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CollectorVision Phoenix Game Console


retroillucid

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A huge congrats to the Phoenix team for pushing through the annoying comment nonsense and delivering what looks like a really solid product.

 

Haters are always going to ping in to give advice and "facts" pulled right from the marketing team of their butt.

 

I am anxiously awaiting for mine to arrive, I ordered on the website shortly after the kickstarter ending announcement.  I am not really an emulator kind of person but I do really enjoy hardware emulation and this small wonder console seems to hit so many of the right buttons for us retro folks in one nice neat package.

 

I don't care if I can save a few bucks and play this on my PC, phone or even my toaster, I want a dedicated CONSOLE that is designed for this ONE purpose, to play games and give me the console experience, and not also make calls or toast.

 

I am so happy that I will be able to finally get to use the F18A games, HDMI for ease of use and cut down the amount of consoles sitting in my entertainment center!

 

The new announced exclusive titles and the expanding support for cores sounds just awesome.

 

I love the idea of the cart slot with additional expansion slot(s) being considered or designed, so my investment in my carts is going to be used..

 

"Carts are for playing not just displaying."

 

My mind boggles at the possibilities of cores for like 7800, C64, MSX2+, Super Cassette Vision, Astocade and other expensive and obscure systems that are out of my budget to own the real machine or was too cumbersome to pull it all out to play a game.

 

In regards to the Keyboard and expansion port; I am very curious on how they will be used in creative ways and the obvious keyboards for systems that need it, Commodore 64/Vic20/16, Adam etc.

 

Looking forward to hearing about more people's experiences during this waiting period.

 

 

Edited by imstarryeyed
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7 minutes ago, doubledown said:

Out of curiosity, does anybody know if an 8BitDo SN30 Retro wireless controller will work on the Phoenix in the SNES port?

Yes the 8bitdo SNES retro receiver works with the Phoenix. I have tested it with wiimote and classic controller attachment, switch joycons, and the wireless controller that came with the nt mini. 

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As far as the SFC NTT controller, are the numbers on the key pad already mapped to colecovision numbers as far as use with the Phoenix?  I may buy one but if there is no difference between that and a regular SNES controller as far as the numerical button mapping then I will stick to my standard SNES controller for use with my Phoenix!

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2 hours ago, Toaddio said:

 

Want more people to buy your games? You should have let more people into the annual game club. I was too late and missed it. ;)

 

 

I thought I read there was a way to at least pay to get access to the rom set but you don't get the other benefits (free game, etc).  give them a shout, you got nothin' to lose

 

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24 minutes ago, lawdawg710 said:

As far as the SFC NTT controller, are the numbers on the key pad already mapped to colecovision numbers as far as use with the Phoenix?  I may buy one but if there is no difference between that and a regular SNES controller as far as the numerical button mapping then I will stick to my standard SNES controller for use with my Phoenix!

I believe they are mapped one to one, so the SFC NTT controller is worth the purchase if you can find it at a decent price!

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I’m having an issue with my system which is I’m getting sound but no picture on my tv. My tv displays the message: “Unsupported Signal. Please check the device output”.  It’s all hooked up correctly so I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.  I’ve tried different hd ports but to no avail.  I can’t imagine it’s my tv since my other hd consoles work fine.  For now I’m going to try it on another tv. 

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7 minutes ago, Loafer said:

I believe they are mapped one to one, so the SFC NTT controller is worth the purchase if you can find it at a decent price!

yes they are but '' normal '' snes gamepad will work ok with bouttons combinaisons  (a+ start =1 etc etc

the ntt doesn't sell at a decent price got mine for 70 $ CAN

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On 8/11/2019 at 9:56 PM, Swami said:

Just checked it with the Atarimax CV Test ROM and all expected super-action controller buttons work using the SCF NTT. The top three buttons don't do anything and neither does "C", but the dot key (period?) is up, i suppose since some games have the up direction for jump and a jump key is sometimes preferred.

the top 2 arrow buttons (left and right) are the select and start buttons and can be used with the Left and Right trigger buttons to produce the keypad combinations like the standard snes controller.

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1 hour ago, Bmack36 said:

the top 2 arrow buttons (left and right) are the select and start buttons and can be used with the Left and Right trigger buttons to produce the keypad combinations like the standard snes controller.

I was just checking the 2600 core with the SD card. Does it only allow you 17 files per folder for 2600? My homebrew list in a 2600 folder stops at the D's.

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2 hours ago, rodge2001 said:

I’m having an issue with my system which is I’m getting sound but no picture on my tv. My tv displays the message: “Unsupported Signal. Please check the device output”.  It’s all hooked up correctly so I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.  I’ve tried different hd ports but to no avail.  I can’t imagine it’s my tv since my other hd consoles work fine.  For now I’m going to try it on another tv. 

 

So I just tested mine and I had a similar issue though for different reasons:

 

- I'm trying to use my Phoenix with an HP computer monitor via an HDMI to VGA adapter since there are no HDMI inputs on this HP monitor

- this is an old monitor with a default resolution of 1600 x 1050 or something like that.  It is not true HD compatible but does support some HD resolutions as 720p... I think

- with this same adapter, theC64 mini works fine

- with the Phoenix, I just get a black screen, won't even autoselect the VGA port

 

I suspect it's because the Phoenix outputs only a 480p signal while this monitor does not (or doesn't know how to auto switch and I can't force it via the monitor's menu).  there's also the conversion from digital to analog video that maybe causes some kind of handshaking issue.  Now the good news is I immediately tried plugging the phoenix in one of my desktop PC monitor's and it works flawlessly so the phoenix does work.  I suspect thec64 mini works fine because it outputs 720p which is more compatible with modern TV's.

 

As for your issue Rodge2001, I suspect your TV may not support a 480p signal but fret not, there may be hope as some manufacturers provide more pc friendly resolutions via one port.  this is just a guess but some TV's like LG's have a means to treat one port as a "PC" port. usually this is done by labelling the port PC.  Please have a look at your TV manual to see if this is the possible and if yes, give it a try.  I don't mean to provide false hope but I have a digital pinball cabinet and there were benefits with plugging my PC into one specific port, wasn't resolution related but there were specific advantages.  Unfortunately I'm older than a colecovision so memory isn't what it used to be so can't recall the specific eheh

 

I'm about to test the Phoenix on my 4K 75" tv.  hope it supports 480!  (if my assumption is correct)

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10 minutes ago, Swami said:

I was just checking the 2600 core with the SD card. Does it only allow you 17 files per folder for 2600? My homebrew list in a 2600 folder stops at the D's.

I was about to ask the same question, it seems to scroll to blank spots after what I thought was 18 but I may have miscounted.

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1 hour ago, Loafer said:

I was about to ask the same question, it seems to scroll to blank spots after what I thought was 18 but I may have miscounted.

After splitting the files up into folders I also can't see one of the folders for 2600 files even though there are only five folders.  Wondering if it is because they contain files it doesn't like such as trackball/mouse hacks which I didn't bother removing, although they are also in a couple of the other folders I do see. I think the limited files in some folders may be a memory limit per folder since different folders have different numbers of files before stopping the listing, up to around 40. 

 

The FPGA for MISTer was know to be very problematic, so for the few classic games I've tried on the Phoenix 2600, it seems pretty good, although the Aliens maze was pink. Homebrew games had some odd behavior. I think it's an improvement on the original 2600 FPGA, but could use some future updates.

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On 8/12/2019 at 4:49 AM, TPR said:

There are several on eBay right now for between $40 - $60.  I guess it's all perspective but IMO that's not really "breaking the bank" for a solid, well-built, somewhat custom controller that you could get hundreds of hours of play out of.

Screen Shot 2019-08-12 at 7.47.58 AM.png

Thank you, I believe I just bought the last one in your pic (USA seller) ... I know I know I'm going at it ass backwards, controller first then console later .... I've never been an early adopter of anything, so bear with me a little longer here.

 

I really hope not many TVs have issues with the 480p of the Phoenix ... chances are older TVs are likely better at it given how ubiquitous those "progressive scan" DVD players were just a decade ago, so I should be set.

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7 hours ago, Swami said:

After splitting the files up into folders I also can't see one of the folders for 2600 files even though there are only five folders.  Wondering if it is because they contain files it doesn't like such as trackball/mouse hacks which I didn't bother removing, although they are also in a couple of the other folders I do see. I think the limited files in some folders may be a memory limit per folder since different folders have different numbers of files before stopping the listing, up to around 40. 

 

The FPGA for MISTer was know to be very problematic, so for the few classic games I've tried on the Phoenix 2600, it seems pretty good, although the Aliens maze was pink. Homebrew games had some odd behavior. I think it's an improvement on the original 2600 FPGA, but could use some future updates.

I think the 2600 defaults the color palatte to PAL. There should be an option in the menu to switch to ntsc.

 

The missing roms issue I think is related to a bug with the FAT32 filesystem on the 2600 core. We are looking into this. 

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6 hours ago, phoenixdownita said:

 

I really hope not many TVs have issues with the 480p of the Phoenix ... chances are older TVs are likely better at it given how ubiquitous those "progressive scan" DVD players were just a decade ago, so I should be set.

The video on the cv core is actually 640x480/59.94Hz, which is why some tvs are having issues. The 2600 core is running at 720x480/60Hz and I haven't heard any issues with the 2600 video not showing up on the tvs that are having issues with the cv video. We are working to get the cv core updated to a more compatible video output.

Edited by Bmack36
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11 hours ago, rodge2001 said:

I’m having an issue with my system which is I’m getting sound but no picture on my tv. My tv displays the message: “Unsupported Signal. Please check the device output”.  It’s all hooked up correctly so I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.  I’ve tried different hd ports but to no avail.  I can’t imagine it’s my tv since my other hd consoles work fine.  For now I’m going to try it on another tv. 

Try and load the 2600 core and see if the video works. After powering on the system hit * and then 2, the front led should turn white and then the video for the 2600 core should show up.

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11 minutes ago, Bmack36 said:

I think the 2600 defaults the color palatte to PAL. There should be an option in the menu to switch to ntsc.

 

The missing roms issue I think is related to a bug with the FAT32 filesystem on the 2600 core. We are looking into this. 

I wondered about the PAL possibility but seemed remote. I suppose maybe it was first designed there. I’ll give the region change a shot and try not to accidentally erase the core. ?

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