THE!CART... New 128MB FLASH Cartridge

[Roydea6]

Just now loaded the new update and all is good again, but the last time I programmed the cart about half way through the update my screen and computer when to sleep and botched the cart programming... Is there a way to keep my PC computer from going to sleep. until the cart gets programmed.. I am using AspeQT.

[+JAC!]

I think you have to change the power savings settings to "NEVER SLEEP WHEN PLUGGED IN" or smthg similar

[+JAC!]

The!Cart Studio version 2014-09-24 released

The addition of the Home-Soft ATR support really boosted the whole thing, measured by the amount of (new) people who now ask questions and give feedback. I'm really happy to get that feedback because as mentioned earlier there's not too much time for me for testing. But hey, this is the internet and we can iterate quickly based on actual customers' feedback. So here's another update.

• Bootable ATRs without DOS 2.x or MYDOS are now correctly recognized again. They had worked before and became broken with the support for the "Bootmanager" ATRs.
• The new menu entry "Tools/Preview" allows for a testing preview of the complete cartridge export and its menu in an emulator, just as in the Maxflash Studio. For the preview, the workbook is exported as ".car" file with a fixed name into the temporary folder of the user. A previously existing preview is overwritten automatically. If no path to an emulator executable,is configured in the options, "The!Cart Studio" tries to open the ."car" file with the associated default program of the operating system. Only if that fails, it will ask you to maintain the full path to the emulator, for example to "Altirra.exe" or "atari800.exe", in the options. This helps to keep the configuration effort at the minimum.
• The modifier key for menu entries should now be "Command" instead of "Control" on Mac OS X. Since I have no Mac OS X machine, I'd be happy to hear if it works.
• The buttons for choosing the bank colors are now also correctly displayed on Windows XP. Looks like some retro computer users are also inclined to retro operating systems :-).
• The "Check for Updates during Start" setting in the options is now correct saved when the program is closed.

Edited September 24, 2014 by JAC!

[+JAC!]

The!Cart Studio version 2014-09-25 released

• The last entry on from "Bootmanager" disks is now visible in the extended menu. Thanks to Franks for pointing out the bug. Basically the last entry from every Home-Soft disk was missing.
• New cartridge type "67 - XEGS 64 KB cartridge (banks 8-15)" added to list of recognized cartridge and content types for completeness.

I have a question and hope for feedback:

 

The ATR support goes quite far meanwhile, including skipping "Bootmanager" menus etc. But has become quite complex to manage from the user's perspective (parameters column with dozens of on the fly patches etc.).

 

With the code that is present now I could "easily" (no coder should ever write this, I know) turn the ATRs back into single .XEX files when they are added to the workbook.

Similar to the Maxflash Programming ATRs that are automatically converted to ".CAR" files on the fly.

Together with the upcoming support for XEX's directly in the extended menu, this would make thing much simpler for me and the users I think.
In particular it'll allow you to add/remove individual files and not have duplicates just because the same thing is somewhere there on another ATR collection.

 

This will not change the existing ATR support, but I'll save me from the (very understanable) request to support for direct starts from MyPicos, or the next GameDos I've never heard of.

 

Opinions?

Edited September 25, 2014 by JAC!

[FULS]

JAC!

I've been programming "The!Cart" with your newest software. Love it!! I like all the Homesoft files to show-up and have them alphabetized and searchable. The files now run immediately when clicked on. I like all the other .atr support now available in the cart. Yes I think "turn the ATRs back into single .XEX files when they are added to the workbook" is a great idea. I think that will reduce duplicate files and roms. I also like the preview before I program the cart. I am looking forward to your .xex support for this cartridge.

I've tried to use your patch on Bounty Bob Strikes Back but I think I'm doing something wrong. Would somebody else try the patch on BBSB and then press reset when the game initializes, then start a new game. See if you can get past level 2 without the program locking up when you jump on the hoist.

Edited September 26, 2014 by FULS

[Roydea6]

JAC!

I've been programming "The!Cart" with your newest software. Love it!! I like all the Homesoft files to show-up and have them alphabetized and searchable. The files now run immediately when clicked on. I like all the other .atr support now available in the cart. Yes I think "turn the ATRs back into single .XEX files when they are added to the workbook" is a great idea. I think that will reduce duplicate files and roms. I also like the preview before I program the cart. I am looking forward to your .xex support for this cartridge.

I've tried to use your patch on Bounty Bob Strikes Back but I think I'm doing something wrong. Would somebody else try the patch on BBSB and then press reset and then see if you can get past level 2.

But my atrs are MyDos Multi game files up to 64 per atr.. But for kfile boot disk type atrs doing xex file add would be okay.

[+JAC!]

>But my atrs are MyDos Multi game files up to 64 per atr

With any kind of bootloader? MyPICODos?

I'd of course only extract XEXs from ATRs where I can find long (reasonable) file names, i.e. MyPICODOs or Bootmanager currently.

1 ATR => up to 64 XEX files in the workbook.

[Grevle]

The Cart's flashing selector bar is a bit to "extreme" for crt tv's. Im using crt tv for my Ataris and as we now crt tv,s can be sensetive to brightness changes and the selector bars blinking is making the lines to the left and right of the bar bulge a bit on crt,tv becuase of the strong intensty of the brightness of the selector bar. Can we have a option to choose a more "soft selector bar" maybe one less intensity or no blinking ? have tried on 2 crt tv, with same result. Forgive me if this has been done already, since i havent read all the updates made to latest Cart Studio.

 

 

I took a picture of whats happening, look at the right side of the selector bar and see the bending of the line there. Crt tv doesnt seem to like the way the bar goes from black to high intensty white blinking. The crt tv seems to work normal otherwise.

 

[+JAC!]

>since i haven't read all the updates made to latest Cart Studio.

You should. Really :-)

 

>Crt tv doesnt seem to like the way the bar goes from black to high intensity white blinking.

I know this problem from my VCS only. I don't have it with my XL/CRTs. Let's try some variantions when I visit your place next time.

[+JAC!]

After 24 hard hours of recording, editing, re-encoding and uploading 1 GB to youtube it's finally there.
Enjoy the first person perspective and the slightly biased presentation :-)

 

 

 

[Grevle]

Nice Presentation

 

Seems the selector bar wasn't bending the lines so mutch with your setup. Im using The Cart! with a NTSC computer on Pal tv in 60hz. maybe thats my issue, Anyway i still would like a option for

choosing a different selector bar. Maybe one less intens without blinking.

[Marius]

I have some issues with that selector bar too on my PAL CRT television. I find it too much blinking anyway. But that is a minor issue.

 

This cart is absolutely the BEST atari 8bit invention since the release of the 8bit line itself!

 

I would like to thank (again) JAC and the hardware team for creating this absolutely stunning piece of hardware.

 

I am still hoping for a new release with a better case, and a professional mounted PCB in that case.

But besides that: I'm extremely satisfied!

 

Thanks thanks thanks!

Marius

[mega-hz]

i am pleased to hear this,

but the best hardware is nothing without the best software!

so many thanx to HIAS and JAC!!

Edited October 2, 2014 by mega-hz

[+JAC!]

I've extended the download with native wrappers for the "TheCartStudio.jar", so you have an ".exe" for Windows, ".sh" for Linux and ".app" for Mac OS X, all in a single download.

This will provide icons and predefined Java parameters.

Here's a first version for testing. Since I dont have real Linux or Mac to test, I'm looking for feedback if all this actually works.

The .jar is in there twice now because of the ".app" structure, but still I feel a single download file is better than 4 separate downloads.

 

 

 

thecartstudio.zip

 

[EDIT: Updated Mac OS Stub]

Edited October 7, 2014 by JAC!

[Marius]

Sorry I forgot to test for you...

 

On MAX OS X only the .JAR version works. The .APP version does not work.

 

It does not give an error, but simply nothing comes up.

 

I also lacks an icon btw.

[+Stephen]

The Windows version works fine. I used it to create a split ATR for a workbook titled "AllCarts". Let's just say that even at pokey divisor 0, sending 27MB through SIO took some time. The system said the cart flashed fine, but it won't boot. The machine just goes to self-test. I am able to access the flashing software though (simple menu). Is there anything I can provide to see what may be the cause? I of course don't want to have to upload a 27MB image anywhere.

[+CharlieChaplin]

"The buttons for choosing the bank colors are now also correctly displayed on Windows XP. Looks like some retro computer users are also inclined to retro operating systems :-)."

 

I got two shouts from my MS-DOS and Win 3.11: "Win XP is not retro ! We are retro !!" Its nice to have a 2Ghz PC working with DOS and Win 3.11, DOS/Windows was never that fast... And SIO2PC.EXE works very well under MS-DOS on that PC...

[Roydea6]

The Windows version works fine. I used it to create a split ATR for a workbook titled "AllCarts". Let's just say that even at pokey divisor 0, sending 27MB through SIO took some time. The system said the cart flashed fine, but it won't boot. The machine just goes to self-test. I am able to access the flashing software though (simple menu). Is there anything I can provide to see what may be the cause? I of course don't want to have to upload a 27MB image anywhere.

Try pressing the cart button and then the RESET button on Atari..

[+Stephen]

Try pressing the cart button and then the RESET button on Atari..

No luck. I have AutoRun set to off. Perssing the button and hitting reset takes me back to the simple menu. Running the cart from Bank 0 puts me in the simple menu. Running it from bank 256 (it defaulted to this after flashing it) just makes the machine go to the self test. I even switched the machine back to stock OS (I have a 32-in-1 OS in the machine FWIW).

 

I have not yet had time to try the cart on any of my other machines.

[+Stephen]

Also - when changing the Workbook Options, Menu to "Extended Menu" an image with a single 8kB cart generates 128MB of output files. Why is this? If I use simple menu, all I get is a 393kB image, which I would expect. However, when trying to prgram with this ATR type, I get an error "no or incompatible data image" error. If I export to "split ATRs", they load OK.

[+JAC!]

The original "All Carts" workbook was created when the extended menu did not exist. That why it has "simple Menu" in set in its options. You should always use the extended menu. If you do so, the studio will put the menu itself in the very beginning of the space and the directory with the entries at the very end. This is necessary because both parts grow dynamically when you add more entries. Otherwise adding a single entry might required a complete reorganization at the time, cause long flashing times. Basically this works like program & screen ram on the Atari or program & stack on other CPUs. One grows from bottom, one from the top of the available space.

 

And even tough you cat a large image (because there is data in the last bank as you can see on the "banks" tab), the incremental flasher will one read the used parts from the ATR based on the usage-map that is contained in the export. That also one big advantage of having a single ATR, it can access the required parts directly. But also when using multiple ATRs, only the used parts/ATRs are prompted for.

 

>However, when trying to program with this ATR type, I get an error "no or incompatible data image" error.

Not sure where this comes from. Maybe the flasher on The!Cart is much too old. In that case you can download an ATR with the latest version from hias web site.

 

@Andreas: I'd love to see a screen shot with TheCartStudio running on Windows 3.11 :-)

Edited October 9, 2014 by JAC!

[+Stephen]

Thanks. I just let it run over night, and it's working now. I'll try incremental updates next.

[Level42]

Great video, it makes it more clear for "newbies" what it does and how to do it although it's still fairly technical.

 

Are there any "pre-created" collections for this cartridge to download ?

Does it only run original cartridge games or also disc/tape based games ?

 

I really like the search option, that is great to quickly find the game you want to play.

 

I just installed the .jar version on my Mac, seems to run OK but I have only just started the program. The .app doesn't work. Running the very new Yosemite OSX. You do have to open the .jar file by looking it up in the finder and than click on the .jar file with the CTRL key held down else (in default settings) the mac refuses to open the program. This depends on your Security and privacy settings though but by default this is set to trust only programs from the App store and "known trusted software developers".

Edited October 19, 2014 by Level42

[+CharlieChaplin]

@Andreas: I'd love to see a screen shot with TheCartStudio running on Windows 3.11 :-)

 

Well,

I do not think I will get it running, but I will try it nevertheless.

 

Step 1: install win32s for Win 3.11

Step 2: install Java SDK for Win 3.11 -or- install Netscape Navigator for Win 3.11 which contains a Java VM (and then surf the internet with 16 bits, 65k colours and currently 1024x768 resolution; but hey I am also using "low" 1024x768 resolution under WIN XP)

 

Lets wait and see what happens... for WIN 3.11 lovers: http://www.gaby.de/win3x/esoft.htm

[+Stephen]

Thanks. I just let it run over night, and it's working now. I'll try incremental updates next.

I am not able to get incremental updates working. Anytime I add something, it creates 9 16MB ATRs, and the flasher tells me that all 16384 blocks are used. I do not have a way of using AspeQt yet, so I cannot try the single large file. The flasher is version 1.02.