2600 Rom Comparisions and Dumps

[Nukey Shay]

What has been "fixed" between dumps (if anything) is the focus of the thread. As far as what cartridges still need verified dumps is concerned, turn to post #1.

 

Of course, there can be unknowns yet to be found. If you suspect that one of your cartridges' data or program differs in some way from the existing library of romsets, post your suspicions. Otherwise, it's a wasted effort.

[Pioneer4x4]

As for obtaining dumps, can an adapter to a eprom burned be made? If so, I might be able to read all of mine.

 

It should be possible to make an adapter for your burner, but it would be hard (maybe impossible) to dump anything over 4K. What do you have? Perhaps I can help you

I figured on the 4K, no bankswitching thing. I have a Xeltek Superpro which is an older very versitle programmer, that unfortunatly uses a propriatary ISA card, and dos software, so I need to keep an old PC just for it!

A supported device list is at.

http://www.xeltek.com/software/splegacy/sp2Device.html

[Rom Hunter]

Rom Hunter, What does "Fixed" mean? Is it documented anywhere what was "Fixed"?

You can read in this thread about what exactly has been fixed.

 

In my collection, it just marks an officially released, de-bugged version of the same game.

 

[Pioneer4x4]

Rom Hunter, What does "Fixed" mean? Is it documented anywhere what was "Fixed"?

You can read in this thread about what exactly has been fixed.

 

In my collection, it just marks an officially released, de-bugged version of the same game.

 

OK, thanks, I'll do more thorough searching.

[Omegamatrix]

Just wanted to add a note that the old dump of Road Runner was bad. This was discovered through it not playing on the Harmony cart! You can read more about it here, and find a good dump thanks to Mitch. Rom Hunter has now added this to his collection too.

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/158247-anyone-having-a-problem-with-road-runner

 

 

Also of note is that Midnight Magic may or may not work on a real hardware due to bad programming. This is discussed in the same thread as Road Runner. The dump for Midnight Magic seems to be good.

[Rom Hunter]

Omega,

 

There's no need to replace the Midnight Magic ROM in the collection with the one Mitch posted, right?

 

[Omegamatrix]

Omega,

 

There's no need to replace the Midnight Magic ROM in the collection with the one Mitch posted, right?

 

Nope, it matches the one in your collection already, 100%.

[alex_79]

I dumped the rom chip of a non working clone console with 128 games built in. The only game that doesn't match any dump in Rom's collection is an hack of "Cross Force". The one in the console only differs in two bytes from the NTSC version.

 

Here are some pictures of the console.

 

And the dumps:

Megatronix-TV_Game_2600_Console.zip

 

The zip file includes the single 512kb rom image and the splitted files that can be played in stella. Files are numbered from 0 to 127, Cross Force is the #92.

[Omegamatrix]

Well done, Alex!!

 

 

I hope some more of these types of consoles can get dumped in the future. You never know what you'll find on them. Cross Force (game 92) has the changed values for the timers, which increases the scanlines making it PAL. I looked at the rest of the games, and they have all indeed been dumped before. I split Bowling (game 38) into 2k, both halves matched each other, and that dump is known.

 

 

I also know there are other multigame consoles out there that have a menu screen that is similar to the one I dumped off the 208 in 1 cart. Spirantho had one, so did Sku_u. It's likely all these consoles came from a common pirate company.

[Wickeycolumbus]

I was looking through the ROMs Alex posted (thanks for the dumps by the way ), and was struck by game 000. Is the origin of Motorcross known? I ask because this game *really* seems like an Activision game for some reason. Could it be David Crane's unreleased motorcycle game?

 

 

Motorcycle Game (real name unknown)

 

David Crane mentioned working on an unreleased game for Activision that involved riding a Motorcycle. According to David it was finished but wasn't good enough to meet his standards and therefore was never published.

[Rom Hunter]

Inside the Suntek version of Motocross a nice looking Home Vision logo has been found.

 

Home Vision announced (but never released) a game called Around the World, which could very well be the same game.

 

If Home Vision got their hands on Crane's Motorcycle game is hard to tell (they did steal and even expanded Activision's Tennis, though).

 

IMO only Crane can answer this.

 

I must admit that the first time I played this game, it reminded me very much of Enduro.

 

Perhaps the contents of Motocross can be compared to Enduro to see if any routines were copied?

 

Edited March 2, 2010 by Rom Hunter

[orangest]

I was looking through the ROMs Alex posted (thanks for the dumps by the way ), and was struck by game 000. Is the origin of Motorcross known? I ask because this game *really* seems like an Activision game for some reason. Could it be David Crane's unreleased motorcycle game?

 

At first glance, it looks like the Quelle version of Motocross that Rom Hunter has in his collection.

[Wickeycolumbus]

I was looking through the ROMs Alex posted (thanks for the dumps by the way ), and was struck by game 000. Is the origin of Motorcross known? I ask because this game *really* seems like an Activision game for some reason. Could it be David Crane's unreleased motorcycle game?

 

At first glance, it looks like the Quelle version of Motocross that Rom Hunter has in his collection.

 

Yes, that ROM is identical to the Quelle version, but I'm suggesting that one of those pirate companies got a hold of David Crane's unreleased motorcycle game It's not unheard of for unreleased games to be released by pirate companies, look at this recently discovered Cat Trax for example:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/158450-cat-trax-on-this-multi-game-cart/

[orangest]

Yes, that ROM is identical to the Quelle version, but I'm suggesting that one of those pirate companies got a hold of David Crane's unreleased motorcycle game

 

Gotcha.

[Omegamatrix]

Inside the Suntek version of Motocross a nice looking Home Vision logo has been found.

 

Home Vision announced (but never released) a game called Around the World, which could very well be the same game.

 

If Home Vision got their hands on Crane's Motorcycle game is hard to tell (they did steal and even expanded Activision's Tennis, though).

 

IMO only Crane can answer this.

 

I must admit that the first time I played this game, it reminded me very much of Enduro.

 

Perhaps the contents of Motocross can be compared to Enduro to see if any routines were copied?

 

Yes, the one Thomas found. I show it here thanks to Bithacker:

 

 

I love hidden logos in a rom. I was estactic when I found the Funvision logo inside of the Challenge (HES) rom.

 

I'm not too sure about Motocross being a hack of Enduro though. It might smell like it, it might taste like it, and it might feel like it, but I don't think it's the real thing. I'm already somewhat familiar with Enduro from taking a gander at it. I'd have to look at Motocross and compare the two, but I know I don't have time right now.

 

 

I would be interested to see what David Crane would say if he saw the Motocross game in action. I think it's more likely he never had anything to do with it, but I like to keep an open mind.

[Rom Hunter]

I'm not too sure about Motocross being a hack of Enduro though. It might smell like it, it might taste like it, and it might feel like it, but I don't think it's the real thing. I'm already somewhat familiar with Enduro from taking a gander at it. I'd have to look at Motocross and compare the two, but I know I don't have time right now.

 

 

I would be interested to see what David Crane would say if he saw the Motocross game in action. I think it's more likely he never had anything to do with it, but I like to keep an open mind.

I'm not saying it's a hack, but if Crane programmed this one he might have taken some routines from Miller.

 

[alex_79]

I hope some more of these types of consoles can get dumped in the future. You never know what you'll find on them. Cross Force (game 92) has the changed values for the timers, which increases the scanlines making it PAL. I looked at the rest of the games, and they have all indeed been dumped before. I split Bowling (game 38) into 2k, both halves matched each other, and that dump is known.

 

 

I also know there are other multigame consoles out there that have a menu screen that is similar to the one I dumped off the 208 in 1 cart. Spirantho had one, so did Sku_u. It's likely all these consoles came from a common pirate company.

I also have a working one with a different set of games. Unfortunately dumping the games of those consoles is not as simple as with cartridges, as usually you have to desolder the rom chip from the console and read it in an eprom-programmer.

[alex_79]

I was looking at the supercharger roms in the collection and I have some suggestion about them.

Since emulators and harmony cart require that the multi-load supercharger games are concatenated in a single file I think that the split roms should be removed from the collection. Moreover in the last version there are still some duplicates (they only differs in checksums and filler data, which are created by the programs used to convert the audio tapes into binary images, but are not part of the code).

I used 2 little command-line utilities I wrote some time ago to check and fix supercharger images. The zip file includes windows executables (you must run them from the command prompt) and C source code (I'm not a programmer, so this is not the best piece of code, but it works!). Note that I'm using Linux and I only tested the windows version under wine.

sc_utilities.zip

 

usage:

 

sc_info <file_1> [<file_2>...<file_n>]

 

this one displays information about every supercharger load (start address, bank scheme, etc.) and lists all matching ones (ignoring checksums and filler data). If you want to save the results on a text file add "> filename.txt" at the end.

 

e.g. the command

 

sc_info *.bin > info.txt

 

will check all the rom in the current directory and save the results in the file "info.txt" (if a non-supercharger rom is found the program will display an error message and exit)

 

 

sc_rom <input_file> [<output_file>]

 

This program will create a new file (if you don't specify the filename it will be called "out.bin") with correct checksums and all filler bytes set to 0. The program will accept also regular (4k or less) roms. The resulting file will run in emulator/harmony/cuttle_cart/cuttle_cart2 in supercharger mode (The point was to test 4k roms for supercharger compability).

 

 

Here is the supercharger rom set without duplicates and with all checksums and filler data fixed (Some will need to be renamed, since there are less alternate versions now). I also suggest to rename the three Party Mix roms: the "(# of 3)" part should be moved before the list of games included in each part, so they are shown in the correct order in emulators and harmony menu.

supercharger_fixed.zip

Edited March 4, 2010 by alex_79

[Rom Hunter]

Thanks for pointing this out.

 

I will examine this.

 

Exactly which ROMs were taken out now?

 

Also, do they still contain the genuine data only?

 

That's what's most important to me.

 

[alex_79]

removed:

-Dragonstomper (Excalibur) (1 of 3) (1982) (Starpath Corporation, Stephen Harland Landrum) (6) (AR-4400) (PAL).bin

-Dragonstomper (Excalibur) (1 of 3) (1982) (Starpath Corporation, Stephen Harland Landrum) (6) (AR-4400).bin

-Dragonstomper (Excalibur) (2 of 3) (1982) (Starpath Corporation, Stephen Harland Landrum) (6) (AR-4400) (PAL).bin

-Dragonstomper (Excalibur) (2 of 3) (1982) (Starpath Corporation, Stephen Harland Landrum) (6) (AR-4400).bin

-Dragonstomper (Excalibur) (3 of 3) (1982) (Starpath Corporation, Stephen Harland Landrum) (6) (AR-4400) (PAL).bin

-Dragonstomper (Excalibur) (3 of 3) (1982) (Starpath Corporation, Stephen Harland Landrum) (6) (AR-4400).bin

-Escape from the Mindmaster (Labyrinth) (1 of 4) (1982) (Starpath Corporation, Dennis Caswell) (5) (AR-4200) (PAL).bin

-Escape from the Mindmaster (Labyrinth) (1 of 4) (1982) (Starpath Corporation, Dennis Caswell) (5) (AR-4200).bin

-Escape from the Mindmaster (Labyrinth) (2 of 4) (1982) (Starpath Corporation, Dennis Caswell) (5) (AR-4200) (PAL).bin

-Escape from the Mindmaster (Labyrinth) (2 of 4) (1982) (Starpath Corporation, Dennis Caswell) (5) (AR-4200).bin

-Escape from the Mindmaster (Labyrinth) (3 of 4) (1982) (Starpath Corporation, Dennis Caswell) (5) (AR-4200) (PAL).bin

-Escape from the Mindmaster (Labyrinth) (3 of 4) (1982) (Starpath Corporation, Dennis Caswell) (5) (AR-4200).bin

-Escape from the Mindmaster (Labyrinth) (4 of 4) (1982) (Starpath Corporation, Dennis Caswell) (5) (AR-4200) (PAL).bin

-Escape from the Mindmaster (Labyrinth) (4 of 4) (1982) (Starpath Corporation, Dennis Caswell) (5) (AR-4200).bin

-Labyrinth (Escape from the Mindmaster Beta) (1982) (5) (AR-4200) (Arcadia Corporation, Dennis Caswell) [a2].bin

-Labyrinth (Escape from the Mindmaster Beta) (1982) (5) (AR-4200) (Arcadia Corporation, Dennis Caswell) [a3].bin

-Party Mix - Bop a Buggy, Tug of War, Wizard's Keep, Down on the Line, Handcar (Paddle) (1983) (Starpath Corporation, Dennis Caswell) (10) (AR-4302) (PAL).bin

-Party Mix - Bop a Buggy, Tug of War, Wizard's Keep, Down on the Line, Handcar (Paddle) (1983) (Starpath Corporation, Dennis Caswell) (10) (AR-4302) ~.bin

-Survival Island (Jungle Raid) (1 of 3) (1983) (Starpath Corporation, Steve Mundry, Scott Nelson) (12) (AR-4401) (PAL).bin

-Survival Island (Jungle Raid) (1 of 3) (1983) (Starpath Corporation, Steve Mundry, Scott Nelson) (12) (AR-4401).bin

-Survival Island (Jungle Raid) (2 of 3) (1983) (Starpath Corporation, Steve Mundry, Scott Nelson) (12) (AR-4401) (PAL).bin

-Survival Island (Jungle Raid) (2 of 3) (1983) (Starpath Corporation, Steve Mundry, Scott Nelson) (12) (AR-4401).bin

-Survival Island (Jungle Raid) (3 of 3) (1983) (Starpath Corporation, Steve Mundry, Scott Nelson) (12) (AR-4401) (PAL).bin

-Survival Island (Jungle Raid) (3 of 3) (1983) (Starpath Corporation, Steve Mundry, Scott Nelson) (12) (AR-4401).bin

-Sweat! - The Decathlon Game (2 of 4) (Paddle) (1983) (Starpath Corporation, Scott Nelson) (13) (Prototype).bin

-Sweat! - The Decathlon Game (Paddle) (1983) (Starpath Corporation, Scott Nelson) (13) (Prototype).bin

 

changed (fixed checksums and filler data set to 0):

-Excalibur (Dragonstomper Beta) (1982) (Arcadia Corporation, Stephen Harland Landrum) (6) (AR-4400) (Prototype) [a].bin

-Excalibur (Dragonstomper Beta) (1982) (Arcadia Corporation, Stephen Harland Landrum) (6) (AR-4400) (Prototype).bin

-Excalibur Version 36 (Dragonstomper Beta) (1982) (Arcadia Corporation, Stephen Harland Landrum) (6) (AR-4400) (Prototype).bin

-Excalibur Version 39 (Dragonstomper Beta) (1982) (Arcadia Corporation, Stephen Harland Landrum) (6) (AR-4400) (Prototype).bin

-Fireball (Frantic) (Paddle) (1982) (Arcadia Corporation, Scott Nelson) (3) (AR-4300) (Prototype).bin

-Killer Satellites (1983) (Starpath Corporation, Kevin Norman) (7) (AR-4103) (Prototype).bin

-Labyrinth (Escape from the Mindmaster Beta) (1982) (5) (AR-4200) (Arcadia Corporation, Dennis Caswell) [a1].bin

-Labyrinth (Escape from the Mindmaster Beta) (1982) (5) (AR-4200) (Arcadia Corporation, Dennis Caswell).bin

-Meteoroids (Suicide Mission Beta) (1982) (Arcadia Corporation, Steve Hales, Stephen Harland Landrum) (4) (AR-4102) (Prototype).bin

-Phaser Patrol (1982) (Arcadia Corporation, Dennis Caswell) (1) (AR-4000, AR-4100) (Prototype) [a].bin

-Phaser Patrol (1982) (Arcadia Corporation, Dennis Caswell) (1) (AR-4000, AR-4100) (Prototype).bin

-Suicide Mission (Meteoroids) (1982) (Arcadia Corporation, Steve Hales, Stephen Harland Landrum) (4) (AR-4102) (Prototype).bin

-Sweat! - The Decathlon Game (1 of 4) (Paddle) (1983) (Starpath Corporation, Scott Nelson) (13) (Prototype) ~.bin

 

Changes are only made in unused bytes and not in the actual game code.

[A.J. Franzman]

One question:

Why does Tempest call the Suicide Mission prototype "Meteoroid", while everyone else calls it "Meteoroids"? I know that what you shoot at in the game is more than one object, but if Starpath named the game in the singular, who are we to make it plural? Is there a catalog, brochure or internal Starpath document that lists it? What about the actual prototype tapes? Is the name given in different forms in different places?

Edited March 5, 2010 by A.J. Franzman

[+Mitch]

I was looking at the supercharger roms in the collection and I have some suggestion about them.

Since emulators and harmony cart require that the multi-load supercharger games are concatenated in a single file I think that the split roms should be removed from the collection.

 

So because emulators and the Harmony Cart don't correctly emulate the multi-load games they should not be included and the hacked versions should be? Sounds to me like it should be the other way around.

 

Mitch

[Rom Hunter]

If these are truly considered as hacks, then I don't think it's a good idea to change anything in the collection.

 

But if these are cleaner dumps, then I think it is.

 

Why does Tempest call the Suicide Mission prototype "Meteoroid", while everyone else calls it "Meteoroids"? I know that what you shoot at in the game is more than one object, but if Starpath named the game in the singular, who are we to make it plural? Is there a catalog, brochure or internal Starpath document that lists it? What about the actual prototype tapes? Is the name given in different forms in different places?

Good you bring this up.

 

I searched for a long time for the correct title and found several different ones.

 

Finally I found the title "Meteoroids" on the Stella Gets a New Brain CD.

 

If these boys don't know their stuff, then I don't know it either.

 

Hence: Meteoroids

 

Tempest, feel free to correct me, but if you do: please show me some proof of the genuine title.

 

[alex_79]

So because emulators and the Harmony Cart don't correctly emulate the multi-load games they should not be included and the hacked versions should be? Sounds to me like it should be the other way around.

I don't think there is a "correct" way to emulate those games. Z26 and Stella are the most polular emulators for the vcs and they use a single file to represent a supercharger tape, which seems a reasonable choice to me. Moreover, anyone can obtain the single loads by splitting the multi-load files into 8448 bytes chuncks. I checked all the files and they match 100%, so they're actually duplicates.

 

"Party Mix" on the other hand is not a multi-load game, so the single file version is useless in emulators, since you can only access the first part.

[+stephena]

So because emulators and the Harmony Cart don't correctly emulate the multi-load games they should not be included and the hacked versions should be? Sounds to me like it should be the other way around.

I don't think there is a "correct" way to emulate those games. Z26 and Stella are the most polular emulators for the vcs and they use a single file to represent a supercharger tape, which seems a reasonable choice to me. Moreover, anyone can obtain the single loads by splitting the multi-load files into 8448 bytes chuncks. I checked all the files and they match 100%, so they're actually duplicates.

 

"Party Mix" on the other hand is not a multi-load game, so the single file version is useless in emulators, since you can only access the first part.

I'd also like to say that adding this ability in Stella (be able to load from physically separate files) would probably be easy to add. However, since the single-file ROMs have been used all along, I don't see the point to add this functionality. Particularly because it then causes other issues (like what each separate file should be named, upper or lower case, what to do when the file doesn't exist at all, etc). I think the decision was made my emulation authors to bypass all the complicated logic and just concat the single-load ROMs together. Now, as to which is more 'authentic', I'll leave to the pedants to decide

 

I'd also like to add that Supercharger support in general in Stella could be more refined. The single vs. multi file thing is one of the issues, but there are also debugger problems as well. I really need to find some time to fix those things, but it definitely won't be for the next version of Stella.