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No problem - the in-game speech is going to blow people away! Thomas has a cool graphics overlapping tool if that would be useful to save ROM? Chris

Interesting! What is left to do in the game now? I guess audio/speech still needs some work? If you have a spare 4K bank then I could have a look at getting high score saving working? (The flash memory can only be written in 4K chunks so a whole bank is needed). Though it might be better to use the space for more speech data? Chris

The Bosconian arcade manual references DIP switches to control the difficulty (Rank A,B,C, Auto), but doesn't explicitly define what effect these settings have. Chris

This guide might be useful: https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Bosconian/How_to_play

That was a lot of effort for the cores, but they look awesome!

Nice work - is this the 4th or 5th rewrite Hopefully you'll be able to reuse the code in another game as it is quite generic? Chris

Have you updated all the kernels to the new CDF/FastJmp method? Chris

Back in the day people wanted a Gameboy because it was small, battery life was far better, it was cheaper, and it had better games. Those advantages were enough that people didn't care about the color. Chris

Fred (batari) is a very busy chap, but also very reliable - you should receive your cart in 2 to 3 weeks. Chris

If you don't mind a bit of soldering, mojoatomic is selling cap replacement kits for the 2600: https://atariage.com/forums/topic/262129-atari-2600-cap-and-voltage-regulator-kits/ Chris

Nice work - thanks Darrell. Chris

I would like to purchase an S-Video mod for an NTSC Atari Jr 2600 console. I am aware of the Etim RGB mod, but this seems like overkill for a cheap Jr. The Longhorn S-Video mod appears to have been discontinued. The Batari S-Video mod would be the best choice, and was previously sold by Electronic Sentimentalities, but appears to be unavailable at present for personal reasons. There is an S-Video mod on eBay from a UK seller (possibly Longhorn variant?), but appears to be only for PAL consoles. Are there any other options that I have not considered, or is the RGB mod my only choice at this time? Thanks, Chris

There is a rebase.autostash option for git that will automatically stash/un-stash your changes when you pull and rebase. Is there some way to enable this option for Xcode? Chris

If you switch off the Atari while a game is loading then there is a small chance the BIOS will get corrupted (I wrote the Harmomy BIOS). Chris

You need to select the "Other" option before entering your payment details:

Reflashing the BIOS will probably fix it - try following the instructions in the manual. You can also download the latest 1.05 version here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/156500-latest-harmony-cart-software/

It is 8 pixel blocks with a gap of 8 pixels. The CRT is not very precise at switching the beam off and on, so you see a gap. The effect is less visible on some TVs and if the console has a svideo or rgb mod. Chris

Ah - I missed the RESxx, but it will still work before the HMP1 with a bit of padding. On the VCS - if you don't rewrite the kernel at least 10 times then you aren't trying hard enough . I lost count of the rewrites for star castle! Chris

I should have pointed this out before you rewrote all of the kernels yesterday! One final suggestion is to move the HMP1/ENAM1 writes to the end to free up the Y register and 3 more cycles: lda #<DS_HMP1_ENAM1 ; 2 71 sta HMP1 ; 3 74 sta HMOVE ; 3 1 sta ENAM1 ; 3 4 stx ENAM0 ; 3 7 lda #<DS_GRP1 ; 2 9 sta GRP1 ; 3 12 jmp (Next) ; 5 17 Chris

I would be tempted to inline the R76 code in ever single kernel. Also, the few kernels that are really tight for cycles could probably go in the same bank as the JMP table and avoid the initial JMP? Trying to find you enough cycles to do digital audio during the kernel Chris

I guess this won't work because the HMMx need to come before the HMOVE and the ENAMx need to come after. I wonder if you could do something like this instead to eliminate the LSRs and allow the GRP1 to be a fast fetch: lda #<DS_HMP0 sta HMP0 tax lda #<DS_HMP1 sta HMP1 tay lda #<DS_HMMB sta HMBL sta ENABL ... lda #<DS_GRP1 sta HMOVE sta GRP1 stx ENAM0 sty ENAM1 Chris

I see this pattern a lot: lda #<DS_HMMB ; 2 58 <- just to keep stream in sync lda #<DS_M1M0BL ; 2 60 sta ENABL ; 3 63 <- on VDEL, for next scanline lsr ; 2 65 tay ; 2 67 <- Y has enable for M0 lsr ; 2 69 <- A has enable for M1 ldx DS_GRP1 ; 4 73 jmp R76 ; 3 76 Could you use the DS_HMMB fetch to eliminate an LSR and save 2 cycles, e.g: lda #<DS_HMMB ; 2 58 <- just to keep stream in sync tay ; 2 60 lda #<DS_M1M0BL ; 2 62 sta ENABL ; 3 65 <- on VDEL, for next scanline lsr ; 2 67 <- A has enable for M1 ldx DS_GRP1 ; 4 71 jmp R76 ; 3 74Even where the HMMB value is used, I think you can still use this trick. It looks like the Y value is only used for ENAM0, which won't overlap with the bits needed for HMBL, i.e: lda #<DS_HMMB sta HMBL tay ... sty ENAM0 Or even better if you can put the HMBL and ENAM0 together you could free up the Y register entirely: lda #<DS_HMMB sta HMBL sta ENAM0 You could possible combine one of the other HMMx values with ENAM1 and save a fecther ... Chris

Your Atari is nearly 40years old - if you bought a 40yr old car, would you expect it to perform like a new one? If the power supply is going bad it will affect your other games soon enough, and cleaning the cart port is something that needs to be done regularly. You can get a new power supply for around $10. If you really want to get rid of it, sell it on the marketplace forum. I don't see why Fred should take a loss when the cart likely works perfectly.

From the video, this looks like a power supply glitch that is causing a "frying" effect on the console. The Harmony cart draws more power than a standard Atari cart and this can be problematic with aging power supplies. Try the following: 1) Clean the cartridge port carefully - if there is a poor contact it can cause issues 2) Purchase a new power supply - a modern switching power supply will perfrm much better (there are lots on eBay) Chris

Thanks for the explanation - I played with some ideas for the score kernel but I'm not getting anywhere. Using RESPx doesn't work because P0 and P1 need to overlap. The only way would be to display on alternate frames with flicker, but I suspect you don't want that. Given a choice of chunky PF text or flicker, I'd go with the chunky PF text. Chris