[Lynx Multi Card Preorders]

 

I believe the "laggyness" in the menu is from where it tries to load in the preview screenshots, this has been mentioned elsewhere.

 

Did you try the memory test menu.bin I sent via PM? It will show if there is an issue with the SRAM. As mentioned above, the things you mention are symptomatic of dry solder joints on the SRAM on the board.

Yes, read the first part of my last message. It passes when pulling the cart away from the Lynx 2mm, fails when I press and hold inward.

[Lynx Multi Card Preorders]

I think I'm having the exact same issue as Dave. If I put downward pressure on the romcart when it's plugged in so that the contacts have a stronger connection, the romcart tends to work more reliably. If I take the pressure off, the lynx tends to crash, presumably the next time it tries to do a read from the cart. I think it's possible a shim of some kind or maybe some tape on the bottom could alleviate this.

 

I'm not sure about some games working and others not, but I have seen some really wacky stuff when the connection sort of works, but is not reliable. When I get some time later I'm going to put some electrical tape on the reverse side of the cart to see if I can make the contact more snug.

 

Edit: I don't want to scare anyone away from buying the romcart, the thing is amazing. Even though my Lynx is in good shape it probably has thousands of hours of use (got it in '89) so the contacts may be quite worn out.

I tried putting something between the lynx and the card the other way, so that the cart was about 2mm *away* from the Lynx case. I did it just at the end of the cart not all of the way in so that the Lynx SD was at an angle. It passed the writing and testing phase. Games also seemed to program fine now. Pressing in like before failed the test. Putting the credit card in front like before failed too (probably why some games failed to program). It really seems like it is something with the cartridge slot that doesn't like this card. I may try a more permanent shim to see if that helps.

 

It seems a bit laggy though. When I press the dpad it doesn't respond sometimes unless I do it again. Also when pressing the button to load it doesn't seem to work sometimes. I am not sure if that is normal. The buttons respond normal in games.

[Lynx Multi Card Preorders]

The romcart I recieved initially worked well in my first gen Lynx 1 (had issues with my lynx2). I just upgraded my lynx 1 to a McWill screen and now I'm having all sorts of problems.

 

All of my original carts work. I've tried around 20 of my personal carts and they all work fine. When I try to use this romcart it's hit or miss whether I can get beyond the INSERT GAME screen. Usually it will just flicker after that or go dark. Some times I can get the menu to come up, but it's all distorted. Rarely I can get the menu system working, but I have done it. Sadly I can't get a game to run reliably when it does get as far as loading one.

 

If I take the romcart out and put it in at different angles, I get different results, but nothing that fully works. Any suggestions? I also copied over the latest menu files so I don't think that's the problem.

 

I was able to get it working so that the menu comes up fine every time. I had to put a thin piece of plastic like from a credit card over the 3D printed "Lynx SD" area to make that slightly thicker and make contact better. Try that. It seems like the cartridge slot in the Lynx II is a bit more finicky than the model 1. It also could be that the copper on the Lynx cartridge slot has oxidized being old so more pressure is needed to make good contact.

 

I still have issues with some games not working but that seems like a different issue. The same games will always work, and the same other games will always fail. That I don't understand. If it was bad static RAM wouldn't it be more random as in the same game sometimes working and sometimes not?

[Lynx Multi Card Preorders]

Just make sure the edge is clean and give it another go, if it's still no good I'll send a replacement. Sometimes (rarely) they seem to die in the post! Drop me a pm to remind me and I'll sort it out.

Yeah I tried cleaning the edge card, no luck.

 

As a last ditch effort I tried something else, I don't know what made me think of it. If I press firmly inward on the card and hold it when I turn on the Lynx it works. It is like the card isn't thick enough to make good contact. Maybe I will try to shim the part with the 3dprinted Lynx SD logo and see if it works better.

 

I found that some of my ROMs don't work though. I load some and it says "programming" for a few seconds then dumps back to menu. Other games say "Programing" for a while then The Lynx shows "insert game" screen. Some work OK. Is there something special that needs to be done to the ROMs? These ROMs work in an emulator so I don't understand what could be wrong, they are all .LNX extension.

[Lynx Multi Card Preorders]

I received my card the other day. Unfortunately it does not work. All I get is the "insert game" text with no menu, nothing. What should I do now? Yes I tried removing and inserting a few times, no work.

[Displaying a page of text on 2600, possible?]

 

One other idea to consider. Only use an asymmetric playfield for the text. This should work on all systems and fix the orientation issue. The drawback would be that you would only have enough room for 10x10 characters on a page. The good thing is that it would fill the whole screen and the letters would be large and hopefully easier to read.

Yeah that would be ok too. Maybe two solutions would not hurt. One best case like SpiceWare's solution that works the best but is not compatible with dodgy emulators. Another solution as you say that may not be as good but works for everything. The author could then choose which way to go. That would leave out some users now if the author choose the best case one but eventually emulators should all evolve enough so that they all work.

[Atari E.T. had a unauthorized port!]

The Spectrum was 48k compared to the 2600 so why the Hell does it look so much worse?

Well if you could somehow add 32 gigs of RAM to a ColecoVision it won't look better than a PS4. The 2600 did have a palette of 256 colors compared to the Speccy's 16. And that speccy color clash...

[Worth $80?]

Hey, it includes E.T. How can you go wrong?

[Easy way to format Games for HC?]

Thanks. is there a place where i can get all of the homebrew games in one place (Pac-Man 8k, New DK, Space Rocks, etc) Or do I just need to search them out one by one?

[Connecting old systems like 2600 to modern TVs?]

Thanks. I heard somewhere that HDTVs didn't work with old analog RF. It seems some do and I should have just tried it.

 

I have a 2600 Jr. and it does work. The image is a bit noisy (solid colors with slight bands, edges of high contrast areas have a bit of bleeding etc. I guess that is probably just the nature of old non broadcast quality RF.

[Easy way to format Games for HC?]

Where did you get your roms originally? There is a set made by ROM Hunter that has NTSC & PAL separated.

 

They are broken out like this...Harmony-RomHunter.jpg

 

 

You can get it here

I got one of those "full sets" and it is very big. Thanks for the info though I will try that, much better than manually doing it myself.

[Easy way to format Games for HC?]

So I bought the Harmony encore cart. It seems great so far.

 

I was wondering is there an easy way to get my ROMs to all NTSC versions and get rid of all of the various hacks, clones, duplicates, PAL etc?

 

It looks to be a daunting task to manually weed out thousands of games. There must be an easier way.

[Connecting old systems like 2600 to modern TVs?]

Ok so most modern TVs no longer accept an analog signal. Is there some kind of converter box that will convert an old RF analog signal to HDMI inputs?

 

There must be some doing that here as I doubt everyone has access to old CRTs (or maybe they do?)

 

 

[Building the ultimate 2600 portable?]

And it would require serious electronic engineering skill.

Yeah I might have to just go the Raspberry Pi rout when they get a simple snap together design or wait for McWills portable if/when that is a reality. I didn't want to do the emulator thing but that may be the only way to get a decent display. Composite is crap and I don't want that. I wonder if there is any interest in a collaboration of coders and electronics engineer that would want to make the ultimate Raspberry 2600 kit including screen connection (nothing smaller than 3.5"), any specific coding, and a case (I could do the case/controls)? If there was interest this would be the forum for that amirite?

[Building the ultimate 2600 portable?]

If I go to You Tube I see all kinds of 2600 portable hacks mostly on the FB2. I was just wondering, how are they all connecting these screens? They never tell you that in the videos.

[Displaying a page of text on 2600, possible?]

If I'm understanding this correctly. The AFP emulation is not accurate enough to run the existing 32 char kernel that has proper orientation. So I was proposing a workaround that uses a simpler kernel which hopefully works on the AFP. It should be possible to detect if the code is running on the AFP or not. Then the sideways kernel could be used for AFP and the other one with correct orientation could be used everywhere else. Sure, rotating the AFP would be a little odd, but it's the best I could come up with. Personally I would prefer to have a solution that requires turning the AFP over a solution that uses flickering, interlacing, or venetian blinds.

 

Has anyone tested on the AFP with the bin file I posted above? Does it render properly and is the text readable?

I just tested on the AFP. It does work fine.

 

In normal mode are you saying that you can only get 6 characters across? What would the other options look like (flicker etc)?

 

While I can see this being ok for the AFP for now it is a bit of a kludge to have system detection etc. What happens in the future when they update the emulation on AFP 2018, 19 ...? maybe it will work, maybe it won't detect and not work right. There are so many combinations of hardware and emulators out there that trying to manage them all now and in the future may be a bit of an issue. Then all of the work doing instructions will be negated. What about Harmony carts, 2600 jr.s, modded flashback 2s, FBxx mods, etc?

 

My goal was to have a pure 100% compatible way to display the instructions no matter what you run on from past devices/emus or in the future. The only real way to do that is to make something that will run on any 2600 compatible hardware or emulator. If it will run a bog standard 2600 game, it will display this text. (BTW those displaying on CRTs may have trouble with dark blue, maybe white or something NTSC friendly ? making this compatible with any display device is another consideration).

 

Maybe this goal is impossible. I thought it might be as we are talking ancient tech here. It was worth a shot though. Thanks for doing what you did.

[Displaying a page of text on 2600, possible?]

Here's a quick test rom. I don't have an AFP to test on. Can someone who does give this a try? I'd like to know if it displays correctly.

 

DaveC1964 would this be a viable solution for what you want to do? Keeping it a 4K rom would leave enough room for 16 pages of text. Each page is 6 rows of 32 characters. I made each character 5 pixels instead of 3 because they looked too tall and skinny with only 3 pixels.

 

ABCDEF.png

 

 

Well yes kind of. I think making users rotate the unit to read then rotate back is a bit awkward. Those running on a TV would need to cock their head 90 deg.

 

The idea was to make this work for all users, even the home console 2600 versions. Limiting just to portables would be a very small section of users.

 

Is there a way it could be done in a normal orientation?

[Lynx Multi Card Preorders]

 

Sorry, my bad. Fixed.

Could I get added to the list too?

 

Thanks.

[Displaying a page of text on 2600, possible?]

 

It loaded fine on mine. It displayed just as well as I expected it to:

 

20170810_101156.jpg

Bummer. I am not too surprised though.

 

Now I am wondering why I couldn't even see the file. I renamed to a simple Test.bin but it didn't show up. Maybe my SD is going bad or something.

[Lynx Multi Card Preorders]

Right, I'm catching up with the Lynx SD again now. I've found spreading your time between three projects can be a bit tricky!

I am interested in getting one of these.

 

I was wondering, could you send me the uncased version but send me the .STL files so I can print one myself in a different material?

 

Thanks much.

[Displaying a page of text on 2600, possible?]

Somebody should post a photo of the build in reply #47 running on a flashback portable, it's a standard 4K ROM. Of course it's an older routine that doesn't create a full 128 pixel image like the newer one does.

I tried that on a portable but the ROM doesn't even show up on the menu list. That is odd.

[Lynx LCD mod complete, WOW]

So I did the McWill LCD mod. It turned out great. If you have a Lynx I suggest this mod, if you don't have a Lynx get one and do the mod!

 

It looks much better in person than my crap cellphone pics, the colors are much deeper. Scanline version shown. Everything works well so far and I had no bad pixels or anything.

 

I used the ribbon cable that came with the mod and soldered the wires in order to the LCD module. I did the jumping around at the Lynx PCB. That seemed to work out well. Also I used some hot snot to keep the wires secure, I would recommend doing that so they don't break when re assembling the unit.

 

I didn't do the VGA mod. It is a nice feature but I figured if I want to play Lynx games on my PC monitor I will just use an emulator.

 

It was a pretty easy mod. Thanks to McWill for making it possible. Now all I need is a flash cart. I actually did buy just about all Lynx games and still have them but for convenience all in one would be nice. Trying some homebrew would be nice too.

 

 

 

[Displaying a page of text on 2600, possible?]

I would set it up using CDF which works on real 2600s, 7800s, Stella, and Harmony carts. I'm not interested in limiting myself due to devices, like the Flashback units, that poorly emulate the 2600. I suspect the tricks used to get 32 characters per scanline wouldn't work on them anyway.

Well that is obviously up to you if you are doing it. There are a lot of those FB units out there. Systems like the portable are things that really need something like this. A homebound system not as much as you can have physical manuals there or look it up on your computer, phone, tablet etc. On the go it is desirable to have it all in one. It would be nice to have something that will work with anything no matter how "bad" the emulation, not sure what could be done in that case or what the limits would be.

 

Is it possible to display a one color bitmap on the whole screen? Maybe I could just type the instructions, then convert it to a 1 bit bitmap as white text on black? It is crude but it is still better than nothing.

[Displaying a page of text on 2600, possible?]

If somebody wants to do this I'm willing to create a template that you'd be able to drop the text into, though it'd be later this year after Draconian is finished.

 

Could even set it up where you can put images within the text, such as the duck dragon for Adventure, though they'd be the same color as the text.

That would be nice. Non-programmers could contribute game instruction ROMs that could be made public. I would be careful about using custom tricks that could cause compatibility issues though, it should work on all devices like the flashback portable, flashback2, Harmony cart, emulators and such that have trouble with certain things such as bank switching etc.

 

I would do some of these if I had this template.

[AtGames Fall 2017 Flashback and Portable Lineup]

Frogger has been non-2600 version for a while now, hasn't it? One of the reasons seems to be all the music jingles that they couldn't license, and it was easier to reimplement the game in arcade like resolution minus the music than trying to hack the 2600 ROM to remove all music.

Then again, Frogger without the music isn't Frogger in my opinion, the music made it good.