Cowering

I was kinda talking about both I have not gotten deep enough into the AtariVOX to see that it had external EEPROM as well as internal EEPROM on the Speech chip. If the Speech EEPROM can be read out, that would work perfectly with MESS' slot system as slots can have ROM/RAM nowadays. Trebor's wording led me to believe Prosystem could get the HSC data from somewhere, it just didn't write it back to a permanent diskfile. If MESS did this, it would store the data in a file that was local to the slot, so that any other game you loaded with HSC in the slot would see a consistent set of data.. This is great when you are playing hacks of the same game... you get to keep the highest score of all of them (sneaky huh)

Still crawling around the .a78 header.. does anyone have a concise doc for the header mod mentioned here for HSC? http://atariage.com/forums/topic/199637-work-in-progress-bentley-bear-crystal-quest/page-32?do=findComment&comment=2864640

That will be good, as I emailed tech support for SpeakJet chip, and EEPROM is write-only

Does the AtariVOX ship with the EEPROM already programmed with some phrases? I didn't see a way to read out the current EEPROM contents from a quick look at the pdf so it would be 'impossible' to properly emulate it in MAME

I've about got everything straightened out now. All the 'fixes' I would make to a header are already done by MAME so I'll just leave 99% of them alone. I did find that on the 7800 emulation page I am listed as 'Matt Cowering'.. no clue who that is as my name is not 'Matt' Does anyone have a tech manual for the speech chip in AtariVox? the Savekey part looks straightforward enough to code but the speech chip is something altogether different.

Ah.. I was not waiting long enough for diag cart! I'll try DS later this week. Thanks Cow

Can you list the softlist entry in MESS for this working Diag Cart, or it's CRC32? I am currently trying to find the original forum entries for each ROM so that people who only want the latest version can use them without having upto 20 old versions. I can also use those original posts to verify what header the original author wanted. Some are clearly 'wrong', in that things like reserved bytes (although never specified) should be set to 0 or that the cartname field should also zero terminate so that 'simple' software readers can print that name without a parser. It is common practice to zero these fields to help future header expansions, but I am not sure I want to start making new versions of headers if all current emulators can decode the 'bad' ones. I know nothing of the CC2 since Schell's site is dead. Is there a menu inside it that lets you specify NTSC/PAL or does it have it's own internal database for retail games? Perhaps a database on disk came with it?? Cow

An old list on my phone says that crc32 729DD769 (.bin) is one such file. I have it listed as a Diagnostic cart. I also have it flagged as not running in MESS in NTSC or PAL mode.

RevEng, thanks again for clarifications. All the .a78 files I have from the wild either have #$00 or #$ff in byte 58 (except for a pit fighter with a #$9d, but that is just from sloppiness I think). Seems that Savekey and HSC can both be detected through software. Perhaps no one is using the proper flag in the header. Can you name an A7800 game with Savekey support? Cow

I'll try and get a list, I'm not at my main computer right now.

Thanks for the fast reply. I am using the code from the function a78_cart_slot_device::validate_header() in MAME to determine good/bad headers. Since I'm a MAMEdev, anything that is decided to not match 'real' headers is easily fixed or faked. To confirm.. this code from MAME is right? (mapper is (53*256)+54) if ((mapper & 0xff00) == 0x0100) m_type = A78_ACTIVISION; else if ((mapper & 0xff00) == 0x0200) m_type = A78_ABSOLUTE; If I see absolute/activision mapper, I should regard all byte54 except for POKEY bits as invalid, true? I've not studied the MAME code for 7800 in 4-5 years and don't know if Supergame can be shared with the other two. I'm going to all this trouble because there are a huge number of .bin only homebrews and I'd really rather not have to guess their info. MAME has a software list system, but it does not list homebrew, only originally issued carts. You have to laboriously add your homebrew, with checksum to the file for every rev as the CRC32 changes. When all files have the right header things are just smoother for the user. BTW, if there is no controller listed for either port in the header, is it proper to assign a joystick to port 1 and nothing to port 2? Can I guess that the prototypes that were obviously only programmed by US/NTSC programmers are flagged as PAL in .a78 header to keep from checking for their missing signatures on NTSC console? Probably just another documentation error in MAME.. the mapper byte that our comment lists as 'normal' is probably meant to say 0 for the whole byte. It only makes sense regarding the code I pasted if the values are bit#s and not values. Sometimes binary is a bitch. I see that i2c is supported in MAME. I'll try and hook it up if I have time for Savekey if etabeta does not beat me to it . I am pretty sure the full docs for AtariVOX are available. Maybe both can be added at once!

Resurrecting this topic! I'm updating my Good7800 tool after too many years of spending all my time cataloguing Mario hacks. Trying to reconcile what MAME uses for header info versus the 'common' header info found at http://7800.8bitdev.org/index.php/A78_Header_Specificationversus actual 'in the wild' .a78 headers has given me the following questions that I hope the experts can answer! 1. MAME wants the [email protected] flag to be bit 3 of byte 53, but it is normally listed at bit six of byte 54. Which is correct? A7800header.exe uses the former. I can easily update MAME if it is wrong. Never mind, the code is right, the comment describing it was wrong 2. Byte 57 is NTSC/PAL. Should PAL always be just 1, or is #$ff also a flag for PAL? Are there any other possibilities? I don't know 7800 well enough to guess about things like SECAM or PAL variants like Brazil had. 3. The above mentioned webpage does not list any meanings for bits 8-15. Is this simply because no one would make homebrew using Absolute or Activision mappers? 4. Is it an error to declare the header to be version 2, but to not have byte 63 set to nonzero? Am I missing another changed part of the header? 5. MAME uses bit 0 of byte 53 as 'normal cart' and bits 1 and 2 to be Absolute/Activision mappers. Some F18 Hornet .a78 files set this value to 3. Is this an error, or just someone's way of saying "This is an Absolute mapper with no other special flags that would be found in byte 54"? 6. Is having the Savekey and HSC bits set at once considered a header error? 7. Some headers look right only if you use little endian to interpret bytes 53 and 54. Is there a header tool that is known to mess this up? Thanks so much for any clarifications. Cow