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Atari Flashback X Custom Firmware for USB roms and boxart


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I can confirm my Flashback X Deluxe model# AR3060S with the reset hole on the bottom, in fact does have the 4 holes to solder a usb onto it.

I like the idea of hiding my usb where there are no extra stuff hanging off the console, and def not having to use a otg cable.

So has anybody tried it yet or is going to?  I would but I needed my jewelers loupe with a led light just to see the model number on the sticker.  And the holes are even smaller yet.

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At about 1:30am I decided it was a good time to start the updates on my FBX. I gathered everything up and went at it. By 2:10 I was playing games.

 

I would really like to thank martin00000000001 for the video. That gave a little direction to get the second firmware going.

 

And to Brad and Draxxon for the firmware and the all the updates. Tons of time spent on this, I can't say thank you enough.

 

To everyone else who kicked in some help, thanks as well. 

 

Tomorrow is football and Atari. I am back to 1981, If I just had more hair.

 

Now to find some paddles for Kaboom.

 

 

 

 

 

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Hello, I am late to the topic, but interested in this device and might pick one up.

 

I have the Legends Flashback 2018 and thanks to all the contributions by many here - especially from @Draxxon - I have had a lot of fun with that.  With several versions of SD cards it kind of got me back into retro gaming.  Now I even bought a Legends Ultimate.

 

One question I have about this device - and did not see answered above.  Does anyone know the odds it could ever support an additional or different core and especially the Atari800 core for 400/800/5200 games?

 

I see from reviews that arcade versions of Frogger and Space Invaders are on there.   So I guess there is sep. MAME core in there for those.  The reason I am asking is this would be the perfect device to play 400/800 games or at least 5200 games (those being like a small subset of the many 400/800 games out there) due to the original Atari-like joysticks!  I grew up playing on a 400, and would really love to play games like Captain Beeble, Shamus, Quasimodo, Caverns of Mars, etc. with something like this mini console using an Atari joystick.

 

It is the Atari800 core that can play those, so I believe would be atari800_libretro.so or similar.  Maybe an impossibility, but thought I would ask - I know the Legends Ultimate can play 5200 games at least through BYOG, and I have done so on there.  It just lacks the perfection of using the original joysticks!

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8 hours ago, MrFister said:

How can a console have higher firmware than what atgames offer?

I would dump it and find out what it's about.

image.thumb.png.6e4c7ea94cdb3cc882958651eb558b07.png

Quiet easily. They just don't bother to update their website. It's a common problem across many companies.

This was bought brand new from a reputable company.

 

I'd be happy to dump the firmware, if I knew how. :)

Edited by FairFight14
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13 hours ago, FairFight14 said:

image.thumb.png.6e4c7ea94cdb3cc882958651eb558b07.png

Quiet easily. They just don't bother to update their website. It's a common problem across many companies.

This was bought brand new from a reputable company.

 

I'd be happy to dump the firmware, if I knew how. :)

Thats wild! 

Anyways I believe you can dump it using AndroidTools from this thread.  Not entirely sure though.

I am looking now on the app and I don't see an option to dump, at least plain as day! 

Also I found this info... https://github.com/linux-rockchip/rkflashtool

I would love to figure this out!

Edited by MrFister
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I am curious if the new version still has messed up box art.

As far as swapping the core... I was only able to extract the files from the official firmware, I never could figure out how to repack into a custom firmware. I'm pretty sure you needed to use Linux and thats where I quit. I've used 7-zip to extract .img updates just to look at them and poke around for files.

I imagine that the Legends Ultimate Arcade firmware updates are the same thing as the flashbacks and could be unpacked. you could take a core from there, rename it whatever the built in stella core is named, swap it, and use ImgRepacker and create a CFW. flash it to the system and see what happens. 

As far as dumping the partitions, they did that here:
Request: Atari Flashback 9 Boom firmware backup - AtGames Flashback and Portable Consoles - AtariAge Forums

Edited by Draxxon
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I picked up the 120 game version at Sam's for $40 tonight.  This is the one with a hole on the bottom for reset.  Yes, the box art is still screwed up in the stock FW on diagonals like the BurgerTime cover art.

 

Thanks for sharing those links.  I am a Linux person though not really a developer anymore.  I was able to mount the partition dumps from the AFB9 and I can see the Stella core.  In Linux with "file" command I see: 

stella_libretro.so: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, ARM, EABI5 version 1 (GNU/Linux), dynamically linked, BuildID[sha1]=c80fa9dc3865101954730eea94815af921b5d740, with debug_info, not stripped

 

On the ALU, you build these .UCE files for each game.  The individual .UCE has the game itself .bin or whatever, the core, and art files for that specific game.  The cores to build new .UCE files are available if you look enough.  From a 5200 game .UCE file I can see this:

 

atari5200_libretro_beta1.so: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, ARM aarch64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, BuildID[sha1]=f1cd3b9d57206cad9120ab3d755b1d0db98265fb, not stripped

 

I can already tell that 5200 core is not going to work on the little units, because it is compiled for a 64bit architecture.  I think somebody who knows what they are doing would have to compile that core for the AFB.  Those libretro cores are all open source, so someone could do it. 

 

I also have found the core I pulled down for Atari800 on ALU a few months ago (it is atari800_libretro.so) but I could never make it work for 800 games.  I believe because it requires BIOS files for one thing and I couldn't figure out where they would go on the ALU.

 

Looking at the libretro docs it is definitely  the "atari800" core which handles both 5200 and 800, so maybe the 5200_libretro.so for the ALU is just a version hardwired with the 5200 flags set.

 

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Who here knows how to dump the firmware from the console?

And would you care to share how?

 

I have done a little digging and found a way by soldering in wires and using RK flashtool, but I would prefer to do it over usb.

I noticed on Androidtools there is a export image option, but I am not sure what start and ending address to put into the fields.

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thank you rocketfan. You are deff way more knowledgeable than I am. I'm honestly just an old MUGEN kid who is handy with art programs and has enough know how to build the allgames ini file.

 

Mr. Fister, I tried the same way to dump firmware and never got it to work. I forget how I found the starting and ending addresses. i got stuff to dump, but if i remeber right, it was all corrupted.

Edited by Draxxon
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Finally ordered my OTG cable, so I can take advantage of the good work by Draxxon and Brad_from _the_80s.

 

Also an observation for whatever it is worth.  I was thinking the Frogger and Space Invaders on the AFB were mame roms (the LFB has a mame core), but when I looked at the AFB9 firmware dump Draxxon pointed to there was no mame core.  I have been wondering about that, so I took a look tonight.  Those two games are named with .a26 extension, but they are not 2600 roms.  First, they are way too big.  "File" command on SpaceInvaders.a26 shows this:

SpaceInvaders.a26: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, EABI5 version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3, for GNU/Linux 3.2.0, BuildID[sha1]=f4e112095800ee8aef76cc7b19de015a064cc3cc, with debug_info, not stripped

 

Frogger is the same.  So those are not roms at all, but standalone executables.  They must be "special cased" somehow to launch different than the rest.

 

 

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2 hours ago, rocketfan said:

Also an observation for whatever it is worth.  I was thinking the Frogger and Space Invaders on the AFB were mame roms (the LFB has a mame core), but when I looked at the AFB9 firmware dump Draxxon pointed to there was no mame core.  I have been wondering about that, so I took a look tonight.  Those two games are named with .a26 extension, but they are not 2600 roms.  First, they are way too big.  "File" command on SpaceInvaders.a26 shows this:

SpaceInvaders.a26: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, EABI5 version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3, for GNU/Linux 3.2.0, BuildID[sha1]=f4e112095800ee8aef76cc7b19de015a064cc3cc, with debug_info, not stripped

 

Frogger is the same.  So those are not roms at all, but standalone executables.  They must be "special cased" somehow to launch different than the rest.

 

 

Great find!

I know they need that bmp file to load.

However, to use any other frogger or space invaders rom in this custom firmware, the games must have "2600" at the end of their names (Frogger2600.a26 & SoaceInvaders2600.a26) if anybody was wondering why they couldn't get any others to work.

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I know on the LFB2019 they have included a version of Fix It Felix Jr that as far as I can tell (I have limited knowledge) is a PC game? It has its own subfolder. 

That also means that the CFW scripts won't dump the FIFJr subfolder.

So what I'm wondering is... can other standalone games be added to these systems in a similar way?

Edited by Draxxon
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I was thinking along those same lines about running other games.  When I get my USB OTG cable, first step is to upgrade the FW and then build a thumb drive with the AtariV2 release!  ?

 

Then I want  to experiment to see if you can just replace SpaceInvaders.A26 with another executable for 32bit Arm and have it run.  I have bad feeling there may be some important details to porting an app to this device that I am clueless about such as supporting the controllers.  Though maybe Brad_from_the_80s could provide some hints?

 

My personal dream would be to get the standalone Atari800 emulator running.  It has an OK interface for selecting ROMs built in, and it can be used on some handheld game devices already.  I did some searching and found sources for the version for OpenDingux are at this site.

 

So if you could run that you might be able to launch any other random Atari 8bit game stored on a flash drive.  There are hundreds of abandonware games out there for 400/800/800xl that all ran in 64k of RAM (or less) and most of them were designed to operate with just select/start and the traditional one-button Atari style joystick supplied with these units.  Really, there are a lot of ways to play those games already, but IMO using original controllers lets them play like the authors intended.  Hardware-wise this mini 2600 device was practically made for it.

 

Edited by rocketfan
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I wish there was a way to make space invaders and frogger into subfolders for hacks and homebrews. A800 also sounds great. Pretty much anything would be better, and you could always just remove the flashdrive to boot stock and play those games normally.

Edited by Draxxon
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