Eckhard Stolberg

Rabbit Transit has the code replaced that took advantage of the SC-RAM. The cartridge version uses less colours for the platforms for example. CMFOS on the other hand makes more use of the extra RAM than Rabbit Tansit, I think. For example it uses some self-modifying code for displaying the highscore list. This is much more difficult to replace, and you might have to remove some features completely. So while it might be possible to transfer some other SC games to cart, the changes that you might have to make could be so big, that it would be like writing the game from scratch anyway. There is no special file format named .a26. These are just renamed .bin's to seperate them from the .bin's that other video game emulators use. You can simply rename the binaries and concatenate all the loads for a game into a single file. Then PCAE, Stella and z26 should play them fine. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

On the PC the 2600 emulators usually use two F-keys each to set the difficulty switches in either position. On z26 for example its F5/F6 for the left difficulty switch and F7/F8 for the right difficulty switch. That should allow you play Ghostbusters. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

I don't have a Sears Arcade II stick. But since there are two controllers on the Atari paddles, you also need two buttons. Atari used the left and right lines for those. If there isn't a mode switch on the Sears sticks, I suppose pushing the stick left or right should work as the trigger for the paddle. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

z26 saves the current command line settings into the Z26.CLI file, if you don't specify a ROM name. The Z26.CLI file is saved to the current directory and loaded from there on every following start of z26. So if you wanted to set video mode 5 as a window to be the default, you would go to the directory where you normally start z26 from and type: z26 -v15 You should then see a message about z26 saving your settings to the Z26.CLI file. From now on, everytime you start z26 from the same directory, windowed video mode 5 will be used as the default. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

This is very strange. There aren't any internet functions in z26. And the changes from the last version were only very small, so I don't think we broke anything that could cause this behaviour. We include a newer version of the SDL library (1.2.6) now though. But I don't think it contains any internet functions either. Does your firewall give any more details about what it thinks z26 is trying to do? Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

More than a year ago? That was before the release of the Windows version of z26, so you are talking about the DOS version here, right? That is strange, because the DOS version is a stand-alone program that isn't depending on any other software. What version of z26 were you having problems with, and what operating system and computer are you using? What exactly happened when you tried playing a game, and did you make any changes to your system, before z26 stopped working? And does the newest version of z26 still cause problems for you? Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

What's happening here is that for some reason x26 is sending the command line parameters to z26 but no file name for the binary. Therefore z26 thinks that you want to save the command line parameters to use them everytime you start the emulator. This sound like a bug in x26. You should contact it's author about it. The Z26.CLI file is a simple text file. If you open it with a text editor, you can see what x26 is sending to z26. This might help Jon to find the problem. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

The official homepage for PCAE is at http://pcae.vg-network.com/index.html where you can download the latest releases. But of course I would suggest using z26 with a front-end program instead. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

OK, let's see, if I can answer everything that was brought up: The "black screen with a tiny display" problem is actually a feature of the SDL. If a program requests a video mode, that your graphics card doesn't support, then the SDL tries to find a higher resolution with the same pixel depth and centers the display in it. The default video mode for z26 is 400x300x8. Apparently your graphics card doesn't support this mode. As you already have found out, you can set a different resolution or pixel depth with the -v# command line option and save that in the Z26.CLI file. The Windows version of the SDL by default uses Direct-X when available. Otherwise it tries to use the GDI. I think the only exeption is the joystick handling where the Windows multi-media functions are used. The Windows version of z26 supports joysticks since release 2.08. But currently the Atari joysticks are hardwired to the first two controllers in the Windows control panel. Anything in there with two axis and at least one button should work. At least it does for me on Win98 and WinXP. I don't know how well WinNT or Win2K support the multi-media functions. If you can find an adapter that allows real Atari joysticks to be used as Windows joysticks, you should be able to use it with z26 too. The z26 video modes are something that we need to work on for one of the next releases. If you have a LCD screen with a fixed resolution, you probably won't find a fullscreen mode in z26 that looks really acurate. You could use a windowed mode, but the highest resolution that we offer right now is somthing like 640x600, which might be too small, if you have a really big LCD screen. If you want to use binaries with a blank in the name with comand line tools, you have to enclose the entire file name in quotation marks ("). Windows should do that automatically, when double clicking a file to start it in the assigned program. At least I have no problems with z26 under WinXP. If you get a message from z26 about creating the Z26.CLI file, it means that X26 is passing the command line option to z26 but not the actual file name. I think there was a problem with that in one of the older versions of X26, but it should be fixed in the newest beta version. If the problem is still there, then you should contact the author of X26 about it. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

The current Windows version of z26 (2.10) supports any kind of joystick that provides two axis and at least one button. But it always uses the first controller in your Windows control panel for the left Atari joystick and the second one for the right Atari joystick. Also the controller has to be plugged in before you start z26. The current version of Stella should also support one joystick. The next version which should be released soon, will support up to eight joysticks, I think. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

Actually the Salu/HES version of Decathlon was fixed to use a different bankswitching scheme then the original Activision version. It uses Atari's 16K bankswitching which should work fine on all VCSs. Your problem sound more like dirty, worn or bended contacts on the cartridge port of your 6-switcher and your 7800. This would also explain why the game sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Do you have problems with other cartridges on these consoles as well? Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

I think I sent you a PAL 2600 Jr some years ago. If you can find it again, you might be able to use it for testing. I don't remember if it's TIA was socketed though. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

It's not the controller that is responsible for that, though. It's Omega Race that accepts both buttons for the same function. Homebrew games could support three buttons with a booster grip joystick. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

I don't know when the 2600 Jr came out in the USA, but here in Germany it was released in late 1984. I got my "short rainbow" 2600 Jr with Centipede and two proline controllers for Christmas in 1984. A friend of mine, who got his VCS a couple month earlier, still got the black four-switch model with Pac Man. I think it was the "long rainbow" 2600 Jr that came out in 1986. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

While CPUWIZ's cart might have come from Canada, the label clearly is German. It says "Weltbekannt durch Monopoly" under the Parker logo. This is what the official logo of Parker Germany looks like. It seems that the game in the UK ebay auction has the same logo. Also the cartridge case is the same as the one that Homevision used. I think Homevision is a from somewhere in Europe, so I suppose Parker Germany had some cartridges manufactured by them. Since Parker's PAL games had multi-language boxes and manuals, they probably were sold in the UK too. That doesn't explain how CPUWIZ's Frogger cart got to Canada though. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

It seems this might be your chance then. I suppose once Manuel's wife finds out about his girlfriend, there will be one or two women looking for a new VCS programmer to play with. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

Yes, that's what you could do, except that the tool to use is Makebin, which you can get from Bob Colbert's website. You can use a CD grabber tool to create the WAV file from the Labyrinth track, or just sample it with your favourite audio editor. Makebin expects a certain WAV format though. I think it's 8 bit at 44 kHz. Then you use Makebin on the WAV file and should get a 8448 byte binary which would work in PCAE, Stella and z26. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

I don't have MESS installed at the moment, so I can't test if this works myself. But if you open the 48K GATO binary in a hex-editor and go to the very end of the file, you can see the bytes "47 5A" right after the space for the signature key. These two bytes should be "FF 47" to tell the 7800 BIOS that a 7800 cartridge is inserted and that it's 48K big. If you change the bytes and then generate a new signature key for the binary, it should pass the BIOS test and play on MESS. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

The ROM images don't contain a signature key. If the code on the EPROMs is identical to the images, then a normal NTSC 7800 will treat the protoboard as an unlicensed game and refuse to start it in MARIA mode. It should work on a 7800 with the Asteroids BIOS though. A78sign only checks if the signaure key is valid by default. To force it to overwrite an invalid signature key with a valid one you have to use the -f command line switch like: a78sign -f gato.bin BTW, I think the binary would be more authentic, if it contained only one copy of EPROM 2 and two copies of EPROM 1. Since EPROM 1 is only 16K it probably gets mapped into $C000-$FFFF and $8000-$BFFF. So the command line from above should be: copy /b gato2_eprom.bin+gato1_eprom.bin+gato1_eprom.bin gato.bin Also, if you want to use the GATO binary with MESS, you'll have to genrate an A78 header for it, or copy one from another 48K game. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

One nitpicky detail: While the Asteroids BIOS was only used in the PAL 7800 consoles, it actually performs a system test at startup and should therefore work nicely in a NTSC 7800 console as well. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

The reason why GATO is split up into two EPROMS is because the game is 48K large. EPROM 2 goes into $4000-$7FFF, EPROM 1 goes into $C000-$FFFF, and the area from $8000-$BFFF is probably unused in this early prototype. On a DOS command line prompt type: copy /b gato2_eprom.bin+gato2_eprom.bin+gato1_eprom.bin gato.bin Then you have to sign the resulting ROM image with A78sign, and you should be able to use it with MESS, the Cuttle Cart 2 or a 48K EPROM cartridge. The demo is nothing special. With the joystick buttons you can switch between several still images that are probably representing the different game screens. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

That's a lot of great information! Do you plan to add Absolute's and Activision's boards too? And I think you are missing the Commando POKEY cart as well. In the description of the Ballblazer POKEY cart you wonder what the jumper might be for. I think this is to switch between EPROM and EEPROM chips. If you put an inverter chip in the free spot near the POKEY, you can use an EPROM or an EEPROM instead of a normal ROM chip. But IIRC an EEPROM chip usually has the same pinout as a RAM chip, so you need to swap some signals. That's what the jumpers are for. Also, before the development cartridge was created, Atari used 7800s with a modified BIOS, similar to our DevOS system. So the POKEY boards might have been meant as RAM carts to test the games. But that would only make sense, if the POKEY boards are older than the development cartridges. BTW, in the file name for my bankswitching guide you misspelled the "switching". The link works though. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

Over at Fatman Games they have an article where programmer Tom Pittman describes the process of creating Grand Slam Tennis for a console that later was released as the Emmerson Arcadia 2001. I found it quite interesting. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

Actually it's the other way around. Atari has +5V on pin 7 and Sega uses pin 5. Also the meaning of the input bits is inverted between the XE lightgun and the SMS lightgun. This could be compensated with a special hit detection routine for the SMS gun, but an adapter would probably be the better choice. It might be possible to use the SMS lightgun in an unmodified form though. The Genesis pads also require +5V on pin 5 for the chip that handles the button switching. And the original Sega pads seem to work fine on a 2600. You would be drawing the power from the TIA, which is not such a good idea, but for a low-power device it might still work. To read a lightgun on the 2600 you need a loop that continously checks the input pin for one frame. So the resolution you could get would be something like 53x40. I checked my demo again, and the lightgun wasn't that inacurate. If you have big targets and a hit marker, it might work pretty nicely. I guess the game type that would suit the 2600 best would be a collection with lots of Western-themed minigames. A Gunfight version of Point Blank/Gun Bullet, if you will. Other lightgun games live from advancing into new graphically interesting levels, which is something that the 2600 can't do too well. In a 32K ROM you should be able to fit in enough minigames to keep the player interested. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

Chad has released Playbin 2.3 for Win32 and various versions of WinCE on his website some days ago. So, if there really is someone out there who would like to use it with his Supercharger, the program does finally work now. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg