sd cartridge for 7800?

[mimo]

Blimey, what did you guys do to the 7800 forum whilst I was away?

It's turned into the jaguar forum.

[sh3-rg]

Calling out the whiny bitches for what they are and suggesting a means of dealing with them has less negative effect on this community than the whiny bitches who are potentially driving away the homebrewers and hardware developers so I don't see the problem.

 

There's whiny bitches in every community, you just learn to ignore or don't prod them, but above all, if you put stuff out there or even just state your intention to do so, you have to accept their existence as they have as much right as the next guy to voice their whiny-bitch opinions.

 

AA has a super-relaxed attitude to moderation, basically whiny bitches all the way up to outright trolls get away with all kinds of stuff until they either have a real meltdown and the banhammer finally falls, or they simply get bored and go try their luck elsewhere. That liberal attitude is a double-edged sword, but on the whole I can see why it is preferred and why they have stuck to it. I personally like the zero-tolerance approach at somewhere like NeoGaf, but that has a scale issue that necessitates it to a great extent, it's just good people can get caught in the cross-fire all too easily. This is why I passed comment as it looks so out of place on Atari Age. That and the fact that I know Clu isn't the kind of person it is being suggested in here.

 

Rounding up whiny bitches, restricting their access to stuff and blaming "people like you" for the latest in a series of emotionally-charged rage-quits is a quite laughable response. From a moderator, doubly so. But like I said, I dunno if it's some 7800 forum in-joke... that appears increasingly less likely.

 

As for Bob, as this is what Clu is being accused of, being "one of them, the boys who do Bob harm", do I really want to approach that subject? Not particularly, it's messy. You guys are better off continuing to exist in your bubble and ignoring the obvious cycle. And I don't think any of you have the stomach for that debate because the outcome is inevitable and not one any of you would like to have to face. Fair enough. But I'll do it. I'll discuss any of that in a reasonable and rational manner with anyone here if there's someone who really wants to go there, if it means an end to moderators accusing guys like Clu of being "one of them", fuck yes I will.

 

[Albert]

Sigh.

 

Alright, I'm only going to say this once. If you don't have something positive to contribute to a thread, then please stay out of it, or at least don't post something like "doctorclu-less". Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but please be respectful of others' opinions. Don't get personally insulted because someone has a different opinion than you. Also please keep in mind that people developing new hardware for the 2600, 7800 and other consoles are generally doing so in their free time, and are not making very much money when their finished project does become available for sale. Yeah, it may not be the hardware YOU would have designed if it was your personal project, but that's no reason to post negative comments about a project or others.

 

People seem to forget sometimes that this is a hobby that is supposed to be fun. In the grand scheme of things, 30+ year old game consoles and computers are not worth investing emotional negativity into. I don't like having a heavy hand moderating, but I will get more aggressive and will kick people out of threads, individual forums, and ultimately the site if they can't post in a respectful manner.

 

..Al

[7800]

I think it's hug time.

 

No sloppy kisses or anything, just hugs all around.

[doctorclu]

...That and the fact that I know Clu isn't the kind of person it is being suggested in here.

 

Thanks. Appreciate that.

 

Also please keep in mind that people developing new hardware for the 2600, 7800 and other consoles are generally doing so in their free time, and are not making very much money when their finished project does become available for sale.

 

That is true. Thanks for that reminder.

 

I think it's hug time.

 

No sloppy kisses or anything, just hugs all around.

 

LOL... sure.

Edited March 11, 2015 by doctorclu

[Andromeda Stardust]

I think it's hug time.

 

No sloppy kisses or anything, just hugs all around.

But I thought everyone loved sloppy wet kisses...

[coleco82]

I will be very excited when the concerto cart comes out. The main reason I want to buy one for my 7800 is that I can finally play the obscenely expensive golf game mean 18 ultimate golf. Every time I look for that on epain, the loose cart goes for 200 dollars, sheesh!

 

Its just a golf game after all.

 

Coleco82

[7800fan]

"It's just a coupe" and some of them have sold for hundred thousand dollars on auto auctions.

 

Some people just got to collect em all.

[Andromeda Stardust]

"It's just a coupe" and some of them have sold for hundred thousand dollars on auto auctions.

 

Some people just got to collect em all.

So much like the elusive Atari Jaguar Sports Coup, there are some 7800s that actually take you places besides your game room? I'm confused. Wouldn't that be a sight to see? A brand spankin' new Jag with the Atari Fuji logo emblazoned across the hood. Oh snap, wrong forum. Caryy on...

[SIO2]

If there is anyone out there waiting to develop software for the 7800 because they don't have a convenient way to test on real hardware, please don't put it off any longer.

 

7800 emulation under MESS seems to be spot on and 7800 Basic makes it very easy to program the 7800.

 

I have read some threads on Atari Age where people were talking about the 7800 being a difficult machine to program. Not so any longer. They have done a fantastic job with 7800 Basic.

[Andromeda Stardust]

^^What about reports of certian games (like Food Fight) not working properly on certain revisions? The vast majority of games run fine, but there are about 5 different revisions with slight variances in compatability. Unless Mess can emulate specific revisions, will we ever know for sure if a game is 100% compatible?

[Trebor]

^^What about reports of certian games (like Food Fight) not working properly on certain revisions? The vast majority of games run fine, but there are about 5 different revisions with slight variances in compatability. Unless Mess can emulate specific revisions, will we ever know for sure if a game is 100% compatible?

 

See here.

The above link sampling has Food Fight working perfectly on an EP, AT84, AT85, and A1. I can add my own collection of AT84, A1, A3, and X, models playing Food Fight perfectly.

That alone covers all 6 serial revisions in some cases several times over with no issues concerning Food Fight.

The likely other scenarios, brought up in several others threads on the subject, that can impact results include cart slot quality/tightness and of course aging or defective parts.

The "issue" of system incompatibilities with some 7800 games has somewhat taken on its own kind of hyperbole. Certainly, there are consoles out there with issues, but console revision is not the key. You're not going to get a plethora of people coming forward stating all 7800 games run great; rather, a few cases posting about a problem and other factors come into play.

[CPUWIZ]

Uhm, you can't really emulate some broken hardware, you would have to tell the emulator that you are emulating a broken system.

[phoenixdownita]

I can tell you as a fact that in some carts Atari used "weird" mask roms that needed a resistor series the VCC to lower the voltage.

Only reason I can see to do that is to move a little down the logical low.

 

I had to modify my Robotron 2084 and add said resistor, without it it would randomly crash in the transition between levels, most frequently level 1 to 2 but I never managed to get past level 3 until I modded the sucker.

Edited March 28, 2015 by phoenixdownita

[CPUWIZ]

I can tell you as a fact that in some carts Atari used "weird" mask roms that needed a resistor series the VCC to lower the voltage.

Only reason I can see to do that is to move a little down the logical low.

 

I had to modify my Robotron 2084 and add said resistor, without it it would randomly crash in the transition between levels, most frequently level 1 to 2 but I never managed to get past level 3 until I modded the sucker.

 

Yes, that is a whole other part of it, the ROM's are all kinds of different. Often the same game was made with different ROM's.

[Andromeda Stardust]

So logic voltage levels were off in certian carts. I always thought CMOS and TTL both put out very close to 0V for low and 5V for high under no-load conditions, but signal outputs vary considerably when placed under load, and as well tolerance for input voltage ranges for various chip designs varied considerably. There is also the issue of rise/fall times and mixing of fab types, for instance I've heard of compatability issues in some circuits when mixing 74HCxx with 74LS. Propagation delay and stray capacitance/inductance in component leads can also influence signals when dealing with high-speed logic.

 

So if signal levels on logic inputs are off tolerance significantly enough to cause invalid or incorrect output logic, one might ask whether Atari used bad circuit design in their products. Sans old caps drying up, Tramiel being cheap and cutting corners with everything didn't help.

 

As an example, I think while the 7800 controller is brilliant in some ways, the way the console reads from it in 2600 and 7800 modes by feeding it strong vs weak logic signals mixing analog and digital, is a hack in some ways. Atari probably used a bunch of electronic hack jobs to get the 7800 console to function in both 2600 and 7800 modes.

[+DrVenkman]

So logic voltage levels were off in certian carts. I always thought CMOS and TTL both put out very close to 0V for low and 5V for high under no-load conditions, but signal outputs vary considerably when placed under load, and as well tolerance for input voltage ranges for various chip designs varied considerably. There is also the issue of rise/fall times and mixing of fab types, for instance I've heard of compatability issues in some circuits when mixing 74HCxx with 74LS. Propagation delay and stray capacitance/inductance in component leads can also influence signals when dealing with high-speed logic.

 

So if signal levels on logic inputs are off tolerance significantly enough to cause invalid or incorrect output logic, one might ask whether Atari used bad circuit design in their products. Sans old caps drying up, Tramiel being cheap and cutting corners with everything didn't help.

 

As an example, I think while the 7800 controller is brilliant in some ways, the way the console reads from it in 2600 and 7800 modes by feeding it strong vs weak logic signals mixing analog and digital, is a hack in some ways. Atari probably used a bunch of electronic hack jobs to get the 7800 console to function in both 2600 and 7800 modes.

 

Good points but (specifically regarding the part I highlighted), GCC designed the 7800 and programmed the first big batch of arcade conversion launch titles. Since GCC made their name hacking up Missile Command and Pac-Man into new versions, after all, it probably shouldn't be much of a surprise they that they were unorthodox in figuring out how to do stuff.

[kaz321123]

"Concerto was plodding along well until last October when I hit a snag. It was basically working but there was a mysterious bug that seemed to corrupt every ten-millionth byte fetched from RAM. I tried every angle I possibly could, soending hundreds of hours and several months to no avail so I set it aside last month in frustration. Then I discovered that there is a different brand of memory chip with the same specs and footprint (although the chip is obsolete and no longer manufactured) but I managed to find one for testing, and found everything was working 100% with the new chip."

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

I'm a complete newbie here, but if you have a failure on every billionth byte or something, does this mean you could use the cart to play 3-4 games, and then it would suddenly crash or something?

 

If this was the scenario, what's the big deal? (You'd just power down the device every so often or something)

 

 

 

I obviously don't understand what's going on here, perhaps the billionth byte glitch thing makes the whole device fail...

 

Can someone explain it? Like dummies books explanation hehe

 

-Kaz

Edited April 20, 2015 by kaz321123

[7800fan]

You wouldn't want a car that drives fine for 3 or 4 days, then suddenly it just quits running and leaves you stranded? If such car was sold, there'd be nasty outcry for recall and fix.

 

Some people don't want hardware that has a reoccurring small one in a million chance of failing.

[Andromeda Stardust]

I don't think it would fail per say, but that 10 millionth byte sending back the wrong value could cause your game to crash or glutch if it occured during gameplay. The 7800 runs at 1.79 Mhz (million cycles per second) so whatever hardware bug that causes one in ten million or so reads to return an incorrect value would not be that rare of an event. Your game might crash within the first several minutes of play. Depending on the location and frequency of the glitch, it may or may not be random and cause repeatable issues with certain games. This might cause the gamer to believe there is a software bug when it's really hardware related. If the RAM glitch occured during a firmware update, you might even brick your cart. I think it's better that the issues get ironed out before release. My two cents.

[Retrok7]

I hate to ask the obvious question but is there an approximate time when concerto would be available? I like many here have patience to wait and am grateful when we do see developments, but just ask for a ballpark estimate when we might see it available.

[Lynxpro]

 

 

See here.

The above link sampling has Food Fight working perfectly on an EP, AT84, AT85, and A1. I can add my own collection of AT84, A1, A3, and X, models playing Food Fight perfectly.

That alone covers all 6 serial revisions in some cases several times over with no issues concerning Food Fight.

The likely other scenarios, brought up in several others threads on the subject, that can impact results include cart slot quality/tightness and of course aging or defective parts.

The "issue" of system incompatibilities with some 7800 games has somewhat taken on its own kind of hyperbole. Certainly, there are consoles out there with issues, but console revision is not the key. You're not going to get a plethora of people coming forward stating all 7800 games run great; rather, a few cases posting about a problem and other factors come into play.

 

 

My Lite Sixer from 1980 won't play any copy of Air Sea Battle…or was that Canyon Bomber? Can't remember. My dad and I gave up after trying the 5th copy. Video game return policies were much more liberal back then.

[vebxenon]

I will be very excited when the concerto cart comes out. The main reason I want to buy one for my 7800 is that I can finally play the obscenely expensive golf game mean 18 ultimate golf. Every time I look for that on epain, the loose cart goes for 200 dollars, sheesh!

 

Its just a golf game after all.

 

Coleco82

 

Really? o.O I paid 12 euros for my Mean 18 PAL copy last year... actually I would like to have a flash cart for playing Sirius, Plutos, Klax, etc, etc...

 

PS: Yes, I see that now new and sealed, 99 euros...

[Andromeda Stardust]

There's better stuff to load on a flash cart than crappy rich expensive sports games. But it's not like 18-hole-golf is the 7800 equivalent of Stadium Events...

[Mayhem]

Really? o.O I paid 12 euros for my Mean 18 PAL copy last year... actually I would like to have a flash cart for playing Sirius, Plutos, Klax, etc, etc...

 

The NTSC version of the game is a lot harder to find than the PAL version. There's a few games like that, including Alien Brigade and Planet Smashers.