Dav

Possibly. The problem is it's best with 2 players. Maybe I should look at the atari driving controllers. I don't know if it works w/ the CV or not. BTW, I don't mind posting the source if someone else wants to mess with it. I'm not so good at documentation though.

Cool, thanks. I was afraid I'd done something wrong.

I'm afraid I don't know anything about macs. Is it working for everyone else?

I like this one better since it's based on the atari version. I always wondered why in the world they had that zero in the score. I would have put a dummy zero on the screen and skipped it.

I cut the attract mode and second player out of my previous version. There's no sound yet since my sound card is not working at the moment. It's not completely accurate to the Exidy original, I've added a hi score display and I don't remember the peds having any sort of ai but it felt like they needed it. Also the original was all B&W I colorized the car and IIRC it the playfield wrapped on all sides, not sure though. I've tested it in mess only , haven't gotten around to trying it on the real thing. Dave dr.zip

It's basically a dipswitch cart. If you look around I'm sure you can find something better for less money. It's cheaper to add menu capability than a pair of hex switches.

You can still buy them new but they're kind of high compared to the sega controllers. I guess the main reason I picked sega is I have a couple on hand and I'd have to order the jaguar pads. Iirc my design for the jaguar pads include 20+ flipflops and some extra components for a clock circuit, the sega design is only a couple of flipflops. I may be pushing the size of my cpld to do everything I want so that's the other reason for picking sega.

I haven't played mario picross but from the descritption it sounds like logic pro, which is in mame and definately addictive. http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?letter...=L&game_id=8448

The jaguar pad is the only one I could find that had a keypad and still used a direct connection. It's not nine pin but it's close enough I could make it work. The plan right now is to add a pair of sega pads with support for directions and a and b button. Holding down the c button would force control to the built in sticks for keypad support. It would autodetect if the sega pads were connected or not. I'm also thinking of using some kind of combo to force a reset and get back to the operating system.

The last couple of days I've been waiting on parts so I've been working on porting one of my arcade games to CV for the packin game. It's more a pain in the neck than I thought. So far I've only converted the 1 player game and I will have to do some fine tuning to make up for the screen being smaller and horizontal instead of vertical. I haven't touched the sound yet either. dr.zip

How about a relative table? This is the main table. These numbers are indexes into more tables so they don't mean anything by themselves, but you can compare the pp time with the bonus time or with ms pacman values. pacman plus gs=ghost speed os = out speed rp = red shift point ft = powerpellet blue time bt= bonus blue time lev gs ?? os rp ft ?? bt 0 05 01 02 01 04 00 02 1 05 01 03 02 05 00 02 2 05 01 03 03 06 01 03 3 05 02 03 03 06 01 04 4 05 00 03 04 06 02 05 5 05 01 03 04 04 02 03 6 05 02 03 05 06 02 05 7 05 02 03 05 07 02 05 8 05 00 03 05 07 02 06 9 05 01 03 06 06 02 04 a 05 02 03 06 07 02 06 b 05 02 03 06 08 02 06 c 05 00 03 06 08 02 06 d 05 02 03 05 06 02 04 e 05 01 03 06 08 02 06 f 06 02 03 06 07 02 06 10 06 02 03 07 08 02 06 11 06 02 03 07 06 02 06 12 06 02 03 07 08 02 07 13 06 02 03 07 08 02 07 14 06 02 03 07 08 02 08 mspacman gs ?? os rp ft ?? 796 defb 03 01 01 00 02 00;0 defb 04 01 02 01 03 00;1______ defb 04 01 03 02 04 01;2 defb 04 02 03 02 05 01 defb 05 00 03 02 06 02;4______ defb 05 01 03 03 03 02 defb 05 02 03 03 06 02 ;6 defb 05 02 03 03 06 02 defb 05 00 03 04 07 02 ;8______ defb 05 01 03 04 03 02 defb 05 02 03 04 06 02;a defb 05 02 03 05 07 02 defb 05 00 03 05 07 02;c______ defb 05 02 03 05 05 02 defb 05 01 03 06 07 02 ;e defb 05 02 03 06 07 02 defb 05 02 03 06 08 02;10_____ defb 05 02 03 06 07 02 defb 05 02 03 07 08 02;12 defb 05 02 03 07 08 02 defb 06 02 03 07 08 02;14

Yes, if it starts in bank 1 it loads the start vector from dffc. It will run the code at d000 and switches to bank 2 and jumps to the start. I haven't tried it yet but that looks correct.

That should make it possible to burn it to a cart. A cart would most likely have a simple flipflop to store the bank number. A single FlipFlop stores 1 bit; on boot up that bit is essentially a random number. That is why most games can boot from either bank. On more complicated hardware like a cuttlecart or a multicart you can define the intial state.

No they have some kind of lame flash thing that keeps the page from loading. Makes me wonder about the company. I have heard the sound effects on other sites and it is pretty cool.

Playstation was the first thing I thought of. Unfortunatly all the new controllers use a serial design that would be difficult to implement. With the new port being on my board it doesn't matter what it looks like as long as I can buy them. With the sega pad I can sense if it's connected and use the original port if it's not. Possibly even hold down button c to force control to the original port to use the keypad. Or use C as a shift to add more buttons. The problem is they wouldn't be labeled, but that might be worth it. Not sure yet if I can do autosensing stuff with the jaguar pad. Maybe sega would be better.

I've just been looking at the sega 6 button, It looks a little difficult in hardware only. The 3 button looks easy. But while I was there I found labrats coleco to jaguar pad page. I think I may look at that, if I can make the keypad on that work it looks like a winner. If not it looks like the 3 button sega would would work with both R and L buttons fairly easily. The 6 button would also work but the extra buttons wouldn't do anything.

I'm a long way from beta tests yet, I still haven't got a feature list yet But I can always refer back to this thread when the time comes. As long as I'm blue skying here, anyone have any thoughts on controllers? Clearly that was one of the weaknesses of the CV. A pokey has support for up to 8 paddles, it even has a keyboard scanner built in. So I've got IO to burn. I could have extra joysticks for programs that wanted them or I could probably replace the existing joysticks or an existing joy stick or even replace half the joystick, ie joystick and left button would be the new stick and the right button and keypad would be the old controller. And there's no reason the new controller needs to be a coleco or atari stick. As long as it's reasonably simple to decode I can build the adapter into the board. Anyone have controller suggestions?

Probably not directly, I'd probably have to patch the bios and/or the games to use my banking/loading. I'm not familiar with those games. I played buck rogers a couple of times 20 years ago. I seem to remember waiting forever between levels for it to load. I really don't know that much about the adam computer so I just don't know yet. The problem I was having turned out to be a loading problem, but it's sorted now. Every game I've tried so far has worked on every flash card I've tried. The thought occured to me today I can probably add composite a/v out. If I offset the device to the right of the CV about an inch they can even point towards the back. I'll check into that more, but if that works ok, then there's no reason I can't do stereo with the extra sound chip.

I've done quite a few backwards over the years and they generally emit a light from the window for a second or 2 and then they are done. It's kind of neat to see. I would agree it's most likely not a chip problem if an address line is stuck.

Yes, that's how it works. It doesn't emulate the way the original light gun worked at all, it's just a mouse driver. It attaches as a pass though to your monitor cable as well and it requires regular calibrations. Look up Act-Labs. They also have a tv version.

I had a chance to code a little today. It now can load an image from a compact flash formatted FAT16. Unfortunately only 1 of the 3 images I tried ran. The test cart image runs great, the other 2 I tried hung so I've got some more work to do. Not sure if it's a runtime problem or loader problem yet even. Anyone have any thoughts on sound chips? I really don't know that much about them other than what I've just read. Pokey's are dirt cheap the downside is they take up a lot of board space, also I suspect it wouldn't be that big of an improvement. I'm not sure how it compares to the standard coleco chip. The speakjet looks pretty cool, but the serial interface scares me. The advantage of it would be you could load your sound effects during bootup and call them later so it'd be like having a dedicated sound cpu. I'm ordering one of those to play with. If it can sound reasonably like the votrax chip in qbert I might be sold. I'm ordering some cases to look at, I guess I really need to decide what I'm doing with the case before I know how much extra board space I have to play with. Dave

I'm sure someone will post it eventually, as it's not difficult. I didn't read the fine print so I don't know if it's OK or not but I ripped the proto's and burnt them to eprom first thing. Although Thwokery didn't work, not sure if it's my fault of if it's the banking I haven't looked at it since I was mostly just interested in playing freeway.

Yes, the footprint is a problem and so are the 50 pins, but I'm comfortable with the IDE interface and I had all the parts on hand. I also like the options with CF as well, small ones are practically free or you can even have giant microdrives. I know it's overkill for this application, but I'm not planning on stopping with the CV. I'm working my way through all the consoles of my childhood.

It's too early to tell about the pricing. I normally sell a board the size and complexity of this one for around $60. Then there'd be an ide cable and a cf adapter($8-$10) That solution would be kind of messy, even if I attached the ide adapter to my board and used a 3" ide cable. Integrating the cf socket will raise the price, very possibly 50% or more. I have a feeling the housing could be very expensive too. There's a clip in the coleco for it to fit into. So as a bare board I'd guess <$100 I couldn't even guess what it would cost with a custom made housing.

BTW here's a pic of it attached to a CV board. The ide cable and cf adapter aren't shown. I haven't decided exactly how that's going to work physically. Ide adapters are about $8 on ebay and I probably counldn't mount one on the board for less than that, but it would be messy if i didn't. The giant rom in the pic will be replaced by a much smaller one and I can shrink the board horizontally. If I build the cf socket into the board then it obviously will have to extend out much more. I hadn't considered an internal mounting but I guess I could look at it as an option .