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RetroN 77


jeremiahjt

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Could you test Stay Frosty 2 John? Thanks!

 

Also, in Metal Jesus' review he couldn't get Pitfall 2 or the Space Rocks cart (rom worked though) to work. Can you confirm both of those as well? Really looking forward to your review. I'm a proud subscriber to your channel and a fellow educator.

 

Pretty much most homebrew carts do not work, but the non melody boards and more complicated roms all work. I could not get genesis controllers to work, but SMS and 7800 joysticks and control pad do.

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swlovinist,

 

Genesis controllers should work without any issues. Are you sure yours work on the Genesis, have you tested them?

 

As for most homebrews, the roms should work just fine, but yeah - non-standard boards will likely be an issue.

 

Thanks for sharing! :)

Edited by AndrewHyperkin
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Pretty much most homebrew carts do not work, but the non melody boards and more complicated roms all work. I could not get genesis controllers to work, but SMS and 7800 joysticks and control pad do.

 

Will you be testing all your personal homebrews John? You have a pretty extensive collection and I'm curious as to the ratio of working homebrews vs rom only. It is only melody board based homebrews that wouldn't work? Also would upgrading the version of Stella that's built in change that to make Melody board based homebrews work?

Edited by AtariLeaf
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Pretty much most homebrew carts do not work, but the non melody boards and more complicated roms all work. I could not get genesis controllers to work, but SMS and 7800 joysticks and control pad do.

Thanks for the quick response! So, Space Rocks and Stay Frosty 2 should work as roms. Does Pitfall 2 work as a rom, but not a cart?

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Pitfall II and Stay Frosty 2 work as a rom but not as a cart. Hopefully this can be fixed moving forward.

What's to fix?

 

I don't see how. Unless they uberfake it.

 

Agreed. They're just passing the content of the ROM on to the emulator. It's not interacting with a POKEY chip, not with this "dumper" design.

 

I have a SuperNT (FPGA SNES). Star Fox, DOOM, Yoshi's Island, and Stunt Racer work as cartridges, but not as ROMs. I'd just as soon have them all on the SD card. I don't need to physically swap out a cartridge to have fun. I figured out object permanence many years ago.

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Agreed. They're just passing the content of the ROM on to the emulator. It's not interacting with a POKEY chip, not with this "dumper" design.

This is how a fix could work, in the Mirror Universe..

You insert the incompatible/undumpable cartridge. The system detects it through checksumming. And then it runs the appropriate ROM from SD.

But nobody wants that kind of R. Goldbergerry, right? Kind of a cop out.. Yeah.. All advanced Harmony/Melody and future games need a cop out card (the SD card) to work. Blech!

 

Edited by Keatah
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swlovinist,

 

Genesis controllers should work without any issues. Are you sure yours work on the Genesis, have you tested them?

 

As for most homebrews, the roms should work just fine, but yeah - non-standard boards will likely be an issue.

 

Thanks for sharing! :)

 

Nope, I just tested a six button controller and three button controller(Sega Brand) on my Genesis(worked great) and they did not work on my Retron 77. I just retested them. I tested with a Berzerk cart. I tried booting up to the menu screen without a cart and the screen went blank.

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Nope, I just tested a six button controller and three button controller(Sega Brand) on my Genesis(worked great) and they did not work on my Retron 77. I just retested them. I tested with a Berzerk cart. I tried booting up to the menu screen without a cart and the screen went blank.

No Genesis controller support ? That sucks.

Combine that with the lack of composite video output has changed my mind on buying one of these which sucks cause I was really looking forward to buying one.

I really don't get why it doesn't have composite video out when their NES and SNES clones have both.

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Thanks John for answering questions early! I think this is a must buy no matter what, even if it doesn't quite do everything we want it too.

 

The only thing I'm not clear about is the controller. If we preorder now will we get the fragile one, or the new one? If it's the fragile one, how soon after will units ship with the improved joystick?

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An anti-piracy measure? That's almost as silly as the initial release form that their legal team wrote up. So I hope the homebrewers lift such a ridiculous limitation for software that in many cases is over 40 years old, largely hasn't been commercially distributed in decades, and in many cases has no clear copyright holder today.

 

And really, you're either against supporting playing decades old roms, or support it. Yet Hyperkin is saying that a little bit of piracy is okay, but that too much of a good thing crosses some invisible moral/legal barrier and suddenly isn't okay?

 

Even Atari was comfortable in allowing AtGames to include this feature in officially licensed products. If Atari is comfortable in allowing this feature in a device that emulates the patent expired Atari 2600, why isn't Hyperkin?

 

If there was any chance of trouble here from another company like Activision or the myriad of other 2600 publishers, I'm quite sure that the Atari SA and AtGames legal teams would've played it safe.

Edited by Atariboy
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We don't know what their motivation for that design was. I don't think we should be so quick to assume evil intent from Hyperkin.

 

It could have been to make things easier for tech support ... what if someone dumps in 300 ROMs but one of them has a funny character, which makes the whole mess unreadable by the software?

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No Genesis controller support ? That sucks.

Combine that with the lack of composite video output has changed my mind on buying one of these which sucks cause I was really looking forward to buying one.

I really don't get why it doesn't have composite video out when their NES and SNES clones have both.

 

Two reasons.

 

1- Composite is really outdated and not used much anymore.

 

2- It would be too costly to hire the talent needed to modify the off-the-shelf parts and software so that it would output to composite.

 

 

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We don't know what their motivation for that design was. I don't think we should be so quick to assume evil intent from Hyperkin.

 

It could have been to make things easier for tech support ... what if someone dumps in 300 ROMs but one of them has a funny character, which makes the whole mess unreadable by the software?

 

Maybe they wanted to avoid a "text" style user interface.. Too technical-looking, you know? There is a certain metro-aesthetic in the current menu, lousy as it is..

 

Or maybe they wanted to prevent ebayers from filling it up with roms..

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Too bad the 16:9 and 4:3 button isn't sticky. Have to press it every time you power up the system if you want the correct aspect ratio?

 

 

An anti-piracy measure? That's almost as silly as the initial release form that their legal team wrote up. So I hope the homebrewers lift such a ridiculous limitation for software that in many cases is over 40 years old, largely hasn't been commercially distributed in decades, and in many cases has no clear copyright holder today.

 

I'm sure that will happen, you just have to patch the emulator and/or allow for multiple pages and drilling down through folders. Someone will do it sooner or later. It's open source!

 

 

Even Atari was comfortable in allowing AtGames to include this feature in officially licensed products. If Atari is comfortable in allowing this feature in a device that emulates the patent expired Atari 2600, why isn't Hyperkin?

 

Which product is that? If you're thinking the Flashback Portable? Uhm, sure.. There's a limit there too, just about every rom seems to need to be patched or re-written somehow. There's that 50-page thread.

 

I bet the hoops one has to jump through to get those patched roms enough deterrent for the casual user to where it isn't a problem.

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Two reasons.

 

1- Composite is really outdated and not used much anymore.

 

2- It would be too costly to hire the talent needed to modify the off-the-shelf parts and software so that it would output to composite.

 

 

Well I certainly won't debate those points but it's still disappointing when their other clone consoles have composite out.

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Yup.. I don't know what their other clone consoles are like, but I highly doubt they had an in-house full-time engineer make those from the get-go WITH composite.

 

"Having composite" on a repro console would have been a sign-of-the-times. A fortunate happenstance. Whatever was pre-designed and pre-manufactured. Off the shelf.

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Anything requiring interaction between the cart and the console won't work. This appears to be Dump-N-Play only. So, I would imagine that carts with extra RAM, DPC+, ARM, or anything where information is sent back TO the cartridge won't work here either. And this likely applies to the "multi" x-IN-x multi-carts too. Not that those are popular nowadays. I will also venture to say that the same goes for controller ports now that I think about it. SaveKey, Compu-Mate, AtariVOX, and whatever else - anything requiring bi-directional communication is a no-go.

 

Stella isn't really architected to be used the way it's being used (console is a cart reader). It's an inherent fault when using existing software emulators in such applications.

 

With SD ROM capability, however, the console should run most everything the PC-based emulator runs. And that's pretty comprehensive.

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If the ports had used 2600-daptors, then Stella would indeed work with any controller (that the 2600-daptor supports at least, which is most of them). I still don't know how the controller ports are being 'interfaced' with Stella, since I haven't yet seen the source code. Depending on how the input is being 'massaged', it may be possible to do more with it than it currently does.

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