleSo I'm considering making the CC2 source code available to the public for modification. -
From what I can tell, it looks like it is made so that 2600 games cannot use the dual 7800 buttons. Enabling those buttons is done with output the 6532 chip found in both the 2600 and 7800, so if a 2600 game could use the dual buttons, it probably wouldn't mean to since it would have no effect when the game is run on a 2600. That would have made for a bad compatibility issue.
If you're considering changing the games' code, here's an idea: see if you can make it into a 7800 game. I remember seeing that there are safegaurds to prevent a 2600 game from enabling the Maria chip, but there may be no similar safeguard against a 7800 game that wants to disable it in favor of the TIA. Probably not quite that simple and I don't know that it can be done, but its the best solution I can think of short of changing controllers.
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I'm designing a board for a new gizmo -- a memory module for the 2600 and 7800 (see http://home.hiwaay.net/~jeffj1/projects/amm/index.html). I haven't before made a board that I intended to put into some enclosure to make it a pretty gizmo in a box, so I'd like some advice.
The gizmo has 3 DB-9 connectors, a cable to connect to the game console, and maybe a power connection. I was figuring I'd use PCB mounted right angle DB-9's. Is this a good idea, or would it be better to have a ribbon cable connected to the board? I've also been positioning the DB-9's to hang off the edge of the board a little -- good or bad?
Right now, I've managed to fit it on a 3x5 inch board. I can put it on smaller boards, but I haven't been able to fit all 3 DB-9's on anything smaller in an enclosure that I know about. Also, I'm not using any surface mount components because I lack the soldering skill to work with those. Should I go for surface mount? Are there any good enclosures I should consider?
I've got the gizmo set up with a controller pass-through port. The first 4 pins of the controller pass-through port are put through a 4016. I did this so that the module could disconnect the pass-through port to prevent joystick motion from interferring with memory module communication. I haven't done any stress testing on this. Can a 4016 handle the current going through an Atari joystick?
If a 7805 is always connected to the +5v power line but isn't always supplying the power -- the +5v could be there while the Vin pin is left floating -- will the 7805 be damaged?
Thanks for any advice, and have fun!
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I've been working on a solution to having battery-backed RAM on a cartridge. It is a memory module that connects through a controller port, and a controller can connect through it so it doesn't need a dedicated port. It has a simple flie system so multiple games can share the storage. I'm going to start work on the board for what I hope will be the finalized version of the hardware soon.
You can see more details on the page I made for it: http://home.hiwaay.net/~jeffj1/projects/amm/index.html
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I wanted more manuals for the 7800 games that I haven't played much, so I started formating manuals for the games that didn't yet have a 40 column manual. I need to redo from M to later in the alphabet.
I also formatted a manual for Solaris. The HTML manual on Atari Age is messy, so I tried to fix that.
Enjoy! (Or don't)
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The major pain is making good connections to the 7800's board. Everything else I had to do was much easier.
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So I am on a quest. A quest to find a converter, or at very least, a better shapped/positioned PS2 controller. One whose L1 and R1 buttons aren't out of reach. One whose left Control Stick is up where it should be, in place of the D-pad. With the D-pad where the stick is. The way it is on the Xbox and Cube. The way I am used to. The comfortable way.I have the opposite problem; if I don't hold the X-Box controller in a slightly awkward fashion, as if it has those L1 and R1 buttons, then using the controller will hurt my wrists. Anyway . . .
The Playstation controllers (PS1 and PS2) use a fairly simple full duplex synchonous serial connection. I know this because I have interfaced a PIC microcontroller to my Dual Shock 2 controller, and the Dual Shock 2 still works with my PS2.
USB is a good bit more complex. As I understand it, there is a pretty involved protocol implemented on top of the physical asynchronous serial transport. I'm told that a USB master/host device, such as the controller interface on the X-Box, is notably more complex than a USB slave device, like the controller. USB supporting microcontrollers all seem to support the slave side of the communication, so they may not help much. Might also explain the lack of a commercially made X-Box to PS2 controller adapter.
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I modified my 7800 with the S-video and RCA audio output method described here: http://www.geocities.com/atari7800mod/7800...nstruction.html
It works very well, except that the color and brightness for each pixel is offset a bit horizontally for 7800 games. No such problem for 2600 games, and it still looks better than RF out even with the problem.
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Personally, I never liked the Prolines because of the pain they cause me after 15 minutes, or the joypads because it is too easy for them to produce a diagonal direction output when I wasn't trying for diagonal. I decided I would fix the problem by making the ultimate Playstation control, which I do like, to classic gaming console adapter. That became very ambitious, so I have a lot more work to do and I don't know when I'll do it.
However, I did make a gizmo that gets Playstation controller input and provides 2600 and 7800 joystick output. That helped me get much further in Ninja Golf than I could with the joypads, and unlike with the Prolines I could play it twice or more in the same day!
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There is Meltdown, and I remember reading that a lightgun game for the 2600 exists.
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If you're going to insist on a full manual gearshift instead of up/down like in most other console games (not hi/low) then this is a good start. I have a few suggestions to make it even better.
Use a modified driving/steering controller on the left port. Use controller lines 3 and 4, normally left and right, for digital accellerator and breaks. Or use the paddle lines for analog control, but that might not be a great idea.
Use a gearshift controller as detailed on the link, but use the two paddle lines for switches (not analog control) that are for 5th gear and reverse.
Of cousre, someone still has to make the controller and make or modify the games.
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Incredibly noticeable, but maybe mine just has bad RF output. Now the games all have sharp images and I have to look very closely to see any noise or static in the image. The sound is crisper, too.So how much does it improve the picture? Very noticeable?Just two issues: 7800 graphics bugs and some wierdness with the ciruit.
Graphics bugs:
The 7800 graphics hardware seems to have a couple problems with its video output that S-video reveals. I'd like to hear if others have seen this. The chroma and luma output seem to be a pixel off from each other, so green text on a black background is white on one side (forget which). Also, any color other than white, black, and anything in between has slightly darkened columns through it, so a region that should be solid colored is not solid. The columns remain in a fixed position on screen and are most noticable with green.
Neither problem takes away from game play becuase it still looks a lot better than RF. Also, output from the TIA/Stella does not have the problems.
Circuit:
I built the circuit detailed at: http://www.geocities.com/atari7800mod/
Unless I put a wire in parallel with the 75 ohm resistor between the transistor and the luma output, effectively removing the resistor from the circuit, I don't get a picture.
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At least someone likes the Pro-line controllers. I prefer the name Pain-line because of the way they make my left hand hurt after 10-15 minutes. Other than that, its a fine controller. I've got the pad controllers, too. They don't hurt my hands, but they don't provide as good directional control.
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Gutting an XBOX or PSX to stick a mod chip inside just to play oldies seems like a PITA to me.It should be possible to do with a PS2 without modifying the hardware, although I suppose someone will have to write some more code to make it work. A Marcus Brown figured out how to exploit a hole in the PS1 emulation code on the PS2 using data on a memory card. It gets around the limitation of running just Sony authorized code. The trick is getting the data to the card.
For more details, see http://www.0xd6.org/ps2-independence.html
BTW: Great avatar Flojomojo!
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Eric, the Tempest spinner looks like it has the same interface as the driving controller, but I don't know that it'll make a good replacement. The driving controller uses a 16 position switch; I have no clue about the spinner. If I'm not mistaken, some games get 32 position resolution from the paddles, so if the spinner uses a 16 position switch, then it may not make a good replacement for paddles.
Even if you really wanted to use the spinner for paddle input, it isn't trivial. I think you'd need to use a microcontroller to read from the spinner and provide timed output to emulate a paddle.
As for the 4 vs 8 direction thing, I don't understand. I think having 8 direction output is the way to go, but that only takes 4 switches. How can a 4 direction joystick be made? Seems like 8 direction should be easier.
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At the bottom of the CC2 page, is this line:
Also, please note that I can only support Windows operating systems. If you use something else, you must be able to write C programs to create the utilities for your OS.Is this just for the menu files and serial transfer mentioned? Can the CC2 be used without these utilities?
If I wasn't working on my own gizmo, I might offer to make a Java program for it. That would cover Windows, Linux, MacOS X, and others. Maybe in a few months I'll make the offer.
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Memory module (for saving games) for 2600/7800
in Atari 2600
Posted
I think I'm about finished designing the next board revision. Hopefully this time it won't take three weeks to get the new boards. I'm going to spend some more time making sure there aren't new problems before ordering.
Yes. The game must have code that supports the module in ordered for it to save any data to the module. Avoiding that limitation is unfortunately much more difficult and maybe even impossible.Great sig, btw. :-)