cschell

I haven't tried anything, but at one point in time the extended 3F method was based on what I put into the original CC. It has the upper 2K always point to the 4th bank. This was to make the CC compatible with the original 3F games but allow it to be extended to 64K. It may be the file that doesn't work expects the starting bank to be the 4th rather than the last bank. Chad

I didn't mean it that way. It's more that the I also have very little skill with GUI programming, and my free time is not exactly ample. I'll see if I can quickly add a minimize button since it seems to be such a popular request. (Who knew?) I think it's just a flag or something. I'll compare flags on playbin and cc2ser. Chad

Ok, Here's a 512K 3F bankswitching program. Completely untested as I have no 512K 3F programs. It is dumb, meaning it really does need to be a 512K file. Chad 3f512k.zip

That's because it wasn't written by me. Windows programmer extraordinaire I am not. The CC software is basically a merger of an audio player and makewav 4.3, with a lot f work done by Eckhard Stolberg, Robert Demming, and Bob Colbert. The CC2 software is something that I hacked together myself. Any talented windows programmers want to combine makewave and the CC2 serial loader? (Code for both is available.) Chad

I have no problem waiting. The reason I listed 480K + 32K is because to my understanding that is the common size between the two carts. KK = 512K FLASH RAM + 32K SRAM CC2 = 512K SRAM (Plus 256K rather inflexible FLASH RAM) Unfortunately I do not believe I could configure the CC2 FLASH RAM to work as the remaining 32K of ROM. Chad

Fair enough. I will post a 512K 3F later today (hopefully) in the 7800 forum, although it will be untested. The CC2 will not be able to do 3E though. It could do 3E-. (480K ROM, 32K RAM). So authors who wanted things to run on both would have to restrain themselves to using only the first 480K of ROM. Thanks for the info, Chad

Ok, Just tried it again, and got sound this time. (And the HSC works when I tell it to. ) Chad

Hi Ken, Thanks for the response. First thing I did was check if Ball Blazer music worked. (The method I used to test every single CC2 Pokey slot... ugh.) Anyway, yes that worked fine. Not sure why no sound in BD. As for the HSC, I forgot to use HSC for the startup. (That's what I get for just quickly editing the top entry of MENU.CC2.) You're right that I should know the CC2 pretty well. But apparently not. Chad P.S. Game looks great. I couldn't resist not checking it out so I had to go dig the 7800 and CC2s out of the pile of "Not really unpacked" stuff.

Ok, I just grabbed the latest version to try out on the 7800 I finally set up. Is it just me, or does is there no music when a POKEY is installed? First I stuck in a CC2 that didn't have one and there was music. Then I said, oh silly me, I should use the POKEY. So I put that one and no music. Also no high score save when I died. (Of couse I did really fast, so maybe you have to beat the 10000 that is there by default.) Is this what others hear? Or should I have paid more attention to those silly warnings the computer gave me about not being able to write the whole file to the disk? Chad

The boulder dash clone is apparently 3E, the new 512K ROM + 32K RAM bankswitching method they designed. Not 512K 3F. Chad

To everyone else, You do realize that there is no ROM posted here. Even with a 512K 3F for the CC2 there is nothing to run. I assume since this is in part a commercial for the Krokodile cart that no ROM would be forthcoming. (And note that I have no problem with that.) Chad

Andrew, Would this demo even run with 512K 3F? Does the upper 2K just point to the last bank? Do you have and are you willing to share the 3E bankswitching details? Chad

Are you willing to create those yourself? It's possible, are you volunteering? That would require a complete rewrite fo the OS, and even then, how many pixels would those screen shots be? We're not talking a high res display here. But you now have the information, have at it. (Nothing I can give you would make that task any easier.) What I was asking here was not, "What features do people still want?", but rather "Is anyone wanting to add new features themselves if only they had more information?" Chad

The present docs would allow one to create an entirely new menu / OS. If I released the source code for the current OS, one could use that and the tech docs to extend or alter the current menu system. Possibly adding a better dev mode or the like (there are several unused pages of flash RAM available.) However I don't think anyone (including me) really has the time or inclination to do this. New bankswitching methods would require the pinout for the FPGA (in terms of what is connected where). I'm perfectly willing to post those as well, but so far I haven't found any freely available software that can create programs for the older Xilinx Spartan architecture. Actually all there needs to be is something that can create an edif file for Spartan chips. Xilinx has made the PAR tools freely available for download. Sadly they don't provide any tools for actually entering designs (schematic layout or HDL) for their older chips. As I said Icarus Verilog could probably be modified to work to at least some level. I guess Electric could as well. If there is someone out there who has the tools and wants to do the work, just ask and I'll be happy to provide my configuration file. Largely I wanted to document things before I completely forgot how it worked. I figured I would throw it out there to see if any of the coders were dying to have at it and changes things. I should have sent Eckhard a CC2 with the OS source code. Chad

Hi, I don't recall what thread I last posted this in, and a search for techdocs didn't show up, so I'm going to be lazy and make a new topic. Anyway, I have upated the CC2 techdocs.txt file I posted long ago. Pretty much complete at this point. http://www.schells.com/techdocs.txt Does it inspire anyone enough to want to do something? I'm still debating on posting the OS source code. I spent some time this week trying to get a way that people could make their own bankswitching files. I tried BYU electric which claims to create the proper EDIF files, but it didn't. I then tried Icarus Verilog. It's a lot closer, but needs to have a Spartan module created. I think the LPN model could be modified to do this for not overly complicated setups. (It wouldn't be all that efficient as it doesn't know about the specific hardware of the Spartan FPGA.) Anyway, when I tried to build the Icarus compiler it failed so I gave up. (And people would have to learn Verilog.) Another option is the Xilinx abl2edif program. It's free and I'm assuming that it can be used to create bankswitching files in Abel, although I didn't really look into it. Does anyone care about any of this? Chad

Andrew uses a different way of extending 3F beyond 8K than I do, so they will not work. I've never made a 3F scheme compatible with these ROMs. (I've never even downloaded the ROMs.) Chad

I assume you mean the Pokey would have gone at $600x. (Thus the no references to $600x.) So unlocking the Pokey at this address would not help. Chad

Use this with the binary Mitch posted earlier in the thread. ROF / RESCUE / 7800_ROF / 78BIOS Enjoy, Chad 7800_rof.zip

So take heed former beta testers. It might be a good time to update that OS on your CC2. Chad

Well all the CC2s have finally made it to their owners. So I will be selling the spares soon. I'm going to choose names by random from the second run mailing list and offer them to those people first. If you were hoping to get one of the spares and are not on the list, you need to join now for a chance. See http://www.schells.com/cc2.shtml for details. As for a second run, the waiting list is no where near long enough to do one. And I was just informed today that one of the parts in the CC2 has been discontinued. So I have to say it doesn't look very good. Alas, Chad

Hello everyone, I've been toying with the idea of unlocking the full potential of the CC2 (yes, it can certainly do more than it does), but I know that it's not something that I'll ever do alone. You see, there's a lot of flexibility in the CC2 hardware, but I'm just not much for writing user interfaces. While in my not so humble opinion I think the CC2 has a rather nice interface, I know that it could probably do much more. (It CERTAINLY could have a much better dev mode, it might even be possible to build a full debugger into the CC2 - but that's something I know I will never do myself.) So I'm considering making the CC2 source code available to the public for modification. I haven't made a decision to do this yet, and don't know what type of license I would use either. (I'm especially concerned about warranty implications if people release software with bugs, or even worse software that damages the CC2 or the 7800 by driving multiple devices at once.) Anyway, I'd like to hear what others think about this. Would anybody be interested in improving the CC2 software? In what way? To give a general idea of what's inside the Cuttle Cart 2 (and to help me remember how the darn thing works a few years from now) I've started to put together some technical documentation. Actually, I just started a little while ago, so it's not complete, and it's probably clear as mud. The part's I've written so far deal mostly with the non-reconfigurable aspects of the CC2, especially the mappings of the FLASH RAM and NVRAM. (Almost everything else is reconfigurable.) Only 64K of the 256K of Flash RAM is currently being used. And I tried to choose a flexible mapping of the FLASH RAM so that pages could be located in various places in the 7800 memory map just so that it could sit along side the SRAM when the SRAM is configured to act as a normal game cartridge. This was with debugging in mind. Anyway, what I've written so far is available here: http://www.schells.com/techdocs.txt So please feel free (and encouraged) to let me know what you think about all of this. Thanks, Chad

Three new updates are available for the CC2. One new file and two bug fixes. The new file: (Well, new to the non-beta testers that is.) HSCQUICK startup file available on the CC2 Updates page. The bug fixes: SC.STR and SC.ROM have been updated to fix a problem with a certain brand of MMC that doesn't reset properly. A new BOOTROM.CC2 file is available to update Dev Mode to version 1.01. This update brings the Dev Mode MMC routines up to date with those in the main menu mode. It improves error handling. (And yes, these changes should have made into Dev Mode 1.00, oops.) Get them all here: http://www.schells.com/cc2utils/cc2files.shtml Chad

I knew I had an HSCQUICK startup file. I just forgot to make it available to people other than the beta testers. Anyway, there is now an HSCQUICK startup file available on the CC2 Updates page. http://www.schells.com/cc2utils/cc2files.shtml Also available are a new version of the SC startup files and a new BOOTROM that updates Dev Mode. Enjoy, Chad

Acid Drop PAL - Doesn't work for me on any settings? Does this game work on a 7800? Sorry, can't offer any more help here. (NTSC version works fine though.) Labyrinth - If this is a Supercharger game, you must name it LABYRI00 or something 6 characters long followed by two zeros. And the startup for SC games is SC, not 78BIOS. Mr Roboto NTSC - Startup is F8BANK1 Stargunner NTSC - Works fine for me. It's a 4K game so it should work fine. Perhaps try 26QUICK for the startup, maybe the 7800 PAL BIOS doesn't recognize it as a 2600 game? Chad