List of Bank Switching Schemes?

[+JAC!]

Hi,

 

I somehow fail to find the documentation of the supported banks switching schemes for VCS/Harmony. Could somebody provide please provide a link?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Harmony supports ALL bankswitching schemes that fit into 32k ROM and 8k RAM.

 

If a new one should be be developed or discovered, you simply have update the BIOS to support that one too.

[cd-w]

The list of supported bankswitching schemes for Harmony is given in the manual where you can use a file extension to force a particular scheme:

 

.2K Atari 2K

.4K Atari 4K (default)

.F8 Atari F8

.F8S Atari F8 with Superchip

.F6 Atari F6

.F6S Atari F6 with Superchip

.F4 Atari F4

.F4S Atari F4 with Superchip

.FA CBS RAM +

.FE Activision FE

.3F Tigervision 3F

.3E 3E (3F with up to 4K RAM)

.E0 Parker Brothers E0

.E7 M-Network E7

.CV Commavid

.UA UA Limited

.AR Arcadia Supercharger

.DPC DPC (Pitfall 2)

.084 0840 Econobanking

.CU Custom bankswitching

 

As Thomas says, Harmony can support all bankswitching schemes that will fit into 32K ROM and up to around 6K RAM. The .CU extension allows user-defined bankswitching schemes (currently DPC+, Star Castle, and Chetiry schemes).

 

Chris

Edited April 2, 2013 by cd-w

[+JAC!]

Thansk, and is there a description of what exactly is behind these modes (addresses, bank #/size, ...)?

[enthusi]

It's a terrible mess still, but you'll find at least two links about banking here:

http://2600scene.net

Edited April 4, 2013 by enthusi

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Some older information here.

[enthusi]

Yeah, that's the one I link to as 'banking schemes'.

The one below is a new verison but covers slightly different topics.

I should really clean that one up but it grows while I code

[+JAC!]

Thanks. Unfortunately this made me realize that my Harmony is "limited" to at most 32K modules, while I was looking for one of these schemes listed in the Stella docs:

 

3F 512K Tigervision

4A50 64K 4A50 + ram

EF 64K Homestar Runner

EFSC 64K Homestar Runner + ram

SB 128-256k SUPERbanking

X07 64K AtariAge

 

Sigh. :-(

Edited April 4, 2013 by JAC!

[+stephena]

Some older information here.

 

The latest one is available here.

 

Also, (for everyone else, since Thomas already knows about this) I'm just now working on adding a tab to the debugger in Stella that outlines the specifics of each bankswitching scheme, size of ROM and banks, addresses where each can be accessed/modified, etc.

 

Finally, for those so inclined, the CartXXX header files in Stella contains all the bankswitch info you would ever need.

[+JAC!]

Is there any way of having a cart with >32k ROM manufactured? I doubt Harmony can be "extended" reasonably.

Edited April 8, 2013 by JAC!

[+SpiceWare]

Melody

Melody boards can be built with a 128K Flash chip, replacing the Melody's standard 32K of Flash memory. And if 8K of RAM isn't enough for you, up to 64K of RAM can be added instead. This allows for a Melody board containing 128K of Flash memory and 64K of RAM. And if that's not enough, the Melody can be fitted with an optional EEPROM chip up to 4MB in size!

[+Nathan Strum]

What? No SSD support?

[cd-w]

3E/3F used by Boulderdash and a few demos - the ROM for boulderdash will never be released publicly.

SB and 4A50 are schemes designed by Supercat but have never been used.

X07 was used by Stellas Stocking, but the ROM has not been publicly released. Since it is a collection of minigames, it could be easily be broken down to work within 32K.

EF and EFSC were designed for Homestar Runner which never progressed beyond an early demo.

 

So you are really not missing out on anything ...

 

Chris

Edited April 9, 2013 by cd-w

[+JAC!]

>So you are really not missing out on anything ...

I'm a coder not a gamer