Cuttle Cart 2 Discussion Thread

[Paul Slocum]

Yeah, I'll definitely make a backup install folder now. I just figured all the files would be on Chad's site and they'd be updated frequently at first anyway. Everything's on there except the bankswitching files.

 

-paul

[Mayhem]

Likewise doing the same... just going through what I have eliminating duplicates and checking they all work (and sadly some of them aren't so far so I'll be asking for more help shortly!) on bootup.

 

Once done I might make it all available for download... I'm collecting both NTSC and PAL files so don't worry about what flavour 7800 you have

[Mayhem]

Okay people, see if you can help me out here. Currently the following 2600 BINs don't seem to want to work in CC2 for me:

 

Acid Drop PAL

Labyrinth NTSC

MindMaze NTSC

Mr Roboto NTSC

Polaris (NTSC and PAL)

Stargunner NTSC

 

The BIN files I have all work fine in emulators, and most of them are from this site. Currently they are all set to run 78BIOS, maybe something else needed? Or perhaps a different banking system? Current bootup for them is (and I'm sure Labyrinth needs a different one anyhow!):

 

Acid Drop (PAL) ACIDDRP F8 78BIOS

Labyrinth LABYRNTH SC 78BIOS

Mind Maze MINDMAZE F8 78BIOS

Mr. Roboto MRROBOTO F8 78BIOS

Polaris POLARIS F8 78BIOS

Polaris (PAL) POLARISP F8 78BIOS

Stargunner STARGUNR 4K 78BIOS

[bjk7382]

Here are the ones I know (changes are in bold)

 

Mind Maze MINDMAZE F8 F8BANK1

Polaris POLARIS 3F 78BIOS

Polaris (PAl) POLARISP 3F 78BIOS

[cschell]

Acid Drop PAL - Doesn't work for me on any settings? Does this game work on a 7800? Sorry, can't offer any more help here. (NTSC version works fine though.)

 

Labyrinth - If this is a Supercharger game, you must name it LABYRI00 or something 6 characters long followed by two zeros. And the startup for SC games is SC, not 78BIOS.

 

Mr Roboto NTSC - Startup is F8BANK1

 

Stargunner NTSC - Works fine for me. It's a 4K game so it should work fine. Perhaps try 26QUICK for the startup, maybe the 7800 PAL BIOS doesn't recognize it as a 2600 game?

 

Chad

[Merrick Bill]

MayhemUK,

 

It would be sweeeeet if you could upload your setup once it's complete. Right now I just don't have the time to figure out how to use ROMS that aren't handled automatically by the CC2 software. Granted I still have a bunch of games to play, but there are some weird ones that look interesting (demos, protos and such) that just don't work.

 

Bill

[Mayhem]

Cheers for the help, I've now got everything running apart from Acid Drop PAL. Labyrinth is a Supercharger game, I overlooked to change the boot ROM there.

 

Stargunner I got working as suggested, by using the 26QUICK method. It's probably something in the PAL 7800 BIOS that might interfere with it. Likewise with Polaris, I had to do that to it in addition to changing the banking to 3F (though for whatever reason it's the only Tigervision game that needs it, the rest are fine with 78BIOS).

 

So that leaves one game. The NTSC version works fine (the conversion available also on this site) but the PAL one just refuses to budge on any boot method I've tried: 78BIOS, F8BANK1, 26QUICK. Anyone care to try it in MESS (7800) to see if it actually runs on a 7800? I haven't tried the other F8 banking types though (F8R and F8SC) so maybe I'll give that a whirl and see what happens.

[Mayhem]

Oh and go through a few of them that don't quite work as expected. Might require a drop to 26QUICK, will have to see (because of the PAL 7800).

[+Mitch]

For Acid Drop PAL you need to use the F8R Banking setting. Fortunately, I didn't do the CRC for that one so I'm in the clear.

 

Mitch

[+Mitch]

OK, scratch that. The game will load and then crash.

Instead use the attached ROM and run it as F6.

It seems to be an overdump but it works.

 

Mitch

aciddroppal.zip

[Mayhem]

Must admit I have to hold my hand up and go "ooops" anyhow

 

Just after my last post, with tiredness creeping in (as it was gone 4am here!) I noticed that the BIN image I had for the PAL version was 16k. And hence I'd be using the wrong bankswitching all along

 

So I changed it to F6 and it worked now. Though the picture for some reason rolls when the game starts and bottom of it is slightly cut off on my TV. Maybe it's the PAL stuff playing as usual

 

Does that with the image I had, and the one you posted here Mitch, so it must be some sort of config glitch. Does the same under 26QUICK too.

 

Right, about the last thing to do now is go back through and see what ones aren't quite working as they should graphically and if it's a setup fault or a BIN problem...

 

1000 files btw... exactly.

[Mot]

1000 files btw... exactly.

 

Can we make a new CC2ROMDB.TXT with what you have so far? or do you know the crc's for the roms? I can send an exe that will create a crc for any file.

 

This will take some doing for 1,000 files I know.

[cschell]

Three new updates are available for the CC2. One new file and two bug fixes.

 

The new file: (Well, new to the non-beta testers that is.)

HSCQUICK startup file available on the CC2 Updates page.

 

The bug fixes:

SC.STR and SC.ROM have been updated to fix a problem with a certain brand of MMC that doesn't reset properly.

 

A new BOOTROM.CC2 file is available to update Dev Mode to version 1.01. This update brings the Dev Mode MMC routines up to date with those in the main menu mode. It improves error handling. (And yes, these changes should have made into Dev Mode 1.00, oops.)

 

Get them all here:

 

http://www.schells.com/cc2utils/cc2files.shtml

 

Chad

[cschell]

Hello everyone,

 

I've been toying with the idea of unlocking the full potential of the CC2 (yes, it can certainly do more than it does), but I know that it's not something that I'll ever do alone.

 

You see, there's a lot of flexibility in the CC2 hardware, but I'm just not much for writing user interfaces. While in my not so humble opinion I think the CC2 has a rather nice interface, I know that it could probably do much more. (It CERTAINLY could have a much better dev mode, it might even be possible to build a full debugger into the CC2 - but that's something I know I will never do myself.)

 

So I'm considering making the CC2 source code available to the public for modification. I haven't made a decision to do this yet, and don't know what type of license I would use either. (I'm especially concerned about warranty implications if people release software with bugs, or even worse software that damages the CC2 or the 7800 by driving multiple devices at once.)

 

Anyway, I'd like to hear what others think about this. Would anybody be interested in improving the CC2 software? In what way?

 

To give a general idea of what's inside the Cuttle Cart 2 (and to help me remember how the darn thing works a few years from now) I've started to put together some technical documentation. Actually, I just started a little while ago, so it's not complete, and it's probably clear as mud. The part's I've written so far deal mostly with the non-reconfigurable aspects of the CC2, especially the mappings of the FLASH RAM and NVRAM. (Almost everything else is reconfigurable.)

 

Only 64K of the 256K of Flash RAM is currently being used. And I tried to choose a flexible mapping of the FLASH RAM so that pages could be located in various places in the 7800 memory map just so that it could sit along side the SRAM when the SRAM is configured to act as a normal game cartridge. This was with debugging in mind.

 

Anyway, what I've written so far is available here:

 

http://www.schells.com/techdocs.txt

 

So please feel free (and encouraged) to let me know what you think about all of this.

 

Thanks,

Chad

[Gregory DG]

You see, there's a lot of flexibility in the CC2 hardware, but I'm just not much for writing user interfaces.  While in my not so humble opinion I think the CC2 has a rather nice interface, I know that it could probably do much more.

That's interesting... I was thinking just yesterday how nice it would be if each game could have a screenshot appear as you scroll through the list a la MAME32. Would something like that be possible?

[Bruce Tomlin]

So I'm considering making the CC2 source code available to the public for modification.  I haven't made a decision to do this yet, and don't know what type of license I would use either.  (I'm especially concerned about warranty implications if people release software with bugs, or even worse software that damages the CC2 or the 7800 by driving multiple devices at once.)

Sounds pretty cool. Right now the only thing I can think of is having a few new useful bank switch modes possible, but I know that would require mucking around with VHDL type stuff, which is not exactly trivial to work with. (Actually, I wouldn't mind being able to figure out how to actually get a dev environment going for mucking with FPGA kind of stuff, but there seem to be very few open-source tools to help understand what exactly is going on. Right now I'm still at the level of hacking raw JEDEC files for GAL chips. Which is like working with stone knives and bearskins.)

 

And, BTW, I think I've found one wierdness with the CC2. I've only tried it on my cart dumper modded 7800 once ( http://xi6.com/hacks/7800dump.html ), but apparently the bus pull-up resistors I added cause a problem that makes the CC2 think its NVRAM has gone bad.

[Mayhem]

I've had that message come up a couple of times myself whilst using it. Just loses my settings... simple enough to go back in and redo them.

[Bruce Tomlin]

Here is a CC2 serial loader program for those who use either Linux or OS X.

 

Just a quick note here... I noticed that somehow, tab characters got into the bank switch name list. Everything starting with FA won't work.

 

I also found that I could use the -b option twice and the first one was never checked (I tried to use -b for baud rate by accident). The fix is to not allow -b or -s to be used twice.

 

I'll upload a new version in a few days with both of these fixed.

[atari_aaron]

Ahh success! I got my CC2 to work in both modes!

 

I just began playing with my CC2 this week as we spent the three months buying a home and fixing it up. Still not done of course.

 

Anyway, at first I had problems getting the AA 7800 roms working, but after a little reading through this thread I downloaded the bin versions from the atari7800 site. Works great, even after I tried to force an SD card into the MMC slot. A note to everyone: that's not a good idea... It's hard to find an MMC, at least a cheap one at 10pm at night at Walmart. I ended up getting the last 128MB MMC at Best Buy here in town. At least it was the last one on the shelf at the time I was in the store.

 

Anyway, I couldn't be happier. CC2 works great! It's greater than great, it's fantastic! Not that there was ever any doubt, especially after reading the posts from others.

 

I even got the Dev mode to load my crappy self-written bin files. Even though the bins are very basic 2600 code, it's very satisfying to finally see something I wrote for the 2600 actually running on atari hardware and not just on an emulator!

 

I'd love to see a cuttle cart for the 5200. I read Chad's response to the request for something similar for the Intellivision, so I understand that I shouldn't expect anything like that in the near future. But I just wanted to say that I'd slap down another $200 each for both an Intellivision version and a 5200 version. One of my childhood friends said that he'd even buy a 5200 version and he doesn't even collect atari stuff. I guess it would allow him to fulfill his childhood fantasy of having more than just 5 games for his 5200.

 

Great work Chad!!!

 

Thanks,

 

Aaron

[+DamonicFury]

I'd love to see a cuttle cart for the 5200.

 

While not exactly the same, you could get a very similar setup by buying an Atari computer (about 20-50$ on Ebay) and a SIO2PC cable (you can often find them on Ebay, or you can buy an adapter from AtariAge for $20 that also requires a SIO cable.) The cable will allow the Atari computer to read from your PC's hard drive.

 

With this hardware, along with the Atari 810 emulator software (at http://retrobits.net/atari810.html ) you can then play any 5200 game OR the vast library of Atari computer games on original Atari hardware! And your cost is much less than a CC2. (And you don't have to use those 5200 joysticks!) I use this setup and highly recommend it. :-)

[Bruce Tomlin]

On the subject of MMC cards, I noticed the other day when I was at Fry's, that they had a new endcap display for Palm. There were carded versions of memory cards, which while Palm branded, were apparently (due to the way things were worded on the package) all MMC cards. This even though all the Palm PDAs in that display were apparently capable of using SD cards.

 

The interesting part is that there was a 256MB card for $99.

[gulag picture radio]

With 256 Megs, doesn't that mean you could fit the entire Atari 2600 + 7800 libraries, along with homebrews and protos, etc. like 8 times over?

 

Are there other good reasons to have that much extra space? I also would like to get a bigger card, but it seems like I might not ever use te extra room.

[bjk7382]

I'd love to see a cuttle cart for the 5200.

 

The A52 Maxicart v1.0 does just that (only with no menu and loads only one game at a time until it is erased with a new one)

[cschell]

Well all the CC2s have finally made it to their owners. So I will be selling the spares soon. I'm going to choose names by random from the second run mailing list and offer them to those people first.

 

If you were hoping to get one of the spares and are not on the list, you need to join now for a chance. See http://www.schells.com/cc2.shtml for details.

 

As for a second run, the waiting list is no where near long enough to do one. And I was just informed today that one of the parts in the CC2 has been discontinued. So I have to say it doesn't look very good.

 

Alas,

Chad

[CPUWIZ]

I hope you don't use a off-the-shelf random number generator.