Issues with RetroN 77 or my TV?

[Issues with RetroN 77 or my TV?]

Hi, all.

 

I have contacted both Hyperkin and Vizio about this issue, but figured I'd ask to learn whether others have seen an issue like this.

I have a RetroN 77 displaying to my Vizio D43fx-F4 (5 months old, bought at Wal-Mart), running the community build (latest or at max 1-2 revs back).  Yesterday I was playing H.E.R.O. on it with my son, and the video became garbled -- specifically there were horizontal black lines all over the place.  I power-cycled the R77 and after the power cycle, it wouldn't display on the TV. Tried power cycling it a couple more times, and sure enough, black screen every time.

 

I moved the R77 to another HDMI input on the TV, and it still shows black screen.  I tested another HDMI source on both inputs, and that other source (a 3rd gen Apple TV, if anyone cares) works fine on both inputs.

 

I tried a new HDMI cable with the R77.  No change.

 

I took my R77 to the other TV in the house (a 13-year-old Sharp LC-52D64U), and it displays just fine to that TV, so it would seem that there is nothing wrong with the R77.

 

I do have a receiver I could connect between the R77 and the TV, but I don't want to run that way, so I didn't try it out -- and my guess is that it wouldn't change things anyway.

 

Anybody ever seen this?  Any ideas what I can do?  I'm assuming that this is an issue with the TV and I need to wait for Vizio support to arrive (later this week) to fix it.

Thanks.

[My Atari 800 Keyboard Repair]

Anybody got any tips on safely removing the foam?

[Stella 6 on the R77: the eagle is landing]

Just now, bmadgames said:

Is it confirmed that the Stella 6 firmware is not compatible with the paddle functionality of the Ranger?

Thanks for asking, I have this same question as well.

[Sophia 2 - improved GTIA replacement]

37 minutes ago, Mathy said:

I just had a quick glance at the PDF (see first message in this thread) and I guess that is a "YES".

Thanks. I took a quick look at the PDF as well, but clearly I didn't look closely enough (I was on my phone).  Now that I'm looking on a computer, I see references to the resolution flags, and the related resolutions.  That right there is the big selling point to me.  Very nice.

[Sophia 2 - improved GTIA replacement]

By “selectable DVI modes,” I assume you mean that the resolution is now user-selectable and user-setable, yes? That would be a great new feature. 

[Ranger with RetroN 77]

Hi, all. 
 

Has anyone tried the Hyperkin Ranger with the Stella community build on the RetroN 77? I’d love paddle functionality, and while the latest community build is much better with the paddles, mine are still pretty jittery.

 

Thanks. 
 

edited to add: I’ve done google searches and have searched the forums. Didn’t find anything in any searches. 

[Stella 6 on the R77: the eagle is landing]

Just now, wilfwilfus said:

Not sure if this can be done or not, can you set the UI launcher screen to be in 16:9 wide-screen, but have the games to be displayed in their 4:3 original ratio when being played?

Any help would be appreciated, thank you.

That's how it works on my system: menu is in 16:9, but games are 4:3.  On my TV (Vizio D43fx-F4) menu is letterboxed by the same amount on all 4 sides, but games are full-screen-height 4:3 with no black bars on top & bottom.

[Stella 6 on the R77: the eagle is landing]

1 minute ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Try to delete the sqlite files.

Thanks, yeah, I can rsync my files onto a smaller drive, but it appears that there's some sort of special formatting or special file allocation that isn't getting copied when I make my own FAT16 image with the same files.  I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.  This isn't a huge deal, but if I can reallocate the 32GB card that's in my RetroN77, I have a tiny 64MB card that would have space left over, and I'd love to be able to use that for the R77.

[Stella 6 on the R77: the eagle is landing]

Is there any chance a 64MB image exists, or is there maybe a way to reduce the size of the existing image from ~80MB to 64MB?  I have a 64MB micro SD chip I'd like to use.

[5200 Pole Position - pulls left]

Thanks. Believe it or not, I did some searches on here, I just didn't find anything.  Clearly I used the wrong search terms.

[5200 Pole Position - pulls left]

Hey, guys.

 

Tonight I pulled out the 5200 for some game time, and while my controllers generally work well (some buttons need repair, but the joysticks are fine), in Pole Position the car only drives to the left.  No matter where I move the stick, I can't get the car to drive straight or turn right -- it is pegged at "hard left."  This is true for both the bin file in my AtariMax and for my actual cartridge.

 

My joysticks test fine with pete's diagnostic cart, and my CX53 trackball steers the car just fine.

 

Any idea what's going on here?

Thanks.

[Help dumping OS ROM]

I received my EPROM chips last Friday, and was able to burn an XL OS to the EPROM, and ... et voila ... my 600XL boots right up to the READY prompt.

 

Fun stuff.

[ESD mat]

Thanks for the comments, all.

 

I want a soldering mat anyway, so I figure I'll get one of those and an ESD wrist strap.

[ESD mat]

There's no danger of that! lol

[ESD mat]

Awesome, thanks. I'll get a cheapy mat and a grounding wrist strap, and be off to the races. Note my moniker -- I'm all about software... new at hardware.

[ESD mat]

Hi, all.

 

I think that I should probably start using an ESD mat for my repairs.  I don't know anything about this, but it looks like I should ground myself to the mat, and should ground the mat to the ground terminal in an electrical box.  Is this correct?  Also, will any ESD mat do, or do I really need to spend $50+ on one?  I am interested in a soldering and ESD mat, and I find them at all price points on Amazon.  My guess is that I don't want the $15 ones (they appear to be soldering mats and not ESD mats), but I probably don't need to spend $150 on one either.

 

Thanks for any tips/guidance.

 

I searched the forums before posting, and didn't really find anything applicable.  I wasn't sure which forum this belonged in; since I mostly work on 8-bit computers, I chose to put it here.

[Help dumping OS ROM]

Just now, Rybags said:

If the OS is dead then the Atari you insert it into wouldn't start up.  Likely you'd get a black or dark reddish brown screen every time.

(600XL and 800XL are the only unmodded machine types that use this chip)

Yup, that's exactly what happens.  I detail the state of the 600XL and 800XL bootups using Sys-Check in this comment.  I just figured I'd try dumping the OS ROM, since that's all I can do with my new EPROM burner until I get the EPROM chips.

[Help dumping OS ROM]

14 hours ago, Nezgar said:

Do you get 16KB of $FF? or random data? or a 0byte file

Yes, I do get 16KB of $FF.  Specifically, hexdump shows:

% hexdump OSROM.rom
0000000 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
*
0004000
% ls -lh OSROM.rom 
-rw-rw-r--  1 unixdude  staff    16K Mar 26 21:12 OSROM.rom
% 

I was seeing 32768 bytes yesterday, but I've rebuilt the file.

 

Anyway, I think I'll chalk this up to "the chip is completely toast," as I suspected it was.  My EPROMs (TI TMS-27C128-1) are coming today, so I will burn an XL ROM image to one of them, then try booting my 600XL with that.  That will hopefully fix my 600XL.

[Help dumping OS ROM]

26 minutes ago, Wrathchild said:

Just wondering whether its easier to do this whilst the ROM is in the A8?

e.g. use the small basic program from this thread.

Cool. I didn’t know about that. But my suspicion here is that the chip is dead. I wanted to see if I could get anything out if it. I’ll have EPROM chips today and will burn a new one for my 600XL. 

[Help dumping OS ROM]

Yeah. Orientation is correct. Not sure about placement.  This is my first time using an EPROM burner and I’m just assuming that it should be able to read a ROM chip, but maybe it can’t. 
 

In any case, I get a file of 32768 identical characters, and they are the same character no matter where I place the chip. I don’t have a hex editor, but in vi they show up as an umlauted “y” letter. 
 

I think this chip is dead, and maybe it really is, and maybe it just won’t do anything anymore. See my recent comment in my other thread about help with my 600XL and 800XL for why I think the chip is dead. Maybe it’s just totally dead. 

[Help dumping OS ROM]

Thanks, I've tried several of the 27128 types, and each one results in an invalid file. Hmm...

[Help dumping OS ROM]

Hi, all.

 

I know there are OS ROMs that I can download, but today what I'm trying to do is test the ROM chip that I actually have.  I received my TL866II+ EPROM burner today, but unfortunately my EPROM chips were misrouted and won't get here until at least tomorrow.  Anyway, I thought I'd try dumping the OS ROM chip, to see what I can see.  I'm on a Mac, and I have installed the minipro program and libusb.

 

Running "minipro -t" detects the TL866 and shows me the status of the pins, but I can't get it to read the chip.  I can't get it to tell me anything about the chip.

% minipro -t
Found TL866II+ 04.2.110 (0x26e)
[output snipped]
Hardware test completed successfully!
%

 

I tried running the following, but it does not result in a valid file:

minipro -y -p "[email protected]" -r OSROM.rom

I'm sure I'm just not telling it the correct device type, but I also can't get it to tell me what device it sees.

 

Any suggestions on how I can do this?

 

Thanks.

[Help w/ 800XL and 600XL]

Here's an update on the 600XL and 800XL.  Perhaps someone here can make sense of these results.

 

The format here is: switch settings, followed by the result of booting the system.  I'm using binary representation for the 5 switches, with the different DIP blocks separated by a dash. I hope you see what I mean here.

 

600XL:

11-110: (Sys-Check as a diagnostic device) Sys-Check starts counting the memory. It fails of course because my system has only 16K RAM. Unfortunately, since the RAM test fails, Sys-Check does not proceed to the OS ROM check.

01-010: (Sys-Check as external OS switcher, Sys-Check RAM disabled, 600XL RAM enabled) System boots to a "READY" prompt

01-011: (Sys-Check as external OS switcher, Sys-Check RAM enabled, 600XL RAM enabled) System boots to a "READY" prompt

01-001: (Sys-Check used only as external RAM) System boots to a black screen

01-000: (Sys-Check disabled) System boots to a black screen

Sys-Check unplugged: System boots to a black screen

 

Since 01-010 boots to a "READY" prompt, and since 01-001 fails to boot, I'm guessing that this points to a bad OS ROM chip.  I bet if I replace that OS ROM chip, the 600XL will boot again.
 

800XL: Testing all of the same configurations as the 600XL: Always boots to black screen.  I'm guessing that this means the 800XL's RAM all needs to be replaced.  I will cut out the old RAM and solder sockets in place, then try new RAM.

 

If it matters, my old RAM is Micron MT4264-15, and the new RAM is KM4164B-10.

 

Thanks.

[Missing sprites]

12 hours ago, jamm said:

Someone else just asked the same question about the dotted pattern in the Pac-Man maze:

 

THANK YOU for this link!  In that thread, user Faicuai mentioned that the issue could be related to using composite output instead of s-video output.  I changed to S-video (fortunately my TV has an S-video input), and BOOM, my display issues disappeared, at least for Pac-Man.  I'll try other games tomorrow, but I think this project might now be complete!  I'll test more tomorrow night, then reassemble.

 

And, I need to figure out how to best clean my 800 case... Not sure retrobriting is the right thing for an 800 case which intentionally has multiple colors on it.

[Missing sprites]

I replaced the ANTIC on my SCCC/Incognito 800 with the one from my "donor 800," and the dotted blue lines still appear in Pac-Man.  I don't remember them before, but maybe I wasn't paying enough attention.