zaphro72 Posted July 2, 2020 Share Posted July 2, 2020 19 minutes ago, Ikrananka said: Apart from Road Fighter, Magical Tree and Sky Jaguar ? But I'm assuming this isn't down to the cart port emulation as the problems also exist when trying to load these games from an SD card. Haha I was waiting for this comment after I read the other Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loafer Posted July 2, 2020 Share Posted July 2, 2020 13 hours ago, Tursi said: Reading back, it looks like you /are/ talking about reading from SD. So yes, SD only supports normal 32k carts and Megacarts up to 512k. A 512k megacart is unable to access the last 32k, because that RAM is reserved for the SGM (even if the SGM is not in use). There's not much out there that needs it all - I was able to patch Wizard of Wor by moving the last few pages to unused ones. I'm not sure if paging would work well.. SD cards are fast but the access time to start streaming is substantial. I /can/ tell you that no amount of paging will make Dragon's Lair work, when I was first designing the hardware for that I evaluated SD and Compact Flash as well, and there was no CPU time available for the setup. (Maybe with a co-processor though...) To clarify other questions above - Running from the cartridge port emulates the port hardware, so the Phoenix doesn't care about the cartridge size or even the banking scheme in use - if it did then the Opcode carts wouldn't work, and they do. Thanks for the response. I've never had a desire to own a TI99 but full respects for your achievement. Although as you gathered my question was relevant to the rom running from SD card, of course find a way to port your DL to the Colecovision / Phoenix and you have an insta-sale here, the cart would be perfect. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted July 3, 2020 Share Posted July 3, 2020 17 hours ago, Ikrananka said: Apart from Road Fighter, Magical Tree and Sky Jaguar ? But I'm assuming this isn't down to the cart port emulation as the problems also exist when trying to load these games from an SD card. Some of these issues get thrown at me - and I've only seen the Sky Jaguar issue. It wasn't immediately obvious. The problem with these bugs is that they require us to first reverse engineer the game software to determine why they don't work, since we can't get the source code. After a certain amount of investment I have to stop until more information is available. Since it works on real hardware, what we have to look for in these cases is something that is done in an unusual manner, to see if that unusual setting or sequence also works on the clone. It's the same thing as with writing and debugging an emulator. (Unfortunately, in this case my emulator has no issues! ) You're welcome to extend my analysis... Maybe I missed something or got something outright wrong! skyjaguar.txt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted July 3, 2020 Share Posted July 3, 2020 18 hours ago, zaphro72 said: Haha I was waiting for this comment after I read the other Yes, you can't be wrong on the internet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted July 3, 2020 Share Posted July 3, 2020 11 hours ago, Loafer said: Thanks for the response. I've never had a desire to own a TI99 but full respects for your achievement. Although as you gathered my question was relevant to the rom running from SD card, of course find a way to port your DL to the Colecovision / Phoenix and you have an insta-sale here, the cart would be perfect. I dunno, didn't Opcode once say he was slightly interested in doing such a port, giving him eternal rights? I remember offering up my image converter for that... It'd be nice though. I had promised to see whether my hardware works, but my real life is just insanely dense, and I haven't even got any hardware set up right now for any retro system. ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kiwi Posted July 3, 2020 Share Posted July 3, 2020 2 hours ago, Tursi said: Some of these issues get thrown at me - and I've only seen the Sky Jaguar issue. It wasn't immediately obvious. The problem with these bugs is that they require us to first reverse engineer the game software to determine why they don't work, since we can't get the source code. I booted the Sky Jaguar up via Ultimate SD, since it's right there since I didn't want to go the hassle pulling it off that card on to the Phoenix SD card. I see that the 2nd color table is messed up on first boot. I press the reset button(on the Phoenix) once, then the tile loaded properly. I played it for awhile and died since I was too tired to play properly. Then I reset, then the 2nd color table didn't load properly. I reboot it several times, different results. On my final reset, it loaded the graphics properly. I went to play Sub-roc Supergame, since it's also on SD card and was curious how it was. I don't remember what the keypad number is for 1 and was too lazy to read the manual. When I reset that game, the Phoenix screen showed up and then Sub-roc booted properly. So... the Phoenix screen never showed up with Sky Jaguar... So.... I think the TMS9918A got too much command at once(Stack overflow?), which is why Sky Jaguar doesn't load properly, and it's load the graphic incorrectly differently upon start up and reset. I know I had that car fall down right after it start the game in the canyon in Spunky's Supercar!. So I increase the delay until it stop falling since it reads the VRAM for it TileID. I guess the phoenix screen need some time for the TMS9918A to finish it tasks. So that's my assessment. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digress Posted July 3, 2020 Share Posted July 3, 2020 (edited) phoenix has all 32 sprites enabled by default. Did you try disabling that so it's regular 4 perline? not sure if sgm can be disabled as well. just something to try. Edited July 3, 2020 by digress Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted July 3, 2020 Share Posted July 3, 2020 2 hours ago, Kiwi said: I booted the Sky Jaguar up via Ultimate SD, since it's right there since I didn't want to go the hassle pulling it off that card on to the Phoenix SD card. I see that the 2nd color table is messed up on first boot. I press the reset button(on the Phoenix) once, then the tile loaded properly. I played it for awhile and died since I was too tired to play properly. Then I reset, then the 2nd color table didn't load properly. I reboot it several times, different results. On my final reset, it loaded the graphics properly. I went to play Sub-roc Supergame, since it's also on SD card and was curious how it was. I don't remember what the keypad number is for 1 and was too lazy to read the manual. When I reset that game, the Phoenix screen showed up and then Sub-roc booted properly. So... the Phoenix screen never showed up with Sky Jaguar... So.... I think the TMS9918A got too much command at once(Stack overflow?), which is why Sky Jaguar doesn't load properly, and it's load the graphic incorrectly differently upon start up and reset. I know I had that car fall down right after it start the game in the canyon in Spunky's Supercar!. So I increase the delay until it stop falling since it reads the VRAM for it TileID. I guess the phoenix screen need some time for the TMS9918A to finish it tasks. So that's my assessment. Thanks for looking at that, Kiwi. It's interesting that Sky Jaguar sometimes worked on /reset/, that was something that I did not try. I can discount some of your theory though. The Phoenix screen only shows up for titles that do not skip the BIOS screen - that is, on a standard ColecoVision they would show the "COLECOVISION PRESENTS" screen and sit there for however many seconds. SkyJaguar skips that. It's also impossible to overrun the VDP on the Phoenix, because the F18A can handle all reads and writes at bus speed, and does not need dedicated CPU access slots. But, the "sometimes works on reset" does imply a race condition somewhere. Let me add that to my analysis notes. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted July 3, 2020 Share Posted July 3, 2020 (Pixelboy, feel free to kick us out of your thread, I just noticed we're hijacking ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pixelboy Posted July 3, 2020 Author Share Posted July 3, 2020 2 hours ago, Tursi said: (Pixelboy, feel free to kick us out of your thread, I just noticed we're hijacking ) It's fine, it's an old thread. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 I think we've found the issue with Sky Jaguar and maybe the others too. Probably be a few days before a new release of the Coleco core. If it actually works for people I'll share what we found (no point getting hopes up, just saying it in case anyone is still working on it ). 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ikrananka Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 29 minutes ago, Tursi said: I think we've found the issue with Sky Jaguar and maybe the others too. Probably be a few days before a new release of the Coleco core. If it actually works for people I'll share what we found (no point getting hopes up, just saying it in case anyone is still working on it ). Tursi, that is absolutely fantastic news. If you'd like me to do a test before full release just let me know. Thanks for your hard work on this. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SHaMROCK 73 Posted December 2, 2020 Share Posted December 2, 2020 I see there was a fix for Wizards of War for Phoenix, and fix for Ghostbusters using Ultimate SD available? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted December 2, 2020 Share Posted December 2, 2020 2 hours ago, SHaMROCK 73 said: I see there was a fix for Wizards of War for Phoenix, and fix for Ghostbusters using Ultimate SD available? For WoW, probably want to ping Brian in the Phoenix thread, I don't know the distribution status of that, whether he went with patch or what. I don't know what the other issue was. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SHaMROCK 73 Posted December 2, 2020 Share Posted December 2, 2020 19 minutes ago, Tursi said: For WoW, probably want to ping Brian in the Phoenix thread, I don't know the distribution status of that, whether he went with patch or what. I don't know what the other issue was. Thank you. WoW works fine for me on the Ultimate SD. Ghostbusters does not. I was hoping there was a patch for that game... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bmack36 Posted December 2, 2020 Share Posted December 2, 2020 On 12/26/2019 at 9:15 PM, Bmack36 said: For those who would like to play Wizard of Wor on the Phoenix, Here is the patched version that works. WizardWorHack512.rom 512 kB · 122 downloads The WoW hack is posted in this thread on page 2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphro72 Posted December 2, 2020 Share Posted December 2, 2020 8 hours ago, SHaMROCK 73 said: Thank you. WoW works fine for me on the Ultimate SD. Ghostbusters does not. I was hoping there was a patch for that game... As far as I know there is not a fix for Ghostbusters on Ultimate SD but it works on the Phoenix off SD just fine somebody said. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SHaMROCK 73 Posted January 11, 2021 Share Posted January 11, 2021 On 12/26/2019 at 8:13 AM, Pixelboy said: By the way, has anyone tried the Ghostbusters ROM on their AtariMax SD cartridge? I have a nagging suspicion (or should I say a nagging memory) that the ROM doesn't work with the SD cart, for a weird technical reason. It does work under emulation though. I have tried is with original hardware and the Ultimate SD and I can confirm it does not work... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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