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Corina - new cartridge architecture


nosty

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i am interested in getting one card... how much do I have to pay the guys to get a dev cart? Beyond Evil would be a good test... not only because of the gfx but for the item generator and for the saving the dropped items and the game world stats...

 

If we finish work on cartridge witg successful I can promise that I'll give You one dev cart for free!

This cartridge idea is exactly for programmers like You :)

 

I am wondering how the bank switching scheme will work through $D500. I know the ROM banks will be like 0-14 on a 128k cart, and 15 being the ROM for $A000-$BFFF. Does the RAM sections like start at a certain number, like 32 or something?

 

I'll publish the specification soon, this week, I promise!

But we still works on this cartridge.

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  • 7 months later...

bump...

 

Has anyone been in contact with Nosty, the person making these cartridges? It seems like he fell of the face of the Earth.

 

Left no links to any websites or contact information on this thread.

 

I sent him a personal message and go

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I last spoke with Nosty about Corina a month or so ago regarding the importance of completing the emulation support in Atari++ to enable everyone to get to grips with it. As much as I understand about it's release, the carts are still undergoing rigerous testing and once BJ is available to buy on the first ever carts, Corina will then be available to buy. Not sure what stage the emulation patch is at since I last emailed Nosty, the author needed to dedicate time to complete it and had other priorities. The emulation patch Vega used on the special release of Atarii++ last year was working.

Edited by Tezz
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I am mainly looking for another source for new EPROMS (128K or 512K). Maybe EEPROMS for hi-score recording. Right now many take existing XEGS cartridges and re-flash the memory with a new game, I imagine supplies are limited.

 

I am not how I can use the SRAM on the cartridge because its not usable for screen memory, player/missile graphics, fonts, display lists because all that has to be in stable main 64k. If bank switching happens in the middle of the screen refresh cycle, it will disturb the screen graphics. I know some say do it during the VBLANK before the 1st visible line or with DLIs, but this is when I do most of my player/missile multiplexing. Trying to do a bank switching screen memory from routines already on the cartridge will be complicated. Maybe use it for data-tables or temporary information saves.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Finally some news about these things. Interesting ideal of putting ROM + some Ram on one. Although I probably won't use ram on the cart, I design everything to use the main memory for video memory since I do massive VBIs, DLIs, Player/Missile graphics, and there might be issues with bank switching.

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Would it be possible for a corina like cartridge to be used in a atari alike version of action replay/multiface type hacker cart

 

i.e have all the normal tape/disk and cart dumping software in the cart, but dumping directly into cart memory, leaving the atari to dump the software to a menu disk or something as well as the ability to convert atr and pc xex/exe files bk to atari disks

 

Have something like built in o/s customisation routines like increased or selectable cassette baud rate, smooth scrolling in Gr.0 (usefull for listing a basic or m65/assembler program) customisable colour start up/ text colour and brightness in Gr .0 as well as customisable standard font

 

In built monitor/assembler (something like assembler editor with ultimon xe) which allows full access/editing to all 64k (or more) memory so you can see where in memory any bank switched data was loaded (final cartridge series on c64 does this i believe) as well as simulated use of run/init so you can find the correct run address for the game/software you are trying to dump/convert (where the normal locations sometimes get overwirtten...i,e 2/3,a/b/c/d and the 2e0-2e3 locations)

 

Also, because of the additional mem, you could impliment something similar to snapshot, where you split the cartridge mem into 2 (or more) computers, allowing you to run multiple games or software programs

 

Or use the additional memory like a standard disk cache that works with all the popular disk programs...imagine something like the zork series or any of infocoms adventure but without so much disk access

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I think the Corina carts are for big ROM,RAM, RTIME8, only without many gadgets on them. I would like to see some flexibility on the bank swiching. Able to switch $8000 to $9FFF, $A000 to $BFFF, whole 16k at once. 4K banks, etc. If there is something useful that can go onto a mega cart, it probably be a math co-processor, mult, div, roots, exponents, etc, things that are CPU intensive.

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haha.... evil Kaz... 1084 connected... ;) and nobody told him that he should get the blinking bombs in a row... ;)

 

Hi

I recorded this movie :)

I think 1084 is the best monitor for Atari 800XE, Sega, Jaguar, ST, Amiga, Saturn, CD32,... for everything I play. Do You know any good and uniwersal colour Atari monitor like this?

 

About blinking bombs - try to play using only left hand and record movie using right hand at the same time ;P

Edited by nosty
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