anarkiwi

Concerto 0.96 72822 + PAL C300633-001/REV C crashes, NTSC fine Hi all, Earlier in the thread I reported that Concerto often crashes on my PAL 7800, whereas on my NTSC unit it's fine (I've been using Trebor's ROMs). Recently I was able to do some more experimentation - I took a NTSC Pole Position II cartridge, and modified it to accept EPROMs (I used .https://www.digitpress.com/library/techdocs/7800_Eprom_cart.pdf). This allows me to test 32k ROMs separate from Concerto. If I try Ms Pacman PAL via Concerto - it crashes after a minute or so. If I burn the exact same ROM to a real EPROM, and install that in my modified cartridge, it runs fine and never crashes. I think unfortunately this points to Concerto as the issue. I did try replacing SALLY after installing a socket also, and also I switched RIOT from my NTSC unit, and the problems remained (I also replaced the RAM, from earlier in the thread). Are there any further diagnostics I can try? Concerto is just fantastic on my NTSC unit, it's a real shame that it seems incompatible with my PAL unit. It may be that I'll just have to make up some EPROM adaptors to use with it. Nowhere near as flexible of course, but at least I can use it with multiple games now.

I appreciate your tip about latest-but-one firmware. I downgraded from 0.96 to 0.95, and things are definitely better. PAL Xevious still instantly crashes, but now Galaga does not crash and many other PAL games are working again. So to summarize, on my PAL 7800, 0.96 almost instantly crashes on most all .PAL a78s, 0.95 is better but still some games don't work. On my NTSC 7800 everything is great, including up to 0.96. I suggest not upgrading for now if you have a working PAL setup!

Great to have the confirmation - thanks! I'll try reverting firmware then (I've tried 7822 and 7822/daily, both don't run PAL ROMs correctly). If you have time, it would be good to know if those hbios versions work/don't work - though I wouldn't want your system to be messed up especially if you have something working :).

Hi all - maybe I should ask my question in a different way (perhaps more helpful). Has anyone got Concerto working on a PAL 7800, and if so, with what firmware/hbios version? Thanks,

Firstly, thanks so much for Concerto! I have two 7800s - one NTSC (original, with the expansion connector), one PAL (with built in Asteroids). Concerto works great on the NTSC one. I've used 0.96/7822/daily on it without any issues. Very happy. On the PAL one - not as much luck. 2600 games work, but 7800 games lock up within a few seconds of loading. I have some NTSC carts which work fine - for example, Galaga. If I put a real NTSC Galaga cart in my PAL 7800, I can actually play it (with the expected corruption at the bottom of the screen of course). However, if I load either PAL or NTSC Galaga from Concerto - it locks up. I feel like this means that my 7800 is actually fine (I could go get a PAL 7800 cart to test with I guess). Built in Asteroids is fine, but if I load Asteroids from Concerto - locks up. Possibly I'm missing something obvious - I see that there are different ee loaders for PAL/NTSC (I've tried both), but I'm not clear if there's a PAL-specific Concerto hbios. My search foo seems be failing, I can't find a specifically labelled PAL hbios if there is one. Am I just missing something simple like I have missed the right firmware, or is something else more deep and mysterious going on? I did run the Atari diag cart image from concerto also. 50% of the time I just get a black screen, but the other 50% of the time it fails with error 12 (which I think is bad RAM). I replaced both RAM chips with some spare 6116s from a VIC 20 (known good), and the 7800 behaves the same. The original RAMs run fine in the VIC 20 so I think the RAM is fine too. Any pointers appreciated and thanks again for an amazing product :).