sd cartridge for 7800?

[78001987]

That's interesting. I haven't installed a pokey in mine yet. Haven't gotten around to desoldering my spare ballblazer yet.

[78001987]

Added the pokey. So ballblazer and commando work perfect. Other pokey homebrew, not so much. Beef drop launches, but gets frozen when the gameplay screen starts. Music still playing though. No sound in DK XM. Or BBCQ.

[Andromeda Stardust]

2600 games run at a slower clock speed, which could make things work in spite of the issue.

 

I don't suppose you have a scope to look at the power and cart bus lines, do you?

No scopes or logic analyzers. Just a bog standard AC/DC multimeter (resistance, ohms, volts) with digital readout and manual range selector. I did got a new one not long ago with auto range that can also measure capacitance, frequency, and duty cycle.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Added the pokey. So ballblazer and commando work perfect. Other pokey homebrew, not so much. Beef drop launches, but gets frozen when the gameplay screen starts. Music still playing though. No sound in DK XM. Or BBCQ.

I hadn't tried Beef Drop yet. Well I think I got the older non-Pokey ROMs in the Good7800 set instead of the XE ROM.

 

Anyway huge amount of bitd and homebrew 7800 games just refuse to work properly but non DPC or special chip 2600 games work just fine.

 

DK XM gave black screen for me, and Bentley Bear is unplayable because he falls through the floor. If you can actually play the game, Kudos to you. If you got the same ROM that I did, I noticed when it loads, it use says "ROM + Superchip" instead of "ROM + Superchip + Pokey @[insert address value here]" so it is possible the Concerto may not be detecting the Pokey in the ROM header or the header isn't formatted properly.

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

They will freeze at some point and sometimes once they load a get a black screen. Sometimes the screen and the sound just goes crazy.

 

The 2600 games play fine on Concerto and my Harmony Encore works fine on my 7800 as do all my regular carts. All the ROMs work fine in my Raspberry Pie.

 

I have an A3 serial number, made in Taiwan with a LongHorn Video mod.

 

Anything left to try?

Similar to mine but I don't have any issues with menu crashing, just bizarre behavior in 7800 games. Usually if I get vertical bars or some such with the Concerto it's because I didn't wait long enough after power cycle to allow the logic states to fully clear. Non DPC or special chip 2600 games work fine on it.

 

If you could, try to open your 7800 and get the PCB revision numbers as I did with mine earlier. Maybe Batari or someone can find a pattern with revisions of problem PCBs. Serials don't necessarily reflect what revision the PCB has, though for compatibility, A1 is generally preferable to A3 or X.

[78001987]

So here's my overall findings so far:

 

No issues running any 2600 roms that are expected to work. I didn't try Pitfall II.

 

Every commercial 7800 rom I tried ran just fine.

 

7800 Homebrews:

 

DK XM - runs without sound. (Pokey is installed) Gameplay is fine. Minor graphical corruption on the How High can you Get? screen, with dotted lines across the screen where the Apes appear, in a grid.

 

Pac-Man Collection Pokey - no sound, game plays fine.

 

Froggie - title screen shows up, doesn't respond to button press to start game.

 

Bon-Q - freezes at www.atariage.com splash screen, game never starts.

 

Beef Drop - runs 100% fine with no Pokey installed, using TIA sound. With Pokey installed, game starts and title screen is fine, when you start the game, the gameplay screen shows up corrupted and frozen characters don't move. Pokey Music plays though.

 

Kevin Mos' - Kung Fu Master, Xevious, Galaga, Choplifter, and Double Dragon Graphic hacks - play just fine.

 

Failsafe - plays fine.

 

Water Ski graphic hack froze at gameplay screen with corrupted graphics.

 

Frenzy/Berzerk - plays 100%.

 

Scramble/Super Cobra - plays 100%

 

Bentley Bear's Crystal Quest - plays without pokey sound.

 

Space Invaders, Super Pac-Man, Jr. Pac-Man, Asteroids Deluxe/Vector, Moon Cresta, MEteor Shower - all play 100% as expected.

Edited November 3, 2016 by 78001987

[tep392]

DK XM - runs without sound. (Pokey is installed) Gameplay is fine. Minor graphical corruption on the How High can you Get? screen, with dotted lines across the screen where the Apes appear, in a grid.

Which one did you try? Try this one from the DKXM thread.

 

dkxm_demo_v12_ntsc.a78

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/204250-donkey-kong-xm-pre-order-and-demo/page-1?do=findComment&comment=2621136

[78001987]

Which one did you try? Try this one from the DKXM thread.

 

dkxm_demo_v12_ntsc.a78

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/204250-donkey-kong-xm-pre-order-and-demo/page-1?do=findComment&comment=2621136

Ah. I tried the one above that one in the thread. I'll try that one tonight! Thanks.

[Everett1954]

This is for Batari (Fred) : I know you don't always read or respond to your PM's

 

I sent you one tonight regarding my Concerto, please read and respond.

[78001987]

Update to earlier post:

 

I upgraded the concerto bios to the latest one batari posted. It didn't change the pokey sounds not working.

 

Froggie does work when a genuine 7800 joystick/proline is plugged in? Odd, but I'll take it!

 

The last linked DK XM behaves the same. Game plays ok, no sound, weird graphical starfield on How High can you Get? Screen.

Edited November 4, 2016 by 78001987

[DBloke]

Damn missed the batch, can my name go on the list for the next batch?

[Everett1954]

Update to earlier post:

 

I upgraded the concerto bios to the latest one batari posted.

 

So what firmware are you using? Mine came with .91 and he posted .9 (an earlier version).

 

Also what brand, size and class SD card are you using?

 

Have you done anything to improve loading and playing the games?

 

Thanks

[78001987]

 

So what firmware are you using? Mine came with .91 and he posted .9 (an earlier version).

 

Also what brand, size and class SD card are you using?

 

Have you done anything to improve loading and playing the games?

 

Thanks

I'm running .91, he also posted that earlier.

 

I'm running on a 256Mb MMC card (predecessor to SD) formatted FAT 16. loading the games is not an issue. I tried two other SDHC cards and both failed.

 

The main issue now isn't games loading. It's Pokey audio not playing in pokey enabled homebrew, which is still an issue. Pokey audio works fine with Ballblazer and Commando Roms.

[Jinks]

My board came today!! I took apart my maybe one and only bblazer cart.. Anyways a couple questions..

1. The Bblazer cart had a dealio on it for the pokey chip on the board it says 1z 25v do I use this on the chip on the multicart? I am thinking that is a capacitor that you guys are talking about.

2. how to format the sd cart what works the best fat 16, 32 blah blah whatever.

3. For the roms is there a one stop one file copy paste to the sd card?

I have never had a multicart before so I have no idea.. well I have had one once but came doa and cost to much to ship back to poland. I think the customs scanners blanked the rom on that one..

[CPUWIZ]

I have stacks of BB boards sitting around, all they have is power smoothing caps.

 

 

[Jinks]

Cool CPU. So that cap would not be the one to solder to the pins on the pokey?

Please forgive me I am by no means any sort of electronics master. I can solder etc and what not. I think my other two questions I figured out the thread Trebor posted for roms and fat 16 should work for formatting.

I think both the pokey and the eprom chip both have those caps.

[Jinks]

I put the file for the bios update in my sd card. Does that need to be unzipped also the file Trebor has you need to enter your credit card number to download? I am not going to do that..Any files that I don't need to possibly get scammed on? When I put my SD card in it says something about bios missing. Does it have a bios anyway and can just find a file and put it on there to try?

Will try later this weekend... If someone has a step by step to get the sd card setup for the cart that would be great as I as out of ideas.

[+Trebor]

I put the file for the bios update in my sd card. Does that need to be unzipped also the file Trebor has you need to enter your credit card number to download? I am not going to do that...

 

You don't have to do that.

[Jinks]

If I get the file for the roms to come up do they need to be unzipped when it gets copied to the sd card. Also where does the file go into a bios folder which should be zipped or unzipped?

My screen just says no bios detected when I power the atari on.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Everything needs to be unzipped, preferably not in the root directory. Any website that asks for your CC info to download ROMs is either a phishing scam or ripping you off. ROMs are technically legal gray area so I can't direct link to a place to freely download them here. Some games are available to download individually from the 2600 and 7800 AA database. Or you can download a "No Intro" set. Google "Archive.org No Intro ROM download" (without quotes). Generally the ROMs will be individually Zipped, then added to a large Zip archive. Common formats are .zip, .rar, or .7z. You need to extract the entire archive, then extract all of the ROMs contained in the extraction folder. I use 7z, a freeware Windows utility for extracting and creating archives. Once you extract the main archive, it creates a folder full of smaller archives which contain individual ROMs. You want to highlight all of the files, go to context menu 7z -> Extract to Here. Wait for the operation to complete. Now you can safely delete all of the compressed files. Typically 2600 ROMs are either .bin or .a26, and 7800 ROMs need to be .78. Next sort the ROMs into smaller subdirectories. You do not want thousands of ROMs in a single folder or it will be impossible to navigate. I usually sort by alphabet and limit them to 250 files or less per folder. There are a lot more 2600 games than 7800 so you can keep the entire 7800 library in a single folder if you want. Finally after you've got your files and folders arrainged how you want them, copy the entire ROMs directory over to the SD card. Windows should copy the files by alphabet. Harmony/Concerto don't auto arrange the files so they will appear in the order copied. You can also use a utility such as Drivesort to rearrange the file indexes if the names don't display in order from the flash cart menu. I have flash carts for ten different game consoles so it ain't my first rodeo.

 

Hope this helps. PM me if you need more advice.

[Jinks]

I updated the bios and then repowered up. And after awhile the screen came up to select files, I never had it unzipped so it would not load. I took the sd card back to the computer and unzipped the 78 files and then went back to the atari.

Now the atari just says concerto v.5 on the screen and nothing happens at all...I was close now it looks like it is bricked I guess?? I tried both 7800s the same thing..

Has anyone had it hang on the title screen and have a fix? Would have been nice to see a single game to come up or load even if it crashed would have shown some promise.

[78001987]

My concerto won't update the bios from the SD card. I choose the bios file, it tells me it updated and to reboot, then I restart the 7800 and the version stays the same .91 I tried to put .90 but it doesn't change?

[Jinks]

My concerto won't update the bios from the SD card. I choose the bios file, it tells me it updated and to reboot, then I restart the 7800 and the version stays the same .91 I tried to put .90 but it doesn't change?

I think batari said that thats the way it is. If it says updated it is.

[Jinks]

So it looks like the main screen I am seeing is right then it is supposed to go to the list of folders. Perhaps the bios is corrupted and that is why it is hanging? Is there a procedure for repairing thru the usb port?

Would like a repair solution or option to return for refund please. Also Pmed Batari awaiting response.

[JATO]

Batari I was on the list to get a Concerto please let me know when more Carts are available... : )

Edited November 5, 2016 by JATO