Mike Harris

I suspect there is some reason for the suspense because no matter what, there is no confirm or deny of anything we say here. What's the hold up. Shove it in an ADAM, dump the rom and be done with it. That said, as I mentioned earlier my friend swore he witnessed Dino Eggs running in a Colecovision at some tech trade show circa 1983 in New Jersey. Regardless of what this cartridge is, there is a version of Dino Eggs out there unless he was lying for some reason or it was a mock up attached to an Apple or some deal.

It has come along since I started at the beginning of December last year. I am impressed with myself that I have accomplished so much when Assembly Language is one of the more harder languages to figure out and I could not have done this without your help. Especially Tony at Electric Adventures. In any case, I have not quit but in my own hubris I thought Coleco, being a superior machine coming after the 2600, could do anything a 2600 could. Why not if it was more powerful. Well, despite better this, that and the other... Coleco does not have the same color scheme. Also, the 2600 displays graphics 100x differently. So, my port will be slightly different in color. Then the drawings, then the patterns... Well the end result is that I am now calling this a Super Game that will be a port but have more. Most everything is done already aside from some bugs and color changes. But if it is going to be a super game then I have to make it super and not just a color change. After all, I am not George Lucas looking for a quick buck. Noooooooooooooooooooo In any case, I have been able to execute it on a real ADAM thanks to the VDD and an extra ADAM I have so it is back to work. So far 60 rooms and still under 14k which leaves more for improvement. I do ask anyone out the with example collision code in Assembly which creates a barrier between a Sprite and background pattern that they would not mind sharing. The code I am using still has some offset bugs that I just can't get working on a real ADAM. Also, if anyone has examples of how to set up objects. Apparently Coleco had objects outside of Sprites that are slower. Hey, lets see how much I can cram into this. The rom is going to be free once it is done and it has always been a learning experience for me. Thanks for reading my rant.

WOW That is reaching into the void but good. I think though it was just called Scraper Caper. I will have to Google it.

OK, then take down every version of Donkey Kong and Smurf you get your hands on. We must be consistent on roms from 30 years ago. I think all of this has already been settled but I welcome the discussion,

I guess I am in the dark about copywrite law but it seems that they had no problem releasing and making money on other licenses that they "don't own" I send a challenge to anyone of you to take the intellivision version, study and release your own version into the public domain. If it was done once then it can be done again and no one is coming after you unless you try to make money off it. All I see is game playing some 30 years later. It's theirs and they don't want to release it...just make your own.

Bounty Bob Strikes Back?

I have no plans too but if I wanted to release a Smurf game on the Colecovision I could into the public domain despite Sony owning the rights to distribute the movies as long as I am not making a cent on it. Public domain is public domain. How many of you has Nintendo gone after for passing around the Coleco version of Donkey Kong. I never owned the flashback junk but coming from what I read it did not include Donkey Kong because they did not secure the license on a NEW piece of equipment that is intended to make money. If the BSR wants to hide behind some bogus copywrite then the more power to them but they already lost one and when all of them are gone, just like every old nostalgia collector, their crap ends up at the Good Will or some thrift store. So someone needs to get on the ball and remind them that the history is more important than trying to take it with them.

OK...This is just hearsay but my friend back in the day swore on a stack of bibles that he seen an actual copy of Dino Eggs running on the Colecovision. He was at some Computer event in New Jersey back in 1983. I am not making this up.

Did the Blue Sky Rangers finally release the alleged "He-Man" cartridge that is supposed to be kept locked up because of "Copywrite" issues.

Thank you, but I was referring to something better and more professional. These are dated for the most part and I know that there are people out there that have created a Colecovision and what not on a bread board and brand new versions. Someone has redrawn these and printed them out with parts list.

So I decided to test out my never used ADAM and smoke billowed out smelling very much like capacitar's White smoke, thick smoke. I am confident that despite feeling dicked over this that I can fix this. I will refrain from telling you the cost or the name of the jerk who decided to "FORGET" to tell me that the unit although being advertised as never used was also not complete despite the premium collectors cost. I also called him directly so he did not share the asking price with EBAY yet he still... Despite all of that... Can someone with a really good copy of ADAM Schematics, the main board showing the caps and test points. I have the originals that came with the programing book from 1984 but they are jacked. So I wanted to check with the community first because a lot has happened since 1984. This is a revision 80 board with the diagonal pinned Digital Data Drive. The last version released from what I can tell. TIA

Thank you for everyone's input. Have it running on real equipment and needless to say, I have to make some drastic changes to make it enjoyable.

ok.... FINALLY WOW...That is about the jyst of it. A struggle just to get it onto a real ADAM is part of it then REALITY sets in. My character runs great, very smooth so far. Colors suck and I have no real shading or gamma control so this port has to go into some changes. Who would have thought that an Atari 2600 had a better color system than a Colecovision. That NMI is a pain too. Works great on the emulator and screws everything up on the real deal. I also have to contend with the backdrop, overscan, border or whatever you want to call it. sigh........

got it working through commandline thx

Thanks again. that's why I humbly ask the experts.

A lot of steps but I am eternally grateful. I think one of my future projects will be to create a simple program that will take a rom and overlay it onto a default boot disk/adapter that you can boot up in a real ADAM. The frustration come from real product. Emulators work fine. Here is something that should piss you or anyone else off, it did me. I decided to test my "Never used" ADAM that I paid 1k for. Smoke blew out and the DData drive went crazy. Never used in 30 years and it blew up. Everything looks clean inside except the smell. So I took all the working chips, the roms and put them in my development machine so at least I now have revision 80 instead of 57 and a better Coleco sub board.

Thanks Trebor... However I have no possibility of copying my homebrew cart image to a copycart disk or whatever other medium because of what I just mentioned. You put a cart in the emulator and every single one of them launches the cartridge and not any other drives. A real ADAM does not work that way. You can have a cartridge in it all day because the ADAM has 2 reset buttons.

I have a serious question. Why is it that EVERY SINGLE ADAM EMULATOR out there has to automatically execute a cartridge if it's attached. Mess/mame does this and give you no choice to boot from other media. ADAMEM does this as well, at least every incarnation. the virtual adam, adam 2018... I am finding impossible to transfer my program over to a real ADAM for testing because these kind of things. I have tried COPYCART, The Hackers Guide version. It just goes on. Nowhere has there ever been an ADAM that defaults to the cartridge slot yet all the emulators do. Any ideas? Future revisions to fix all this? or just bringing it to the international attention.

Could always use Z80 Assembly. My game is still under construction, no compression and so far I have 60 rooms, 9 Animated characters and 13 objects and all using 23 16x16 sprite and 200 8x8 tile patterns. so far under 14k I am not trying to toot my own horn. I am just trying to convey that z80 assembler allows more freedom. IF you can figure out the bugs. I had a memory leak that took me a good 8 hours of staring at the same code over and over.

I received my VDD today and as much as I would have loved this 30 years ago it only makes ADAM just a bit more bearable. The other issues is I am spoiled with the ease of emulators. To the point... Has anyone figured an easy way to inject test cartridges onto a copycart disk or similar program? All my tests up to now have been failures and I do not know if I should pad the end of my game to get a perfect round number, the programing or what. The VDD comes with a sorts of manual that suggests using programs from the DOS era but if I know you guys, someone out there has created a modern tool. TIA

My current project is in the final stages of part one. Getting the bugs out, testing on real equipment. I just added 30 new rooms and am still under 14k. Can someone with expertise share some code that explain how someone like MR. Do can walk between patterns without going through them. If he digs a hole then how does coleco know because one is a sprite and one is a background. Currently I have a sprite defined as a 4x4 cube to be updated later and this is the code Tony from Electric Adventures was kind enough to shar with me. MAP_TO_SPRITE: LD HL, VRAM_NAME LD A,(SPRTBL) CP 0 JP Z, SKIP ; if we are zero SRL A ; divide by 2 three times i.e. divide by 8 will give us our row SRL A SRL A LD B,A ; save it to a loop count LD DE,32 XOR A LOOP: ADC HL,DE DJNZ LOOP SKIP: LD A,(SPRTBL+1) CP 0 JP Z,SKIP2 SRL A ; divide by 2 three times i.e. divide by 8 will give us our column SRL A SRL A LD E,A LD D,0 XOR A ADC HL,DE SKIP2: CALL SETRD IN A,(DATA_PORT) RET It does the job well but there are a couple of areas were it just does not catch the code like at the very edge and it allows the sprite to move through at certain corners. I did not want to keep bugging him especially when he has a video series he's working on.

Could not wait till the weekend. Word to the wise, initialize every bit of ram that your program uses so the system doesn't overwrite your data by a single byte.

It's a memory leak. Working on it this weekend. But yes, it does have to do with memory locations are different in ADAM.

It's a game I am programing. Works on Colecovision emulators but I have 2 real ADAM's Both same issues when I try to run it.

It works in every Coleco Emulator but as soon as I tried it in a real ADAM nothing... Nothing but a flashing screen in both my ADAM's. It is trying to display my game with the colors so I am not talking about a bad BIOS or ram. It also fail's in an ADAM emulator. Everything up till this point has been on the legit. No special calls, Proper defined ram location as far as I know. It is a little over 12k so size is not a problem. (at least that's what I tell my wife) Somebody....anyone....