SainT

Just comes up with an error.

The Mega7800 allows you to use Mega Drive / Master System controllers on the 7800 and 2600. While the Mega Drive controller plugged in *does* work, it's not ideal as +5V is in the wrong place. I don't think you should be able to damage the Mega Drive controller as nothing will be shorting out, but it's just not ideal.

Nice! I can add those in. 👍

Yes, it depends on the console. I have added RAM cheats and save states to the 7800GD for example. Unfortunately the Lynx is just a console where this is not possible, unfortunately! However if you fancy a challenge, try finding some ROM hacks for any other Lynx games! I don’t think there are any ‘easy’ ones left…

Nothing else has been added, so that’s the full list. RAM cheats are not possible. Think of the Lynx cartridge as a memory card. There is no access to the running system / bus from the cartridge (unlike most other consoles), it is purely a storage device which is accessed sequentially. All cheats were found using a custom version of Handy which allowed me to find them more easily. When a cheat is identified you then have to search the ROM to see if you can find and patch the corresponding code. It’s not always possible, as some games are compressed. All the cheats currently found are the easy ones where games are not compressed or otherwise obfuscated.

Very odd, I’ve never seen that before myself — it may have something to do with the memory card, or just power issues with the Jaguar in general. And if a ROM boots, it should work (the cart checks it’s not damaged / corrupted before boot), so failing during play points more toward the Jaguar being marginal than anything else. You may find a recap and new voltage regulator will help.

How the firmware is updated.

Hmm, these do run. If you found the ROMs in threads, it may be the headers are incorrect. Are there versions in Trebor's pack for these games? 99 times out of 100, if the game doesn't run, the header is incorrect. The 7800GD really does need the header to accurately describe what hardware is needed to run it, I don't make any guesses that the header is wrong and it's probably something else that is needed (as many 7800 emulators do). And just make sure you have the latest firmware. If everything else is running, I don't think this is the issue, but it's worth checking.

You can get the latest for the original cart here -- https://www.retrohq.co.uk/product/jaggd/firmware-220509.zip The direct link was removed from the website as I was getting too many people trying to download it and use it with the newer carts.

The new style cart works just fine, and with firmware 1.07 (and the next analogue pocket firmware) the save states work correctly with games loaded from the GD. The next AP firmware should also sort problems with the older style Lynx GD cart, which currently does not currently work.

You see when you fire you speed up? Hold that button down, then jump. It's the same as Mario.

That’s basically all of the ‘easy’ ones which I could find. If anyone else wants to contribute any ROM hacks, I can add them, but I don’t have a lot of time to be working on finding cheats unfortunately. And any hacks need to be *ROM* hacks, not memory. The ones listed above are memory hacks which are not possible on the Lynx.

Also make sure the cable is plugged into the cart firmly, I've had cables make poor connection before now and it's thrown me thinking I had a hardware issue, but it just needed the cable pushing in.

I’m not quite sure what you mean. What I’m trying to say is, if LEFT and RIGHT or UP and DOWN are pressed at the same time (which is normally impossible for a controller) when the 7800GD is running then it will act is if the START or Z button has been passed on a Genesis pad connected to the Mega7800. Functionality has only been recently added for this to the 7800GD.

I've added support for other types of controller adapters to allow BREAK via a button. So on your adapter if you map a button to LEFT+RIGHT (pressed at the same time) and one to UP+DOWN then you will have BREAK and (I think) quick save state.

I'm guessing the AP doesn't keep retrying long enough. The original Lynx cart takes quite a while to read the menu into memory and release the bus for the Lynx to actually read it. The new LynxGD model works, however.

Yep, was having a dig into this last night! It is using a mapper I don't support currently, but it isn't using any custom ARM code, so it could be supported. It's something I'd like to have a look at, but my biggest enemy at the moment is both FPGA and MCU memory space.

Some video mods might cause damage if used with some carts with push/pull drivers on the external audio. POKEY and TIA are both open drain, so is fine to just short the two outputs. The rev2 7800GD was changed to open drain on the audio so it cannot cause any issues with mods which short the audio. So some homebrew carts with external audio may be problematic with these types of mods, but in all honesty I haven't looked into it any further on these carts.

If you bought the 7800GD recently (ie. anything but the first batch last year) then I changed the hardware such that it plays nicely with all video mods.

Best guess, sounds like your voltage regulator may be on its way out. The fact it works for a while, then starts playing up, indicates something is failing. I suspect if you used a standard cart and left the system running a bit longer, you’d also get weird behaviour.

I completely get the time constraint issues and trying to please as many as you can, sorry if it came across as a dig, it certainly was not intended that way.

Sorry, only just seen this. I’ll check it out, but yes, it will be related to the number of games.

It is a slightly odd way of doing it, when you get no onscreen cue as to the fact there are even different input mappings. Tower Toppler was the weirdest, where it just auto completes the level. I thought one of my consoles was broken for months as it only happened on the one… 😆

Both the TIA and Maria on the cart are just shadows of the console chips. They do not provide any feedback to the console at all, they just replicate their behaviour based on what is seen on the bus and generate an image. So there’s no way to alter how the console runs. The only real difference between the PAL and NTSC TIA, however, is just the palette, I think? Ignoring composite video format and slight clock variations. So it is possible to set an NTSC palette on PAL or vice versa, however I have not done this as yet.

Unfortunately this is correct, the 7800 cannot play different region games. Maria is different and hard coded to generate the specific video output. Some will run, but in general it’s not a good result. It is possible to alter the palette for the 2600, however it does not currently. The best option with the 7800 is to buy an NTSC machine as well.