Jump to content
IGNORED

THE!CART... New 128MB FLASH Cartridge


mega-hz

Recommended Posts



A new run is planned to be available in Q1/2020.


Great cartridge, but really difficult fon non ABBUC members to get their hands on one... I am on the waiting list since last May! OK, I understand the fact that the production is funded and being run by ABBUC but somehow the demand could be predicted and spare units produced...

I just hope it won't take much longer for my turn on that waiting list...
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, dimfil said:


 

 


Great cartridge, but really difficult fon non ABBUC members to get their hands on one... I am on the waiting list since last May! OK, I understand the fact that the production is funded and being run by ABBUC but somehow the demand could be predicted and spare units produced...

I just hope it won't take much longer for my turn on that waiting list...

 

I wish we could make it officially availabe for everybody, ABBUC member or not, but there are some things stopping us from this. Of course we want to have something which makes one profit from being an ABBUC member, but we also want to support the Atari community in general. [edited on request, please change quoted messages]

 

Anyway: To stop your wait, I can offer you one of my The!Cart, as I have two of them. Just send me a PM, if you don´t want to wait any longer.

Edited by skr
Complicated things that have to be discussed elsewhere.
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, skr said:

I wish we could make it officially availabe for everybody, ABBUC member or not, but there are some things stopping us from this. Of course we want to have something which makes one profit from being an ABBUC member, but we also want to support the Atari community in general. Sadly, especially here in Germany there is one person, trying to avoid hardware to be sold at all. I don´t know why he is like that, but he already managed some great hardware guys from offering their products to a general audience. Right now, he is also bashing on Atari Age on his facebook page.

 

Anyway: To stop your wait, I can offer you one of my The!Cart, as I have two of them. Just send me a PM, if you don´t want to wait any longer.

 

Thank you for your answer dear friend.

Of course I understand. I am not complaining at all, I just explain my wish that it could be more easilly obtained.

 

Peter @JAC! has already put my name on a waiting list and I don't want to bypass any other people. Thank you for your offer, I will choose to wait as anybody else, I just hope that Peter has still my name on that list!

Edited by dimfil
Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, dimfil said:

Of course I understand. I am not complaining at all, I just explain my wish that it could be more easilly obtained.

 

Peter @JAC! has already put my name on a waiting list and I don't want to bypass any other people. Thank you for your offer, I will choose to wait as anybody else, I just hope that Peter has still my name on that list!

Sure, all who has contacted me before are on the list and thanks to the support from the ABBUC we'll have enough in spare, too!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not sure whether the problems are just here, or in the latest release of The!Cart JAVA program (running on Mac OS X) but I did run into this issue:

 

1. I decided to do a complete reflash of my The!Cart (so no incremental flashing). 

2. After the reflashing (took long time) only files starting with L and M were shown in All. in all other categories only 1 file per categorie (which is wrong).

3. I decided to do the flashing again, but this time incremental. It did reflash the highest banks again, so this time after starting the cart all the files were there but....

4. Searching does not work. There is this file SIO2SD on my The!Cart, but when I type SIO it does not list this file.

 

I would like to know whether these issues are known? 

 

Thanks

M.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tested some more. The search facility indeed fails. The game 'Thetris'  is listed in All, but when I type  'The'  it does not show up. Also still in all categories there is just 1 file listed (except for one category, which lists 3 files that do not all belong there). It seems that there goes something wrong.

 

My 'workbook'  is from older versions. Had no troubles in january 2019. After that date I never made an update to my The!Cart. 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You are right, I was so happy to get the genre filter done that I missed to see if searching still works (double facepalm).
I've restored version 2019-11-27 on the web site for now and promise to have better testing before the next upload...

  • Like 7
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, JAC! said:

You are right, I was so happy to get the genre filter done that I missed to see if searching still works (double facepalm).
I've restored version 2019-11-27 on the web site for now and promise to have better testing before the next upload...

No worries - you can never test enough, something will always get through.  I'm struggling at my job to finish up a major refactoring (100% database re-write to be SQL agnostic and no longer sucking on the MS SQL Server teat) and code release so we can next move on to a 100% UI re-write.  This is always worst time of year for me.  I also realized I worked 240 hours overtime and did not use 163 available hour of vacation so net effect, worked 62 weeks in 52 weeks.  I wonder, why did my beard go 75% grey the past 3 years?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Request for Testers for The!Cart Studio

 

I've the the following idea to prevent the recent problems from popping up again:

 

- I will create a separate "daily" build like I do with my other projects (WUDSN IDE). The public version remains untouched in first place.

- I create a separate private message thread where I invite people whou would like to support me with testing new versions before they become "public"

 

So I you are interested in supporting with testing new versions and feature of The!Cart, please send me a simple PM with the subject "The!Cart Tester".

 

Best regards, Peter/JAC!

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 months later...

A very important warning: don't use RespeQt versions from late 2018 up to 5.3 when flashing your The!Cart.

 

These versions have broken 8k-sector-size ATR handling and will soft-brick your cart - you can revive them by reflashing with "FLASH.COM" from "thecart.atr" though (latest version is here https://www.horus.com/~hias/thecart/software/thecart-software-170924.zip)

 

RespeQt version 4 from here https://github.com/ebiguy/RespeQt/releases (and previous versions) are working properly.

 

I've opened a PR with a fix, so future RespeQt versions should be safe to use again https://github.com/RespeQt/RespeQt/pull/6

 

so long,

 

Hias

  • Like 4
  • Thanks 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, HiassofT said:

I've opened a PR with a fix, so future RespeQt versions should be safe to use again https://github.com/RespeQt/RespeQt/pull/6

My bad with this modification!

I hope nobody has his The!CART bricked...

Thank you very much for your fix.

Will do the merge quickly but I will need some help from other people to build the binaries for different platforms

  • Like 2
  • Thanks 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, ebiguy said:

I hope nobody has his The!CART bricked...

Thank you very much for your fix.

Will do the merge quickly but I will need some help from other people to build the binaries for different platforms

Thanks for the quick merge!

 

So far only  @Tempest seems to have been affected by the issue, we were PM'ing the last couple of days trying to figure out why his cart stopped working. Took us a while to figure out that RespeQt was the culprit.

 

so long,

 

Hias

Edited by HiassofT
  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
18 hours ago, FULS said:

So does this link have the updated fix for RespeQt 5.3?

https://github.com/RespeQt/RespeQt/releases

 

Thanks,

Doug

No. The 5.3 is closed and I won't change the binaries.

It will be a new version 5.4 but with other changes.

In the meantime, if you want to build a binary yourself, the fix in on the master branch.

If you recompile it, you will have a 5.3 with the fix.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

Hi,
I love "The!Cart", but a big drawback is no support for the cartridge game "Bounty Bob Strikes Back".


There are some Xex's and Atr's of the game, but all had flaws in one way or another.
Some files were Pal only, some would not run if you had over 64kb of ram,

and ALL would not handle System Reset correctly(Unplayable corruption on 2'nd screen Hydraulic Lift).


There is enormous copy protection on the cartridge.

Homesoft made the only perfect file version, but that file would not work with "The!Cart".

 

Now the good news for me, I ordered "Turbo Freezer" from santosp. Love this thing!!
I pluged it into my 130Xe and loaded Homesoft's file version of BBSB. I put in the documented cheat using the 61800 number.
I pressed the freezer button and dumped the contents of my ram to an Atr file.
It seems to work like a charm, and the best news it works with "The!Cart".

 

Now you can press the following keys while playing:

B - Back to the place where you were standing last
Q - Next level
A - Previous level
Z - Restart level
F - Bounty Bob can move freely and can not die.

 

(This is the best cheat) - To go to any level type the level number(ex. 03,11,08 ect.). There are 25 levels.

The Atr loads 500 sectors but when it is put in "The!Cart",  takes about 2 seconds to load.

 

Here is the Atr if anybody wants to play with it.

Bounty Bob Strikes Back.atr

 

Hope you enjoy,

Doug Fuls

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, FULS said:

Hi,
I love "The!Cart", but a big drawback is no support for the cartridge game "Bounty Bob Strikes Back".


There are some Xex's and Atr's of the game, but all had flaws in one way or another.
Some files were Pal only, some would not run if you had over 64kb of ram,

and ALL would not handle System Reset correctly(Unplayable corruption on 2'nd screen Hydraulic Lift).


There is enormous copy protection on the cartridge.

Homesoft made the only perfect file version, but that file would not work with "The!Cart".

 

Now the good news for me, I ordered "Turbo Freezer" from santosp. Love this thing!!
I pluged it into my 130Xe and loaded Homesoft's file version of BBSB. I put in the documented cheat using the 61800 number.
I pressed the freezer button and dumped the contents of my ram to an Atr file.
It seems to work like a charm, and the best news it works with "The!Cart".

 

Hope you enjoy,

Doug Fuls

Haha, brilliant idea ? . Could you point to the exact homesoft version which doesn't work? I'll check why.

 

EDIT: I just tested it in Altirra with the (not yet released) daily build where the XEX loader in has been improved already. Here the original XEX from the HOMESOFT site seems to work. Maybe you can test it in detail to confirm.

 

Daily build: https://www.wudsn.com/productions/atari800/thecartstudio-daily/thecartstudio.zip

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/1/2020 at 8:14 PM, ebiguy said:

No. The 5.3 is closed and I won't change the binaries.

It will be a new version 5.4 but with other changes.

In the meantime, if you want to build a binary yourself, the fix in on the master branch.

If you recompile it, you will have a 5.3 with the fix.

I compiled the latest version ... and it does not leave a working The!Cart. So perhaps another patch is needed? (edit: trying it tonight with aspeqt 1.0.0-preview 7)

 

Is there a way to flash this thing faster? I have lots of jtag devices for instance.

Edited by foft
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, foft said:

I compiled the latest version ... and it does not leave a working The!Cart.

That's a big issue.

Did you use the master branch ? The fix is only in the master branch.

I thought Hiassoft had found the fix. @HiassofT, did you build the binary and did it fix the issue on your side ?

The master branch has not changed for quite a while so if it works for Hiassoft, it should work for you also.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@ebiguy I'm pretty sure I tested the fix back then and it worked fine.

 

@foft the problem seems to be that RespeQt's default branch is set to "develop" so a simple git clone gives you that - and that branch doesn't include the fix (it's in master).

 

you can either do a "git checkout origin/master" in the cloned tree or tell git clone to initially give you master instead of develop with "git clone -b master https://github.com/RespeQt/RespeQt.git"

 

so long,

 

Hias

Edited by HiassofT
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...
On 9/13/2020 at 2:32 PM, FULS said:

Hi,
I love "The!Cart", but a big drawback is no support for the cartridge game "Bounty Bob Strikes Back".


There are some Xex's and Atr's of the game, but all had flaws in one way or another.
Some files were Pal only, some would not run if you had over 64kb of ram,

and ALL would not handle System Reset correctly(Unplayable corruption on 2'nd screen Hydraulic Lift).


There is enormous copy protection on the cartridge.

Homesoft made the only perfect file version, but that file would not work with "The!Cart".

 

Now the good news for me, I ordered "Turbo Freezer" from santosp. Love this thing!!
I pluged it into my 130Xe and loaded Homesoft's file version of BBSB. I put in the documented cheat using the 61800 number.
I pressed the freezer button and dumped the contents of my ram to an Atr file.
It seems to work like a charm, and the best news it works with "The!Cart".

 

Now you can press the following keys while playing:

B - Back to the place where you were standing last
Q - Next level
A - Previous level
Z - Restart level
F - Bounty Bob can move freely and can not die.

 

(This is the best cheat) - To go to any level type the level number(ex. 03,11,08 ect.). There are 25 levels.

The Atr loads 500 sectors but when it is put in "The!Cart",  takes about 2 seconds to load.

 

Here is the Atr if anybody wants to play with it.

Bounty Bob Strikes Back.atr 90.02 kB · 25 downloads

 

Hope you enjoy,

Doug Fuls

BIG thank you for this, this was one of my (few) frustrations with The!cart going to try it now !

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...