Jump to content
IGNORED

7800 Expansion Module (XM) hardware & game details - 7/8/2016


Lendorien

Recommended Posts

  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Are Super Pac-Man and Jr. Pac-Man final versions, or is there a possibility that these will receive an audio upgrade? I have these in my purchase plans, but I'd rather not double dip.

 

My guess is that it's unlikely. Both have been out for some years now. You might consider contacting the author (PacManPlus) and asking him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
  • 5 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Will there be any games for PAL 7800 consoles? A music program to take advantage of the Yamaha chip might also be a good idea.

 

It's just a shame there aren't any microphone, audio or USB inputs and outputs on the XM as something like this might have appealed to computer musicians.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Will there be any games for PAL 7800 consoles? A music program to take advantage of the Yamaha chip might also be a good idea.

 

Yep! All my games auto detect PAL or NTSC and adjust colours and animation speeds accordingly. So it'll be one cart for both regions.

 

It's just a shame there aren't any microphone, audio or USB inputs and outputs on the XM as something like this might have appealed to computer musicians.

 

With POKEY on board the XM you can play mono RMT tunes fine. With a POKEY equipped CC2 the playback of stereo RMT tunes is possible too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sounds good! I hope the Yamaha chip could sound as good as this:

 

There is a demo of the XM's YM2151 currently at the bottom of the status page :-

 

http://www.atarimuse...7800/expansion/

 

More examples of the XM's Yamaha audio are here and here. The quality isn't brilliant because they were taken at the Replay Expo last year.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sounds good! I hope the Yamaha chip could sound as good as this:

 

There is a demo of the XM's YM2151 currently at the bottom of the status page :-

 

http://www.atarimuse...7800/expansion/

 

More examples of the XM's Yamaha audio are here and here. The quality isn't brilliant because they were taken at the Replay Expo last year.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nice demo. This might be a silly question, but could the Hi-Score cartridge facility be used to store other types of data such as sound data or a small program?

 

The high score cart has a BIOS that the game passes information to/from and that takes care of the data structure in the HSC's non volatile memory. I'm no HSC expert but I don't think there is a way to insert extra data outside the format that it expects.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's a pity. It would have been interesting if someone wrote a simple BASIC programming language for the 7800 that used the HSC to store programs.

 

There is nothing stopping a developer from enabling the HSC RAM and writing to it directly without making calls into the BIOS. However, its only 2K of RAM and you'd lose the HSC functionality (HSC compatible games could "reformat" the non volatile memory later). If somebody was going to the trouble of getting BASIC going on the expanded console it would be better for them to support the A8 disc drives (SIO2PC etc.) instead.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I guess it wouldn't be very practical saving programs to the HSC. Perhaps it could be used as a save game feature or to save data as part of a Game Construction Kit?

 

With the HSC BIOS in its current form its only useful for saving high scores in games that know how to interact with it. Personally, I don't have any plans to code a new HSC BIOS. If games need to save more information they can add SaveKey functionality. A SaveKey is a small device that fits into the player 2 joystick connector. It contains an EEPROM that can be accessed by the game. My game Worm! is SaveKey compatible.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The only thing you could potentially save is 15 bytes of information. Normally there are 5 scores held per difficulty level, and each score is 4 bytes each. In order to reliably order the data being saved / retrieved, you would have to use the high nybble of the first byte of each set of 4 to set the order (i.e. you would need to 'force' the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th place entries so you know what bytes you are getting). Then you would need to call the HSC routine, and read the data from RAM (I do this for my latest games, Scramble, Meteor Shower, etc.) That's why I don't use the HSC routine to display the scores any more... I use my own.

 

To show an example:

 

1st Place - $9X $XX $XX $XX

2nd Place - $8X $XX $XX $XX

3rd Place - $7X $XX $XX $XX

4th Place - $6X $XX $XX $XX

5th Place - $5X $XX $XX $XX

 

The 'X's are where you could potentially save data per difficulty level.

 

NOW - the only issue here (and this is the big one), is finding the routine that actually puts the data in the cart (after entering your initials). I wouldn't think you would want a High Score entry screen with some arbitrary (to the player) number being saved.

I've been meaning to look at that but I haven't had the time.

 

Hope this helps!

 

Bob

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...