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BennVenn's ElCheapo Lynx SD Flash Cart


Igor

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It's close to being done, or was...then we had our baby boy so he's keeping me from spending too much time on this. I'll have to invoke the CDPR phrase of "when it's ready" in this case...

 

it is on my list of things to do, after I finishing writing up details of the game jam I've just finished running - https://itch.io/jam/lynxmas2020 (it's taken me about a week to find the time to do that though!)

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/31/2020 at 12:22 AM, UHATEIT said:

I got my elcheapo in the mail this week along with the LCD screen. I was talked to the seller and they did mention that only .lnx format works on the el cheapo. 

 

Does anyone have an easy drop and convert program or link to where I can convert .lyx and .o formats to .lnx?

I've updated the Atari Gamer website to add some basic functionality for this. The following tools can be used:

 

The LNX2LYX tool can convert .o files to LNX, this is essentially the same code as on the Lynx SD. LYXCONV tool can be used to convert a LYX file to a 512KiB LNX ROM with a default header.

 

Hope this helps! I plan to expand on these tools later when I have more time ?

Quote me here and report any issues if you encounter any, but DM you me the ROM you're having issues with so I can test it out myself.

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10 hours ago, Igor said:

I've updated the Atari Gamer website to add some basic functionality for this. The following tools can be used:

 

The LNX2LYX tool can convert .o files to LNX, this is essentially the same code as on the Lynx SD. LYXCONV tool can be used to convert a LYX file to a 512KiB LNX ROM with a default header.

 

Hope this helps! I plan to expand on these tools later when I have more time ?

Quote me here and report any issues if you encounter any, but DM you me the ROM you're having issues with so I can test it out myself.

Thank you so much for doing this! I ended up converting all the .o to .lyx which the first converter did and then converted the .lyx to .lnx and they came at the 512kb format with a header so the size ends up as 513kb. 

 

All seem to work well! I even went into some of the other ones that were small, like random .lnx files that were 11kb, 43kb, 15kb and such, and did the .lnx to .lyx, and then converted them back to .lnx in the higher size. not sure what that does exactly as far as whether something is 256kb or 512kb, but that seems to have fixed the really small size .lnx files I had

 

Not on your end, tho on the Bennvenn Elcheapo end, what was weird is things were all disorganized alphabetically when Sd card boots udespite having everything in the folder sorted in alphabetical order. So what I did was pulled ALL the files from the SD card to a folder on my computer, and then erased the SD card and reformatted it again and then pulled everything from the folder back to the SD card again. Now it's alphabetized and organized ***The weird thing tho is that is is making the letter "E" as the first letter of the alphabet so file #1 is actually Eggsavier instead of 8bit Goblin. If Bennvenn sees this post do you know it would do that exactly? I could probably take everything off and then reformat again but not sur why it starts the alphabet with the letter "E"

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Awesome! Glad it all worked, sorry it took me so long to get around to this, I saw this post a while back but was busy with our newborn to do any coding.

 

With regard to the disorganised ROM listing, this is expected because the default menu displays ROMs in file-system-order, which means the order they were copied to the SD card. I'm working on a new menu system to replace the default one and that will sort ROMs into their correct spots. Again, I've not had too much time to get to this because of the baby, but I do plan to release it some time soon.

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1 hour ago, Igor said:

Awesome! Glad it all worked, sorry it took me so long to get around to this, I saw this post a while back but was busy with our newborn to do any coding.

 

With regard to the disorganised ROM listing, this is expected because the default menu displays ROMs in file-system-order, which means the order they were copied to the SD card. I'm working on a new menu system to replace the default one and that will sort ROMs into their correct spots. Again, I've not had too much time to get to this because of the baby, but I do plan to release it some time soon.

hey you rock! Yeah it's odd because I took ALL of the roms off the SD card and reformatted it and then dragged the Boot.bin and all 200+ roms onto the fresh SD card and for some reason it decided to make "E" at rom #1 and alphabetically from there, even tho I had them alphabetized before dragging them back onto the card and put them all back on at the same time, so I'd have imagined it would have loaded them alphabetically that way. it's not a big issue, but if there is ever an update to the Boot.bin for the ElCheapo that will probably fix those issues!

Edited by UHATEIT
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  • 4 weeks later...
On 1/12/2021 at 9:36 AM, UHATEIT said:

hey you rock! Yeah it's odd because I took ALL of the roms off the SD card and reformatted it and then dragged the Boot.bin and all 200+ roms onto the fresh SD card and for some reason it decided to make "E" at rom #1 and alphabetically from there, even tho I had them alphabetized before dragging them back onto the card and put them all back on at the same time, so I'd have imagined it would have loaded them alphabetically that way. it's not a big issue, but if there is ever an update to the Boot.bin for the ElCheapo that will probably fix those issues!

If you select all, and drag them over to the SD, the file you select to drag will be the first file that is copied, then the rest below it, then looping back around from the start until that file.. if that makes sense?

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've been itching to do a label for the BennVenn cart, and finally got around to throwing together a quickie.  The idea was to use the tie-dye pattern at the top so it matches the rest of the shell, and put something Lynx-like where a label normally goes.  I didn't plan on using the circuitboard on the label, but once I scanned it in for sizing, I liked it better than the plain orange or purple.  Here's what it looks like applied to my BennVenn cart:

KIMG0140_sm.thumb.jpg.39c16e42f959238257fc32521393d1d9.jpg

 

There's approximately a millimeter or so of excess on the sides to give room for trimming.  I actually applied this label to the cart before trimming off the edges, letting the hobby knife ride in the groove between the PCB and shell.  It gave a nice fit.

 

All images uploaded in 600dpi.  If forum software resizes them, I'll zip them up or something.

1901942060_BennVennLabelV1600dpi.thumb.png.ac5a8fe1e3ace1f583b64d71eacfd3d1.png 1905469703_BennVennLabelV2600dpi.thumb.png.fb1b15880b3589995f556d3e88136b8f.png 960630599_BennVennLabelV3600dpi.thumb.png.1ad3505aa56b23b37b3c38acd0c76987.png 1274324111_BennVennLabelV4600dpi.thumb.png.150d36c9af0dece73b3c864f27fb4ea9.png

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Bah... After I print, apply, and upload images, I realize some mistakes.

- I should have used the microSD logo instead of the SDHC logo.

- I should have added BENNVENN.COM

I did say it was a quickie.  That's what happens I suppose.  Here are those couple of corrections.  I'm sure there are a multitude of improvements that could be made, but I'll call it done.

 

214360438_BennVennLabelV1b600dpi.thumb.png.b2f6dc21c09ef898177ece944738a202.png 27855503_BennVennLabelV2b600dpi.thumb.png.6e60fce4842c119cdd4b362bcc51d2c5.png 745163683_BennVennLabelV3b600dpi.thumb.png.578ddf582c0c3dd85007bc4eee88f338.png 1956662895_BennVennLabelV4b600dpi.thumb.png.8a5e53907bad87116add71b9bae3f012.png 1957954944_BennVennLabelV5b600dpi.thumb.png.43daaca56411928f22a79d8dd297236f.png

Edited by KevinMos3
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On 2/27/2021 at 11:04 PM, UHATEIT said:

Those look sweet! I do not have a sticker printer tho :(

I invested in a Canon Selphy photo printer that does 148mm by 100mm prints. It is a sublimate printer so the colour is on plastic sheets and is transferred by heat to the glossy paper. You can fit 4 labels on one sheet. With a little glue and scissors the result is awesome!

 

108 sheets with the inks cost 46 € here in Finland. So a single label would be just 0.11 €. Not bad.

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This has been requested by many and it's been very close to completion for a long time, unfortunately life got in the way of finishing it sooner...but better late than never. So now we're pleased to announce that the ElCheapoSD Menu v2.2203.1 is finally available for download!

This is a replacement menu for the BennVenn ElCheapoSD for Atari Lynx cartridge. This menu has the following features:

  • Runs on default firmware (this makes it limited to a maximum of 256 ROMs and has no directories support, new firmware from BennVenn is in the works to address this)
  • ROM list scrolling and pagination (up/down to move through the ROM list, left/right to skip forward/back a screen full of ROMs)
  • Displays up to 16 ROMs at a time
  • Scrollbar with position indicator
  • Changeable colour themes
  • Files beginning with a . (dot) or _ (underscore) are removed from the ROM list; if you use macOS to copy files, you will not get junk displayed
  • ROM list is sorted alphabetically
  • Configurable settings

IMG_1919.thumb.jpeg.1998408e3916c05646b79f8215d2f7fd.jpeg

 

So head on over to the itch.io page and download the menu. Installation is simple, just copy the BOOT.bin file from the downloaded ZIP to your SD card. We're planning to add more features in the future. Remember this is an independent project, not related to BennVenn and not funded by anyone else, so if you like the new menu, please show your support with a small donation at download time!

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I initially had an issue and resolved it this morning. For some reasn I had a bunch of duplicate roms and demos so I had 270roms, and when I loaded them it wasn;6t alphabetized, it went half way through B to the end of Z and then the #s and A and B were at the bakc and it cut some off (since i see it can only handle 256. 

 

So I deleted everything off of it and then put them into a folder and copied only 250 over and it's all alphabetized and good to go!

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Oh how odd, did you happen to see what # of ROMs it showed at the bottom of the screen when you had 290 loaded? It's possible that it overflowed a buffer (though I was sure I handled that in the code already, it could still have a bug in it)...

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2 hours ago, Igor said:

Oh how odd, did you happen to see what # of ROMs it showed at the bottom of the screen when you had 290 loaded? It's possible that it overflowed a buffer (though I was sure I handled that in the code already, it could still have a bug in it)...

Oh I want to say it DID say I had 270 which is what I had total. But it went from mid B to Z then # to mid B but was missing a while page of them like 14-16 or so. 

 

But removing down to 250 was perfectly fine after that. But I saw the update eventually will allow over 256 someday right?

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