Jinks Posted November 18, 2016 Share Posted November 18, 2016 Be sure to rub the rod with rabbit fur. Moose fur is way too coarse.I knew I was doing something wrong thanks! Will have to go out of the village and see what I can find.. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
78001987 Posted November 18, 2016 Share Posted November 18, 2016 Cat fur works best, preferably a live one. Seriously, rub a latex balloon on a cat in the dark; you will make visible mini lightning strikes! Your cat will kill you in your sleep for this. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
78001987 Posted November 18, 2016 Share Posted November 18, 2016 this worked! Though it did take a second loading to get it working. Though I have to say - the POKEY version si so much better. The TIA music on Froggie hits some pretty sour notes here and there. Kinda reminds me of some non-FM SMS games. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted November 19, 2016 Share Posted November 19, 2016 Your cat will kill you in your sleep for this. Poor Whitey. I petted him for hours at night sometimes when I couldn't sleep and he seemed to always come to my bedroom whenever I got depressed. Sometimes in the winter months his fur would get full of static, and especially my bed comforter when it was still warm fresh from the dryer. FTR, I think I only tried the latex balloon thingy once out of curiosity. Snap, crackle, pop! He didn't seem to like it too much. Sadly he passed of cancer in 1997 when he was 8 years old (though his sister Snowball outlived him to be 18). I was still in high school at the time... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinks Posted November 20, 2016 Share Posted November 20, 2016 So I can get the original dig dug to work. Some funny things is as soon as the level starts 1 second in the game the speed up music is played and everything speeds up like it should but this usually takes about 30-45 seconds of playing the level before this happens. Also I got astro fighter to work. On easy level usually can get to the gs ship 2 times before starting to die. With the concerto cart astro fighter on easy everything is faster and the gs ship is moving and takes 3 hits to kill and I die 3 times before getting there itis so intense. Super cobra at the end of the first stage the ground terrain spikes up to the top of the screen making it so you die every time as you can not pass that part of the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinks Posted November 20, 2016 Share Posted November 20, 2016 One thing I ask of other testers is if this is the norm if your 7800 can play robot tank it will not work well with the concerto cart as in will not load 7800 games. If it can NOT play robot tank it will load 7800 games but still have glitches. moving too fast or too soon in the menu will crash the menu as well it seems to always be a delicate procedure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted November 20, 2016 Share Posted November 20, 2016 I don't have Robot Tank, sorry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinks Posted November 20, 2016 Share Posted November 20, 2016 I don't have Robot Tank, sorry.try loading it with the 2600 roms on the sd cart same thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+batari Posted November 20, 2016 Share Posted November 20, 2016 I'm not sure offhand if FE bank switching is implemented in Concerto. If it is, I am using the same code as Harmony. What that means is that you would need a real Robot Tank to test. In Harmony I crafted the code in such a way that it should work with 7800s that won't normally play the game. In other words, it attempts to work around the timing circuit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted November 21, 2016 Share Posted November 21, 2016 GameXChange should have a 2600 Robot Tank or two. I'll check back later. So for clarity, if my 7800 works or doesn't work with Robot Tank, I might have trouble with Concerto??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinks Posted November 21, 2016 Share Posted November 21, 2016 I have found that one that works has much more trouble. Like it will not load any 7800 games at all. Don't go out of your way for this test KS. But Robot tank is one of the best 2600 games ever made. Probably in top 20 on anyones list. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
78001987 Posted November 21, 2016 Share Posted November 21, 2016 GameXChange should have a 2600 Robot Tank or two. I'll check back later. So for clarity, if my 7800 works or doesn't work with Robot Tank, I might have trouble with Concerto??? jinks assumptions are wrong. I have 4 7800 consoles. Two work with Robot Tank. Two do not. None of them have a problem with concerto, unless the pokey is installed which adds power draw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinks Posted November 21, 2016 Share Posted November 21, 2016 jinks assumptions are wrong. I have 4 7800 consoles. Two work with Robot Tank. Two do not. None of them have a problem with concerto, unless the pokey is installed which adds power draw. Ok sorry I only have 2. one that is and one that is not compatible with rtank. You have a larger test sample. I do not have pokey installed and both do not work well with concerto the rtank one not at all. So maybe it is something else.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
78001987 Posted November 21, 2016 Share Posted November 21, 2016 Ok sorry I only have 2. one that is and one that is not compatible with rtank. You have a larger test sample. I do not have pokey installed and both do not work well with concerto the rtank one not at all. So maybe it is something else.. I think most of it is power at this point. The one I have that has worse compatibility with Concerto when Pokey is installed also has a replacement 7805 voltage regulator, which might be a 500ma. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+-^CrossBow^- Posted November 22, 2016 Share Posted November 22, 2016 I think most of it is power at this point. The one I have that has worse compatibility with Concerto when Pokey is installed also has a replacement 7805 voltage regulator, which might be a 500ma. Perhaps someone needs to bite the bullet to verify a power issue by ordering up one of the small switching regulators that was linked earlier? However, I would make absolutely sure that the wall wart being used with it can output at least 1.2 or more amps to make sure everything keeps up. I can't imagine anything else that can be done to help solve if this is a power issue? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted November 23, 2016 Share Posted November 23, 2016 Perhaps someone needs to bite the bullet to verify a power issue by ordering up one of the small switching regulators that was linked earlier? However, I would make absolutely sure that the wall wart being used with it can output at least 1.2 or more amps to make sure everything keeps up. I can't imagine anything else that can be done to help solve if this is a power issue? Do the newer switching regulators generate HF noise compared to the classic 7805 which pass off excess voltage as heat? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phoenixdownita Posted November 23, 2016 Share Posted November 23, 2016 Do the newer switching regulators generate HF noise compared to the classic 7805 which pass off excess voltage as heat? A little. All my consoles that were 7805 based took the plunge (some have the 3A some have a 1.5A version of the same). As I was at it most of them got the heat sink out of the way, I did notice some faint diagonal disturbances, I believe those switching regulators work around 350Khz or something. It's been a long time, I think the Genny and SNES show more than the 7800, TurboDuo etc... I personally did it to keep them cooler and as I was messing with Gennys replacing the Video Encoder with a CXA2075 to get clean SVideo out it was a boon! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+batari Posted November 23, 2016 Share Posted November 23, 2016 I was able to test Concerto today with two different chips. One of them uses 50 ma less current and one uses around 80 ma less. I have ordered a number of the lowest-power ones. When I get a chance I will send one out to Kosmic for testing. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinks Posted November 23, 2016 Share Posted November 23, 2016 I was able to test Concerto today with two different chips. One of them uses 50 ma less current and one uses around 80 ma less. I have ordered a number of the lowest-power ones. When I get a chance I will send one out to Kosmic for testing.Awesome!! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fille1976 Posted November 25, 2016 Share Posted November 25, 2016 hope it works batari Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+batari Posted November 26, 2016 Share Posted November 26, 2016 I sent a board out to Kosmic yesterday. Should be there early next week. Hope it works too. If not then I'll be doing more experiments and maybe acquiring these problem consoles. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted November 27, 2016 Share Posted November 27, 2016 I sent a board out to Kosmic yesterday. Should be there early next week. Hope it works too. If not then I'll be doing more experiments and maybe acquiring these problem consoles. Thanks Batari. I hope it works. Also I sent you a PM earlier. Toiletunes and I exchanged concerto PCBs recently to test and see if it was the board or the console. The Concerto Toiletunes sent me appears to exhibit exactly the same bugs as the one I swapped out with so hopefully the new model fixes things. Trebor also has a 7800 unit with the exact same PCB revision as mine; in fact the serial numbers are exactly one apart so they must have come off the assembly line the same day: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/230751-sd-cartridge-for-7800/?p=3622798 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
78001987 Posted November 28, 2016 Share Posted November 28, 2016 I was able to test Concerto today with two different chips. One of them uses 50 ma less current and one uses around 80 ma less. I have ordered a number of the lowest-power ones. When I get a chance I will send one out to Kosmic for testing. If it turns out this is the fix - is it feasible to retro-fit existing concertos with the better-performing chips? Mine has been pretty much good, except when POKEY is installed, so I don't know if it will help, but I was just curious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted November 28, 2016 Share Posted November 28, 2016 If it turns out this is the fix - is it feasible to retro-fit existing concertos with the better-performing chips? Mine has been pretty much good, except when POKEY is installed, so I don't know if it will help, but I was just curious. IDK. Mine behaves exactly the same whether the Pokey is installed or not, so it appears either you have a bad Pokey or different compatibility issues than mine. Specifically I can navigate the menu on mine and successfully flash the ROMs with reasonable success, then things start acting screwy when I actually play the game. Since swapping with toiletunes, he confirmed that everything that "worked" on his unit before works now, so the memory chips don't seem to be bad, despite nearly every game I load having corruption of some sort. Hopefully the low current memory chips fix things. I wonder if they have lower latencies as well? In addition to voltage transients, timing is another big issue which could affect game compatibility. If a particular console is already reading carts extremely close to the rising or falling edge of the clock signal, a couple nanoseconds of latency could mean the difference between a perfect read and a miss. The 6502 is clocked 50% faster in 7800 mode compared to 2600, and the Concerto is a highly complex device. If the internal concerto memory has even slightly more latency than a mask or EPROM, that may explain why 2600 games (at least the ones that don't use exotic mappers) load with a nearly 100% success rate whereas 7800 games have crashing and all sorts of other issues when played on my Concerto. At any rate, I will report back on the performance of the new revision Concerto on my 7800 when I receive it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinks Posted November 28, 2016 Share Posted November 28, 2016 I think its timing of sorts aa games ply faster Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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