Turbo / Atari 2600

[Albert]

Attached is the original Turbo prototype ROM from Coleco. I apologize for not posting this sooner, I completely forgot about it. Thanks to Rom Hunter for reminding me about it.

 

I am now able to make more copies of the reproduction Turbo sold in the AtariAge Store, which includes a slightly tweaked version of the attached prototype, and a significantly enhanced version, selectable with a pretty cool steering wheel screen. I wasn't able to produce copies for a good period of time as one of the components we used on the original board shot up immensely in price once it was discontinued. I now have a new Coleco board design that I used for the run of Lady Bug Collector's Edition, and I'm able to use it for Turbo as well.

 

Hmmm, I'm not sure anyone ha found the easter egg in the cartridge version of Turbo yet..

 

..Al

Turbo (Coleco).bin

[Rom Hunter]

Thanks again, Albert!

 

[+McCallister]

Hmmm, I'm not sure anyone ha found the easter egg in the cartridge version of Turbo yet..

 

..Al

Is it what's behind the spoiler I think it's the second spoiler being referred to above...

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

That's not what we had discussed back then. But I am not 100% sure what got into the final release.

[+McCallister]

So, there might be multiple ones? Intriguing

[Wickeycolumbus]

Awesome, thanks for posting!

[JL]

THANKS Albert! Hell hath frozen over

Edited January 8, 2016 by JL

[Albert]

THANKS Albert! Hell hath frozen over

The intent was always to release that ROM. I had just forgotten about it.

 

..Al

[+McCallister]

Hey, Al, did you see the "other" EE had been found?

 

edit: I think it's in a pm...

[Atarian Psychopath]

Thanks for the goodies,  I downloaded the rom.  Hope it works! 

?

[Supergun]

Has anyone here ever actually tried to play this rom yet?

 

Let me preface this post by CLEARLY stating that I already personally purchased the AtariAge Turbo “2 in 1” release back when Albert first made it available.

 

With that said, this rom does NOT work. I downloaded the bin file here and the one posted at AtariMania (presumably identical) and neither one works.

 

When played on Harmony, it loads up the title screen, goes into gameplay screen, and you can hit reset and start a game. But as soon as you pass the 18th car, the game completely glitches out until time runs out and it’s impossible to go any further. And it’s ALWAYS the 18th car. You can pass 17 with no problem, and let time run out, and the game won’t glitch, but it’s still game over, and thus, the game is unplayable.

 

When played on an actual original Coleco 8kb proto eprom board, it goes to the title screen, and resets after the green light. It won’t even go into gameplay screen. Completely unplayable.

 

And if you go to Matt’s Atari protos web site, and read his review of the original proto, he clearly states that he could play and see all the various stages. (impossible to do if you can’t pass more then 17 cars).

 

So, what’s the deal? Did Albert post the wrong rom file? The original proto was incomplete and glitchy, but nothing like this! It was in fact quite playable. Has no one else ever tried to play this?

[Rom Hunter]

21 hours ago, Supergun said:

Has anyone here ever actually tried to play this rom yet?

 

Let me preface this post by CLEARLY stating that I already personally purchased the AtariAge Turbo “2 in 1” release back when Albert first made it available.

 

With that said, this rom does NOT work. I downloaded the bin file here and the one posted at AtariMania (presumably identical) and neither one works.

 

When played on Harmony, it loads up the title screen, goes into gameplay screen, and you can hit reset and start a game. But as soon as you pass the 18th car, the game completely glitches out until time runs out and it’s impossible to go any further. And it’s ALWAYS the 18th car. You can pass 17 with no problem, and let time run out, and the game won’t glitch, but it’s still game over, and thus, the game is unplayable.

 

When played on an actual original Coleco 8kb proto eprom board, it goes to the title screen, and resets after the green light. It won’t even go into gameplay screen. Completely unplayable.

 

And if you go to Matt’s Atari protos web site, and read his review of the original proto, he clearly states that he could play and see all the various stages. (impossible to do if you can’t pass more then 17 cars).

 

So, what’s the deal? Did Albert post the wrong rom file? The original proto was incomplete and glitchy, but nothing like this! It was in fact quite playable. Has no one else ever tried to play this?

I wondered about this myself a long time ago.

I always assumed this was the 80% complete ROM.

Perhaps Thomas or Matt can shed some light on this.

[+Nathan Strum]

The ROM crashes pretty spectacularly in Stella, too.

 

I don't think the ROM was ever really 80% complete, unless the last 20% was "make a playable game out of it".  

 

Dennis did some early work on the prototype to make it more playable, but I honestly don't remember what ended up on the cart as the "original" prototype - whether it was a straight dump, or had some bug fixes done to it. I don't have my cartridge (or 2600) handy at the moment so I can't check it.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Looks like a wrong ROM got posted, it crashes at bankswitching. Attached is a ROM I created from what I think is the initial Distella disassembly of the original ROM. Only two bytes differ, but one of these caused the crash.

Turbo (Coleco, the real original).bin

[alex_79]

On a side note, in the pictures that are on Atarimania and AtariProtos, the eprom is installed backwards. The notch of the chip should point to the right, like it was originally in the pictures posted in the first pages of this thread.

The pics on Atarimania show also the back of the pcb, and it's visible how it has been modified to accept the "2564" eprom used for this proto, while the board was originally designed for the "2764" type eprom, which has a slightly different pinout.

 

[Albert]

1 hour ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Looks like a wrong ROM got posted, it crashes at bankswitching. Attached is a ROM I created from what I think is the initial Distella disassembly of the original ROM. Only two bytes differ, but one of these caused the crash.

Turbo (Coleco, the real original).bin 8 kB · 5 downloads

That's really strange, if the one I posted back in 2015 is not the same, I'm not sure where I would have gotten it from.  Even odder if only two bytes were swapped.  Are you sure the version you posted isn't a patched version of the original ROM to fix this specific issue?  That above ROM has been download 467 times (as I write this), and I'm somewhat amazed that nobody has reported this issue before now.  Really makes me wonder how many people actually played it! 

 

 ..Al

[Thomas Jentzsch]

The original game is hardly playable, I am not very surprised.

 

No clue how the ROMs got mixed up. But I do not remember that the original dump crashed. Though, in my case that doesn't mean much.  

[Albert]

2 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

The original game is hardly playable, I am not very surprised.

True, I do sometimes play it briefly when I sell a copy of the game and I'm testing it.

2 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

No clue how the ROMs got mixed up. But I do not remember that the original dump crashed. Though, in my case that doesn't mean much.  

Well, if I posted the original (buggy) ROM, that is true to what I said in my earlier post.  I feel if I had knowingly posted the fixed ROM, I would have stated that in my post.  But I have no idea what my intent was at the time when I posted it.

 

 ..Al

[Supergun]

17 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Looks like a wrong ROM got posted, it crashes at bankswitching. Attached is a ROM I created from what I think is the initial Distella disassembly of the original ROM. Only two bytes differ, but one of these caused the crash.

Turbo (Coleco, the real original).bin 8 kB · 11 downloads

Thank you so much for looking into this. I will test this rom out on actual hardware with one of my 8kb Coleco boards.

[Supergun]

16 hours ago, alex_79 said:

On a side note, in the pictures that are on Atarimania and AtariProtos, the eprom is installed backwards. The notch of the chip should point to the right, like it was originally in the pictures posted in the first pages of this thread.

The pics on Atarimania show also the back of the pcb, and it's visible how it has been modified to accept the "2564" eprom used for this proto, while the board was originally designed for the "2764" type eprom, which has a slightly different pinout.

 

Yes, I had observed these anomalies as well. In fact, I was so perplexed with it not working after burning 3 different manufacturer’s 2764 EPROMs, that I was considering the idea that perhaps it literally required a 2564 eprom in order to function properly.

[Rom Hunter]

15 minutes ago, Supergun said:

Thank you so much for looking into this. I will test this rom out on actual hardware with one of my 8kb Coleco boards.

To thicken the plot: which ROM is this then?

Found it in my personal archive.

Any differences with the one Thomas posted yesterday? (it is different according to Stella)

Turbo.bin

Edited November 16, 2022 by Rom Hunter

[Supergun]

Just now, Rom Hunter said:

To thicken the plot: which ROM is this then?

Found it in my personal archive.

Any differences with the one Thomas posted yesterday?

Turbo.bin 8 kB · 0 downloads

Hmm. Well then, I’ll just have to test this one out as well.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

OK, it looks like the ROM which Rom Hunter posted above is really the original.  

 

Mine got recreated from a disassembly. There the ORG of the first bank is $f000 instead of $d000, which causes the differences between the ROMs.

 

And then there is one byte changed. I don't remember exactly why I changed this byte, it is part of an unused copy of the sky colors from the 2nd bank (curved road). IIRC this byte was different between banks and I aligned it.

 

@Albert Can you please delete the attached ROM from my post above? 

[Rom Hunter]

Thanks for clearing this up, Thomas.

I just added the ROM to our database now.

Albert, you might as well delete that 2015 one too.

Edited November 16, 2022 by Rom Hunter

[Supergun]

Ok so here is my report thus far.

 

Both of RomHunter’s and Jentzsch’s Turbo roms work properly on a Harmony cartridge. The game starts with the countdown title screen, goes into gameplay screen, and after hitting reset, a game can be started.

 

Both also allow you to pass the 18th car, without glitching, which was impossible before. And I can now see WHY the 18th car was so “relevant” and what happens when you do. It changes scenery. (perhaps the bank switching occurs here)

 

I was then able to pass another 18 cars, reached a checkpoint, got bonus points tally’d, and changed scenery again, etc.

 

However, I then tried RomHunters rom on a Coleco 8kb eprom board cartridge, and much to my dismay, it still has the same problem; will not exit the title screen countdown. (will not go into gameplay screen) And so it is still unplayable.

 

I haven’t burned an eprom yet with the Thomas bin file, but I guess I will try that next. Not sure if it will matter at this point though.

 

Is there any reason this rom file would work on Harmony but not on a stand alone cartridge?