7800 multicart idea

[scotty]

This is being asked to the engineering type people out there....

 

It is obvious there is a problem with a SD card solution on the 7800.   I was thinking outside the box and wondered how feasible this would be.  Since the 7800 has a terrible cartridge port anyhow (grip of death on some games) what about the possibility of bypassing the port entirely?  There have been versions of the 2600 where it had XXX built in games, and still had a functional port to insert your own carts into.   Why couldn't this be done to the 7800?  Make a board that solders inside the 7800 with a SD socket on it, and have it boot to it if a physical cart is not inserted?   Yes, it is not as simple as a plug in cartridge, but the PSIO for the playstation requires you to open the device and do some soldering, and it seems to be selling pretty well.   

 

Opinions?

 

 

[Jinks]

I would never want to f up my 7800 by destroying the cart slot... I would pass. 

[+GoldenWheels]

To bad it couldn't run through the expansion port with a cord etc...that'd be neat, and make the damn thing worth something.

[Jinks]

I wonder what the expansion port was able to do? Besides hacking into the mainframe and launching nukes at USSR.

Edited July 30, 2019 by Jinks

[Shawn]

Something like this is currently being worked on. That is all I can share about it.

[scotty]

S W E E T ! ! !  If you/whoever needs a beta tester, I have two 7800's to try it on.

 

 

[+DrVenkman]

 

2 hours ago, GoldenWheels said:

To bad it couldn't run through the expansion port with a cord etc...that'd be neat, and make the damn thing worth something.

 

2 hours ago, Jinks said:

I wonder what the expansion port was able to do? Besides hacking into the mainframe and launching nukes at USSR.

 

Well, first off not all 7800 even have the expansion interface. But even if they had, it's not a very capable general I/O widget, I don't think. It was meant to allow control of a laserdisc player so it has composite and mono audio input lines, and some control lines for commanding the laserdisc mechanism. I don't think it's a real general purpose interface like the cartridge port.

 

That said ...

2 hours ago, Shawn said:

Something like this is currently being worked on. That is all I can share about it.

And it that (^^^) is the same thing that was teased by someone with a short Youtube video a few months ago, I'm 100% ready for it.  

[CPUWIZ]

7 hours ago, DrVenkman said:

And it that (^^^) is the same thing that was teased by someone with a short Youtube video a few months ago, I'm 100% ready for it.  

 

Are you talking about my project, or something I missed?  Mine won't require mods.  But is a bit over the top, and I don't have much spare time, so it is taking time.  Been working on this, for 10 months+.  Maybe I should take pre-orders. LMAO

[+groundtrooper]

7 hours ago, DrVenkman said:

 

 

 

Well, first off not all 7800 even have the expansion interface. But even if they had, it's not a very capable general I/O widget, I don't think. It was meant to allow control of a laserdisc player so it has composite and mono audio input lines, and some control lines for commanding the laserdisc mechanism. I don't think it's a real general purpose interface like the cartridge port.

 

That said ...

And it that (^^^) is the same thing that was teased by someone with a short Youtube video a few months ago, I'm 100% ready for it.  

 

Great, now I will be searching YouTube looking for clues. ??

 

[+DrVenkman]

7 hours ago, CPUWIZ said:

 

Are you talking about my project, or something I missed?  Mine won't require mods.  But is a bit over the top, and I don't have much spare time, so it is taking time.  Been working on this, for 10 months+.  Maybe I should take pre-orders. LMAO

Well, I didn’t want to name-drop. ? Taking your time is fine ... taking a decade-plus after pre-orders, maybe not so much. But that’s a topic for another thread (and I have no skin in that game).

 

Aaaaaaanyway ... Yeah, let us know when you have more fun stuff to show off.  

[+GoldenWheels]

On 7/30/2019 at 5:22 PM, DrVenkman said:

 

 

 

Well, first off not all 7800 even have the expansion interface.

I know but 2 of the 4 I own have it. ?

 

And not to be a snobby collector about it....it would be kind of neat (to me) if the expansion port models became sought after because of something like this.

 

[Shawn]

13 hours ago, GoldenWheels said:

I know but 2 of the 4 I own have it. ?

 

And not to be a snobby collector about it....it would be kind of neat (to me) if the expansion port models became sought after because of something like this.

 

 

Adding the header pins to any board without them isn't a hard thing to do.

[+GoldenWheels]

8 hours ago, Shawn said:

 

Adding the header pins to any board without them isn't a hard thing to do.

Of course I am going to take your word for it Shawn, but that's kind of the idea....you could do that but I couldn't. I just want to "plug it in"!

[+save2600]

For the consoles that need it, cutting a nice/neat square out of the plastic case would be a greater challenge than soldering header pins. I have yet to master the art of dremeling.   ?

[+GoldenWheels]

6 hours ago, save2600 said:

For the consoles that need it, cutting a nice/neat square out of the plastic case would be a greater challenge than soldering header pins. I have yet to master the art of dremeling.   ?

The worst is when you're like 92% done with perfect control....and you slip.

[1980gamer]

9 minutes ago, GoldenWheels said:

The worst is when you're like 92% done with perfect control....and you slip.

I feel like a Michael Scott quote should follow that line....

 

[+DrVenkman]

Except again that the Expansion Interface isn't a full bus interface - it was intended for a single planned peripheral which was never released. But hey, at least it DID have a planned peripheral, unlike the oddball connector stuck off the back of the 5200 and the 800's production test connector stuck off the back of the main board. ? 

[CPUWIZ]

4 minutes ago, DrVenkman said:

Except again that the Expansion Interface isn't a full bus interface - it was intended for a single planned peripheral which was never released. But hey, at least it DID have a planned peripheral, unlike the oddball connector stuck off the back of the 5200 and the 800's production test connector stuck off the back of the main board. ? 

 

The 5200 expansion port is actually more useful, than the 7800's.

 

 

[+DrVenkman]

I’d forgotten all about that thread in last couple years.  

[Shawn]

I'd buy a floppy add on for the 5200 just for kicks.

[Lynxpro]

On 8/2/2019 at 6:40 PM, DrVenkman said:

Except again that the Expansion Interface isn't a full bus interface - it was intended for a single planned peripheral which was never released. But hey, at least it DID have a planned peripheral, unlike the oddball connector stuck off the back of the 5200 and the 800's production test connector stuck off the back of the main board. ? 

 

The 5200 Expansion Port did have a planned [unreleased] peripheral... a music keyboard.

 

CPUWiz knows the I/O capabilities of both the 5200 Expansion Port and the 7800 Expansion Port. I forget them off the top of my head.

 

One would think that a port meant for I/O with a music keyboard [the 5200's port] and a port meant for I/O with a LaserDisc/CED player(s) [the 7800's port] would have enough 2-way bandwidth capabilities to support extra joysticks. The extra 2-controller expansion cables that connected to the Parallel Printer Port on the Amiga and Atari ST come to mind [for Gauntlet II and Leatherneck, and maybe other titles]. If possible, that would be a great way to give 2-port 5200s and the 7800 the ability to support 4 joysticks, especially since both lack the ability of the Atari 8-bit computer line to use devices like the MultiJoy.

 

Curt has speculated that Joystick Port #2 on the 7800 has enough serial capabilities to support connecting the 7800 into something like a MIDI Maze ring and his theory is that's what Atari Corp would've done if plans to produce a MIDI Maze version of the 7800 had materialized [or maybe it did but the project has been lost to time, like Paperboy]. After all, the unreleased 7800 Keyboard would've plugged into there and offered an SIO Port driven by a proprietary chip and not a PIA.

 

As for some project on YouTube, I'm assuming it's in reference to the videos of mods to run multiple 7800 games internally with a switch. I seem to recall a video that had Pole Position II running like that. Probably based upon the European BIOS that had Asteroids included.

 

What would be pretty cool would be to have a board with a 6850 or a 6551 included and then connect a WiFi "modem" to the 7800 so that one 8-bit multi-platform online racing game could be ported to the 7800. I guess a 6850 or 6551 wouldn't be necessary with all of the modern-day solutions available unless wanting to be era-authentic, although WDC still produces 6551 variants. Future XM owners could, of course, add a PIA to the XM and then connect whatever connector SIO Port-based solution is available in Atari 8-bit land to use said WiFi "modem".

Edited August 19, 2019 by Lynxpro

[Bruce Tomlin]

The 7800's "laserdisc" port was literally nothing more than a fancy A/V port that also had the ability to replace the main Maria 14.3MHz clock crystal with an external input. From the looks of the schematic, all the genlock magic was probably going to be in the disc player add-on, which would connect to your TV instead of the 7800's RF modulator.

[phoenixdownita]

12 hours ago, Lynxpro said:

 

.....

What would be pretty cool would be to have a board with a 6850 or a 6551 included and then connect a WiFi "modem" to the 7800 so that one 8-bit multi-platform online racing game could be ported to the 7800. I guess a 6850 or 6551 wouldn't be necessary with all of the modern-day solutions available unless wanting to be era-authentic, although WDC still produces 6551 variants. Future XM owners could, of course, add a PIA to the XM and then connect whatever connector SIO Port-based solution is available in Atari 8-bit land to use said WiFi "modem".

.... mmhhh .... with all the talk of online services sucking balls this is just a no no.

 

Baby steps here ... let the XM land, "future" is all that's been so far.

[Lynxpro]

2 hours ago, Bruce Tomlin said:

The 7800's "laserdisc" port was literally nothing more than a fancy A/V port that also had the ability to replace the main Maria 14.3MHz clock crystal with an external input. From the looks of the schematic, all the genlock magic was probably going to be in the disc player add-on, which would connect to your TV instead of the 7800's RF modulator.

 

It's more than that. The I/O has translate the joystick movements to correspond with playing the right video off the LaserDisc or CED player. The Amiga and the Atari ST both had a LaserDisc player option to connect such a player via the Parallel port - or was it serial? I forget - in order to play the Dragon's Lair arcade LaserDisc exactly as it played in the arcades.

 

Until the specs are revealed for the interface as well as whatever program would've been on the corresponding cartridge, it's all assumption. Of course, the 7800 cartridge slot can use actual CPUs and graphics chips in addition to sound chips.

[Lynxpro]

48 minutes ago, phoenixdownita said:

.... mmhhh .... with all the talk of online services sucking balls this is just a no no.

 

Baby steps here ... let the XM land, "future" is all that's been so far.

 

I'm quite sure the 8-bitters playing that multi-platform 8-bit racing game online enjoy it.

 

Besides, who wouldn't want a PlatoTerm port to the 7800/XM? [joking].