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Weird internal Atari cart dumped


ianoid

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Maybe 64 was the Rom chip size, though I doubt it.

 

I'd agree chess is likely the first ten game options with Othello being the next four options. You just gotta hit the select switch however many times. Don't know about Othello, but chess goes between single and multiplayer, and higher numbers let the computer think longer.

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This is not the release version of Chess on there but clearly an older build. I remember hearing somewhere that the original version was 6k and the author then pared it down to 4k for cart release. Maybe this is one of the older 6k versions?

 

Maybe there was talk of Atari including Othello on the cart as a collection, and to take up that extra 2k?

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3 hours ago, batari said:

This is not the release version of Chess on there but clearly an older build. I remember hearing somewhere that the original version was 6k and the author then pared it down to 4k for cart release. Maybe this is one of the older 6k versions?

 

Maybe there was talk of Atari including Othello on the cart as a collection, and to take up that extra 2k?

Do you have a source on the 6k Chess? I thought i read that somewhere as well.

 

Lloyd

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6k chess is mentioned on Atariprotos.com. On Wikipedia it's said that bankswitching was developed specifically for this game but ultimately the technology was not used until later.

 

I don't know where the information came from, but this is the first proof I have seen that substantiates the statements above. I think the past protos are all 4k.

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On 11/29/2020 at 12:38 PM, batari said:

6k chess is mentioned on Atariprotos.com. On Wikipedia it's said that bankswitching was developed specifically for this game but ultimately the technology was not used until later.

 

I don't know where the information came from, but this is the first proof I have seen that substantiates the statements above. I think the past protos are all 4k.

The technology was not used until later? Do you know where it was used?

 

I am always on hunt for stuff like this..

 

lloyd

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Only Ian could make me come out of semi-retirement with an interesting new proto.  I've done some testing and while Video Chess has a number of differences from the final, Othello seems to be the same as the released version.  However if someone could split out the Othello rom from this cart and do a file compare with the early released version just to verify I'd appreciate it.

 

I've moved my Computer Chess page to a new Video Chess page and added this prototype: http://www.atariprotos.com/2600/software/videochess/videochess.htm

 

I'll have to do an Othello page eventually, but as it appears to be the same as the final and I'm not very familiar with Go Reversi Othello, that will probably wait for a bit.

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4 hours ago, Tempest said:

...Othello seems to be the same as the released version.  However if someone could split out the Othello rom from this cart and do a file compare with the early released version just to verify I'd appreciate it.

Yes, the code is almost 100% identical. With just 11 bytes changed to interact with Chess.

 

(also the ORG was changed from Fxxx to Dxxx, but that's irrelevant)

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Very cool cartridge, thanks for sharing!  I assume that you have not opened it up and taken a picture?  I wonder if the pcb is different from the standard 8K prototype board.

 

Also I seem to remember hearing a rumor that some of the early 2600 development systems had 6K RAM to simulate the cartridge ROM with a slightly different memory map, and the target was to always reduce the size to fit in 4K.

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