doctorclu Posted July 11, 2009 Share Posted July 11, 2009 Can someone please point me to some good tips and resources on what it takes to convert XL games to the 5200? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted July 11, 2009 Share Posted July 11, 2009 I think there was a couple of issues of one of the american atari mags (can't recall which one) that had a fairly comprehensive article on 5200 to A8 i think (or was it the other way around) The article(s) were later reprinted in LACE (London Atari computer enthusiasts) newsletter...in issue 42 (might have continued in 43 or 41) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorclu Posted July 11, 2009 Author Share Posted July 11, 2009 I think there was a couple of issues of one of the american atari mags (can't recall which one) that had a fairly comprehensive article on 5200 to A8 i think (or was it the other way around) The article(s) were later reprinted in LACE (London Atari computer enthusiasts) newsletter...in issue 42 (might have continued in 43 or 41) Awesome, can I find those online, or do you have these issues and can you scan them for me? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted July 11, 2009 Share Posted July 11, 2009 (edited) http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/cons...nv_to_5200.html the magazine is analog the lace newsletter i have but i have no camera or a scanner and it was written by AA member ClausB...nice job Edited July 11, 2009 by carmel_andrews Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorclu Posted July 11, 2009 Author Share Posted July 11, 2009 the magazine is analog the lace newsletter i have but i have no camera or a scanner and it was written by AA member ClausB...nice job Hmmm... what could I do to get you to photocopy and mail it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted July 11, 2009 Share Posted July 11, 2009 Me has too look at postal rates for the lace newsletter If you can find something called 'Pooldisk' (a cd rom of a8 goodies by ernst and bo shurers or something like that) it has the Lace newsletter archive (i think) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg2600 Posted July 11, 2009 Share Posted July 11, 2009 http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/cons...nv_to_5200.html Link was working right. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted July 12, 2009 Share Posted July 12, 2009 http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/cons...nv_to_5200.html Link was working right. One thing not mentioned is how to detect various controllers connected to the joystick port. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted July 13, 2009 Share Posted July 13, 2009 (edited) would it be possible to convert the xegs cartridge games (the ones adapted from old A8 disk games) that are atari 800 compatible (except the ones that use xl/xe bank switching like gato,airball, thunderfox etc) and recode them for the 5200 I think most of those games only went up to 48k Edited July 13, 2009 by carmel_andrews Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bohoki Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 would it be possible to convert the xegs cartridge games (the ones adapted from old A8 disk games) that are atari 800 compatible (except the ones that use xl/xe bank switching like gato,airball, thunderfox etc) and recode them for the 5200 I think most of those games only went up to 48k my dream game would be a 3 player rampage Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 Rampage...you've got to be kidding me, quite possibly the worst game activision ever did for the A8 Now, a four player gauntlet, possibly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
classics Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 Since the cartridge interface is so limited on the 5200 and there is only 16k RAM its likely you would need an internal expansion module of some sort to upgrade the internal ram to 32k or 64k before those larger games could even be a consideration. Even then it would not be trivial to port such large games via dis-assembly. Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 Agreed. Does the 5200 cart port have a write line? Ideally, something like a passthru device could give 4 banks of 16K in the $4000-$7FFF area, then have a cartridge that has multiple banks in the $8000-$9FFF area. Then again, with today's technology, do away with the cartridge and just have a plug-in RAM unit and SD card reader. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 I wonder how difficult it would be to expand the memory of the 5200 to 64K. It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult. It wouldn't to useful obviously until someone ported a game. It would be cool knowing you had the only 64K Atari 5200 in the world. Allan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 i'm guessing that since the 5200 was based on the 800, it had the 800's bank switching (not the cart bankswitching) which if mem. recalls was at D800 (the cart bankswitching i think was at d500)...or perhaps these were moved on the 5200 (like all the other stuff above BFFFh was) If this were so, i think that using more ram space in the cart and the 800's bankswitch (where ever it is in the 5200) it might be feasable to doing a 64k game Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 Well I was looking at it from 6502 point of view meaning can have 64K bytes of addressable RAM without bankswitching. There may be a 5200 specific thing that makes it more difficult to add memory but that is beyond my tech knowledge. Allan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 (edited) You can't just add memory in a cart and have it appear in an unused area - the system architecture is such that addresses are decoded such that onboard Monitor ROM is around the high $Fxxx area, IO chips are $C000-$DFFF etc. Additionally, Atari carts for their 6502 based machines don't carry sufficient address lines to handle 64K anyway, 15 address lines = 32K, so that's all that would be supplied. The 400/800 unmodified do not have bankswitching (besides the case of cart ROM automatically taking precedence over system RAM) - in the case of back-switchable cartridges that is entirely handled on the cartridge. The CARTCTL line is activated on $D5xx accesses which can chip-select latches to handle bankswitching. That was probably the intent of the design in the first place, but can be used for other things (e.g. like selecting an offboard Pokey contained on a cart) Edited July 15, 2009 by Rybags Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 You can't just add memory in a cart and have it appear in an unused area - the system architecture is such that addresses are decoded such that onboard Monitor ROM is around the high $Fxxx area, IO chips are $C000-$DFFF etc. Additionally, Atari carts for their 6502 based machines don't carry sufficient address lines to handle 64K anyway, 15 address lines = 32K, so that's all that would be supplied. The 400/800 unmodified do not have bankswitching (besides the case of cart ROM automatically taking precedence over system RAM) - in the case of back-switchable cartridges that is entirely handled on the cartridge. The CARTCTL line is activated on $D5xx accesses which can chip-select latches to handle bankswitching. That was probably the intent of the design in the first place, but can be used for other things (e.g. like selecting an offboard Pokey contained on a cart) I didn't even see any WRITE signal on Atari 5200 cartridge slot so adding memory is limited to read-only memory unless you add some jumpers from motherboard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 (edited) Pin 4 - R/W Early Really, you could devise a kickarse cart - something along the lines of 256K static RAM, and a small bootstrap ROM that handles an SD card interface. But the question is "Why"... even such devices on the computer line struggle for support and people interested in buying them. And you'd end up with a situation where games would be developed for a market in the dozens, and the games would be widely different from a programming perspective from a computer based equivalent. No point really. 5200 owners should be happy with what's out there (legacy), and the occasional conversion that trickles through. If you're serious about Atari, you buy an XL or XE computer. Edited July 16, 2009 by Rybags Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 Pin 4 - R/W Early Really, you could devise a kickarse cart - something along the lines of 256K static RAM, and a small bootstrap ROM that handles an SD card interface. But the question is "Why"... even such devices on the computer line struggle for support and people interested in buying them. And you'd end up with a situation where games would be developed for a market in the dozens, and the games would be widely different from a programming perspective from a computer based equivalent. No point really. 5200 owners should be happy with what's out there (legacy), and the occasional conversion that trickles through. If you're serious about Atari, you buy an XL or XE computer. Well, the whole 'to small of a user base so don't bother' argument could be used for all classic game systems and computers. Why develop for the 8-bit Atari computers when you can develop for the X-box 360? We do this for fun so why not. If your a big 5200 you would love to see such development. Being a fan of the 8-bit computers I would think you would have understood that. Just look at the VBXE. How many people are going to use this thing? Maybe 100 if they are lucky. It's still cool that they are developing it and the people that will use it will be glad it was made. Allan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 Pin 4 - R/W Early Really, you could devise a kickarse cart - something along the lines of 256K static RAM, and a small bootstrap ROM that handles an SD card interface. But the question is "Why"... even such devices on the computer line struggle for support and people interested in buying them. And you'd end up with a situation where games would be developed for a market in the dozens, and the games would be widely different from a programming perspective from a computer based equivalent. No point really. 5200 owners should be happy with what's out there (legacy), and the occasional conversion that trickles through. If you're serious about Atari, you buy an XL or XE computer. The "R/W Early" is on the expansion port. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
classics Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 No R/W, and no clock, except on the 2-port model. Both of which could be overcome by throwing enough hardware or cpu power at it, but still, the 5200 cartridge port leaves much to be desired. Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 Since the expansion port is basicly an SIO port, I am assuming you couldn't use it to add something like more RAM or sound processor like on the 7800 cartridge port? Allan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
classics Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 Since the expansion port is basicly an SIO port, I am assuming you couldn't use it to add something like more RAM or sound processor like on the 7800 cartridge port? You could add RAM or pretty much anything else via the expansion port, as long as you didn't mind a very small window to work with it in. There isn't really any reason you couldn't hang 128kb of ram off it and access it in 256 byte segments with minimal hardware. A internal expansion like the 7800 X-Board would be more useful IMHO, at least if we are talking about porting games. Something with ram windows large enough to double buffer screen data at least. Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted July 18, 2009 Share Posted July 18, 2009 Am i to understand it then that since the stock 5200 is an unmodded 800 it doesn't support the 800's bank switching (i.e D800 if memory recalls) or where ever it should be on a 5200 (if it was indeed implemented) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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