sd cartridge for 7800?

[+Muddyfunster]

7 minutes ago, groundtrooper said:

Are we counting the Concertino as #4 with Concerto, Saints and Dragonfly if we are obsoleting CC2 & Mateos?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I mentioned 4, Dragonfly, Saint, Concerto, Concertino = 4 options.

[+groundtrooper]

3 hours ago, Muddyfunster said:

I mentioned 4, Dragonfly, Saint, Concerto, Concertino = 4 options.

That's what I thought. 

[Shawn]

OK then there is a 5th. I thought someone might have mentioned another one that is only known to a handful

of folks but won't end up in mass production, at least I don't believe it will.

[+batari]

5 hours ago, Muddyfunster said:

I mentioned 4, Dragonfly, Saint, Concerto, Concertino = 4 options.

Got it. There are enough similarities between Concerto and Concertino that I was not considering them distinct flashcarts in my mind, even though they really are.

 

I think it's kind of funny that the 7800 market has had so few flashcart options for so long, but now suddenly there are several coming out at once.

[John Stamos Mullet]

6 hours ago, Muddyfunster said:

I mentioned 4, Dragonfly, Saint, Concerto, Concertino = 4 options.

Does Saint really even count though, since he hasn't even started it yet? 

[John Stamos Mullet]

3 hours ago, Shawn said:

OK then there is a 5th. I thought someone might have mentioned another one that is only known to a handful

of folks but won't end up in mass production, at least I don't believe it will.

If it's a secret project that will never be released for purchase, then who cares?

 

seems like certain people only ever bring it up in these discussions to brag about being in the not-so-secret club who know about it. 

[Jinks]

I hope the developers get these first. 

Looks like Batari will be first to market by a long shot. That will be the biggest gamechanger. This dude is going to make a 10 dollar Hokey.. Why would you not want to support him? We have been whining about pokeys for over a decade and having a reliable source that is 4x cheaper than the alternative so he should be supported bigtime. Also look at his shipping free to USA and 8 to Canada.. heck people charge 15 shipping for a cart usually for me. So he is a reasonable guy that is not out to make every last penny but to make something great happen for the Atari community.  Do what you like guys but for me there is only one option. 

 

Edited October 12, 2020 by Jinks

[Jinks]

7 minutes ago, John Stamos Mullet said:

If it's a secret project that will never be released for purchase, then who cares?

 

seems like certain people only ever bring it up in these discussions to brag about being in the not-so-secret club who know about it. 

I duct taped my phone to my 7800 and now it has smart capabilities. I win!! 

No no your analog! ?

 

[Greg2600]

28 minutes ago, Jinks said:

I hope the developers get these first. 

Looks like Batari will be first to market by a long shot. That will be the biggest gamechanger. This dude is going to make a 10 dollar Hokey.. Why would you not want to support him? We have been whining about pokeys for over a decade and having a reliable source that is 4x cheaper than the alternative so he should be supported bigtime. Also look at his shipping free to USA and 8 to Canada.. heck people charge 15 shipping for a cart usually for me. So he is a reasonable guy that is not out to make every last penny but to make something great happen for the Atari community.  Do what you like guys but for me there is only one option. 

 

How does Hokey compare to say, the Yamaha chip?  You know me, I'm last to know these things!

[Jinks]

17 minutes ago, Greg2600 said:

How does Hokey compare to say, the Yamaha chip?  You know me, I'm last to know these things!

Yamaha chip blows it away. Hokey is pokey. Yamaha is something you would hear in a 80s arcade in about 84 85 I believe. Its ok man search for ym2151 chip on google and then atari pokey. 

Check out PMP pac man collection XM edition the latest of his pac games. It sounds exactly like the arcade with no compromises. 

Edited October 12, 2020 by Jinks

[Greg2600]

3 minutes ago, Jinks said:

Yamaha chip blows it away. Hokey is pokey. Yamaha is something you would hear in a 80s arcade in about 84 85 I believe. Its ok man search for ym2151 chip on google and then atari pokey. 

Check out PMP pac man collection XM edition the latest of his pac games. It sounds exactly like the arcade with ni compromises. 

I've heard the YM already, yes, it's great.  I thought perhaps the Hokey was an upgrade in addition to Pokey replacement. 

[Jinks]

3 minutes ago, Greg2600 said:

I've heard the YM already, yes, it's great.  I thought perhaps the Hokey was an upgrade in addition to Pokey replacement. 

You know these things. ?

[RevEng]

20 hours ago, Muddyfunster said:

I think this is a fantastic time, maybe even a golden age for the 7800. There are so many developers active now, mature tools like the fantastic 7800Basic and now not 1 but potentially 4 SD cards solutions coming to market that will aid developers and support consumers alike.

I agree entirely, it does seem to be the dawning of a new age for the 7800. The software WIPs I'm seeing are simply amazing, but these new hardware developments are completely unexpected.

 

Hardware is always a lot more messy than software will ever be; it involves a lot of up front cost, R&D, specialized equipment, failed attempts as the problem space is revealed, weird consoles giving you heartache, and the occasional pissy customer who expects perfection from their hobby wares. Taking all of that stuff into account, I have little doubt that batari or CPUWIZ haven't broken even on their numerous hardware contributions to the scene. In an interview Curt said he would be losing money for each XM unit shipped. While I always hope for any project to bring in a big profit, at the very least rj1307 isn't really getting paid properly for his time.

 

Once the hardware projects are out, the contribution from these guys get tends to become invisible. When a new game comes out, nobody thinks of the flash cart that was instrumental to development of that game, or the engineering that was put into the cart hardware, without which the game probably wouldn't have been written in the first place. Today happens to be Canadian Thanksgiving, and you amazing hardware guys are certainly in my thoughts. You kick ass. ?

[Shawn]

13 hours ago, John Stamos Mullet said:

If it's a secret project that will never be released for purchase, then who cares?

 

seems like certain people only ever bring it up in these discussions to brag about being in the not-so-secret club who know about it. 

 

It's not a "secret" really. It's been mentioned a couple times on the forum and I thought it might have been mentioned as another

cart in the race by someone else. I agree that if it's not coming to the masses it really doesn't count or matter in such a discussion. 

[Shawn]

One thing that is kinda bugging me is that there are folks who kept asking for and talking about "dual pokey" and "yamaha" (2 things I don't give a flying duck about myself) but now that those things have been realized on the same SD cart it's being damn near marginalized instead of celebrated. I just don't get how that is possible. 

[Tidus79001]

3 minutes ago, Shawn said:

One thing that is kinda bugging me is that there are folks who kept asking for and talking about "dual pokey" and "yamaha" (2 things I don't give a flying duck about myself) but now that those things have been realized on the same SD cart it's being damn near marginalized instead of celebrated. I just don't get how that is possible. 

I totally agree with you.  At this point just a SD cart with 1 Hokey would be perfect. If the 7800 XM does get picked up by someone once all is sorted out with the future of project that is where we will get all the extra features that are nice to have but not necessary for playing the existing games.  As for  SD cart its main goals should just be to provide a format that can play any exciting released games, so SD storage and 1 Hokey will suffice.

[+DrVenkman]

5 minutes ago, Shawn said:

One thing that is kinda bugging me is that there are folks who kept asking for and talking about "dual pokey" and "yamaha" (2 things I don't give a flying duck about myself) ...

I'm confused. Just yesterday you said those features made it "blow everything else out of the water" in this post.

 

The reality is, more features are always a chicken and the egg problem. Developers have no incentive and probably no real interest in writing games to utilize features that maybe a couple dozen people around the world will ever be able to use (which is why we have yet to see a big slew of YM-enhanced titles 10+ years after the XM was announced). If the devs had wanted to write stuff for emulation just for shits and giggles, we'd have already seen it. Bob and his collaborators should be congratulated that the Pac Collection got re-done to use YM, but has anything else really been done? 

Feature-creep is the enemy of production - POKEY on-cart has been a thing since Ballblazer and Commando, and I think that's all many of the current retro-gamers really "demand" from a flash cart. We want to play our POKEY-enhanced homebrews and originals, plus a chance to try all the amazing POKEY hacks and demos, and WIP titles from authors currently writing, on real hardware. 

 

Just my two cents of course. 

[Shawn]

42 minutes ago, DrVenkman said:

I'm confused. Just yesterday you said those features made it "blow everything else out of the water" in this post.

 

The reality is, more features are always a chicken and the egg problem. Developers have no incentive and probably no real interest in writing games to utilize features that maybe a couple dozen people around the world will ever be able to use (which is why we have yet to see a big slew of YM-enhanced titles 10+ years after the XM was announced). If the devs had wanted to write stuff for emulation just for shits and giggles, we'd have already seen it. Bob and his collaborators should be congratulated that the Pac Collection got re-done to use YM, but has anything else really been done? 

Feature-creep is the enemy of production - POKEY on-cart has been a thing since Ballblazer and Commando, and I think that's all many of the current retro-gamers really "demand" from a flash cart. We want to play our POKEY-enhanced homebrews and originals, plus a chance to try all the amazing POKEY hacks and demos, and WIP titles from authors currently writing, on real hardware. 

 

Just my two cents of course. 

 

Yes, What I meant was others (not always programmers, which needs to be mentioned) asked for years for a means to do such feature rich things and now that it's possible as well as probable, it's "meh, not a big deal" and the folks who spoke up about these exact features are silent. The dragonfly is doing pretty much everything the XM was gonna do aside from HSC. I thought it would have been praised for being such a thing is all. I also need to add that I agree with everything you said in regards to what software is actually getting made and what hardware is required. I'm seeing it from both sides and the middle. Sorry if what I'm saying is confusing. I might be having a hard time putting this to words.

[+DrVenkman]

15 minutes ago, Shawn said:

Sorry if what I'm saying is confusing. I might be having a hard time putting this to words.

No worries. I get it now.

 

Yeah, I agree that the Dragonfly sounds pretty great hardware-wise and maybe the availability of something like this will spur the developer community to take advantage of it when it's available. I don't know - I can write barely write enough 65xx/65xxx code to blink lights on my little WDC Mensch SBC for fun, and that's about it, lol.

[Shawn]

19 minutes ago, DrVenkman said:

No worries. I get it now.

 

Yeah, I agree that the Dragonfly sounds pretty great hardware-wise and maybe the availability of something like this will spur the developer community to take advantage of it when it's available. I don't know - I can write barely write enough 65xx/65xxx code to blink lights on my little WDC Mensch SBC for fun, and that's about it, lol.

 

I'm roughly in the same boat as far as proper programming goes. I've not done anything worth while since qbasic  I fuck around a little but not much more than that. I leave that to the professionals

 

[+Pat Brady]

On 10/11/2020 at 12:21 PM, Shawn said:

The Dragonfly cart has blown all other similar devices out of the water. Just look at was it's currently doing. Dual Pokey, Yamaha, SRAM, On screen display, Power supply management and more. It's like an adult fist fighting a child the gap is so huge.

 

2 hours ago, Shawn said:

Yes, What I meant was others (not always programmers, which needs to be mentioned) asked for years for a means to do such feature rich things and now that it's possible as well as probable, it's "meh, not a big deal" and the folks who spoke up about these exact features are silent. The dragonfly is doing pretty much everything the XM was gonna do aside from HSC.

 

I’m not totally versed on this stuff, but last I read, XM would provide 128k RAM, HSC, POKEY, YM, an SIO port, a keyboard port, and ability to play cartridge-only games (but not a way to play ROM files from the internet, aside from inserting one of the carts that can do so). Decked-out Concerto provides 16k RAM, HSC, and POKEY. Decked-out Dragonfly will provide 16k RAM, POKEY, and YM.

 

The other differences are that Dragonfly has its own power supply and does game selection on cart instead of via menu. Different users might consider these advantages or disadvantages.

 

To me, Dragonfly looks much closer to Concerto than to XM. It will be nice to have a choice, should Concerto and Dragonfly both become available. I personally prefer the feature set and design of Concerto.

[+batari]

28 minutes ago, bizarrostormy said:

 

 

I’m not totally versed on this stuff, but last I read, XM would provide 128k RAM, HSC, POKEY, YM, an SIO port, a keyboard port, and ability to play cartridge-only games (but not a way to play ROM files from the internet, aside from inserting one of the carts that can do so). Decked-out Concerto provides 16k RAM, HSC, and POKEY. Decked-out Dragonfly will provide 16k RAM, POKEY, and YM.

 

The other differences are that Dragonfly has its own power supply and does game selection on cart instead of via menu. Different users might consider these advantages or disadvantages.

 

To me, Dragonfly looks much closer to Concerto than to XM. It will be nice to have a choice, should Concerto and Dragonfly both become available. I personally prefer the feature set and design of Concerto.

I think both carts have 512k RAM. Just wanted to clear that part up.

[+mksmith]

I think it's great there is going to a few options for devs and gamers.  For me the only real difference I see is one has a screen (ahla Gotek style) and one will have the on-screen menu and people will have a choice that suits.  As Mike said its great for the community to have these guys investing their time and effort (and money) into building these for us to benefit from.  Having been around the 7800 community for couple of years now you can feel the groundswell building around the machine so it's very timely these tools will be available and along with Mike's awesome 7800basic pushing so many boundaries I can only see only growth!

 

I hope the YM will eventually also offer a viable alternative down the track with the help of these carts and hopefully one day the XM. Bob's Pacman and Mike and Bobby's demo track show it brings a different arcade type of sound to the platform.

[Shawn]

2 hours ago, mksmith said:

I think it's great there is going to a few options for devs and gamers.  For me the only real difference I see is one has a screen (ahla Gotek style) and one will have the on-screen menu and people will have a choice that suits.  As Mike said its great for the community to have these guys investing their time and effort (and money) into building these for us to benefit from.  Having been around the 7800 community for couple of years now you can feel the groundswell building around the machine so it's very timely these tools will be available and along with Mike's awesome 7800basic pushing so many boundaries I can only see only growth!

 

I hope the YM will eventually also offer a viable alternative down the track with the help of these carts and hopefully one day the XM. Bob's Pacman and Mike and Bobby's demo track show it brings a different arcade type of sound to the platform.

 

The Dragonfly will be the only YM audio option in the near future. Fred plans on implementing it into the HOKEY at one point possibly as well. The XM is not worth mentioning in the conversation right now as it's not really on the playfield for the time being and there is absolutely no indication when it might ever be finished. For all that is known it could be years, perhaps another 10 like it already has in it's troubled history. It's not exactly at the forefront with the project creator sadly passing as he did. Someone else said they will pick up the pieces to finish it off at some point but I wouldn't invest any time waiting for that to become a reality. Like someone else mentioned, if the XM was gonna net programmers making YM enabled games we would have had some over the last 10 years instead of just the one Bob did with his PMC and the tracker that I'm pretty sure Mike wrote, IIRC.  Not exactly a pile of must have software that was just waiting for the hardware to support it. 

[RevEng]

33 minutes ago, Shawn said:

if the XM was gonna net programmers making YM enabled games we would have had some over the last 10 years instead of just the one Bob did with his PMC and the tracker that I'm pretty sure Mike wrote, IIRC.  Not exactly a pile of must have software that was just waiting for the hardware to support it. 

Anything could happen, but I think it's right to put any hopes of XM aside and move on with other plans. The YM tracker was indeed mine, and I'm quite proud of it. I had more stuff planned for the tracker, and XM in general as I'm sure Bob and Perry did, and probably others... the first stage of getting XM into dev hands got the ball rolling, but that second stage of getting XM into player hands needed to happen to keep the ball rolling. My hobby coding time is a finite resource, so there's only so much code I'll write on faith.

 

But even without a bunch of XM specific games, any 7800basic games that need RAM, HSC, or Pokey and don't find that hardware, will automatically probe for XM and enable it. Then there's the titles that could have just plain used the HSC or Pokey without being XM aware.

 

Anyway, moving on. Even if XM doesn't get finished, we'll eventually figure out how to reuse the work and resurrect the better parts, in one form or another.