Gip-Gip
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Posts posted by Gip-Gip
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Hey all! Long time no see!
I'm doing atari repairs on the side of my current job/future college and I want a stress test cart for making sure they all work as intended
So far I have some ram test code laid out, along with some TIA test code in mind, and I'm wondering what ideas you guys have for testing the 2600 to make sure it's in 100% working order
I'll have the source code up when I have it in a good state, per usual, and I'll try my best to keep it semi well-documented. Granted, it's hard to make good looking assembler, but I will at least try my hardest to make it half readable
Plus, it's been a solid year or two since I've worked with assembler, so forgive me if it isn't the best code you've ever seen
Currently my list of tests include:
- RAM test, write both $FF and $00 to each byte in ram
- TIA test, set background color to each possible tia color in a rainbow fashion
- Sound test, cycle through sounds per frame
Please give me other stress ideas, what other common failure points there are, etc. etc.
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1 hour ago, Vorticon said:
Just wondering where progress was on this project.
Currently I'm just working on the game I'm making for this engine. I'm adding features along as I go so once I have a demo out I'll update VePseu99 with the features as well
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As a little disclaimer, I am taking plenty of time with each map now and it's probably only a third of the way finished, just having to tweak the engine as I go to do as I want has taken a bit of time
Also this demo level will most likely not be in the final game just so nothing is spoiled per-se, that and the designs are more experimental than anything
I'm trying to give the best RPG experience I can on the TI and I think it's going well so far
The only thing this demo probably won't have is a title screen and a fighting system, I'll save those for a later date perhaps...
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Just as a little update as to what's been going on
I've been tackling a few bugs and adding features to both VePseu and VePseuTool primarily, and I've been working on the actual game for two days as of now, attached below is a screenshot of VePseuTool with everything I've gotten done so far
I'm currently going at a rate of 1 map every day, so assuming this area has about 8-16 maps I'll have a tech demo ready in 8-16 days
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So far documentation is progressing, easily my least favorite part of development but it's kinda important
Quick favor to ask of those who read this, how readable is my commenting? For example, here's the file that loads textures onto the VDP. It's simple, short, and in my opinion, relatively easy to follow. I'd like to opinions on it so I can better document code in the future
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I've finally fixed the keyboard! And a few other things
I'm going to work on commenting the code and documenting everything, which will be a pain, but I NEED to do it
However I can safely say the testmap is on it's final version for now, and if you want to check it out the binary is attached
Tell me how it runs on real hardware too, if you can
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1 hour ago, Elia Spallanzani fdt said:
maybe make a little video for those that read this forum on smartphone?
I can provide a mp3. A video wouldn't be much worth anything as it's the same demo level with Wolfenstein music plastered on it
Keep in mind the TI's music is fairly loud
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I finally have music working!
Granted, I completely broke the keyboard routine and the code's fairly buggy, but now you can listen to music
stolen frominspired by Wolfenstein 3D!-
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It looks like I'm getting under 10 FPS somehow and that kinda worries me... I'll actually have to do some optimization and commenting now
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4 hours ago, mizapf said:
[Edited] If you are developing directly for the FinalGROM, I'll have to fold at this time. Currently I have no plans for emulating the FinalGROM because it involves a lot of powerful hardware (including a micro controller) that cannot easily be emulated. I could possibly simulate it, though.
Maybe it suffices to know how to do the bankswitching and where the RAM is located.
This is from the finalgrom website:
QuoteIn RAM Mode, each 8 KB bank is split into a ROM half-bank >6000->6FFF and a RAM half-bank >7000->7FFF. The RAM may be freely written to, but it is not battery-backed and will be lost on power down or cart reset. ROM half-banks are switched by writing to >60XX, and RAM half-banks are switched independently by writing to >6800. Intermediate bits are again ignored. Note that writing to >7XXX will not switch banks but update the RAM at that location.
Other than that it's a fairly standard bankswitching scheme, write to an even address read-only address in cartridge ROM and a bank is swapped
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3 hours ago, mizapf said:
I can do it, but I need to know your banking scheme, i.e. how you switch banks. And is this ROM-only, or do you again use RAM?
We have various cartridge types, based on different selector chips (e.g. 74LS378).
Both ROM and RAM, using FinalGROM's RAM mode-style bankswitching.
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I remember following this post when this was only a year in development! I'll have to try it out to see what I've missed
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Alright! I've somewhat successfully implemented bankswitching! If you want to see a "demo" of this bankswitching, the binary is included down below
Not sure how to make a multi-bank RPK sadly
The code's kinda half-baked at this point so I'd avoid the GitHub unless you want to be disappointed
Next update will be a little more exciting, I promise
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2 hours ago, Tursi said:
Are we sure it didn't work on hardware? Cause I'm wondering if I should change the Classic99 VDP drawing code to respect the 4k bit too...
right now it doesn't and that feels like an oversight.
I double checked on my TI, definitely didn't work
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14 minutes ago, mizapf said:
Updated RPK for MAME.
Thanks for providing RPKs
I'll read up how to make RPKs next update I push an update
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On 4/26/2020 at 7:15 PM, Tursi said:
I guess based on what Rasmus is saying, trying enabling the F18A and see if that makes a difference? (If it really is the 4k bit, that will disable it indirectly as the F18A doesn't support that bit).Ahhh, it works when I enable the 80 column hack. This disables 4k mode in the code.
So I'm not clear - does it or does it not work on hardware as-is?
Apparently I didn't catch this yesterday
It should now, the newest binary should at least. It enables 16k mode instead of 4k
The 4k mode binary does not work on old hardware, however
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Alright since I'm almost done getting the engine game ready I already contacted some freelance composers to see if I could get some music done for the TI. I'll have a title page and a shareware level done in ideally 2 weeks.. that'll allow me to get comfortable with the level editor, get some lore and artwork down, etc. etc. I'm excited to get a game together
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Ok so I've started to implement bankswitching and it works pretty well so far, it's just a little complicated
Basically, the first bank is the standard code, nothing much has changed here. But every ROM bank past bank 1 contains a full map+scenes+code+music, and when LDMAP is called the map is copied into a second RAM bank. Then, the map data is copied into the first RAM bank to RAMMAP and the scenes/music stay in bank 2. ?
Needless to say the implementation isn't perfect yet, and my code definitely needs some cleaning before I push it to git, but in theory this should be a fairly space efficient way to store maps. You can store 127 4kb maps in 1 rom, without any external add-ons. I'm pretty excited
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Quick question: how do you format banks for emulators such as JS99'er? I can get the separate bank files, which would be great if I were writing files to EPROM, but for testing with emulators I'm not entirely sure how you'd combine them, load them, etc.
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Here's the fixed cart with added audio. The code's getting pretty big and I'll do some size optimization later
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I'll have that out by the end of the day along with the sound stuff. Kinda hard for people to play my demo if it doesn't work with one of the more popular emulators
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3 minutes ago, Asmusr said:
Actually it's me who have 'fixed' js99er to show the effect of running with 4K video memory. If you set VDP reg 1 to >e1 instead of >61 thus enabling 16K video memory everything should be fine.
Huh. Well that was an easy fix
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Also, I should add that is appears Js99'er is temporarily broken.. I was testing out adding footsteps and it appears sprites are being sent to the character table. I'll raise an issue and see if I can't fix it before they do
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I did not expect this to be finished so quickly! And it runs nearly as fast as my engine, if not faster at this point..
Shows I have no right in dictating what can and cannot be done
How big of a pain would it be to implement entities like in Wolf3D?
right now it doesn't and that feels like an oversight.
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Single shorting plug on the diagnostic cart
in Atari 2600
Posted
Hey all!
I've been testing an atari and I fabricobbled an old serial cable into a shorting plug for the atari 2600
I could get another cable but I'm wondering if someone with the diagnostic cart and a 2600 could send me a picture of what the diagnostic matrix looks like with just one plug inserted, one picture per controller port
any help is greatly appreciated!