Master Phruby Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 I'm running Pole Position from an Atarimax cartridge. The car instantly gets stuck turning left and the joystick is unresponsive. Any idea what is wrong? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joystickjedi Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 How does it work if you just run it off a Pole Position cart? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 I've seen the same behavior with Pole Position and my Atarimax cartridge. It seems odd to me that the cartridge would affect that one game in this way, so I'm inclined to suspect a bad dump of the game, although I have experienced joystick problems with several of the conversions from the 800 as well. I bought an original Pole Position cartridge specifically to test for this problem, but I haven't done so yet. I'll bring the 5200 back out tonight. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynxpro Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 Try it with the TrakBall. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 Try it with the TrakBall. If I remember correctly, I did try it with the TrakBall and found that it worked normally. I'll try it again tonight. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+wongojack Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 Had the same problem with AtariMax and PP Didn't try trackball I have an original cart that (I think) works fine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Master Phruby Posted May 30, 2014 Author Share Posted May 30, 2014 The original cartridge works fine. It might be a bad dump but I downloaded three pole position roms and they all did the same thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 It's good to know that the original cartridge works. That could mean one of two things: the Atarimax cartridge hardware itself somehow causes this game to behave differently (but only when the joystick is used), or else the copies we've been trying are all bad. Perhaps the copies of the ROM that have been passed around were all derived from the same source. I'll have to try dumping my own cartridge and comparing the checksums. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 Huh, so my 5200 Pole Position is doing the same thing: the TrakBall works fine with both versions of the game, but the joystick works only with the original cartridge. If I try the joystick with the AtariMax cartridge, the car steers constantly to the left. I've begun building a quick little 5200 cartridge dumper (I've wanted one for a while anyway for other purposes). I'll try dumping my original and see if that gives different results. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 I did extensive testing with pole position in atarixlbox while I was working on the emu and I'm pretty sure at least one of the ROM dumps out there is ok. I had a similar situation where the game was thinking the track ball was plugged in because the simulated responses from the controller were incorrect. Once I corrected the responses from the controller (effectively enabling analog control) the game worked properly. I'll dig through my notes and see if I had any other info. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+playsoft Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 My guess is it's an uninitialized variable, i.e. PP has a variable which it sets when it's detected a track ball - but it's not initialising it. It gets away with it on the real cart, where RAM will contain whatever it's power up value is, plus whatever the BIOS writes. Running via Atarimax RAM will contain data that was used for the menu, the loader etc... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 Found this quote in another thread.. "Pole Position does the detection when you turn on the machine with the cartridge plugged in." So it may be like Paul Lay said.. Maybe a hacked/hexed pole position image will do the trick. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7800 Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post rom files, but here's Pole Position from a set of No-Intro roms that I have. Maybe this will work better for you. Pole Position (USA).zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+playsoft Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 It's not an uninitialized variable, it is the PP joystick detection code: 6011: A9 00 LDA #$00 6013: 8D 1F C0 STA CONSOL 6016: A5 11 LDA $11 6018: C9 E4 CMP #$E4 601A: F0 04 BEQ $6020 It's disabling the joystick and expecting to read back a POT0 value of $E4 if one is connected (or rather a track ball is not connected). That logic is correct, what's wrong is that the shadow POT0 location ($11) is not updated until the next vertical blank. So rather than reading the POT0 value with the joystick disabled, it is reading the POT0 value from whatever the previous state was. When I tried it on my Atarimax Ultimate SD I did not initially see the problem. Only after I enabled the "Game Quick Start (bypass BIOS)" option (from the * key menu) did it occur. So that is one thing to try, disable the Quick Start option if you want to run the original ROM. If you've already tried that and it didn't work perhaps you have older Atarimax firmware. My version numbers are: hardware version 20110115 bootflash version 20110115 menu version 20110115 firmware version 20130504 I added a bit of extra start up code to disable the joystick and wait a few vertical blanks. This means the shadow POT0 location already contains the disabled value by the time it gets to the dodgy detection code. This was ok on my Atarimax with Quick Start enabled. pole.bin 9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmervine Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 Paul-the fixed worked great on my Atarimax cart...thanks!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 Yes, indeed, thanks! It hadn't occurred to me that it might be an initialization issue related to the Atarimax cartridge, but it makes sense. I'll give it a try with my cartridge. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlie_ Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 It's not an uninitialized variable, it is the PP joystick detection code: 6011: A9 00 LDA #$00 6013: 8D 1F C0 STA CONSOL 6016: A5 11 LDA $11 6018: C9 E4 CMP #$E4 601A: F0 04 BEQ $6020 It's disabling the joystick and expecting to read back a POT0 value of $E4 if one is connected (or rather a track ball is not connected). That logic is correct, what's wrong is that the shadow POT0 location ($11) is not updated until the next vertical blank. So rather than reading the POT0 value with the joystick disabled, it is reading the POT0 value from whatever the previous state was. When I tried it on my Atarimax Ultimate SD I did not initially see the problem. Only after I enabled the "Game Quick Start (bypass BIOS)" option (from the * key menu) did it occur. So that is one thing to try, disable the Quick Start option if you want to run the original ROM. If you've already tried that and it didn't work perhaps you have older Atarimax firmware. My version numbers are: hardware version 20110115 bootflash version 20110115 menu version 20110115 firmware version 20130504 I added a bit of extra start up code to disable the joystick and wait a few vertical blanks. This means the shadow POT0 location already contains the disabled value by the time it gets to the dodgy detection code. This was ok on my Atarimax with Quick Start enabled. Thanks Paul. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynxpro Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 Wouldn't you need that fix on Centipede and Missile Command then as well? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
killersquirel Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 Thanks Paul, your version is working great on mine as well. There were some pole position hacks in the hack section to add new tracks and also hacks that added new tracks but also sped up the game as well. Is there any chance of getting these to work with a joystick also? Here's a link to the threadhttp://atariage.com/forums/topic/120642-pole-position-x-courses-hacked-to-a-5200-rom/ Thanks, Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+playsoft Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 Thanks Paul, your version is working great on mine as well. There were some pole position hacks in the hack section to add new tracks and also hacks that added new tracks but also sped up the game as well. Is there any chance of getting these to work with a joystick also? Here's a link to the thread http://atariage.com/forums/topic/120642-pole-position-x-courses-hacked-to-a-5200-rom/ Thanks, Mike There seem to be quite a lot of them! If based on the original cart then they should all fix up in the same fashion - I'll take a look later in the week. Paul 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Master Phruby Posted June 1, 2014 Author Share Posted June 1, 2014 Thanks Paul! It works like a charm. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
killersquirel Posted June 2, 2014 Share Posted June 2, 2014 Thanks Paul, hopefully those will all be easy to convert. I know I'm being greedy, but it's for the good of the scene. Thanks again. -mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slampam Posted June 2, 2014 Share Posted June 2, 2014 Fixed tracks for AtariMax SD. Don't bother with speedups or the rest. There's a PAL speedup version for the A8 that does it properly (not really needed for NTSC). What would be cool would be the Pole Position & Race Designer for the 5200 or even Pole Position X+ as a conciliation prize. PP_MAX_tracks.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
killersquirel Posted June 2, 2014 Share Posted June 2, 2014 Thanks slampam! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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