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CollectorVision Phoenix Release Thread


Bmack36

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48 minutes ago, Bmack36 said:

You can also load the core without video. Just press # then 1 then 1 right after powering the system on. After hitting the second 1 you should see the led start flashing purple.

Just got to work, plugged it all in using a different CV controller and still nothing. A green LED comes on inside the unit so it's getting power but there is no video signal and no outside LED seen whatsoever. Tried doing the #/1/1 you suggested but nothing happens. I've use power surge protectors whenever I plug it in so I never encountered any surge. I think it's just a bad unit. Oh one more thing, the power button stays all the way down sometimes if it's not pushed in perfectly centered. Let me know how I can send the unit back for a replacement.

Edited by malarrya
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34 minutes ago, Mike Harris said:

Just curious and I have no clue where to post this.

Are WE/I supposed to go through this cloudfire check every time WE/I look at a page now?

This is the 21st century and I don't see how this improve the experience other than adding an irritation.
 

According to Albert, a large surge of bot activity is trying to spam or hack AtariAge, so it is high-level security slowing it down.

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3 hours ago, Mike Harris said:

Just curious and I have no clue where to post this.

Are WE/I supposed to go through this cloudfire check every time WE/I look at a page now?

This is the 21st century and I don't see how this improve the experience other than adding an irritation.
 

Already answered in another thread, but this is DDoS protection making sure you're a real person.  The more automated activity is performed against the server, the slower it will respond for us - if at all.  So it's definitely worthwhile and doesn't seem to be intrusive.  (only happens the first page you access within a session...not every page)

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Just plugged in QBIQS and switch Phoenix on. It works great with no sound glitches.

 

But I see some problems:

 

-QBIQS uses sprite masking to hide shoots and target over the bar. As F18A is set to display 32 sprites/line, the sprite masking has no effect. This behaviour was known.

 

-Also noticed that I can't distinguish between green colors. On the level 1of QBIQS there are some RGB cubes and the red and blue ones show three different tones, but the green cubes are displayed as a plain green hexagon. Not sure why is this hapening.

 

-As Phoenix is NTSC, QBIQS should detect it and slow music. But the music plays faster than composed, so the NTSC detection doesn't works. As it works perfectly on emu (and on real MSX) I must check if it's a code problem or not.

 

-Related to last one, there's a voice sample for GAME OVER. It also plays faster than expected. But the replayer takes into acount the cycles of instructions. AFAIK, the Coleco has the same extra cycle when accessing to memory than MSX, has been this correctly implemented on the core? As the NTSC detection is related to cycle calculations, an incorrect number of cycles could be an answer for the music and samples going faster than expected.

 

  Besides those problems, I'm very happy with my Phoenix. Great work!! ???

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3 hours ago, SapphiRe said:

Just plugged in QBIQS and switch Phoenix on. It works great with no sound glitches.

 

But I see some problems:

 

-QBIQS uses sprite masking to hide shoots and target over the bar. As F18A is set to display 32 sprites/line, the sprite masking has no effect. This behaviour was known.

 

-Also noticed that I can't distinguish between green colors. On the level 1of QBIQS there are some RGB cubes and the red and blue ones show three different tones, but the green cubes are displayed as a plain green hexagon. Not sure why is this hapening.

 

-As Phoenix is NTSC, QBIQS should detect it and slow music. But the music plays faster than composed, so the NTSC detection doesn't works. As it works perfectly on emu (and on real MSX) I must check if it's a code problem or not.

 

-Related to last one, there's a voice sample for GAME OVER. It also plays faster than expected. But the replayer takes into acount the cycles of instructions. AFAIK, the Coleco has the same extra cycle when accessing to memory than MSX, has been this correctly implemented on the core? As the NTSC detection is related to cycle calculations, an incorrect number of cycles could be an answer for the music and samples going faster than expected.

 

  Besides those problems, I'm very happy with my Phoenix. Great work!! ???

Did you try toggling to 4 sprite per line mode?

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2 minutes ago, zaphro72 said:

Did you try toggling to 4 sprite per line mode?

Right now it depends on if playing from cart or sd card. For SD card loader, any games can enable the sprite flicker.

For playing from cart, if the game is a "AA 55" game sprite flicker can be enabled while the Phoenix splash screen with the game name is displayed.

if the game is a "55 AA" game it skips the BIOS and goes straight to the game, so there is no chance to enable the sprite flicker.

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13 minutes ago, Bmack36 said:

Right now it depends on if playing from cart or sd card. For SD card loader, any games can enable the sprite flicker.

For playing from cart, if the game is a "AA 55" game sprite flicker can be enabled while the Phoenix splash screen with the game name is displayed.

if the game is a "55 AA" game it skips the BIOS and goes straight to the game, so there is no chance to enable the sprite flicker.

That's a rather unfortunate problem. So the only way to enable the 4-sprites-per-scanline limit on a "55 AA" game would be to use an alternate FPGA core with the limit enabled by default?

 

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11 minutes ago, Pixelboy said:

That's a rather unfortunate problem. So the only way to enable the 4-sprites-per-scanline limit on a "55 AA" game would be to use an alternate FPGA core with the limit enabled by default?

 

Bmack36 has previously stated that they're looking into the potential for making the F18A sprites and scanlines jumper settings persistent.  If this can be achieved with a single CV core then great, if not then I guess alternate cores should be provided.

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4 hours ago, Bmack36 said:

Right now it depends on if playing from cart or sd card. For SD card loader, any games can enable the sprite flicker.

For playing from cart, if the game is a "AA 55" game sprite flicker can be enabled while the Phoenix splash screen with the game name is displayed.

if the game is a "55 AA" game it skips the BIOS and goes straight to the game, so there is no chance to enable the sprite flicker.

Antarctic Adventure and QBIQS are both "55 AA" games and so both skip the BIOS.  So, playing a cart of these game means that "sprite flicker", and hence sprite masking, cannot currently be enabled.

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On 11/6/2019 at 4:17 PM, Bmack36 said:

That is correct, some TVs have the not powering down issue some work just fine.

So happy?

 

1 hour ago, Ikrananka said:

Antarctic Adventure and QBIQS are both "55 AA" games and so both skip the BIOS.  So, playing a cart of these game means that "sprite flicker", and hence sprite masking, cannot currently be enabled.

I m maybee not on the wright topic but can someone tell me where is the best place To download à atari game pack for my Phoenix ? Thanks

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9 hours ago, SapphiRe said:

Just plugged in QBIQS and switch Phoenix on. It works great with no sound glitches.

 

But I see some problems:

 

-QBIQS uses sprite masking to hide shoots and target over the bar. As F18A is set to display 32 sprites/line, the sprite masking has no effect. This behaviour was known.

 

-Also noticed that I can't distinguish between green colors. On the level 1of QBIQS there are some RGB cubes and the red and blue ones show three different tones, but the green cubes are displayed as a plain green hexagon. Not sure why is this hapening.

 

-As Phoenix is NTSC, QBIQS should detect it and slow music. But the music plays faster than composed, so the NTSC detection doesn't works. As it works perfectly on emu (and on real MSX) I must check if it's a code problem or not.

 

-Related to last one, there's a voice sample for GAME OVER. It also plays faster than expected. But the replayer takes into acount the cycles of instructions. AFAIK, the Coleco has the same extra cycle when accessing to memory than MSX, has been this correctly implemented on the core? As the NTSC detection is related to cycle calculations, an incorrect number of cycles could be an answer for the music and samples going faster than expected.

 

I just recorded playing the game on an original CV, CoolCV emulator and also my Phoenix.  My observations are as follows:

  1. Yes, sprite masking isn't currently possible with this game (using a cart) and the current CV core on the Phoenix (see my previous post).  Hopefully, CollectorVision will come up with a solution to this in the near future.  There is already an issue logged on GitHub for this.
     
  2. I have no problems distinguishing between greens on any of the systems I tested, including the Phoenix.  The different greens looked basically the same on all of them and were easily distinguished between one another.
     
  3.  The in-game music and voice does indeed play much faster on the Phoenix so looks like the NTSC detection is failing as you suspect.  I'd suggest letting Bmack36 know how you're doing your detection - perhaps it's a Phoenix CV core issue that needs to be fixed.  Are there other homebrew games that do a similar NTSC/PAL detection I wonder?  In any case, please add this as an issue to the GitHub so that this can be officially logged and tracked.
     
  4. As an aside, I compared the speed of the actual gameplay on the Phoenix against a real CV and they certainly matched.  It was just the in-game music that is sped up on the Phoenix.
Edited by Ikrananka
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2 minutes ago, Antoine said:

I m maybee not on the wright topic but can someone tell me where is the best place To download à atari game pack for my Phoenix ? Thanks

Not sure if this the best or not but it seems to be pretty comprehensive and is actively updated.  Nicely organised too.

 

http://www.atarimania.com/rom_collection_archive_atari_2600_roms.html

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6 minutes ago, Antoine said:

So happy?

 

I m maybee not on the wright topic but can someone tell me where is the best place To download à atari game pack for my Phoenix ? Thanks

 I posted one back on post 63 especially for the Phoenix 2600 core.

 

 

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4 minutes ago, Swami said:

 I posted one back on post 63 especially for the Phoenix 2600 core.

 

 

Hmm - the AtariMania collection has a separate folder of the roms for the Harmony Cart which is what I'm using on the Phoenix.  Seeing as the Harmony Cart also uses an SD card am I correct in thinking that bank switched roms would also need to be fixed for the HC, or does the HC hardware handle that without rom hacks?

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9 minutes ago, Ikrananka said:

Hmm - the AtariMania collection has a separate folder of the roms for the Harmony Cart which is what I'm using on the Phoenix.  Seeing as the Harmony Cart also uses an SD card am I correct in thinking that bank switched roms would also need to be fixed for the HC, or does the HC hardware handle that without rom hacks?

Harmony cart has a Melody Cart with ARM built in. Currently, the 2600 core is more like something between the Atari Flashback Portable and the Atari Flashback 9 in terms of compatibility, which, by the way, is why my pack has 500+ flashback portable compatible roms in the "Game" folder.?

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5 minutes ago, Ikrananka said:

 

I just recorded playing the game on an original CV, CoolCV emulator and also my Phoenix.  My observations are as follows:

  1. Yes, sprite masking isn't currently possible with this game (using a cart) and the current CV core on the Phoenix (see my previous post).  Hopefully, CollectorVision will come up with a solution to this in the near future.  There is already an issue logged on GitHub for this.
     
  2. I have no problems distinguishing between greens on any of the systems I tested, including the Phoenix.  The different greens looked basically the same on all of them and were easily distinguished between one another.
     
  3.  The in-game music and voice does indeed play much faster on the Phoenix so looks like the NTSC detection is failing as you suspect.  I'd suggest letting Bmack36 know how you're doing your detection - perhaps it's a Phoenix CV core issue that needs to be fixed.  Are there other homebrew games that do a similar NTSC/PAL detection I wonder?  In any case, please add this as an issue to the GitHub so that this can be officially logged and tracked.
     
  4. As an aside, I compared the speed of the actual gameplay on the Phoenix against a real CV and they certainly matched.  It was just the in-game music that is sped up on the Phoenix.

 

Thanks a lot. The gameplay is not affected because it's synchronized with the vblank.

 

The NTSC/PAL detection is based on counting how many times an instruction is executed between two consecutive vblanks. PAL is 50hz that means 0,02 seconds, wich is more than 0,016 seconds on NTSC. As I said, the Z80 of MSX and Coleco has an extra cycle for each memory access, so NOP is actually 5 cycles instead of 4 cycles.

 

If this has been incorrectly implemented on the core, means that the instructions execute faster than expected, so more instructions are executed between two consecutive vblanks and the routine detect the console as PAL, not slowing the music.

 

This also explain why the sample is played at a higher speed: the cycles between sound outputs are not correct. In fact this weird behaviour gave me the hint on what could be the problem.

 

I will add this to github (after creating an account) on Monday, it's hard to reply using just a cellphone.

 

Tomorrow will take a pic of the game to show that (at least on my Phoenix) the greens are the same. Maybe it's a incompatibility of my tv with the Phoenix, will try to test it on a different tv.

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6 minutes ago, Swami said:

Harmony cart has a Melody Cart with ARM built in. Currently, the 2600 core is more like something between the Atari Flashback Portable and the Atari Flashback 9 in terms of compatibility, which, by the way, is why my pack has 500+ flashback portable compatible roms in the "Game" folder.?

Wow - I just thought your zip file had a number of SD card fixed roms in there.  Looking into it now I can see that it's jam packed with hundreds of roms.  Nice - I'll have to take a deep dive into this over the weekend.  Is this something you compiled yourself from multiple sources?

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8 minutes ago, Ikrananka said:

Wow - I just thought your zip file had a number of SD card fixed roms in there.  Looking into it now I can see that it's jam packed with hundreds of roms.  Nice - I'll have to take a deep dive into this over the weekend.  Is this something you compiled yourself from multiple sources?

The "Game" folder with the Flashback Portable roms was started here

with the final set in the "Game" pack compiled by Arenafoot. The rest I grabbed from other places around the forum and internet. Some of the more "complicated" carts may still be a little screwy, like Pole Position speedometer doesn't work and others may still show glitches, but overall, they work better.

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18 minutes ago, SapphiRe said:

Thanks a lot. The gameplay is not affected because it's synchronized with the vblank.

 

The NTSC/PAL detection is based on counting how many times an instruction is executed between two consecutive vblanks. PAL is 50hz that means 0,02 seconds, wich is more than 0,016 seconds on NTSC. As I said, the Z80 of MSX and Coleco has an extra cycle for each memory access, so NOP is actually 5 cycles instead of 4 cycles.

 

If this has been incorrectly implemented on the core, means that the instructions execute faster than expected, so more instructions are executed between two consecutive vblanks and the routine detect the console as PAL, not slowing the music.

 

This also explain why the sample is played at a higher speed: the cycles between sound outputs are not correct. In fact this weird behaviour gave me the hint on what could be the problem.

 

I will add this to github (after creating an account) on Monday, it's hard to reply using just a cellphone.

 

Tomorrow will take a pic of the game to show that (at least on my Phoenix) the greens are the same. Maybe it's a incompatibility of my tv with the Phoenix, will try to test it on a different tv.

Not that it matters now since the game is released, but there is an easier way to detect the frequency on a cv

"It was in a thread about modding by changing the OS in ColecoVision in order to skip the title screen, and I've decided to make the ROM file properly set as a PAL version by changing the value 60 for 50 at the address memory $0069, which is, based on the Coleco documentation, where the frequency value is hardcoded... and it's named AMERICA in the OS7 BIOS Complete listing, which is weird but... Anyway, mystery solved!"

 

 

Edited by Bmack36
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8 minutes ago, Ikrananka said:

Cool - thanks for letting me know.

By the way. There is another Flashback portable game pack floating around that has about 1000 roms in it, but a lot of those are incompatible. I'm not sure what's going on there. Maybe they mixed all the missing games from the Rom Hunter Atarimania pack in with the flashback portable compatible games. I suppose thats another way to go.

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11 minutes ago, Swami said:

By the way. There is another Flashback portable game pack floating around that has about 1000 roms in it, but a lot of those are incompatible. I'm not sure what's going on there. Maybe they mixed all the missing games from the Rom Hunter Atarimania pack in with the flashback portable compatible games. I suppose thats another way to go.

Thanks for the head-up.  Yeah, I was thinking that a blend of the two sets may be what the best Phoenix rom set will be.  Lot of work though to wade through them though....

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