Kroko

#1, #2 and #180 for me, please

My cart came out with the label still in perfect condition, but the plastic looked worse than before

The Krokodile Cartridge contains electronic parts which have a limited lifetime. This lifetime is not different from other electronic equippment. With regard to the memory content, the Krokodile cartridge contains two parts with flash rom. In theory these parts could fail any time. Now, or if you are lucky in 200 years. Nobody can tell you. It is the same with all electronic equippment.

This part ?

I don't think it has to do with me. We did not discuss how many boards I am willing to make, so I guess the reason has to be something else. The good thing is, if you make only a few, you can do it by hand. If you make many, you can let them make for a reasonable price. Of course the quality of the game has to justify the increased costs. I think notBD is absolutely worth the additional costs. Maybe the situation changes in case Andrew decides to release notBD, because in that case there would be demand for a lot of boards with RAM.

There is no fix to this problem. You would have to fix the flashback 2 such that it is 100% compatible to the 2600 The multicart menu is based on 3F bankswitching and that is quite sensitive to the bus timing.

Just search the forums for "Chimera"

There are several reasons. There will be zero demand for the Krokodile Cartridge as soon as Chimera is released. The risk to buy a lot of hardware, spend a lot of time for production and then not being able to sell the devices about half a year from now is too high. At least I am not willing to take the financial risk and spend the time as things are now. Another reason is, that the microcontroller is obsolete. I do no longer have a good reliable source. The design of the Krokodile is outdated. In case I will ever make a new Krokodile, it will fit in a standard case without significant modifcations. This would require a redesign of the current PCB. It is not difficult, but there is no point in designing a device that would be more expensive and less powerful than Chimera. There is no price you are willing to pay that could make me modify any more cartridge cases. Absolutely no price, trust me. I am so fed up with modifying cases that I simply can not imagine that I will ever do it again.

Not at all. I talked to Achim and he said that there only is a theoretical chance to damage the Atari (not the cart!) and the text is mainly there due to legal reasons. I refuse to learn any tricks just because the world is full of greedy lawyers. Ah! I did not know that. It's good information to have, for sure. Thanks! Don't complain if your console dies There is only a very little risk if you do it like Thomas, but if VCS power is switched OFF and the Krokodile is powered you have a significant risk to damage your console. This is not only a theoretical risk. I damaged at least two consoles by doing that. You must not induce power into the vcs data and address bus while the vcs chips are not powered.

The Krokodile Cartridge requires a power supply with a voltage between +6V and +9V DC and at least 500mA. An Atari 2600 power supply can be used. The power connector is 3.5 mm and has exactly the same dimensions and polarity as the connector of the 2600. Make sure that the polarity of the connector is as follows: the tip is positive and the back part of the connector is connected to ground. Do not swap the polarity, because you could damage your Krokodile Cartridge. 240V input is ok as long as you get the specified output

The error message means, that the Krokodile Commander can not write to the database. It can of course write to the cartridge. If you select the correct bankswitching mode manually and download the ROM, then there is no reason, why it should not work. But next time you choose the same ROM after you have closed the Commander, it will not remember that this was a multicart and you will again have to manually select the BS mode from the pulldown menu. If you do so, everything should be fine. Because I want to force everybody to copy their stuff to the harddrive. Trouble will not stop until you have done that, so do it ! "Read only" is the database, not the cartridge. You can always write to the cartridge. Try harder, or ask for help I tried to design is such, that anything you add with bulk should work. Of course there are bad hacks out there which simply don't run on real hardware. Save it as a "MUL" File. The Binary itself can not be modified later. But the MUL file can be saved, copied and modified later. You can open MUL files with a text editor. If you have ICQ, I can help you to copy the CD to a folder on your drive, it is not that hard ...

The Krokodile Commander comes with a database. Everything the Krokodile Commander knows about bankswitching is stored in this database. When you choose bulk load, the Commander automatically adds all valid ROM files from a folder on your drive to the multicart dialog list box. If a rom is not stored in this database it might be added although it is not valid. You get this message if you did not copy the Krokodile Commander to your harddrive, because the Commander can not write to your CD. If you don't copy the commander to a drive where you have write permission, it will not be fully functional. To avoid more problems, do this first. Copy it to your drive and start it from there. If you want to make a Multi-Cart you need basic knowledge of bankswitching. Although the Commander tries to not let you add invalid ROMs, you need to be aware that there are 4 different types of Multicarts on the Krokodile. I think these 4 type are explained quite well in the manual. There you can also read, which ROMs you can mix and what is not possible. No, that is correct. But when you create the Multi-Cart binary, the Krokodile Commander must register the new Multicart in its own database. It can't do that if you don't have write permission. Thats why it fails. Not sure if anybody ever tried to make a multicart while running the commader directly from the CD. Maybe you are the first I hope this is clear now, copy the commander to your harddrive into a folder with write permission. It should not be necessary to do that. Make a new folder on your Hardrive. Name it "KrokodileCart" and copy the complete CD to that folder. If you have trouble to do that, I am sure a friend can help you to copy files from CD to a folder on your drive. From now on, run the Krokodile Commander from that location. If you can not manage to copy the CD to your drive, you will not have a lot of fun with your Krokodile, thats for sure. All known ROMs are in the database. If you select them with the Krokodile Commander, it shows what mode it is together with additional information on the "database" tab. Try to find it in the Rarity Guide here on AA or you can ask the author or you need to guess from the ROM size. If you don't want to lose hours of work, please save your work from time to time. You can do that on the multicart tab. You can save a ".MUL" file that contains all your selections. This can be re-loaded the next time you start the commander. Good Luck

It is true that I probably spent most time on it. On the other hand, the Krokodile Cart is a good example of teamwork. On page 18 of the (online) manual, you can get a good impression how many people have been involved: Albert Yarusso, Andrew Davie, Thomas Jentzsch, Nathan Strum, Tony Morse, Darrell Spice, Alexius Wronka, everybody who joined the label contest, Eckhard Stolberg and the homebrew authors that allowed us to include their games. I think that there would be no Krokodile Cart without all the help I got from the community, especially during development, where lots of people shared their knowledge with me. I am very glad that you like the final result

Some people use it with Serial to USB converters. I also tested it with one of these and it works without problems. I have not heard of anybody who had problems with a converter ...

The Krokodile supports F4 bankswitching. You just need to select F4 in the Krokodile Commander when you download the ROM. You can go above 32K if you choose EF,3F or 3E, but I think these are currently not supported by bB and you can't get real carts for them. You would have to use a bankswitching mode that is not supported by the Krokodile, like E0,FE or AR or a custom new BS mode. But AFAIK these are not supported by bB, so I can't think of anything you could do wrong.

I do not think it is fair to call Chimera vaporware. Complicated things need a longer time for development. Is that hard to understand ? It is not encouraging for Vern and Glenn to make deprecative comments about the fact that it is not yet released. Is anybody here who thinks you can develop a device like Chimera in a few weeks ? Yes ? Good luck, you will need it Call it "In Development" and I am happy ...

Yes, check this: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?a...;showentry=1237

Hi ! Just a little update from my side: The devices are completely finished now and after a few more tests I will send them out to Albert.

Burgetime will work with the new firmware. Toyshop Trouble does work as well, because the new devices support 0840 banking.

There will be no next list. It is very likely that this is the last batch of Krokodiles. At some point we will put the rest of the carts to the store until they are sold out.

Hi Sonja, You can not directly upload .ASM to cartridge. Only the binary files (.BIN or .A26) can be uploaded to a real cartridge. .ASM files are source files that can be compiled into BIN files, but they can't be used on a real cart or emulator.

Thanks for the nice review I am glad you like it.

I can attest to that. Even on my a/v modded 2600 (a 4-switch) I am seeing noise from Chimera even though the ARM is one step removed from the cart bus. Delicon is having to reimplement an active buskeeper to try to get rid of it. Are you sure that the noise is induced by the address or data-lines ? I mean if that is the case you can solve the problem with a modification to the connection between VCS and cart. But there are many other possibilties how you can create noise. For me it was difficult in the past to find out what is the reason. Could be the oscillator itself, could be the ARM, could be the CPLD or just a trace on the PCB that acts like an antenna. Can you "see" the noise on an oszilloscope when you watch the data/address lines ? What happens if you put the cable between VCS and TV closer to the cartridge ? Does it get worse ?

What banking mode would you need for development ?

I am sure he would help. He actually offered his help already. But I can not include 4A50 or any other more complicated BS mode to the Krokodile, because there is not enough space on the logic chip. I would need to throw out something else.