Marius Posted April 24, 2015 Share Posted April 24, 2015 I have some very nice atr-only games on The cart here. Johny's Trouble, eckn+, cropky. Very nice feature. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted April 24, 2015 Share Posted April 24, 2015 Is there some sort of limitation on which games you can use though? Like no multi-load games? I seem to recall the AtariMax flash cart having limitations on ATRs and I can't see why The!Cart would be any different. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted April 24, 2015 Share Posted April 24, 2015 Is there some sort of limitation on which games you can use though? Like no multi-load games? I seem to recall the AtariMax flash cart having limitations on ATRs and I can't see why The!Cart would be any different. Not clear what the limitations are. The cart is much better since the atr is analysed and customized for the cart. That is something quite revolutionary! Atarimax works with a soft os which is weak and incompatible by default. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+JAC! Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 (edited) Every ATR comes with it's specific way of using the OS and disk I/O. There is not 100% solution for all of them. Yet with the The!Cart cart you can use all 3 existing solution and see if it works. - Use MaxFlash Studio to create a regular MaxFlash Image with the ATR and add it as a whole. Does not support disk swapping. Does not support programs that load under the OS ROM. - Use MegaCart Studio to create a regular MegaCart Image with the ATR and add it as a whole. Does support disk swapping. Does not support programs that load under the OS ROM. - Use The!Cart Studios direct ATR support which was designed to supplement the 2 other options. Does not support disk swapping yet (one day... :-) ). Does support programs that load under the OS ROM. Also support patching the ROM on-the fly to make the work if required. See http://www.wudsn.com/productions/atari800/thecartstudio/help/TheCartStudio.html#AddingEntries Edited April 25, 2015 by JAC! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irgendwer Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 I have some very nice atr-only games on The cart here. Johny's Trouble, eckn+ ... Is it also possible to save the high scores on the cart? (Patched CIO -> flash ?) And is there any use of the 512k SRAM yet? (Compatible to std. memory extensions (Compy/Rambo) ?) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 I think Rambo on a cart is out of the question. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 Is it also possible to save the high scores on the cart? (Patched CIO -> flash ?) And is there any use of the 512k SRAM yet? (Compatible to std. memory extensions (Compy/Rambo) ?) As far as I know everything is read only, but I might be wrong. XE compatible ram expansion is not possible on a cart, since the cart port lacks important connections to do that. I don't know whether the SRAM is already used or not. I know the MyIDE ][ interface has the 512K SRAM too. The MyIDE ][ cart uses this to mimic a cart. Perhaps The!Cart does the same? I don't know... curious too. I think Rambo on a cart is out of the question. I agree! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 i have an empty cart case - is it possible to buy the!cart without the case and i can use my own? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irgendwer Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 I think Rambo on a cart is out of the question. I thought so too, but if SIO access is checked and patched, the same could apply for bank register access (...to some degree). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 I thought so too, but if SIO access is checked and patched, the same could apply for bank register access (...to some degree). True, although RAM addressing would need patching too, to reference (at most) 16K at $8000. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 True, although RAM addressing would need patching too, to reference (at most) 16K at $8000. It will be almost impossible, since the cartridge ram window is probably used already by other code. Especially software that needs more than 64K has main code beneath $4000 and above $8000. Of course one could write software himself by supporting this SRAM, but patching already existing software, the way the ATR support is built, seems to be impossible to me. It would be awesome though a have patched versions of great demo's like Numen and Boogie Nights. If someone has the source of those demo's they could be adapted I guess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 Yes: it's left to the reader to figure out how to patch existing code to use extended RAM in a completely different address space. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irgendwer Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 At least a RAM-disk would be nice... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 Dumb question but how do actually program The!Cart? Do you need to use something like the AtariMax USB Flashing cart? That's how I programmed my AtariMax 8MB carts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 Dumb question but how do actually program The!Cart? Do you need to use something like the AtariMax USB Flashing cart? That's how I programmed my AtariMax 8MB carts. Hi Tempest! I'm not sure what happens with the cart when you insert it for the first time (I suppose you have it original...) ... but when you get a black screen with txt, you can press the F for Flasher. The cart has the flasher built in. If you get the colorful screen with the entries of your cart, you first press ESC to get in the black screen with txt. In the cart studio (the JAVA tool which is downloadable on JAC's site) you can export to ATR images. I use Sio2SD so I pick the 16MB images. On sio2SD I mount the 9 ATR files to D1: ... D9: and in the Flasher (the atari part) I chose the right option (I am not behind the atari, so I can not give you the right menu choice). I think when you follow these steps, you will come far enough to chose the right function Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+JAC! Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 (edited) Is it also possible to save the high scores on the cart? (Patched CIO -> flash ?) And is there any use of the 512k SRAM yet? (Compatible to std. memory extensions (Compy/Rambo) ?) At least a RAM-disk would be nice... Saving: Since The!Cart is flashable from the Atari, one could of course include that feature into his game/program. The 8-bit code for the flashing routines is open source an available here: http://www.horus.com/~hias/thecart/software/ Once the program is extended to support The!Cart, you can reserve a bank at the end of the cartridge space as "User Memory". I.e. reserved for being updated via another program than the The!Cart Studio flasher. And finally you could use the patch code entry to tell the program which bank that is. RAM Disk: Provided there is reasonable source code for a matching RAMDISK driver, it could be adapted to use the different banking register/window. Of course the different memory location and the way the OS handles cartridges will make it work differently than an XE expansion, but for using it as a regular RAM disk during disk copying etc. it would work fine. Note: The SRAM is basically on The!Cart because the Flash can only be updated in blocks of 64k/128k. So to write a single byte you have to first copy a backup to the SRAM, modify it and then write it back. The SRBAM itself is just simply banked RAM. Edited April 26, 2015 by JAC! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 Ah ok, you need to save it as a bunch of atr files and use a program to get the atr images to the Atari. That was the piece I was missing. I'll give it a try and see how it goes. Another question. I'm using a heavily modified 1200XL (DC power mod, extra RAM, video mod, compatibility fixes, PBI port, etc). Sometimes when I turn on the computer I get a yellow screen instead of the menu. I can fix this by turning it on and off a few times but I was wondering what could cause this. I'm guessing it's all the extra stuff I have in there but I don't know for sure. Also of note is that the extended memory test program that came on my cart says that the first block of memory has errors. I don't know anything about this program but could this be because of the type of memory mod it is (I think it's Rambo) or if it detects errors is it always bad? I've never used a program that needed the extra memory before so I'm not sure if it works or not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+JAC! Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 (edited) >Ah ok, you need to save it as a bunch of atr files and use a program to get the atr images to the Atari. That was the piece I was missing. I'll give it a try and see how it goes. I've heard the very often, so I took some time today and updated the documentation with some more text and pictures to illustrate the sequence. I'l do the same for the "Add ATR" question. >Sometimes when I turn on the computer I get a yellow screen instead of the menu. The menu itself only uses a light red blank screen in case an invalid bank is addressed. Yellow must be coming from the OS. >Also of note is that the extended memory test program that came on my cart says that the first block of memory has errors. Which program is that? Edited April 26, 2015 by JAC! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 >Also of note is that the extended memory test program that came on my cart says that the first block of memory has errors. Which program is that? Not sure, I'll take a look. My cart came with a few programs on it like Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, and that extended memory test program. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+JAC! Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 The!Cart Studio Version 2015-04-26 released This one was mainly done already in November when I created the native wrappers to solve the heap space issue on some OSes. But I couldn't find a test bed for the Mac OS X build. Now I got some other requests too, so I decided to release it not and fix the Mac OS X app in the 2nd round. Features: The download now contains a "TheCartStudio.exe" for Windows users. This wrapper program comes with a proper icons, a version and location test for the Java Runtime and the required Java parameters to ensure enough heap memory is available. The download now also contains a "TheCartStudio.sh" for Linux users. This script provides Java with the required parameters to ensure enough heap memory is available. The download now also contains a "TheCartStudio.app" for Mac OS X users. This one is still very experimental and is not yet tested as I don't own a Mac OS X machine. But I wanted to get this version out now. Online help has been revised. New sections and diagrams in now explain the overall workflow and creating and flashing workbooks. Also the different options to add files directly or via Maxflash Studio and MegaCart Studio are now explained. The selected line in the extended menu now uses black text and a more constant and darker flashing. This reduces bending and artifacts on CRT TV. Fixes: Player missile graphics of the extended menu are now disabled correctly before an entry is started. That was an issue for example with Flop Magazine 56 Intro. An exception that occurred with ATR files that do neither have a boot manager menu nor are DOS 2.5 disks is fixed. New Atari software version 2014-04-07 included. It includes a fix for the CAR or MyPicoDOS when loading OSS modules. The "-createSampleFiles" command now correctly creates separate folders "ROM-Correct", "ROM-Size-Too-Small", "ROM-Size-Too-Large". Console output for error messages is now routed to "System.err", so the command line can properly distinguish between information and error messages. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 Can The!Cart handle .COM, and .EXE files? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+JAC! Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 Can The!Cart handle .COM, and .EXE files? That's exactly part of the updated documentation now. http://www.wudsn.com/productions/atari800/thecartstudio/help/TheCartStudio.html#AddingEntries "This is the Atari DOS composite file format of executable files that can be loaded from a DOS. Many disk based programs that are available in this format can also be started from flash cartridges. To achieve this, typically a minimal DOS is copied to the RAM. The DOS is modified to load the "file segment" from the flash cartridge instead of the real disk. Of course this emulation has its limitations, for example for programs that use the RAM where the DOS or loader is located or perform real DOS operations like reading the directory or writing to disk. Currently you cannot add these files directly to a workbook. Instead you can use the Maxflash Studio or MegaCart Studio to create 128 KB, 1 MB or 2 MB collections with COM/EXE/XEX executables. Both studios come with proven emulation and provides several options to specify how the executable shall be handled. You can then export the collection as BIN or CAR cartridge image and add that to the workbook. " 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FULS Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 @FULS: Actually typing in "P M", "Pac Man" or "Man Pac" should find it. Only letters and numbers are relevant, order of words should be ignored. That the point of the Google like search. But it looks at some point a bug has creeped in and the space is taken as part of the word instead of the word separator. I'll have a look, but it'll take a while. Great to see a new release. Thank you for making this Cart so fun. I think the space might still be a problem in the Google like search. So far everything else looks great!! Thank you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+JAC! Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 I think the space might still be a problem in the Google like search. Indeed, that post didn't make it into the written todo list. It is there now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted April 28, 2015 Share Posted April 28, 2015 Perhaps a dumb question from my side, but why does The!Cart SDX while it already supports AtariMax 1Mbit / SIC? There are SDX distributions for those, so SDX does not need to be in the banking scheme. You could add another bankingscheme for that perhaps or am I asking too much now (Not offended meant btw; I'm extremely satisfied by all the features, bells and whistles of The!Cart!!!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
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.