VecFever

[Cintivoch]

Cool VecFever Package. Not Mine,,,yet. 🙂  Even has a Vectrex side mount stand that looks like the one I was able to get from a person that printed a few of these stands. Also some nice boxes. That it is also an Ultimate version of the VecFever is good. But maybe not required as much as previous. Cool 128 MB version certainly nice to have for more storage! Guessing we won't see this kind of VecFever for sale again anytime soon!

 

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vectrex-Vecfever-cart-Ultimate-Multicart-w--Robot-Arena-box-&-Asteroids-overlay/394344708716

 

Pictures from the listing:

 

[+GoldLeader]

On 11/22/2022 at 12:14 PM, Cintivoch said:

 

Dan Akroyd is

 

"Vec Fever"

 

Rated PG-13

 

 

Edited November 24, 2022 by GoldLeader

[uczmeg]

So it went for a cool £1550!

 

Anyone on here buy it?

[+jgkspsx]

Not I.

[Obiw4n]

Not I, said the walrus, actually weirdly enough I live in Brighton ( well Hove actually ) and I have a VF and an asteroids overlay, I do now proudly own a 'Rocks & Saucers' cart for my Vectrex which was nice to get ( thanks again Thomas ) and I hope whoever bought this one recently uses it to create a new game which I'm going to do... it's going to be the best vector game ever created and the coolest, it's going to be so popular that it's going to be become eponymous on many other systems, even being shown in feature films, the Vectrex console as a result which become highly sought after and the prices for such a device will skyrocket... and the title for this most wonderful of games will be called : ?

 

Dunno yet... I'm just chewing the cud... a bit of mental chewing gum... hmmm

Edited December 3, 2022 by Obiw4n
had a thought...

[uczmeg]

2 hours ago, Obiw4n said:

and the title for this most wonderful of games will be called : ?

 

We look forward to watching videos of it as not many will be able to play.

 

Could you do it for the PiTrex instead? (or at least pretend whilst it's in it's current imaginary state)

[Vectrexer]

Still just as awesome this Christmas season!

Word War VI - Christmas Version (Game Play) | vectrexmad
https://youtu.be/bhB6p_cb39Y

Word War VI - Christmas Version (Attract mode) | vectrexmad
https://youtu.be/RZm_uMfXtSw

#Vectrex #Merry #Christmas #Word #War #VI #WordWarVI #Game #Play and #Attract #mode #VecFever #Thomas #Sontowski #Stephen #Cameron

[Quetzalcoatl]

Does anyone have the MicroSD card version of Vecfever and know how to properly update the firmware? I'm having trouble getting the updated firmware to work for Vecfever 2.53. I replaced the System folder with the one from the zip folder. Then took the files fw_update_v2_53.v4e and md5_info and put them into the root folder of the sdcard. When I try to run any games, Major Havor PE says "wrong Vectrex cart" and all other games say "firmware too old". Also I don't even see Pooyan in the list. What am I doing wrong here? Do I need to go into the file browser and manually install the new firmware update or something? This seems like a stupid question as it appears this should just be a drag n drop type of deal. I emailed Thomas but figured I'd see if anyone here knows what to do. There doesn't appear to be any folder to put the firmware file. I don't see any other file with a similar filename. I've attached a screenshot for clarity.

[vectrexroli]

Placing the firmware update file is not enough, you need to find it, click on it and do the firmware update first.

Finding the file depeneds on the firmeware you are currently using, I would try to create a new folder in root called ROMS .

Put the firmware there and try to find it there in your Vecfever file browser and click on it.

After that your Vectrex will reboot and check the firmware. If you see 2023 on the boot screen it should be already fine.

You also need to include all new ROMs on the game list later.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

4 hours ago, Quetzalcoatl said:

Does anyone have the MicroSD card version of Vecfever and know how to properly update the firmware? I'm having trouble getting the updated firmware to work for Vecfever 2.53. I replaced the System folder with the one from the zip folder. Then took the files fw_update_v2_53.v4e and md5_info and put them into the root folder of the sdcard. When I try to run any games, Major Havor PE says "wrong Vectrex cart" and all other games say "firmware too old". Also I don't even see Pooyan in the list. What am I doing wrong here? Do I need to go into the file browser and manually install the new firmware update or something? This seems like a stupid question as it appears this should just be a drag n drop type of deal. I emailed Thomas but figured I'd see if anyone here knows what to do. There doesn't appear to be any folder to put the firmware file. I don't see any other file with a similar filename. I've attached a screenshot for clarity.

I went through this myself last week. What I had to do was I first made a backup of my current VecFever contents to my computer just incase. I then deleted all of my current Roms, the Extreme Player, Music...anything that I knew I didn't need immediately because as I have a Mark 1, it didn't have enough space for the new System folder with everything else. So I had to sacrifice that stuff.

 

I copied over the new System folder (Again, once I had room). And created a new folder called FW and placed the firmware update file in there. I then booted up my VecFever and RAN the update file like you would a ROM. It updated the cart, I got the new animated logo intro and from there I then had to start over on the directory layouts.

 

The System folder is hidden by default and doesn't appear. So to get the stuff working, I had to move the Apps folder out of the system folder and put in on the root by itself. I then copied my Roms folder back over. So at that point I only had my FW, System, and Roms folders on the root of the VecFever.

 

To get the new arcade roms working, I had to create the Data folder within the System folder and then one some games, I had to create a unique folder for each of the arcade roms with the needed files within. Some of them, would actually work when I left them in .Zip format in that same folder. So I just had to check them one by one and modify/change the files as needed until I had them all working that I wanted. 

 

After all of this, I only have like 2mb of space left on the cart so it looks like my music and video files will just have to remain non usable at this point since the system folder is needed under the new firmware best as I can tell. I'm sure that is why the Mark II and 128mb versions of VecFever were later made was to allow for more internal storage. But I'm not complaining as I can play most of the other stuff with my other Vectrex Flash carts.

 

[Quetzalcoatl]

Thank you for the very informative replies CrossBow and vectrexroli. I've made some progress based on your input but I'm not 100 percent done yet. I successfully updated the firmware version to 2.53. I added Pooyan, Donkey Kong, Bomb Jack, and Major Havoc PE roms in their own separate file folders under data. Now I have Pooyan and Bomb Jack working. However, my games list stops at Tomcat and so I can't see V Kong or War of the Worlds, etc. I haven't added the Tomcat rom yet so maybe that's causing some issues there. I'm not sure what to do with md5 info text file, or is this just for informational purposes to let you know which roms it's expecting? I'll mess around with it some more tonight. This was a bit more convoluted than I expected.

 

Edit: I added the Tomcat ROM as well as Protector and verified I have all the ROMs at the end of the alphabet such as Warrior, WOTW, etc, and they're all there. For some reason the Tomcat ROM didn't work and still nothing is displaying beneath Tomcat (I will try putting all the files in their own folder rather than a zip). Perhaps it's a RAM issue and I do need to remove all the Music, etc. But it's definitely not a ROM issue as this is the MicroSD VecFever and I have a big MicroSD card for this. I'll keep tinkering with it later tonight.

Edited January 2, 2023 by Quetzalcoatl

[Quetzalcoatl]

Alright I finally got around to trying this all out again. Turns out there's a Games List options menu within the Main Menu which lets you turn on and off games from displaying in the Games List. For whatever reason a whole ton of games were disabled by default from this menu. I turned them all back on and they're all displaying correctly now in the list.

 

The issue with Tomcat was also fixed with a different ROM, and by putting it into its own folder.

 

Looks like I'm only missing the VecCaves ROM at this point, but it would appear that one isn't widely available to download. I believe you need to actually own a copy of the game and dump the ROM yourself in order to play it on VecFever. Thanks again to everyone for your helpful input.

[sprazzi]

The only arcade rom that eludes me is the VBREAK.ZIP rom, i.e. Breakout renamed...

 

Can anyone give a hint on where to locate it?

 

thanks

[sprazzi]

I ended up 3d-printing one and carving a small hole on the rear for the usb port...

[mikesk8]

Are there any signs on the horizon, there will be a new batch of those amazing cards?  I have been trying to contact Thomas for years without any success ;-(

[+jgkspsx]

On 10/7/2023 at 12:29 PM, mikesk8 said:

Are there any signs on the horizon, there will be a new batch of those amazing cards?

No.

[mikesk8]

29 minutes ago, jgkspsx said:

No.

I was expecting this answer  thanks.

[+slx]

On 10/9/2023 at 7:54 AM, jgkspsx said:

No.

Is there any more information available why the hardware won't be available any more? @TomSon's last posting here was long ago but on the vecfever home page, there are frequent firmware updates. Are all those arcade ports mentioned there really available to lucky owners? A bit confused here.

[+jgkspsx]

6 hours ago, slx said:

Is there any more information available why the hardware won't be available any more? 
 

Are all those arcade ports mentioned there really available to lucky owners? 

No.

 

and

 

Yes.

 

A true artist is a person who answers to nobody but themselves.

[RockLobster]

I'm a new Vectrex owner and am reading as much as I can so please don't slay me with this question...  

 

So I've several multicarts now...  Sean Kelly's 2.0 one, BackBit Pro and most recently a PiTrex.   

 

I may have incorrectly assumed that VecFever was yet another multicart but it seems that I may be wrong in that it has additional functionality.   vecfever.com has lots of changelog comments but I must have missed an overview / comparison of it.  I'm particularly interested in some of the "vectorized" arcade games but it seems like the ".V4E" files can only run on the VecFever?

 

Meaning, there's no emulator or way to have a PiTrex or other multicart run these games?

 

Thank you

[akator]

37 minutes ago, RockLobster said:

Meaning, there's no emulator or way to have a PiTrex or other multicart run these games?

There is, although not everything that can run on VecFever.  Dig through these pages and follow the directions, you'll be able to get your PiTrex setup well.

 

http://www.ombertech.com/cnk/pitrex/wiki/index.php

[RockLobster]

16 minutes ago, akator said:

Dig through these pages and follow the directions, you'll be able to get your PiTrex setup well.

Thanks, yes that was the base page for setting up my PiTrex after xmas.   

 

One thing I'm shamefully disappointed in were how many arcade games on the PiTrex are still without sound.  
 

I'm not complaining as I understand there's a lot of work involved.  It just seems like VecFever has a lot of things running well.

[gtoal]

24 minutes ago, RockLobster said:

One thing I'm shamefully disappointed in were how many arcade games on the PiTrex are still without sound.  

This would be better in a separate Pitrex thread, but since you're new here I'll answer here this time, but please don't flood the Vecfever thread with a lot of followups.  The info below is mostly known to the members of our Facebook group, Vectrex Fans Unite!, where we hang out more often than here or proboards.

The Vectrex hardware doesn't really support sampled sound (except in a couple of very limited ways where the sound is carefully interleaved with the graphics, as in the Bad Apple demo etc) so *all* arcade games that have sound need to have *all* the sound completely recoded from scratch to use the tone generator on the Vectrex to produce effects that sound a bit like the originals. [*] Malban from the PiTrex team did a few by hand (the most popular games, such as Asteroids and Battlezone) and asked for programmers in the community to help out with adding sound for more games, but no-one volunteered.  All our code is on github and anyone who wants to improve the games is welcome to modify it.  The VF is considerably more developed because Thomas, the developer, has the resources to work on that project extensively - the three of us who put together the Pitrex do not.  We got it to a stage where it's acceptably playable but none of us are currently putting dedicated hours into converting more games - we all have our own interests and although sometimes what we're working on overlaps with game emulation, at other times it doesn't - for example my most recent Pitrex work has been R&D in the graphics area under Linux, for supporting the use of the Pitrex as a general purpose vector display for programmers such as in CAD applications.  Remember, Pitrex is a community project, not a commercial product. We open sourced the hardware design (by Kevin) and agreed to Kevin selling the boards commercially to ensure that there would always be a good supply of them, but the other team members don't make a penny from board sales or anything else, so although we do consider the project to be ongoing, you should expect further development to be intermittent, with 2023 having been a rather lean year.

One last thing; the Pitrex wasn't designed initially as a general arcade emulation machine - it was an offshoot of my wanting a mechanism to run the arcade version of Tailgunner on the Vectrex.  That project actually was what spurred Thomas into adding arcade emulation to the VF and by the time we started to get the Pitrex hardware working, Thomas was well ahead of the game in emulating vector arcade games, and the Pitrex became seen as a cheap (but admittedly inferior) substitute for the VF which was in short supply.  But the fact that it is actually usable as a general purpose emulator should be seen as a bonus, at its heart it's still a Tailgunner platform!

 

Graham

 

[footnote *: unless you use the linux sound hardware on the Pi Zero, but that requires hardware which not all Pitrex users will have.  Also  most of the O/S support for sound is only available on the Linux Pitrex implementation, but the most R&D and the primary release for gaming has been done on Raspberry Pi bare metal, so things like using Bluetooth for sound are not currently practical.  Getting emulators like AAE to run smoothly under linux so such things are possible is the sort of R&D that we *are* currently working on, at the expense of modifying individual games to add approximate sound-alikes, but that sort of R&D is more long term and we can make no promises for when/if something usable will come out of it. ]

[RockLobster]

45 minutes ago, gtoal said:

please don't flood the Vecfever thread with a lot of followups.  The info below is mostly known to the members of our Facebook group, Vectrex Fans Unite!

 

Thank you so much and I'll try to read more elsewhere!

 

What you provided is more than enough to push me off to know what to look for.