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Harmony as a CopyCart


batari

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Using v0.92:

 

 

FE

- auto-dumps correctly.

- manual dumps is still broken. I get 2 copies of bank 0.

 

 

E0

- All manual dumps are now 100% correct (tested each cart 5 times).

- Auto dumps were also all good (tested each cart 5 times), with the exception of Death Star. It would abort most of the time, and only auto-detected once. This was over a period of a few hours with many other carts dumped in-between. I think I tried about 7 times for an auto-dump. However it always dumped correctly when forced. Maybe something is going on in the code, or maybe it's just my cart.

 

 

AJ, if you have this cart can you try dumping it auto/manual a few times?

 

 

3F

- Auto-dumps are now giving perfect copies. All detections worked (3x for each cart).

- All manual dumps failed. Slices 0,1,2 of the dump matched slice 0 of the real rom. Slice 3 of the dump always matched slice 3 of the real rom.

 

 

There was one exception. Miner 2049er (NTSC) had a few differences. Upon examination I think I either have an alternate or the true good dump. Here it is:

 

post-7074-128795728675_thumb.jpg

 

Miner 2049er !.zip

 

 

Looking at the differences, I can tell that my dump has code there. It looks like:

 

LDA #$03

STA $CF

JMP $3F64

 

But I'm just reading the code straight from hex so I could be wrong. Anyhow the question remains is this an alternate, and is the other rom a good dump or not? If both are valid what is the original? Disassembly would be required. I also compared this rom to a dump I made off of my 7800. both matched 100%

 

 

AJ, did you say you had Miner 2049er? Can you do an auto-dump and compare the roms?

 

 

FA

- auto-detection is now broken. 5 attempts failed. I don't know what version this happened in because I haven't tested it for a few versions.

- manual dumps are still working. Only differences at the hotspots and ram. It is curious how all my ram and hotspots is filled with $E9. Is that the last value that was on the bus? On the dump that is out there there are a bunch of $FC and $F4 in that area.

 

 

AJ, can you try your Tunnel Runner with the neweset version? When comparing it you should only see differences at:

 

first 4k:

$0000-$01FF ram

$0FF8-$0FFA hotspots

 

second 4k:

$1000-$11FF ram)

$1FF8-$1FFA hotspots

 

third 4k:

$2000-$21FF ram

$2FF8-$2FFA hotspots

 

 

 

Also AJ (and everyone else), I have no E7 carts. Would you mind testing yours? If anyone has Omega Race (FA) as well that would be great.

 

 

E7 carts list:

BurgerTime

He-Man (Masters of the Universe)

Bump 'n' Jump

 

FA carts list:

Omega Race

Tunnel Runner

Mountain King

 

FE carts list:

Robot Tank

Decathalon

Space Shuttle (some are F8 though)

- A few protos as well...

 

E0 carts list:

Frogger II

Gyruss

James Bond 007

Montezuma's Revenge

Mr. Do's Castle

Popeye

Qbert Qubes

SW: Death Star Battle

SW: The Arcade Game

Super Cobra

Tooth Protectors

Tutankham

- a few protos as well...

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Using v0.92:

[...]

E0

- All manual dumps are now 100% correct (tested each cart 5 times).

- Auto dumps were also all good (tested each cart 5 times), with the exception of Death Star.[...]

 

AJ, if you have this cart can you try dumping it auto/manual a few times?

 

 

3F

- Auto-dumps are now giving perfect copies. All detections worked (3x for each cart).

- All manual dumps failed. Slices 0,1,2 of the dump matched slice 0 of the real rom. Slice 3 of the dump always matched slice 3 of the real rom.

 

There was one exception. Miner 2049er (NTSC) had a few differences. Upon examination I think I either have an alternate or the true good dump.

[...]

Anyhow the question remains is this an alternate, and is the other rom a good dump or not? If both are valid what is the original?

[...]

AJ, did you say you had Miner 2049er? Can you do an auto-dump and compare the roms?

 

 

FA

- auto-detection is now broken.[...]

- manual dumps are still working.[...]

 

AJ, can you try your Tunnel Runner with the neweset version?

 

[...]

Also AJ (and everyone else), I have no E7 carts. Would you mind testing yours? If anyone has Omega Race (FA) as well that would be great.

 

 

E7 carts list:

BurgerTime

He-Man (Masters of the Universe)

Bump 'n' Jump

 

FA carts list:

Omega Race

Tunnel Runner

Mountain King

 

FE carts list:

Robot Tank

Decathalon

Space Shuttle (some are F8 though)

- A few protos as well...

 

E0 carts list:

Frogger II

Gyruss

James Bond 007

Montezuma's Revenge

Mr. Do's Castle

Popeye

Qbert Qubes

SW: Death Star Battle

SW: The Arcade Game

Super Cobra

Tooth Protectors

Tutankham

- a few protos as well...

OK Omega, I will install v0.92; dump SW: Death Star Battle, Miner 2049er, Tunnel Runner, BurgerTime, Bump 'N' Jump and MOTU: Power of He-man. I'll post the dumps here and let you do the comparisons. It may take me a few hours to get them done.

 

I have every cartridge you listed except Omega Race and Tooth Protectors. As I posted previously, I don't know yet which bankswitching scheme my Space Shuttle uses. I also have a Taiwan Cooper pirate of Popeye whose BS scheme I don't (yet) know. You didn't list 3F carts but of those, I have Polaris, Miner 2049er, and Miner 2049er Volume II.

Edited by A.J. Franzman
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OK Omega, I will install v0.92; dump SW: Death Star Battle, Miner 2049er, Tunnel Runner, BurgerTime, Bump 'N' Jump and MOTU: Power of He-man. I'll post the dumps here and let you do the comparisons. It may take me a few hours to get them done.

 

I have every cartridge you listed except Omega Race and Tooth Protectors. As I posted previously, I don't know yet which bankswitching scheme my Space Shuttle uses. I also have a Taiwan Cooper pirate of Popeye whose BS scheme I don't (yet) know. You didn't list 3F carts but of those, I have Polaris, Miner 2049er, and Miner 2049er Volume II.

 

 

Thanks, AJ.

 

 

I don't have any E7 carts, so testing these is really in your hands unless someone else volunteers. I'm curious to see if you Death Star will give you trouble, and if you Miner Dump will match mine. Definitely give Miner Vol II a dump as well. Here is a 3F list:

 

 

Springer

River Patrol

Miner 2049er

Miner 2049er Vol II

Polaris

Espial

 

I might have some more E0's too. I'm missing a lot of carts... I might have sold them. If you try your Tunnel Runner and the other E0 carts not done yet that would be great. :)

 

Also it helps if you mark which dumps were done by auto-detection, and which ones were dumped manually with a forced bank scheme.

 

 

Cheers,

Jeff

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I also have Miner 2049er(NTSC) I used v.92 autodetect 3 times and got good dumps every time, but if i select 3F I get a bad dump every time which turned out the same as Omegamatrix described above:

block 0 is duplicated to blocks 1 and 2 but block 3 is ok.

 

The good dumps also match the good dump in Rom's collection. It's the white Tigervision cart if that helps any, (I don't know if there are any others)

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Ok, v.93 didn't fix it, it's still mirroring block 0 to blocks 1 & 2 but block 3 is ok. (Miner 2049er)

 

EDIT: That is when I select 3F instead of autodetect. Autodetect works fine though.

 

Autodetect also works fine with Robot Tank, but not when FE is selected.

Edited by Buzbard
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Thanks, AJ!

 

E7

 

All your He-Man dumps were good. I read your dump notes as well. It seems every time you plugged the cart in during the countdown it aborted, and every time you plugged it in before running dumper it was good. With your single power supply it seems in general you have much more success with it plugged in before hand, so I'd probably stick with that method with your dumper. For my double supply I have to stick the cart in during the countdown, and then power it to have success.

 

 

BurgerTime was all bad dumps. I split the roms into 2k chunks and compared them all the original, and none match. So maybe the cart is dirty? Does it play okay? BurgerTime is definitely the cart to be tested in the future, especially since it was auto-detected as 3F so many times. Incidentally I discovered that BurgerTime has some duplicated slices. I never knew that before. Anyhow Burgertime will be the cart to focus on in future trials.

 

 

Bump 'n' Jump was auto-detected as 3F a lot too. However your forced dumps were all good save FD1, which is a forced dump while plugging in the dump cart during the countdown.

 

 

FA

Your auto-detection worked when the cart is plugged in beforehand. All your dumps were good, but you will notice the rom is different from the internet rom. This is because the hotspots and ram are all filled with $E9, which is just like I found with my Mountain King cart.

 

@Batari, is the dumper attempting to read the hotspots? Is the $E9 a value that is left on the bus? It seems weird that both Tunnel Runner and Mountain King would have $E9 at the hotspots unless it was a product of the dumping process.

 

 

E0

I see you are having troubles with this cart too! Auto-detection was showing alot of aborts. Anyhow your good dumps were the auto-ones that worked, and FP2, FP3. FP1 and all the FD's were bad. I didn't check what is wrong with them, because 3 were done while the cart was stuck in during the countdown (which is giving your dumper problems). I imagine it'll just be the wrong slices again.

 

 

3F

There is really exciting news here. Your auto-dumps 100% matched my Miner cart, while Buzbards have 100% matched the rom on the internet. So we have verified that both dumps are true, and that means one game is an alternate. :) Now it just takes disassemble to figure out what the differences affect. I was really excited about this, and Buzbard and you having different roms was the best case scenario. I will look at the rom in detail maybe next weekend.

 

I imaging you are experiencing the same problem Buzbard and I were with the slices in the wrong order. I won't check this cause I'm kind of tired, but instead lets wait for the next version from Batari.

 

 

 

With the next version can you try a couple of the E0's I've already done? They should all auto-detect and dump correctly (unless it's Death Star). Also all forced dumps should be correct too (I had no bad dumps). Also, maybe just stick to the cart plugged in before hand for your dumper.

 

 

Thanks for yours and Buzbard's help. :)

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I've reverted to (what I think was) the 0.9 detection to see if FA will work.

 

I believe 3F and FE manual will finally work. Also, I figured out how to wait for a keypress before inserting the dump cart so you don't have to wait 10 seconds, and although sending the dump code must be done at 38400 bps, I found a way to increase the dump speed to 115200 so dumps are nearly instant.

Harmony_cart_dumper.zip

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Hey Jeff, I'm lagging a couple of posts behind, let me catch up!

 

It looks like I lied, I don't seem to have a Miner 2049er Volume II (I was pretty sure I did...).

 

I'm just finishing up dumps of eight more E0 carts per your request in post #106.

 

The reason I try four methods when dumping every cart, is that I've had one cart (can't remember which at the moment) that would hang the terminal at "Terminal started (press Escape to abort)" (just before the 10-second delay) every single time if it was already plugged in. So with that cart I had no choice but to plug it in after.

Edited by A.J. Franzman
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My BurgerTime, Popeye and Tutankham all appear to work fine on a real console. I'm not very good at BurgerTime or Popeye, and I'd never played Tutankham at all before last night, but at least the first screens seemed OK, and I did get to the second screen of BurgerTime. I'm guessing these carts are not happy with Harmony's 3.3 V logic. If there are more carts like this around with unknown binaries and the only available dumper is a Harmony, it may require level translation to work properly. Fortunately, there are chips for that. I could build one into my dumper if there's consensus that it's likely to help.

 

The next item on my plate, from Omega's post #111, is to dump E0 carts: Montezuma's Revenge, Frogger II: Threeedeep! and Q*bert's Qubes. I'll use the latest dumper from post #116.

v0.95 dumps.zip

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Hi AJ.

 

 

In general auto-dumps are working well for you when they don't abort. You had perfect dumps (for each dump) for SW - The Arcade Game, Gyruss, and James Bond. Super Cobra was close to being perfect (1 bad dump), and your pirate Popeye dumped well until you used the forced mode (3 dumps were bad).

 

The biggest difference is my bad dumps have the wrong slices. Yours is full of garbage data. It looks like small chunks of code from other places in the rom, and then just more scrambled data. So with my bad dumps I can split these E0 games into 2k chunks and find matches, but yours won't match.

 

I'm kind of wondering if your cart is sometimes misaligning in the socket sometimes. I'm fortunate that I had the plastic port from my RomScanner that I cannibalized. I'm always getting the cart in nice and centered. The only other thing I can think of is that your single power supply or pull-down resistor is failing sometimes. It just seems weird that your data would become garbage code, and mine wouldn't.

 

 

 

Anyhow I have a keen interest in your Mr. Do's Castle. You got a big block of dumps that matched each other, but not the rom out there. Some of your other bad dumps also had these bytes different from the original rom (but not all). I'm not ready to declare anything at this point, but it is possible your cart is an alternate. Please try a few more dumps with the lastest version of the dumper.

 

post-7074-128806923428_thumb.jpg

 

Also if you ever wanted more of a conspiracy, the first byte different is at $1984 by HOM3 numbering. Hmmmm, Did Orson Welles program this? As a side note a few of the bad dumps for Mr. Do's Castle did have slices that matched the original. I marked these as partial matches in my attached file, which is your dumps.txt appended.

 

 

dump comparisions.zip

 

So where we go from here is I'm going to go try the latest version of the dumper. If you could dump Mr. Do's Castle and James Bond with it that would be great. Oh and also Tunnel Runner, and the E7 games. I'm just going to do a quick comparison with CloneSpy though, not much time for an in-depth examination unless it's interesting. So don't kill yourself noting everything. This will just be pass/fail with a few games so that hopefully Batari can bang off a few quick versions of the dumper and we'll get this thing fixed.

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Version 0.95 is much improved. I'm getting perfect dumps now. No abortions.

 

- FE is auto-detecting and forced dumping correctly. I tried Robot Tank and Decathlon 3 times with each method.

- 3F is doing both methods as well 1 trial run of each method with Polaris, Miner 2049er, Miner 2049er PAL

- E0 is working for me, I tried every cart I have at least once with each method, Death Star I tried 3 times with each method, and no abortions.

 

@ Batari, did you do anything with E0, or is my Death Star cart suddenly working?

 

For shits and giggles I tried some 32k, 16k, 4k, and 2k carts because we have been focusing on the exotic bankswitch schemes. All seem to be auto-detecting and dumping correctly. I didn't try any of these forced though!

 

 

 

 

The bad news:

- FA is now completely broken. I can't get a good dump by auto-detection or forced.

 

So hopefully AJ gets some good results with the E7, and then it seems it's just a matter of fixing FA.

 

 

Once everything seems to be working good, I'm going to test a shit load of carts thoroughly. For now it is just quick tests though.

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Version 0.95 is much improved. I'm getting perfect dumps now. No abortions.

 

- FE is auto-detecting and forced dumping correctly. I tried Robot Tank and Decathlon 3 times with each method.

- 3F is doing both methods as well 1 trial run of each method with Polaris, Miner 2049er, Miner 2049er PAL

- E0 is working for me, I tried every cart I have at least once with each method, Death Star I tried 3 times with each method, and no abortions.

 

@ Batari, did you do anything with E0, or is my Death Star cart suddenly working?

 

For shits and giggles I tried some 32k, 16k, 4k, and 2k carts because we have been focusing on the exotic bankswitch schemes. All seem to be auto-detecting and dumping correctly. I didn't try any of these forced though!

 

 

 

 

The bad news:

- FA is now completely broken. I can't get a good dump by auto-detection or forced.

 

So hopefully AJ gets some good results with the E7, and then it seems it's just a matter of fixing FA.

 

 

Once everything seems to be working good, I'm going to test a shit load of carts thoroughly. For now it is just quick tests though.

The changes I made to E0 were to do a dummy read to warm up the cart. FA is really baffling, but I've made a small change to the version I posted here to hopefully make it work again. The change was so small that I didn't bother changing the version text.

Harmony_cart_dumper.zip

Edited by batari
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I'm kind of wondering if your cart is sometimes misaligning in the socket sometimes. I'm fortunate that I had the plastic port from my RomScanner that I cannibalized. I'm always getting the cart in nice and centered. The only other thing I can think of is that your single power supply or pull-down resistor is failing sometimes. It just seems weird that your data would become garbage code, and mine wouldn't.

I doubt it's misaligning. My dumper is made from connectors scavenged from VCS parts consoles, so it should be the right width. I only have one plastic guide though, and I put it on the Harmony end. I'll swap the guide to the other end and see if it works any better. It could be that I'm glitching the Harmony by jiggling the USB cable while inserting/removing tight-fitting dump cartridges, and being able to grip the connector easily might help alleviate that.

 

 

Anyhow I have a keen interest in your Mr. Do's Castle. You got a big block of dumps that matched each other, but not the rom out there. Some of your other bad dumps also had these bytes different from the original rom (but not all). I'm not ready to declare anything at this point, but it is possible your cart is an alternate. Please try a few more dumps with the lastest version of the dumper.

 

Also if you ever wanted more of a conspiracy, the first byte different is at $1984 by HOM3 numbering. Hmmmm, Did Orson Welles program this?

I think you mean author George Orwell. ;) I can't find any mention of Orson Welles having any connection to a production of 1984. My brother gets them mixed up too.

 

I'll make some more dunps of Mr. Do!'s Castle for you. It would be fairly amazing if we discover two alternate ROM versions within days of the announcement of this new Harmony feature of a simple low-cost cart dumper for the masses. But, did you mean to say that some of my bad dumps of MDC did not have changed bytes in the locations in question? That would be really weird. It's also possible that the available binary is a bad dump (several have already been discovered since Harmony's release) -- unless you have a copy that always matches it.

 

 

If you could dump Mr. Do's Castle and James Bond with it that would be great. Oh and also Tunnel Runner, and the E7 games. I'm just going to do a quick comparison with CloneSpy though, not much time for an in-depth examination unless it's interesting. So don't kill yourself noting everything. This will just be pass/fail with a few games so that hopefully Batari can bang off a few quick versions of the dumper and we'll get this thing fixed.

OK, will do.

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I'll make some more dunps of Mr. Do!'s Castle for you. It would be fairly amazing if we discover two alternate ROM versions within days of the announcement of this new Harmony feature of a simple low-cost cart dumper for the masses. But, did you mean to say that some of my bad dumps of MDC did not have changed bytes in the locations in question? That would be really weird. It's also possible that the available binary is a bad dump (several have already been discovered since Harmony's release) -- unless you have a copy that always matches it.

 

You have to remember the bankswitch methods of these make them a little less accessible to dump. I'm not surprised that there was an alternate Miner rom at all. The bytes that are in question in Mr Do!'s Castle were the same in quite a few of your dumps. There is a good chance that your cart is an alternate. First we got to make sure we're getting a good dump, and then we can examine the rom in more detail to see what is going on. It is also possible that the other rom is bad. We were lucky last time that you and I had the same Miner cart, and Buzbard had a different one that matched the rom that is out there. That makes it easy to verify both dumps are good.

 

 

I think you mean author George Orwell. ;)

 

Ha Ha, yeah I did. How did I get Orson Welles? Anyhow I liked reading Animal Farm as a kid.

 

 

I'll try the latest dumper again later tonight to see if FA is working.

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Here by request are my latest dumps:

 

v0.95b dumps.zip

 

Good news: I got 6 matching dumps each of all but Bump 'N' Jump.

 

Bad news: Bump 'N' Jump always auto-detected as 3F. But the forced E7 dumps match the available binary.

 

Maybe bad news: Dumps of BurgerTime, Mr. Do!'s Castle and Tunnel Runner do not match the available binaries. Possible RAM/hotspot value issues, alternate binaries, or bad dumps.

Edited by A.J. Franzman
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