sd cartridge for 7800?

[+batari]

1 hour ago, Mitch said:

OK, after rev 3 bios the integrity screen is back to where it was before rev 2 bios but it hasn't improved.

Testing games seem to fail about the same as previously.

 

One thing to note, this particular 7800 seems to dislike the Concerto. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or not.

 

Mitch

This is a good thing, as if it works on this one it will probably work on anything. I know what's causing the problems now, and it's a matter of finding a way to work around it. It's going to take a bit more effort, clearly.

 

When you get a chance, I would like to see a pic of the 8400 and 8480 pages.

 

 

 

The workaround in this case was

[+Mitch]

It looks like your last sentence got cut off but here are the screenshots.

 

Mitch

 

 

[Shawn]

It's fun watching Fred & Mitch share the testing of this. It's almost like a live show on tape delay while they actually do the testing and then report back. Those little pauses between time stamps are just the commercial breaks

 

 

[+KylJoy]

I tried BIOS version 3.  It caused some bizarre "button press" anomalies.  Hard to explain. But seemed to randomly press controller button while using dpad.  I went back and forth between rev 2 and rev 3 and the problem only existed on rev 3.

[RevEng]

6 hours ago, KylJoy said:

I tried BIOS version 3.  It caused some bizarre "button press" anomalies.  Hard to explain. But seemed to randomly press controller button while using dpad.  I went back and forth between rev 2 and rev 3 and the problem only existed on rev 3.

 

When you say "dpad", are you using a genesis controller, a 7800 europad, or ...?

[+KylJoy]

2 hours ago, RevEng said:

When you say "dpad", are you using a genesis controller, a 7800 europad, or ...?

Yup.  A 7800 Europad.

[RevEng]

Thanks! And the button presses were in the Concerto menus, right? i.e. they didn't continue afterward in a launched rom. (assuming you could launch a rom)

 

Also, do you have any other controllers to test with, like a 2600 stick? Just to see if there's a difference.

[Jinks]

Hey Batari..

Are you still making a hokey chip? 

[+batari]

20 minutes ago, Jinks said:

Hey Batari..

Are you still making a hokey chip? 

Yes I plan to, especially in light of the fact that the replacements out there are so expensive! Mine will be far cheaper. I found my HOKEY stuff the other day. It's not on the front burner right now but will be pushed up once Concerto is ready to go.

[+batari]

17 hours ago, Mitch said:

It looks like your last sentence got cut off but here are the screenshots.

 

Mitch

 

 

Thanks. This further confirms the issue. I’m 100% sure on the nature of the problem now. However, I was mistaken on the conditions that lead to the issue. I will work up another test BIOS later to try which hypothesizes a different possible cause. 

[Shawn]

If having a newer USB programmer would be of any use to you Fred I have an extra MiniPro TL866 you are welcome to. It works on everything including Windows 10.

[+batari]

On 8/11/2020 at 10:57 PM, Shawn said:

If having a newer USB programmer would be of any use to you Fred I have an extra MiniPro TL866 you are welcome to. It works on everything including Windows 10.

I might take you up on that. The one I have is pretty old, uses a parallel port and doesn't support newer than XP!

[+batari]

I worked up another test BIOS. It should only be used by those who have game loading issues.

 

The only change to this BIOS is to stop drawing the screen during a game load. It's been hypothesized that MARIA DMA might be interfering with the Concerto game loading, so I shut it down during loading. When the DMA is off, the screen will go white, or, if you are using a newer TV, it may lose sync briefly during loading, but when the utility starts the display should return.

 

We have other theories we are currently exploring if this makes no difference with the integrity of the utility cart.

 

concerto_test4.cbi

[Shawn]

1 hour ago, batari said:

I might take you up on that. The one I have is pretty old, uses a parallel port and doesn't support newer than XP!

 

Send me a PM and I'll make sure you get it.

[+Mitch]

Tested the latest bios.

Number 1 is as bad as ever, I think it is worse after the 7800 has been on for a while.

I did not encounter number 2.

Number 3 is much better, the issues I noticed were slight graphical corruption in Plutos. Donkey Kong Xm had graphic corruption on the "How high can you get" screen and Double Dragon crashed about 30 seconds into the game.

I played a somewhat random selection of 7800 games. I did not test any 2600 games.

 

Mitch

[RevEng]

When you get a chance, can you try running the integrity test in the Utility Cart rom? That would help determine if the graphical issues you encountered in those games were due to rom loading corruption, or something else entirely during runtime.

[+batari]

13 hours ago, Mitch said:

Tested the latest bios.

Number 1 is as bad as ever, I think it is worse after the 7800 has been on for a while.

I did not encounter number 2.

Number 3 is much better, the issues I noticed were slight graphical corruption in Plutos. Donkey Kong Xm had graphic corruption on the "How high can you get" screen and Double Dragon crashed about 30 seconds into the game.

I played a somewhat random selection of 7800 games. I did not test any 2600 games.

 

Mitch

This is encouraging that compatibility has been improved here for loading games. The integrity test will help tell us if we have solved this particular issue or not.

 

As for the games, the drivers for the games themselves can be improved. Those showing graphical corruption are RAM games, and I can have a look at those. Also, in the past, someone else reported issues with Double Dragon, so that issue is known, but it hasn't been addressed yet as it was just one or two people who mentioned it. At first, some of my consoles had trouble with Double Dragon too, and with some effort I got it working on them, so most likely I can get things working on yours too.

[+Mitch]

The integrity test shows red on 8000, 8400, C000, C400.

 

Mitch

[+batari]

34 minutes ago, Mitch said:

The integrity test shows red on 8000, 8400, C000, C400.

 

Mitch

Sounds like DMA off helps, but does not solve the problem entirely. Coming is another test binary that moves memory around, as the problem seems like it might be sensitive to the code location in memory. I pretty much made the changes already, but need to test on my end first so expect it Monday.

[+batari]

Mitch has graciously offered to let me borrow his console, which is great news! I tried for a long time to get my hands on a problem console, and I ended up buying many and I have 12 consoles now. Concerto works properly on all of them, so I think incompatible consoles are pretty rare.

 

I would guess only 10% of consoles don't work properly, and once I get it working on Mitch's, I bet that number goes down to near zero.

 

Once these issues are worked out, Concerto will be ready for release. I will also be working on the lower-cost Concertino, which may see a near-parallel release. Concerto is seeing daily development now so it shouldn't be long!

[+mksmith]

Great news thanks Mitch for offering your console up for testing ?

[Greg2600]

4 hours ago, batari said:

Mitch has graciously offered to let me borrow his console, which is great news! I tried for a long time to get my hands on a problem console, and I ended up buying many and I have 12 consoles now. Concerto works properly on all of them, so I think incompatible consoles are pretty rare.

 

I would guess only 10% of consoles don't work properly, and once I get it working on Mitch's, I bet that number goes down to near zero.

 

Once these issues are worked out, Concerto will be ready for release. I will also be working on the lower-cost Concertino, which may see a near-parallel release. Concerto is seeing daily development now so it shouldn't be long!

Very happy to hear!  Honestly, if anyone still has a flaky console, they can probably find another.  I realize you don't want to take that position as the developer, but this is going to be bought, or has been, by those of us who are knee deep in collecting.  If one of us cannot obtain another 7800, shame on us!

[Jinks]

3 minutes ago, Greg2600 said:

Very happy to hear!  Honestly, if anyone still has a flaky console, they can probably find another.  I realize you don't want to take that position as the developer, but this is going to be bought, or has been, by those of us who are knee deep in collecting.  If one of us cannot obtain another 7800, shame on us!

Both of mine are "flaky" by your definition.

Aside from Batari's consoles I never heard from one user that the Concerto works flawless on. 

 

Should we all own 25 or 50 of them to get one that adapts to the Concerto?

 

I would let Batari keep working on it instead as he seems to be making headway. 

 

 

 

[Greg2600]

21 minutes ago, Jinks said:

Both of mine are "flaky" by your definition.

Aside from Batari's consoles I never heard from one user that the Concerto works flawless on. 

 

Should we all own 25 or 50 of them to get one that adapts to the Concerto?

 

I would let Batari keep working on it instead as he seems to be making headway.

 

My suggestion was prefaced on his expectation that incompatibility should go "down to zero."

[+batari]

51 minutes ago, Jinks said:

Both of mine are "flaky" by your definition.

Aside from Batari's consoles I never heard from one user that the Concerto works flawless on. 

 

Should we all own 25 or 50 of them to get one that adapts to the Concerto?

 

I would let Batari keep working on it instead as he seems to be making headway.

Flawless and flaky are ends of the spectrum. Flawless means it always works 100% in all cases. Flaky, to me, refers to a console that basically never works.

 

That said, my consoles aren't "flawless." Occasionally one may still fail to get past the splash screen, or one may fail on the menu, but once a game is loaded they are all solid, and all can play the games without issues. All these issues are likely a single cause, and it probably has a great deal to do with my 7800 coding, which I am fixing. The problem is that I used RIOT RAM heavily, thinking it was OK because the 7800 BIOS itself uses it, but testing has shown it to be unreliable, and there is no way to make it reliable.