cschell

I'd suggest starting with the Stella mailing list archives, and getting on the list itself. You can find out more about it here: http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/ This is an email list specifically about programming the 2600. Lots of helpful people and lots of information in the archive. 2600 games are programmed in 6502 assembly language. Most people use the dasm cross assembler which is freely available. You can download it from Bob Colbert's website at http://members.home.com/rcolbert1/sdev.htm You can use an emulator to test your code, but you'll probably eventually want to test it on the actual hardware. The options for this are using eproms and a modified cart, a Supercharger (details on Bob's site as well), or a Cuttle Cart if I ever produce more. You can find more about the Cuttle Cart at my website at http://www.schells.com/cuttlecart.shtml Chad

quote: Originally posted by Albert: I'm not sure where else you posted this, but considering you only posted it yesterday I think it's a little early to write off a second run of Cuttle Carts due to interest you've received thus far. I didn't mean to give the impression that I have written off a second run. I was only stating that at this point there is not enough interest. I certainly was planning on giving it more time before making that decision. As for where else I've posted, just rgvc. I'm not much of a salesman. It bothers me to go around and shove things in people's faces. quote: Originally posted by Albert: I personally hope enough people write you requesting a Cuttle Cart. You did a wonderful job creating it and as more people discover it I'm sure more people will want one. I hope so too. And I appreciate the kind words. What actually has surprised me the most about the Cuttle Cart has been the lack of word of mouth advertising for it. The Intellicart received a lot of word of mouth when it first came out. I guess it probably has a lot to do with the fact that the Intellicart came out of nowhere, whereas now people know who I am and what I do. (And the stupid timing problem certainly didn't help either.) As for ebay, no I haven't gone that route yet. I had miserable luck with the Intellicart on ebay though, so I don't count on much success there. I'll see how it goes, Chad

quote: Originally posted by Albert: What you might want to do is get firm commitments for around a quarter to half of that number and then produce another run. Yes, that's exactly what I'm trying to accomplish. So far I have not received a sufficient number of interested parties. And the initial run was 98 carts. Two carts were unrepairable . Chad

You all do realize that these multicarts contain only 2K and 4K games right? Including larger games would require additional logic for bankswitching. Chad

quote I'm sure that's true, but the thought of spending thousands of dollars on a run of carts I can't sell just doesn't work for me. I just don't have that kind of money to toss around casually. Chad

Glenn has stated that he would be willing to donate more CDs for a second run. So it should still come with the Stella CD. Chad

Hello, I've sold out of the first run of Atari 2600 Cuttle Carts, and I'm attempting to determine if there is sufficient interest to justify a second run. You can find details on the Cuttle Cart here: http://www.schells.com/cuttlecart.shtml If you're interested in one, and would like to see more produced please let me know. Thanks, Chad [email protected]

I've seen capacitors like that used before in other Atari products. I suspect that's what was on Scott's board as well. A resistor doesn't make any sense. (Gee - let's take our logic levels and divide them down.) John also informed me that his notes had the capacitor in the circuit, it just didn't get copied into his ascii diagram. (This is good, as otherwise I think there would be 7800s out there that had problems running even simple first generation 2K games.) Chad

quote Sure, I'd like to see them. I'm curious if they updated the silkscreen, or if it still says C64 where your resistor was. Email links are all over my website. Chad

Ok, I've put instructions up for the simplest modification that should make your 7800 work with the Supercharger and the other stubborn games. So far I've tried it on exactly ONE 7800, so it's definitely still in the experimental stage. If you'd like to give it a try, you can see the instructions and photos at http://www.schells.com/7800mod.shtml There are lots of 7800 variants out there, so I don't know to how many this modification applies. But if you have the extra circuit, and it's connected via the highpass filter formed by C64 and R66, this should do the trick. Chad

I think this modification is more than is required. This circuit doesn't need to exist, so there's no need for a switch. As John mentioned it's not on the early 7800s, and I have later 7800s that have the pads and circuit on the board, but the 74LS02 isn't installed and instead shorting jumper is installed in it's place. I believe this circuit can be removed by simply removing a single capacitor. I know it can be removed by shorting a single resistor. When I get my digital camera back I'll post photos of what I'm talking about. Chad

quote: Interesting that the cuttle cart doesn't work on some 7800s either...I thought he had wired around that issue. But since nobody really knows what that issue is, I guess it can't be wired around. hehe..anyway thanks for the input all the same. Exactly. I was unable to determine what was wrong, so I couldn't fix it. It's probably a timing problem, possibly in the deglitching setups. The Cuttle Cart works a little better in my "bad" 7800 than my Supercharger does, but is still broken. The original Supercharger won't even load a game, whereas the Cuttle Cart will load a game, but most of the Supercharger games play incorrectly. (Non-supercharger games will sometimes load and play fine though.) Chad

There are other differences. Many of the 7800's are lacking a logic chip on the right side of the board, and in it's place is a resistor jumper. I have also opened 7800s that had no sockets at all. I have not tried replacing this chip to see if it fixed things. (I believe that there was another change somewhere else when this chip was removed - but it's all hazy now.) As for compatibility, I have one that will not run the Supercharger or the Cuttle Cart. It's not a connector port problem, although I do agree with you that many of the 7800 problems are caused by that. I recently had to replace the connector port on a 7800 in order to get it to reliably run Pitfall 2. I have one of the end of line 7800's, with no expansion port, and it runs everything with no problems, so it's not just the 84 models. I thought perhaps it could be the different 6502 that was causing the problems as well, as the one 7800 I have that doesn't work with the Supercharger has a CPU from Mexico, all the ones that work don't. But I know of someone with a 7800 that works with everything with the Mexican CPU. I'd like to hear from more people with 7800s on what CPU they have and whether or not it's compatible, as well as whether or not the logic chip is present or not. The reason I suspect the CPU is because of how the FE games (Decathlon, Robot Tank) and Supercharger work. They are the only carts that use a state machine triggered by specific sequences in the address bus states. If the CPU had a different stepping, it could alter the order of the address bus changes, and possibly break these state machines. I know that newer 6502s do have a different order of executing certain instructions, and some of the really new ones even have different cycle counts. I don't think the cycle counts have changed, as that would break the display of several games, but it's definitely possible the execution order changed. I've traced the circuit on a 7800 and compared it to the schematic available from Best Electronics, there are differences although I don't recall what they were. I have not traced the schematic on a non-compatible model to see if it's different, and have no intention of doing so. So I guess in closing, I know that there are 7800s that don't work with the Supercharger, and that it's not a connector issue. I don't know why that is the case though. (It could also be timing related, the 6502s in the 7800 have different transient responses than the older 6507s in the 2600.) I have not had a 7800 damage a supercharger or vice versa. I don't know of anyway they could do that either. I've found both machines to be pretty hardy. I've beat the heck out of a Supercharger and it still works fine. Plugged it into the "bad" 7800, plugged it in backwards, shorted various pins while powered, etc. etc. No damage. I've abused a 7800 as well, and it's still going strong. (Note: I'm a trained professional - Don't try this at home. I'm not responsible for any damage you do while attempting this yourself. ) Chad

quote: The 2600 soundchip (Inside Stella) has two channels but they are mixed inside the chip. So only a mono signal is leaving the chip. Thus it not possible to have 'real' stereo output. That's incorrect. They're mixed on the board, not on the chip. So you can get stereo sound just by picking the signals off the chip before they're mixed on the board. Thus all the posts about how cool Threshold sounds in stereo. (I'm pretty sure it was Threshold.) Chad

Video Life works fine on the Cuttle Cart. It's 2K of ROM and 1K of RAM - same as the Magicard. Nice to see that it's being made available though. Chad

quote Assuming you're talking about the picture of the 2600 I was using at CGE, the reason there is only one RCA connected is that it was connected to a mono monitor. You would use standard stereo RCA cables for stereo sound. Chad

It's not the only 8K superchip game, Stargate/ Defender 2 is also 8K and uses the Superchip. Chad

So am I the only curious to hear how this research went??? The real reason I'm asking is that unfortunately two people have had some problems , and I'd really like to hear back from as many people as possible on how it's going so that I can get the big picture. Thanks, Chad