zezba9000

I sent my VecMulti back to Richard so he could use it to help investigate. Still hasn't gotten to him yet (shipping) but tbh is probably going to be at least a month before any useful feedback can happen is my guess.

Its pretty sad these aren't being made anymore. Really wish packrat could make them. If you only care about games and not development there is the C7061: http://packratvg.com/o2c7061.html Doesn't support custom games though.

Ya just found it tnx!

Any of these still exist for the WATARA? Any WATARA flash/multi carts around?

O no its all good. I just was in the mood to play around with stuff. Interested in what you find out! I did replace the SD card reader with one I got off Amazon. Same issue as I'm sure you expected. However an interesting discrepancy I noticed was when formatting the SD card to FAT (not FAT32 on Win10) it causes the Vectrex to restart VecMulti and or "the system" over and over. When I format to FAT16 with GParted on Ubuntu 18.04 90% of the time the screen just is black and when it does load the selection screen games don't as others have stated. I re-ran the 'MenuMaker.exe' before each test. Reason I asked about firmware is because I was wondering what driver was used to read from the SD FAT file system. If it was a standard Arduino driver I was just going to poke at it to see if there was a software issue there. Anyway thanks for looking into this.

Got a standard SD reader and used a micro SD converter. My personal 2gb SD starts to load but then the selector crashes but the one that came with the device just comes up with a screen saying no SD is detected. I'm getting some more micro SD card readers tomorrow and a 256mb (NOT gb) sd card to see if that changes anything. My thinking being something could be wonky in the firmwares SD card reader driver. If nothing changes will just wait for @mooshue to post back. Sorry everyone for the spam... just was taking a stab at it and sharing. Is the firmware source open source on GitHub or something for this device? Its also possible the firmware on the chip is corrupted. I had a brand new Arduino in the past have a corrupted bootloader upon arrival. Any many from Adafruit. Not sure how these are flashed before sent.

Was able to check that there is a voltage shiftier on the SD reader and powering it from an external power supply doesn't help. Going to go buy a different SD reader and see if that has any effect. Yes I have tried a different 2GB SD card. As I said before I imaged the one that came with the device on Linux, then gave the original a drive name on Windows (which it was missing) and copied the files to new SD card (wish someone would share there files so I can validate hashes). Because the original models didn't have an external SD reader module I'm wondering why it was changed and why I started playing around with it. Here are my VecMulti files: https://1drv.ms/u/s!Alt5wRhQYKD7gegaR6cAJ1OYxOrlcA

So just tested the voltage feeding into the micro SD card reader on the board. Its 5v but these card readers should only be feed 3.3v or you will damage the card reader. Because the sd reader is soldered at the bottom of the board can't see if it has a voltage shiftier on it (which I doubt it does).

Also where are the SD card files on the web? I can't find them anywhere officially (I want to validate the latest '.img' file). * Plugged my SD card into my Win10 PC and found there was no drive letter assigned to the FAT partition. * So plugged it into my Ubuntu 18.04 box and 'dd' backed up everything as a '.img' file. * Brought it back over to my Win10 PC and added the drive level with the "Disk Management" tool. * Copied the files to my local disk then copied those files to a new 2GB SD card I had laying around. * Still no luck. I really need the official SD card files to validate mine are not corrupted. (Anyone else have files I can try that are working for them?) I may try to remove the LED as it looks like its super easy to reteach later if its not the problem. EDIT: disconnecting the LED did help the device to boot to the selection screen more often. Which makes me feel like there is a power issue on the board. Looking at older versions of the board online I notice they had the SD card reader built in. Wonder if this revisions card reader is taking to much power as the console seems to mess up when it starts to read data files is my guess.

One red-flag I noticed on the VecMulti was the LEDs. On modern systems putting LEDs that draw a little current away from circuits the boards were not designed for (such as ram modules) can cause issues. Its possible some of these older revisions of the boards don't supply the same amount of current as newer revisions and thus fall short when LED's are attached. Kinda wonder If I removed the LEDs the problem might go away (wish there was a way to turn them off to test).

Here is how my device is messing up. Messed up different this time. Video with VecMulti cart (doesn't work): https://photos.app.goo.gl/FV5mrhCqDwQGi73S9 Video with Solar Quest cart (works every time): https://photos.app.goo.gl/Z1BcV7adG4Hyyk7V7 Picture of back of device: https://photos.app.goo.gl/BAUAjDxyJvkNncfbA

Just tested my brand new "vecmulti" and I have the exact same issue as you. Title screen loaded fine fist time but games didn't load correctly and after I hit the reset button the title screen had words all offset wrong like a pointer was shifted. Did you get any more info about this yet? Let me know if I can send any info from my Vectrex device that would be useful to figure this out. Glad to help if I can. The internal game and my external official cart work just fine. I'll take a video later today and post it after work for comparison. Also is there an alternative to the "vecmulti" that works if this ends up being a dead end? I wanted this for homebrew testing more than anything else.

@gtoal Why you stuck up snot! JK, looks nice but I seem to like the cases that come with these. Makes them stand out as something special. @chaozz I got my multicart yesterday. When I get a chance to test it I'll make sure I don't have any issues as well.

A phone camera would be good enough.

Got it. For others: https://1drv.ms/u/s!Alt5wRhQYKD7gegWF0_hKAQ_Mj5JHw