batari

As I have made some of the hardware that homebrew games are played on, I can say that I have found this same mistake in a good number of games. It usually starts with someone telling me something like, "Game X doesn't work on your hardware!" So I look at game X and the game almost invariably has this same bug in it. Since my hardware is working just fine and I can't fix something that isn't broken, I usually end up fixing the game and sending it along! I have personally fixed dozens of games like this. Even before I made hardware that plays other people's games, I already knew this mistake was common so it led me to create an auditing tool for source code that I posted in my blog here long ago. I am not sure if many people used it, though, not unlike the developer tools in Stella that would later help find the same bugs. I think this particular bug is almost diabolical because it is such an easy mistake to make, because on the 2600 (and possibly to a lesser extent, the 7800), this mistake can pass through the cracks unnoticed, while on other systems it almost never would go unnoticed. This same bug is also in commercial software, even in Atari releases like Video Pinball and Dodge 'Em, and probably others, so it's not just affecting homebrews. It is worth mentioning, though, that some of the more elite homebrewers quite possibly have never made this mistake. I never heard about such bugs in their games, nor have I ever had to fix any of these bugs in their games But if you think one of those homebrewers is me, think again. Despite that I am so hyper-aware of this issue, a couple of years ago I caught myself making this same mistake thanks to Stella.

If you are talking about the blue capacitor-like devices that are poorly attached to the ground, neutral and hot wires, these appear to be varistors, for surge protection.

You mean this? This panel will be ready to assemble once the chips for it arrive (may take some time, thanks to the chip shortage!) But if all goes to plan (and parts suppliers are truthful with their lead times) these will be widely available this year.

I never stopped shipping to South America, just this order to Argentina left a bad taste in my mouth. I have had no problems with Chile at all.

Eventually you will be able to have your Harmony cart upgraded when I have a chance to update the Harmony firmware to support the upgraded CPU. The difference is pretty minor between the original and upgraded CPUs so the changes aren't all that involved. Most likely a physical cart release will come well before that.

Technically, existing Harmony or Harmony Encore carts can run this game with an upgraded CPU. However, I am not offering CPU upgrades to Harmony/Harmony Encore at this moment, however, due to the fact that the upgraded CPU won't run current versions of Harmony firmware natively. Someday I might make changes to the firmware to support the upgraded CPU, just not today

There was an electronics surplus store back in the mid-90s in town that had pallets of these monitors for something like $50 when a comparable new monitor cost upwards of $1000. I bought two, and IIRC, a standard VGA-to-5-BNC cable was all you needed to use on a PC (albeit with fixed 1280x1024 resolution, so Windows only.) The display was very crisp for the time (these were Trinitrons and resources say 0.26mm dot pitch). I used one until 2003 when I went LCD. Everyone who saw these loved them. I lent one to a girlfriend who refused to give it back after we broke up. After I retired the other, I gave it to a friend who used it until it died (or, the cable may have died?)

I built a MAME cab back in 1999. It's a gutted Circus Charlie. It's so old, it was built closer to when the classic games it emulates were released, than to today. Still have it, probably still works or did last time I plugged it in 5 years ago. I think it's running a Pentium III, around 300 Mhz with a DOS-based MAME (0.35). Today it just sits in the garage, unused. It's not pretty nor was it ever meant to be, it was built for function, not looks. So no pics, it doesn't look as nice as any of the others here! Not sure what to do with it today as honestly I haven't powered it up in years and I have a JAMMA cocktail cab now with a 60-in-1 that meets my needs, takes up a lot less space and is possible for me to move around without help.

These are all being addressed in the next firmware release. On a typical boot, Concerto loads the menu from flash into its RAM. The RAM is static RAM, not flash, and so it has an unlimited number of write cycles. It typically just reads the flash, with no flash writes being performed. The only exception (which isn't actually implemented yet) are for the ARM-based 2600 games, like DPC+ and CDFJ. These will need to write to the flash in order to play the games, then reflash the menu back to flash on the next boot. Even such, the flash has a minimum 100,000 write cycle rating, which most likely nobody will ever see or get close to. if you played 5 different ARM-based 2600 games every single day, it would take 27 years to hit that limit. Also, even when flash is at that limit, it by no means means it is worn out, as the 100,000 is a minimum rating (most likely it will handle many more.)

The dummy read trick isn't bad at all if you use this functionality to your benefit. One trick I have used to always start in the same bank with minimal overhead is to place something like this at the end of every bank: ; F4 example shown: use FFF5 for F6 or FFF7 for F8 ORG $FFF3 BRK ORG $FFFC .word $FFF3 .word Start The dummy fetch at $FFF4 occurs before the actual BRK is executed. So, no matter what bank things start in, you will always end up in bank 0 at "Start" without the need for explicit bankswitch instructions to do that. You don't even need to use .word Start in every bank, only bank 0, so you can use BRK for other things in banks other than 0.

Definitely it's smaller in size, looks like under 512 bytes total?

This needed some work to make it function out of its original context, but I think I got it working. Looks like the memory requirements are about 1k. Here is a standalone version of the logo with assembly modified to compile as a 4k bin. aalogo.zip

I only have 2k to work with (and most likely less than that), so the second logo might not work, but if source is available I will evaluate. Is there source for this second one?

As of right now, ALL of the reservation holders have been invited to order. The last batch of emails just went out. There are a handful who received emails some time ago but have yet to place an order, so I think they didn't see the invitation email. If anyone reading this reserved a Concerto by paying the $10 deposit and has never seen the email, please PM me and provide your email address, and I will let you know how to place your order.

Thanks, I just looked at that. The logo looks great! The jingle isn't there (at least on the version I have), but it's not that it's hard to create that part of it. Though if there is a version with both, all the better.