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Pokey for 7800 Q's?


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Ok, well, I was wondering something, since the Pokey sound chip was supposed to originally be in the 7800, and was excluded for cost or whatever, and there's a lot of homebrew games, or games you can download that need a Pokey, Would it be possible for me to add a Pokey to the board in the 7800, rather than strip a bunch of carts? CAn this be done, and would it work still with the old games, and new games?

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Ok, well, I was wondering something, since the Pokey sound chip was supposed to originally be in the 7800, and was excluded for cost or whatever, and there's a lot of homebrew games, or games you can download that need a Pokey, Would it be possible for me to add a Pokey to the board in the 7800, rather than strip a bunch of carts? CAn this be done, and would it work still with the old games, and new games?

 

Somewhere in the forums there is a link to specs on how to add a POKEY to a 7800. Search is your friend!

 

The catch is, because of the 7800's design, a boarded POKEY would have to be referenced differently than one in a cartridge. So, commercial games would not be able to use it. Homebrews designed to look for a boarded POKEY, however, would work fine.

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Pac Man (the user, not the game) has a board containing the Pokey and some RAM. It's called the XboarD. It has to be installed into Maria's socket, the she has to be installed onto XboarD.

I still am considering buying one if another run is made, but the difficulty of installing it into a third generation 7800 has kept my decision in check.

Edited by shadow460
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The XBoard should be available from Atarimax by now. I handed over the design to Steve some months ago so send him an email if you're interested.

 

And if you need more information about the XBoard check out my website www.x-game.se.

 

/P

Edited by PacMan
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I think Kenfused added it into Beef Drop and b*nQ for a while. Beef Drop doesn't need the XboarD since the production carts have POKEYs onboard.

 

So the answer is yes and no. If you're interested in testing homebrews, the XboarD might be good since it would provide extra RAM to any new game that was looking for it. POKEY can be installed in the CC2 that you'd likely be using to test the rom files.

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I think Kenfused added it into Beef Drop and b*nQ for a while.

b*nQ doesnt have POKEY support.

Beef Drop doesn't need the XboarD since the production carts have POKEYs onboard.

Unless those ever run out. The demo (and cart) should support XboarD but I dont think anyone has ever tested it. IIRC it first looks for POKEY on cart, then POKEY on XboarD and then falls back to TIA.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I think Kenfused added it into Beef Drop and b*nQ for a while.

b*nQ doesnt have POKEY support.

Beef Drop doesn't need the XboarD since the production carts have POKEYs onboard.

Unless those ever run out. The demo (and cart) should support XboarD but I dont think anyone has ever tested it. IIRC it first looks for POKEY on cart, then POKEY on XboarD and then falls back to TIA.

 

I just installed my Xboard into a 7800 tonight. Do you think if I took my Pokey out of my CC2 and ran Beefdrop that it would see the Pokey in the Xboard?

 

Edit:

 

OK I just tried it and it doesn't work. :( I'm not sure if it's the Cuttlecart or if it's Beefdrop's code to check for the xboard just isn't working.

 

Allan

Edited by Allan
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I just installed my Xboard into a 7800 tonight. Do you think if I took my Pokey out of my CC2 and ran Beefdrop that it would see the Pokey in the Xboard?

 

Edit:

 

OK I just tried it and it doesn't work. :( I'm not sure if it's the Cuttlecart or if it's Beefdrop's code to check for the xboard just isn't working.

 

Allan

Doh, I was hoping it would work. I would actually like to get that working if I ever sell any pokeyless ones. I don't think you have to actually remove the pokey, just choosing the right memory and startup files should be enough. I will try to take a look tomorrow if you can help me test anymore in the future, that would be great.

 

Thanks,

Ken

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I just installed my Xboard into a 7800 tonight. Do you think if I took my Pokey out of my CC2 and ran Beefdrop that it would see the Pokey in the Xboard?

 

Edit:

 

OK I just tried it and it doesn't work. :( I'm not sure if it's the Cuttlecart or if it's Beefdrop's code to check for the xboard just isn't working.

 

Allan

Doh, I was hoping it would work. I would actually like to get that working if I ever sell any pokeyless ones. I don't think you have to actually remove the pokey, just choosing the right memory and startup files should be enough. I will try to take a look tomorrow if you can help me test anymore in the future, that would be great.

 

Thanks,

Ken

I have the same problem with my code and I am quite sure it should work.

Maybe I did something wrong with the wiring maybe it is a problem with CC incompatibility (even if this it very unlikely)?

Edited by Schmutzpuppe
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I just installed my Xboard into a 7800 tonight. Do you think if I took my Pokey out of my CC2 and ran Beefdrop that it would see the Pokey in the Xboard?

 

Edit:

 

OK I just tried it and it doesn't work. :( I'm not sure if it's the Cuttlecart or if it's Beefdrop's code to check for the xboard just isn't working.

 

Allan

Doh, I was hoping it would work. I would actually like to get that working if I ever sell any pokeyless ones. I don't think you have to actually remove the pokey, just choosing the right memory and startup files should be enough. I will try to take a look tomorrow if you can help me test anymore in the future, that would be great.

 

Thanks,

Ken

 

No problem Ken. I'll do any testing you need. I have some eproms coming for CPUWIZ's 7800 boards as well. So we can try stuff on a real cart to see if it's the cc2 causing problems.

 

Allan

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I think Kenfused added it into Beef Drop and b*nQ for a while.

b*nQ doesnt have POKEY support.

Beef Drop doesn't need the XboarD since the production carts have POKEYs onboard.

Unless those ever run out. The demo (and cart) should support XboarD but I dont think anyone has ever tested it. IIRC it first looks for POKEY on cart, then POKEY on XboarD and then falls back to TIA.

 

I just installed my Xboard into a 7800 tonight. Do you think if I took my Pokey out of my CC2 and ran Beefdrop that it would see the Pokey in the Xboard?

 

Edit:

 

OK I just tried it and it doesn't work. :( I'm not sure if it's the Cuttlecart or if it's Beefdrop's code to check for the xboard just isn't working.

 

Allan

 

It turns out I think I missed something. I will check it later tonight. Beefdrop may still work with the xboard.

 

Allan

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I did some testing "light" to see if it works or not. With the CC2 I could not get it to use the XBoard at all. But after removing the CC2 Pokey it played fine on the XBoard. It seems even though I am using the 7800_32K bank file the CC" pokey is still mapped into the 7800 memory space.

 

It also seems I played a bit to much with my last remaining XBoard so now it is not working any more. Aaa well, back to work ;-)

 

/P

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OK. I forgot all about the audio cable so it may be my fault. I'm trying to find C10 on my NTSC 7800 and can't find it. I tried the schematics but I'm still having trouble finding it. Can somebody tell me were it is on a NTSC board?

 

I still have to pic up a cable somewhere as well. I'll try getting one tommorrow.

 

Thanks,

 

Allan

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The strangest thing happened when I removed the Pokey from my CC2. It couldn't find MENU.CC2 ! When I plugged the Pokey back it worked, when I removed it again, it failed. I had to reformat the MMC and write everything back to make it work without the Pokey. Have anyone seen that behaviour before ?

 

/P

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OK. I forgot all about the audio cable so it may be my fault. I'm trying to find C10 on my NTSC 7800 and can't find it. I tried the schematics but I'm still having trouble finding it. Can somebody tell me were it is on a NTSC board?

 

I have one NTSC unit at home so I can check that when I get home tonight.

 

/P

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I did some testing "light" to see if it works or not. With the CC2 I could not get it to use the XBoard at all. But after removing the CC2 Pokey it played fine on the XBoard. It seems even though I am using the 7800_32K bank file the CC" pokey is still mapped into the 7800 memory space.

 

It also seems I played a bit to much with my last remaining XBoard so now it is not working any more. Aaa well, back to work ;-)

 

/P

Removing CC2 Pokey makes no difference for me

Still no Sound :(

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Removing CC2 Pokey makes no difference for me

Still no Sound :(

Do you mean there is no sound period, tia sound, or very limited tia sound?

If most of the sounds are missing (music, some effects) then that means the pokey is being detected. So there is either a bug and I am not writing to the proper pokey when it has been detected, or somehow the pokey sounds is not getting out of the xboard?

 

--Ken

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Maybe pokey wasnt getting initialized on the xboard. dont know if that would cause silence or not. I made a few minor adjustments to the code, but dont know if that will help or not.

After looking at the code. It will enable an xboard pokey if it finds one, if it finds one in the card, it will disable the xboard pokey because all pokey writes for sound output are actually written to both an xboard and card pokey.

 

--Ken

bd7800demo.zip

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It definitly worked for me, i tried removing the connector to the XBoard and the music went away. Seems you are using TIA sound for sound Fx and POKEY for music.

 

Schmutzpuppe, I will mail you a BIOS EPROM with a test program so that we can debug what is going on. You are using a PAL 7800 nes pá ?

 

/P

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Maybe pokey wasnt getting initialized on the xboard. dont know if that would cause silence or not. I made a few minor adjustments to the code, but dont know if that will help or not.

After looking at the code. It will enable an xboard pokey if it finds one, if it finds one in the card, it will disable the xboard pokey because all pokey writes for sound output are actually written to both an xboard and card pokey.

 

--Ken

Sorry I didn't make clear the I don't talk about Beef Drop.

I didn't use Beef Drop for XBoard test because I don't know which of the Versions worked with the XBoard.

I'll check out the attached one.

Yesterday I used my code so there is a chance that I just messed something up.

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Ok check the attached Beef Drop version.

Again no XBoard sound just TIA.

That means that I also hear sound and music when I disconnect the sound connector from the XBoard.

I tested with and witout Pokey installed on the CC2.

Maybe my XBoard is just defective!? :(

 

It definitly worked for me, i tried removing the connector to the XBoard and the music went away. Seems you are using TIA sound for sound Fx and POKEY for music.

Schmutzpuppe, I will mail you a BIOS EPROM with a test program so that we can debug what is going on. You are using a PAL 7800 nes pá ?

/P

Yes I use PAL.

I have an old eprom programmer just have to search for an eprom (and check if the old dos application still works with my PC).

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Again no XBoard sound just TIA.

That means that I also hear sound and music when I disconnect the sound connector from the XBoard.

So if you are hearing TIA music, then it isn't detecting the pokey at all. I could try compiling a version with forced XBoard pokey sound to determine if it is a problem in the detection although the same algorithm is used as is used for the cart pokey.

 

TIA is still used for some effects, because any effects that sounded ok using TIA, I left as TIA. A few effect sounds might be on pokey. This means less sounds interupting other sounds.

 

--Ken

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