Are you going to buy a Harmony cart for the Atari 2600?

[+batari]

Another thing I should point out is that you may not be able to tell from the menu whether the binary is NTSC or PAL as that is usually at the end of the filename. If you select a game in the wrong TV format, the screen may roll. I recommend deleting the files that you can't use (I personally used Windows "find files or folders" on the SD card, searched for files containing "PAL" and deleted them.)

Same here, just vice versa, except where no adequate PAL version exists.

 

Regarding Atarimania's ROM collection, I am sure the order of the information contained in the filename can be changed easily.

Yes, a simple utility to rename the files could be created. Simply removing the information in parentheses (except PAL/NTSC) would help a lot. That is an idea for the programming software when complete (things like file sorting are already planned.)

[thebiggw]

Payment sent!!!

[+batari]

Hey Batari,

 

I'm not sure I remember reading this or not, does it have a place where you can connect a USB cable to the cartridge to talk with the SD or did I just come up with that out of thin air (I vaguely remember reading something along those lines . . . .)

 

Thanks

Disjaukifa

The Harmony is not programmed to write to the SD card. Maybe Chris can say for sure, but while (I think) it may be theoretically possible to write a program for the microcontroller with driver support on the PC side that could write files to the SD, it would be difficult to do, and it would be slow. The cart uses a USB-to-serial chip and its maximum speed (limited by the microcontroller) is a fraction of even USB 1.0, much less that of USB 2.1. You are better off writing the SD with a card reader.

[disjaukifa]

Hey Batari,

 

I'm not sure I remember reading this or not, does it have a place where you can connect a USB cable to the cartridge to talk with the SD or did I just come up with that out of thin air (I vaguely remember reading something along those lines . . . .)

 

Thanks

Disjaukifa

The Harmony is not programmed to write to the SD card. Maybe Chris can say for sure, but while (I think) it may be theoretically possible to write a program for the microcontroller with driver support on the PC side that could write files to the SD, it would be difficult to do, and it would be slow. The cart uses a USB-to-serial chip and its maximum speed (limited by the microcontroller) is a fraction of even USB 1.0, much less that of USB 2.1. You are better off writing the SD with a card reader.

 

Thats fine, its easy enough to pull it out and stick the SD card in a reader, I just thought I remember reading it had a usb cable, maybe it was something else.

 

Do you know if the Harmony will work MicroSD card with an SD adapter?

 

For some reason I don't have SD cards, just MicroSD with the adapter for SD.

 

Thanks

Disjaukifa

[Thomas Jentzsch]

I just thought I remember reading it had a usb cable, maybe it was something else.

You can reprogram the cart via USB for a bug fixed or improved BIOS (menu, driver etc.).

[+batari]

I just thought I remember reading it had a usb cable, maybe it was something else.

You can reprogram the cart via USB for a bug fixed or improved BIOS (menu, driver etc.).

Yes, and there will be an update before too long (I forgot to include the code to improve 7800 compatibility, for example.)

 

 

Do you know if the Harmony will work MicroSD card with an SD adapter?

 

For some reason I don't have SD cards, just MicroSD with the adapter for SD.

Some will work, but microSD is not required to support the protocol we are using, so compatibility with microSD is not guaranteed. MMC cards may work as well, but these also are not required to support the protocol and may be too slow for the driver, so no guarantees here either.

 

All SD cards should work, however.

 

FWIW, I am using a Sandisk microSD on one without problems. If you have name-brand cards, you are probably fine. When you get your Harmony, if you can report what microSD cards you have and whether they work or not, that may help others in the future.

[disjaukifa]

I just thought I remember reading it had a usb cable, maybe it was something else.

You can reprogram the cart via USB for a bug fixed or improved BIOS (menu, driver etc.).

Yes, and there will be an update before too long (I forgot to include the code to improve 7800 compatibility, for example.)

 

 

Do you know if the Harmony will work MicroSD card with an SD adapter?

 

For some reason I don't have SD cards, just MicroSD with the adapter for SD.

Some will work, but microSD is not required to support the protocol we are using, so compatibility with microSD is not guaranteed. MMC cards may work as well, but these also are not required to support the protocol and may be too slow for the driver, so no guarantees here either.

 

All SD cards should work, however.

 

FWIW, I am using a Sandisk microSD on one without problems. If you have name-brand cards, you are probably fine. When you get your Harmony, if you can report what microSD cards you have and whether they work or not, that may help others in the future.

 

Actually all of mine are Sandisk as well but I can test out all of them and let you know what works and what does.

 

As a funny side note. I was looking for a 4 megabyte SD card online . . . and all I could find was 4 gigabyte. I think I have a 16mb SD card somewhere in my house, which I might use for the harmony, but its funny, you really can't buy new at least anything under 256 megabyte for SD and MicroSD.

 

-Disjaukifa

[cd-w]

The Harmony is not programmed to write to the SD card. Maybe Chris can say for sure, but while (I think) it may be theoretically possible to write a program for the microcontroller with driver support on the PC side that could write files to the SD, it would be difficult to do, and it would be slow. The cart uses a USB-to-serial chip and its maximum speed (limited by the microcontroller) is a fraction of even USB 1.0, much less that of USB 2.1. You are better off writing the SD with a card reader.

 

Yes, the Harmony driver is entirely read-only for the SD card. This was necessary to fit the driver in the limited space available. Also, it is safer as there is less chance of the SD card contents getting corrupted. As batari has pointed out, it would be very slow to write to the SD card through the Harmony. It is much better just to write to the SD card on a PC instead. I suspect most people won't modify the contents of their SD cards very often. For development, it is probably better just to flash the game directly onto the Harmony, rather than using the SD card.

 

Chris

[disjaukifa]

The Harmony is not programmed to write to the SD card. Maybe Chris can say for sure, but while (I think) it may be theoretically possible to write a program for the microcontroller with driver support on the PC side that could write files to the SD, it would be difficult to do, and it would be slow. The cart uses a USB-to-serial chip and its maximum speed (limited by the microcontroller) is a fraction of even USB 1.0, much less that of USB 2.1. You are better off writing the SD with a card reader.

 

Yes, the Harmony driver is entirely read-only for the SD card. This was necessary to fit the driver in the limited space available. Also, it is safer as there is less chance of the SD card contents getting corrupted. As batari has pointed out, it would be very slow to write to the SD card through the Harmony. It is much better just to write to the SD card on a PC instead. I suspect most people won't modify the contents of their SD cards very often. For development, it is probably better just to flash the game directly onto the Harmony, rather than using the SD card.

 

Chris

 

How does the Flash work? I am in the process of writing two Homebrews for the 2600, and I will be using the Harmony for development for the most part (I hate testing with keyboard controls ). Its easy enough for me to just use an SD card, but I am curious about the flash as well.

 

Thanks

Disjaukifa

Edited September 22, 2009 by disjaukifa

[+batari]

The Harmony is not programmed to write to the SD card. Maybe Chris can say for sure, but while (I think) it may be theoretically possible to write a program for the microcontroller with driver support on the PC side that could write files to the SD, it would be difficult to do, and it would be slow. The cart uses a USB-to-serial chip and its maximum speed (limited by the microcontroller) is a fraction of even USB 1.0, much less that of USB 2.1. You are better off writing the SD with a card reader.

 

Yes, the Harmony driver is entirely read-only for the SD card. This was necessary to fit the driver in the limited space available. Also, it is safer as there is less chance of the SD card contents getting corrupted. As batari has pointed out, it would be very slow to write to the SD card through the Harmony. It is much better just to write to the SD card on a PC instead. I suspect most people won't modify the contents of their SD cards very often. For development, it is probably better just to flash the game directly onto the Harmony, rather than using the SD card.

 

Chris

 

How does the Flash work? I am in the process of writing two Homebrews for the 2600, and I will be using the Harmony for development for the most part (I hate testing with keyboard controls ). Its easy enough for me to just use an SD card, but I am curious about the flash as well.

 

Thanks

Disjaukifa

Harmony has 32k of flash, and this can be programmed through USB with a single game image so it will run the game without the SD even inserted. When we release the programming software, there will be a "development" tab that will facilitate this process. When you are finished developing, you may reprogram the multicart BIOS and use SD cards again.

[lgallair]

I have been playing around with the SD card I use in my Harmony and have decided to build my directory structure as follows ...

The root will contain 6 categories (sub-directories) only. From there I am able to quickly navigate to any game by simply drilling down through the structure.

I use this exact structure on my Nintendo Powerpak and it works nicely. The only drawback is you have to duplicate the roms for each "category". No biggie as I use a 512MB card which can easily hold the entire library many times over. Also, I have renamed all the filenames to be 24 chars or less so that the entire name is visible on the screen. I removed all the PAL games as well. I am finalizing a spreadsheet that breaks up the roms into the various categories. If anyone wants a copy, PM and I'll send it to you. Otherwise I will likely post it here sometime tomorrow. Anyways, here's the structure of my SD card.

 

By Genre

+- Adventure

+- Arcade

+- Board & Card Games

+- Educational

+- Puzzle

+- Racing

+- Shooter

+- Simulation

+- Sports

By Hardware

+- Paddles

+- Joystick

+- Keypad

+- Track Ball

By License

+- Commercial

+- Homebrew

+- Prototype

By Name

+- A-B

+- C-D

+- E-H

+- I-L

+- M-O

+- P-R

+- S

+- T-Z

By Players

+- 1 Player

+- 1 vs 2 Players

+- 2 Players

+- 2+ Players

By Year

+- 1975

...

+- 2008

[disjaukifa]

The Harmony is not programmed to write to the SD card. Maybe Chris can say for sure, but while (I think) it may be theoretically possible to write a program for the microcontroller with driver support on the PC side that could write files to the SD, it would be difficult to do, and it would be slow. The cart uses a USB-to-serial chip and its maximum speed (limited by the microcontroller) is a fraction of even USB 1.0, much less that of USB 2.1. You are better off writing the SD with a card reader.

 

Yes, the Harmony driver is entirely read-only for the SD card. This was necessary to fit the driver in the limited space available. Also, it is safer as there is less chance of the SD card contents getting corrupted. As batari has pointed out, it would be very slow to write to the SD card through the Harmony. It is much better just to write to the SD card on a PC instead. I suspect most people won't modify the contents of their SD cards very often. For development, it is probably better just to flash the game directly onto the Harmony, rather than using the SD card.

 

Chris

 

How does the Flash work? I am in the process of writing two Homebrews for the 2600, and I will be using the Harmony for development for the most part (I hate testing with keyboard controls ). Its easy enough for me to just use an SD card, but I am curious about the flash as well.

 

Thanks

Disjaukifa

Harmony has 32k of flash, and this can be programmed through USB with a single game image so it will run the game without the SD even inserted. When we release the programming software, there will be a "development" tab that will facilitate this process. When you are finished developing, you may reprogram the multicart BIOS and use SD cards again.

 

Any chance that this software will be Mac compatible? If not again the SD won't be difficult to do.

 

-Disjaukifa

[RevEng]

I like it.

 

I think I'll do the same, and add in a "by company" category.

[+batari]

Any chance that this software will be Mac compatible? If not again the SD won't be difficult to do.

 

-Disjaukifa

Yes, we are releasing Windows, Linux and OS X versions.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

The root will contain 6 categories (sub-directories) only.

Basically that's very similar to what I thought too.

 

I think I will add by size, company and maybe programmer. And also subcategories for hacks, TV format conversions and for unreleased or WIP homebrew versions.

 

And I definitely won't remove all PAL or NTSC versions.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Yes, we are releasing Windows, Linux and OS X versions.

Java based software?

[disjaukifa]

Any chance that this software will be Mac compatible? If not again the SD won't be difficult to do.

 

-Disjaukifa

Yes, we are releasing Windows, Linux and OS X versions.

 

:!: :!: :!: :!: ITS A DREAM COME TRUE :!: :!: :!: :!:

 

Batari you just made my day and I have not had a good day at all !!!!!

 

Thanks

Disajukifa

[disjaukifa]

Yes, we are releasing Windows, Linux and OS X versions.

Java based software?

 

Could be C or C++ programmed and compiled with the GNU tools . . . but yeah Java would be the easiest to port . . . because there is no porting really.

 

-Disjaukifa

[+batari]

Yes, we are releasing Windows, Linux and OS X versions.

Java based software?

I think it's C++. The GUI is written in QT4 which I understand works under multiple platforms.

[+stephena]

Yes, we are releasing Windows, Linux and OS X versions.

Java based software?

I think it's C++. The GUI is written in QT4 which I understand works under multiple platforms.

I can expand on that part. It's in C++ with Qt4. The GUI partly comes from KrokCom (which I still haven't released) and the autodetection stuff from Stella, which were both written in C++. And the actual programming code itself is in C, so it made sense to just use C++. Porting to Java would have been even more work. The software will be released under the GPL/v3, and will be available in 32-bit versions for Windows and OSX, and 32/64-bit for Linux. Obviously, it will require the Qt4 libraries. These will be included in the Windows and OSX ports. Linux users can just install them from their distro repositories.

[disjaukifa]

Yes, we are releasing Windows, Linux and OS X versions.

Java based software?

I think it's C++. The GUI is written in QT4 which I understand works under multiple platforms.

I can expand on that part. It's in C++ with Qt4. The GUI partly comes from KrokCom (which I still haven't released) and the autodetection stuff from Stella, which were both written in C++. And the actual programming code itself is in C, so it made sense to just use C++. Porting to Java would have been even more work. The software will be released under the GPL/v3, and will be available in 32-bit versions for Windows and OSX, and 32/64-bit for Linux. Obviously, it will require the Qt4 libraries. These will be included in the Windows and OSX ports. Linux users can just install them from their distro repositories.

 

 

Wow thanks for the info and all the hard work on the software and hardware!!!

 

-Disjaukifa

Edited September 22, 2009 by disjaukifa

[ninermaniac]

Late but hopeful PM sent!!

[Zoyx]

Late but hopeful PM sent!!

 

Too late for this batch... another one is coming.

[Shquata]

Late but hopeful PM sent!!

 

Too late for this batch... another one is coming.

 

Ok , I am a complete moron ...so what do I need to do to get one of these ?...will there be a new post ?...want to make sure I get on the list to order.

Thanks,

The Old Guy

[ovalbugmann]

No need to worry batari said there will be plenty to go around when the first full production run takes place later this year.