Roydea6 Posted January 9, 2014 Share Posted January 9, 2014 Hi, Go to this site and look for the download.. http://www.mega-hz.de/Angebote/THE!CART/THE!CART_EN.htm 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted January 9, 2014 Share Posted January 9, 2014 This is so strange... I tried this on my OS X 10.6.8 iMac and it resulted in an unarchived ZIP file -> a folder with several subdirectories. On my MBP with OS X 10.8.5 it resulted in a .JAR file .... Well ok... probably a JAVA thing I did not install on the iMac. Thanks for help rdea6! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted January 9, 2014 Share Posted January 9, 2014 Well... I think I will have to organize some more free time. I really do not understand a single thing of how to program this cart. Why doesn't this CART program simply produce an ATR which I can boot and then program my cart? Why is the BIN file that comes out of this tool 128MB, while I only entered one single test file? I probably am too patient, but I want a quick test. Can someone point me in a direction of a simple step by step guide? I hope I do not have to transfer 128MB through sio. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TXG/MNX Posted January 9, 2014 Share Posted January 9, 2014 I thought there was now only one version, the 128MB one. Did you arrange a prototype I got the "you cart is sent" e-mail the 24th of december and received the cart at the end of december. But it was just in my post-box even when it had the registered mail sticker on it. You would think I had to sign for the package but those mail delivery guys don't want to come again when there is nobody home so they try everything to "loose" the package at the first delivery attempt. Robert Hmm I got something rare ? I just was quick ordering the 64MB version... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roydea6 Posted January 9, 2014 Share Posted January 9, 2014 Well... I think I will have to organize some more free time. I really do not understand a single thing of how to program this cart. Why doesn't this CART program simply produce an ATR which I can boot and then program my cart? Why is the BIN file that comes out of this tool 128MB, while I only entered one single test file? I probably am too patient, but I want a quick test. Can someone point me in a direction of a simple step by step guide? I hope I do not have to transfer 128MB through sio. PROWIZARD, Use the HELP option on title bar.. use the export to make the AspeQT compatible atr after the boot process of the atr option 1 and do incremental and It should go fairly quickly for Just one entry.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted January 9, 2014 Share Posted January 9, 2014 PROWIZARD, Use the HELP option on title bar.. use the export to make the AspeQT compatible atr after the boot process of the atr option 1 and do incremental and It should go fairly quickly for Just one entry.. But I don't have Aspeqt! .... I have Sio2USB and Sio2IDE... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HiassofT Posted January 9, 2014 Share Posted January 9, 2014 Hi! But I don't have Aspeqt! .... I have Sio2USB and Sio2IDE... First be sure to use the "Simple Menu" (Edit->Workbook Options->Menu), not the extended menu. If you select the latter you'll currently get a 128MB file, no matter how many carts you added. Using the simple menu you get reasonably sized file(s). Then use File->Export->Export to ATR Programming Images (16MB). Depending on how many carts you added to your project you'll get one or more standard ATRs with max 16MB in size each. Next power up the Atari with The!Cart plugged in, run the flasher from the cart menu, select option "1" and follow on screen instructions. Forget about all the other options in the Flasher software, they are only for expert users so long, Hias Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+JAC! Posted January 9, 2014 Share Posted January 9, 2014 Finally managed to create a build chain for reasonable coding & testing of the menu (Compiler Java, Create The!Cart Studio, Compile ASM, Run new Studio with Template Project to Export ."CAR", Run in Atari800 beta). Now all the info from the project is actually in the export and there a a minimum logic on the Atari side to display it. Gettting closer to something I can release, soon. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mega-hz Posted January 9, 2014 Author Share Posted January 9, 2014 (edited) cool, a menu with multicolour DLI and Stereo Sound ? Edited January 9, 2014 by mega-hz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+JAC! Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 cool, a menu with multicolour DLI and Stereo Sound ? THAT is going to be the easy part. Making 16.000 entries searchable on 6502 is the hard part... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonSlayer77 Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 Thanks for the "Simple Menu" tip. I was wondering why it was creating all those empty files. I just got mine today. Still working on my first workbook. I've noticed you can specify files as executable in the interface, but on the web site you recommended making a Maxflash compilation and loading that instead of trying to load XEX files directly. So, is it that The!Cart can load XEX files now, and the documentation needs an update, or is that option just there for classification without any functionality behind it yet? Just to be safe I'm going to make a Maxflash compilation of the 5200 conversions before adding them. Still, just thought I'd ask. Also, I may have stumbled upon a minor problem. When adding "Bounty Bob" it put the data type as "Bounty Bob" but, when I went to export it, it asked me to select a supported data type. So, apparently the game uses a unique form of bankswitching from the other XEGS games (guess the separate dumping option in Maxflash should have told me as much). And apparently it is not going to run. No big deal though, thinking about it. Steve's fixed XEX works fine. I'll just throw it in a Maxflash workbook, set it to autorun, export to a 128 KB .car file, and it's good to go. What can I say, Maxflash compatibility is really what sets this apart. Oh, and for the person who was looking to do stacked SDX, while The!Cart may not support it directly, since it can load Maxflash images, you might want to check this out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 Thanks for all the information. Will try things out soon. Received finally my package, so I'm glad it wasn't lost in space as I was expecting. I'm very excited about the features of the cart, and a lot of people are involved in this project, so it's certainly alive. Very good points for that. I must say I'm a tiny bit disappointed by the assemblage of the cart itself. I was really surprised finding rubber foam (some kind of sponge) keeping the pcb in place. When I compare the cart with the 4MB cart or the beautiful cases of the AtariMax, this looks a bit like a prototype to me. I'm not offending, but more expressing my wishes for a future batch with a better final product (btw. with gold plated contacts). For now it is time to get used to this powerful and superb gadget. I'm looking forward to start using them. Greetz Prowizard 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+JAC! Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 (edited) >When adding "Bounty Bob" it put the data type as "Bounty Bob" but, when I went to export it, it asked me to select a supported data type. The!Cart Studio regognizes all defined cartridge types when you add files. Depending on the Flash target, only those that are supported by the flash target of thr workbook are allowed. The AtariMax Target only allows 8k standard. The The!Cart Target supports many, all of which are indicated in the "Help/Content Types" dialog by a non-initial "The!Cart Mode" value. BB did not fit into the CPLD, so it's not supported by the emulation. >option just there for classification without any functionality behind it yet? The special "XEX" content type will be support by the extended menu later. Edited January 10, 2014 by JAC! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 Hi! First be sure to use the "Simple Menu" (Edit->Workbook Options->Menu), not the extended menu. If you select the latter you'll currently get a 128MB file, no matter how many carts you added. Using the simple menu you get reasonably sized file(s). Then use File->Export->Export to ATR Programming Images (16MB). Depending on how many carts you added to your project you'll get one or more standard ATRs with max 16MB in size each. Next power up the Atari with The!Cart plugged in, run the flasher from the cart menu, select option "1" and follow on screen instructions. Forget about all the other options in the Flasher software, they are only for expert users so long, Hias ok so far so good... I flashed the cart with a few items, but now it is flashed it does not work. No menu, only that start menu again. How do i get now the menu where I can chose the files I have flashed? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HiassofT Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 No menu, only that start menu again. How do i get now the menu where I can chose the files I have flashed?You don't, Jac still has to program the extended menu You have to select the bank and mode manually (at least for now). To view the banks in the cart studio software just right click on the table caption and enable "Start Bank". You can also rearrange the columns by dragging them around and print the list using File->Print. so long, Hias 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 Ah! Ok that makes sense! Well in that case: great! It works! Is really starting to get interesting this! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+remowilliams Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 Finally managed to create a build chain for reasonable coding & testing of the menu (Compiler Java, Create The!Cart Studio, Compile ASM, Run new Studio with Template Project to Export ."CAR", Run in Atari800 beta). Now all the info from the project is actually in the export and there a a minimum logic on the Atari side to display it. Gettting closer to something I can release, soon. 2014-01-09-themenu.png I've had my The!Cart for a bit but not tried it until this morning. While having to manually select the cart configs at run time isn't the best thing (tiny little complaint, sorry ) overall it works very well! Huge thanks to JAC!, mega-hz and hias (and anyone else I might be accidentally leaving out) for all their work here! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 (edited) well, the fact that I got it working, and that I can have Space Harrier together with other titles on one cart is really awesome, so bonus point for this cart. I am very excited about the potential of THE!CART, and the development-team (which is doing a fabulous job). I have still one question though; I'm pretty sure I saw somewhere a way of converting AtariMax Flash.ATR images into .BIN/.CAR/.ROM files. But I can't find that anymore. Can someone point me in the right direction for that? Thanks Prowizard p.s. Will this also work: mounting a virtual empty AtariMax 1Mbit cart to Altirra's Cartridge, and then run the ATR in Altirra, and then save the mounted cartridge? Will that give me a working ROM to put in my THE!CART workbook? Edited January 10, 2014 by ProWizard Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonSlayer77 Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 (edited) So, I'm not the only person who was confused by the lack of a list after I programmed it (nor the only person who was a little disappointed by the foam rubber thing). I was about to post the same thing ProWizard did, but then it suddenly hit me why that stuff about showing the starting bank and printing the workbook had come up in previous posts. It's working good. Adding the Bounty Bob XEX (the one from "bbfix3.zip" to be specific) to a new workbook in Maxflash, setting it to auto-run, then exporting it to a 1 Megabit (128 KB) .car did indeed work. It plays fine (as usual, after about 5 minutes, the game had me wanting to drop it from the highest building in the area, but, for the sake of completion, it does work). So, workaround confirmed working. I've so far tried several XEGS games including Mario Bros. and Tower Toppler, they all worked fine. The Ultima IV cartridge conversion works. The 39+ disks compilation (aka the "Bard Cart") runs fine. The aforementioned compilation of 5200 conversions works as well. So far, so good, functionality wise. As for the menu, well, I can work with it, but it's just not quite there in terms of ease-of-use and instant gratification (though it's definitely got typing "LOAD *,8,1" beat ). Edited January 10, 2014 by ZylonSlayer77 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonSlayer77 Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 well, the fact that I got it working, and that I can have Space Harrier together with other titles on one cart is really awesome, so bonus point for this cart. I am very excited about the potential of THE!CART, and the development-team (which is doing a fabulous job). I have still one question though; I'm pretty sure I saw somewhere a way of converting AtariMax Flash.ATR images into .BIN/.CAR/.ROM files. But I can't find that anymore. Can someone point me in the right direction for that? Thanks Prowizard p.s. Will this also work: mounting a virtual empty AtariMax 1Mbit cart to Altirra's Cartridge, and then run the ATR in Altirra, and then save the mounted cartridge? Will that give me a working ROM to put in my THE!CART workbook? Actually, you can directly add a Maxflash ATR to The!Cart Studio. It will generate a .car file for you automatically, and use that in the workbook. That's how I got Ultima IV working. It's a nice feature. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 I have another feature request, I already had for the MegaCartStudio. Is there a way of extracting the files from the workbook? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 Sorry for me spamming this thread a bit, but man... I have been playing around tonight with this cart, and how cool is this? What a capacity, and what a compatibility. This is a very nice cart, honest! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+JAC! Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 >Is there a way of extracting the files from the workbook? See the documentation. In contrast to the other Studios, The!Cart Studio keeps the files as plain files in a project folder the file system. So you can find them there via "File/Open Folder". The project file itself is just a small XML file. It would not have been a good idea to create a single 128 MB file for this (time to load/save, extensbility, ...). And it also allows you to update the files in the project directly from the file system (provided you keep the name, type and size), for example when you export an Maxflash 1 MB collection after you changed it. This way you can simply export in The!Cart Studio again. As written above The!Cart Studio accepts .BIN. CAR and .ATR exports from Maxflash Studio directly (.ATR is converted to .CAR on the fly in this case). 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonSlayer77 Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 (edited) I have another feature request, I already had for the MegaCartStudio. Is there a way of extracting the files from the workbook? Have a closer look at where you saved your workbook. You'll notice The!Cart studio actually stored all the files in a folder (with a .tcd extension). The .tcw file just contains the layout. So, anyone grabbing a workbook actually has all of the files (as long as whoever uploads it doesn't forget to include the .tcd folder). I'll upload one of mine just as an example - All Carts Workbook.zip Have fun Ah, JAC! beat me to it, oh well. Enjoy the example workbook, but know it's a work in progress. I've still got plenty of things to add to it eventually. Compilations like the Boulderdash one, 63 in 1, etc. Plus I'm still looking for a proper copy of "Yie Another Kung Fu" -- I don't know what to do with the one from AtariOnline.pl -- doesn't seem to be a Maxflash, and The!Cart Studio can't seem to identify it as any other valid format either. Edited January 10, 2014 by ZylonSlayer77 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 Thanks guys... This is really fabulous, and ZylonSlayer77 thanks a lot for that zip file. You are too good Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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