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Is there a decent converter for making CTG files yet?


JoeLogname

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The multiplicity of incompatible formats for various TI emus is perplexing me, and I'm having a nightmare trying to convert between them.

 

I know a bunch of games have already been converted to CTG but I particularly want to play a couple that don't seem to have been, namely the homebrew port of Scramble and Flying Shark, and the emulator I'm using is CTG-only. I've tried using CONVERT-CTG but it's incredibly flaky (it hates older versions of Windows and I'm on 7), and I've had no luck with those titles.

 

Has anyone written a vaguely user-friendly convert tool, or just converted those games already? Any help much appreciated.

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Honestly, we have hundreds and hundreds of carts for this system, brother. Seems like the easier path would be to ask the RPi developers to add support for our .bin conventions.

 

I don't know a ton about the ctg format, but our binary cart images are mostly just binary dumps of ROM. It can't be that tough to convert that to another format if you must.

 

Just some thoughts. Good luck

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The GROMs are another "format" we use, but realistically we do not have a particular format. They are straight dumps of real ROM and GROM. The only format we have, if you consider it such, is some ROMs are "inverted," which means the banks are in reverse order due to the latching chip used for the bank switching. The convention in use is have a number at the end of the filename before the extension to indicate the type of ROM it is.

 

Even the RPK files used by MESS are just zip files containing the ROM/GROM images and a an XML file with meta data.

 

@Tursi's Classic99 software documentation contains detailed information on these files.

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These ctg files are working. Apparently the convertion tool has the inverse idea of bank inversion, so a non-inverted cart needs the -9 switch and an inverted cart needs the -8 switch.

 

Oh, you absolute star. Those do indeed work beautifully. Thank you SO much, you've made an old man very happy :D

 

(Hey, I don't suppose you fancy doing any of the better games from here as well, do you? I can't get CONVERT to do anything at all now, it just whines about my having an old Windows and crashes, even though it used to at least run. I'll have another bash at it, though.)

Edited by JoeLogname
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(Hey, I don't suppose you fancy doing any of the better games from here as well, do you? I can't get CONVERT to do anything at all now, it just whines about my having an old Windows and crashes, even though it used to at least run. I'll have another bash at it, though.)

 

Never mind - I got CONVERT running in a command window and I think I'm sorted. Here's JetPac, will upload others when they're done :)

JetPacTI.zip

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Okay, here's all the ones I've managed to get working:

 

JetPac

Jet Set Willy

Knight Lore

Mummy's Tomb

Night Stalker

Red Planet

Road Hunter

Sabre Wulf

Snake Plissken

Sparkdrummer's Challenge Rescue At AtariAge

 

(None of the other stuff on the page is in the right 8K-multiple cart format and I can't do anything with it.)

 

Enjoy, and thanks again :)

TIcarts.zip

Edited by JoeLogname
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Meanwhile, does anyone know what to do with this to get it to run on an emulator?

 

These are the instructions that came with it, but they're all Greek to me and seem to refer mainly to running it on real hardware.

 

"Inside are 4 files to flash to the 2 chips on the UberGrom cartridge board:

 

at49F040.bin : The 8K rom code, filled into all banks of the 512k rom, so no matter what bank your ubergrom starts on, it will find the code.

atmega1284p-code.BIN : The ubergrom chip code segment with the groms

atmega1284p-config.BIN : The fuse settings for the ubergrom chip

atmega1284p-data.BIN : Not actually sure what this is, but there are some bytes in it so flash those... (Oh, this is the portion Gazoo's images called eeprom)

 

If using the MINI-PRO TL866 programmer, there are 3 tabs for the different segments. The atmega files are named to match the name of the segment to load into, either by changing the radio selector when loading the file, or by switching to that tab before picking the File->Load function."

Tutankham.zip

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Meanwhile, does anyone know what to do with this to get it to run on an emulator?

 

I'm not into your emulator, but THAT version of Tutankham is for programming the UberGROM board.

 

sml_gallery_35324_1027_94122.jpg

 

You would have better luck using the << FinalGROM 99 Version >>

Please bear in mind that this program uses GROM & ROM components, hopefully your emulator can deal with it. Good Luck!

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Lastly, here are four CTG compilations that between them cover just about anything you could want to play on the TI (except Tutankham, see above). All of them are tested and working on emulator:

 

1 Meg Supercart

2 Meg Supercart

Atarisoft compilation (14 games)

Rasmus Moustgaard compilation (8 games)

 

 

compilations.zip

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I'm not into your emulator, but THAT version of Tutankham is for programming the UberGROM board.

 

sml_gallery_35324_1027_94122.jpg

 

You would have better luck using the << FinalGROM 99 Version >>

Please bear in mind that this program uses GROM & ROM components, hopefully your emulator can deal with it. Good Luck!

 

That did the trick, many thanks :)

 

Here's the working CTG for anyone who wants it.

tutankh.zip

Edited by JoeLogname
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  • 6 months later...

Lastly, here are four CTG compilations that between them cover just about anything you could want to play on the TI (except Tutankham, see above). All of them are tested and working on emulator:

 

1 Meg Supercart

2 Meg Supercart

Atarisoft compilation (14 games)

Rasmus Moustgaard compilation (8 games)

 

 

 

Full lists for those compilations, btw:

 

1 Meg Supercart

---------------------

Adventure, Aliens, Alpiner, Angler Dangler, Astro Fighter, Astroblitz, Backsteine, Battleship, Beyond Parsec, Bigfoot, Breakout, Buzzard Bait, Caverns, Fireball, Galaxia, Honey Hunt, Hunt The Wumpus, Hustle, Intercept, Jumpman Junior, Kaboom, Killer Katerpillar, Life, Microsurgeon, Mission X, Moonbase, Munchman, Munchmobile, Natures Way, Newton's Revenge, Perfect Push, Rock Runner, Rush Hour, Saguaro City, Schnoz-Ola, Scud Busters, Seawolf, Sewermania, Sneggit, Space Bandits, Space Zap, Spad XIII, Soundtrack Trolley, Star Force, Star Forth, Starforth, Superfly, The Labyrinth Inferno, TI-Sweeper, Tic Tac Toe, Typo 2, Tunnels Of Doom, Video Games 1, Virus Attack, Wing War

 

 

2 Meg Supercart

---------------------

4A Flyer, A-Maze-Ing, Ambulance, Ant Colony, Anteater, Arcturus, Attack Of The Creepers, Barrage, Berlin, Black Hole, Blackjack & Poker, Blasto, Block Buster, Bouncing Babies, Boxer, Break Thru, Buck Rogers, Burger Builder, Burgertime, Cannonball Blitz, Car Wars, Cave Creatures, Centipede, Cerberus, Checkers, Chicken Coop, Chisholm Trail, Clowns, Compu-Car, Computer War, Congo Bongo, Connect 4, Crossfire, D-Station I, D-Station II, Defender, Demon Attack, Dig Dug, Donkey Kong, Driving Demon, ET, ET At Sea, Escape, Espial, Face Chase, Facemaker, Fathom, Football, Frog Stickers, Frogger, Guardian, Hangman, Henhouse, Henpecked, Hopper, Jawbreaker, Jumpman Junior, Jumpy, Jungle Hunt, Lasso, MASH, Mancala, Meteor Belt, Midnight Mason, Lobster Bay, Miner 2049er, Moon Mine, Moon Patrol, Moonsweeper, Mouse Attack, Ms Pac-Man, Munchman, Munchman 2, Never-Lander, Nibbler, Oh Mummy, Othello, Pac-Man, Paddleball, Parsec, Picnic Paranoia, Pinball, Pitfall, Pizza, Pole Position, Popeye, Princess And Frog, Protector, Q-Bert, Rabbit Trail, Racer, River Rescue, Rotor Raiders, Scrabble, Shamus, Shanghai, Slymoids, Soccer, Solitaire, Space Aggressor, Spice Demise, Spot-Shot, St Nick, Star Gazer I, Star Gazer II, Star Gazer III, Star Trap, Star Trek, Star Wars, Strike Three, Submarine Battle, Submarine Commander, Tennis, The Attack, The Mine, TI Toad, TI Invaders, Tombstone City, Topper, Treasure Island, Tris, Video Chess, Video Vegas, Worm Attack, Yahtzee, Zero-Zap

 

 

Atarisoft compilation

-------------------------

Centipede, Defender, Dig Dug, Donkey Kong, Jungle Hunt, Moon Patrol, Ms Pac-Man, Pac-Man, Picnic, Pole Position, Protector 2, Robotron, Shamus, Superstorm

 

 

Rasmus Moustgaard compilation

-----------------------------------------

Bouncy, Flappy Bird, Jet Set Willy, Road Hunter, Sabre Wulf, Scramble, Titanium, Track & Field

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  • 10 months later...

Just learned last night that actually the convert can be done in windows

1. Download: http://www.mrousseau.org/programs/ti99sim/archives/

 

2. Use the 0.15 Win32 version

ti99sim-0.15.0.win32.tar.xz 2018-03-09 21:02  244K

 

3. use the convert.exe tool in the  /bin directory

 

4. e.g. for this month TEXTURBO8    ../bin/convert texturbo8.bin

    and for games of Rasmus use -9 option and give it a filename:    ../bin/convert -9  obstacle-8.bin obstacle

    and for Tix8  ../bin/convert -9 tix8.bin tix

  

   (and also try option -8 for inverted modules)

 

5. in the ../bin directory there are now .ctg generated files

    e.g. texturbo8.ctg,  obstacle-8.ctg,  tix8.ctg

 

6. (assumed that the RetroPie is connected to the network, e.g. via Wi-Fi)

    then FTP (I use Filezilla, using SFTP 192.168.1.55) from windows to the RetroPie

    into directory: /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ti99

 

7. Restart Emulstation and the files are added in the menu.

 

Here are the .ctg as well:

obstacle-8.ctg

TEXTURBO8.ctg

tix8.ctg

 

Note that the colours in Obstacle course are outside the ball on the RetroPie somehow .cc  @Asmusr 

 

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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On 11/12/2018 at 4:00 AM, JoeLogname said:

And here's Arcturus and Neverlander as well. (Neverlander has an annoying constant noise, but plays fine.)

 

 

arcnever.zip 23.27 kB · 21 downloads

The noise is only there when starting the game and in the 1st level until you collect fuel, then the noise is gone also in further levels until game over.

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