sd cartridge for 7800?

[Jinks]

My other 7800 no matter what I do will not load a 7800 rom with the concerto.

If you go to concerti settings you can change the cursor color and speed. but if I scroll down the cursor never gets to that. part of the settings and kicks out to the rom list directory page.

Its wierd bentley bear is one of the roms that works perfecrly now. I do not have a pokey installed and wonder what would happen if I did. should there be sound for the sound effects without the pokey?

If I power it on cold bentley will not run.

I can get the cart integrity test to all pass consistently when it is hot.

I noticed when the first time the utility test works the cart integrity test will show yellow instead of green.

I can always tell before hand how the integrity test will work if there has been no garbled graphics only 2 red blocks. 3 or 4 powerups with no garbled graphics will show all green with no faults.

At that point bentley will run.

I wonder if the power switch or something is flakey on the console(well I know they dont always work) or however the data gets read from the sd card is screwy.

[RevEng]

Integrity Test.jpg

Very noticeable pattern here.

Yeah, seems to be. Hopefully we'll get a few more results in, along with internal ram tests.

 

The good news is the red blocks don't shift around, so in theory it can be worked around in software. e.g. with a crc ram integrity check in the concerto menu/loader. The same probably needs to be done for the concerto menu/loader program itself, given Everett1954's results.

 

But it would be better to figure out the hardware cause for the loader failure at the source, *and* do this sort of crc integrity check as part of the loading.

[78001987]

None of the memory blocks turned red on any integrity tests I ran. I ran it three times. But regardless of that test the few problem games are still not running properly - specifically Alien Brigade and Basketbrawl. They work on one of my 7800s but not the other.

 

Also b*nQ doesn't run at all, on any console.

 

This is without pokey installed.

[RevEng]

Thanks for confirming. The ROM corruption issue seems to definitely have some ties to console hardware then.

 

Does this hack of the bonq demo work any better?

 

bonQ-demo-unofficial.a78

 

Or this version of Basketbrawl?

 

Basketbrawl (1990) (Atari).a78

[Jinks]

Yeah bbrawl and alien brigade can start up but get graphical glitches. Same here.

[Everett1954]

Hey RevEng, Thanks for helping to try and solve the problems with the Concerto! I will try the test with the integrity test file along with the revised BasketBrawl and bon-Q.

 

Anyone heard from Fred lately? Wonder what he is trying to pursue next for a fix?

[funknflow5200]

My other 7800 no matter what I do will not load a 7800 rom with the concerto.

If you go to concerti settings you can change the cursor color and speed. but if I scroll down the cursor never gets to that. part of the settings and kicks out to the rom list directory page.

Its wierd bentley bear is one of the roms that works perfecrly now. I do not have a pokey installed and wonder what would happen if I did. should there be sound for the sound effects without the pokey?

If I power it on cold bentley will not run.

I can get the cart integrity test to all pass consistently when it is hot.

I noticed when the first time the utility test works the cart integrity test will show yellow instead of green.

I can always tell before hand how the integrity test will work if there has been no garbled graphics only 2 red blocks. 3 or 4 powerups with no garbled graphics will show all green with no faults.

At that point bentley will run.

I wonder if the power switch or something is flakey on the console(well I know they dont always work) or however the data gets read from the sd card is screwy.

Bentley Bear works great for me without sound on my concerto with the pokey installed. I beleive it is looking for the pokey at the wrong address or something.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Bentley Bear works great for me without sound on my concerto with the pokey installed. I beleive it is looking for the pokey at the wrong address or something.

Funny you mention it, I have booted Bentley Bear at least a dozen times, and for the first time the other night, I actually got to play into the game without falling down a pit and dying upon boot. Then I powered off and reloaded the ROM, and he drops in the hole again...

 

I'm wondering if the header is set wrong. I had a Pokey installed at one point, but removed it to save wear and tear of the pins until a solution is provided that doesn't corrupt all my ROMs. Even with Pokey, booting Bentley Bear shows "Superchip+RAM" on the loading screen, not "Superchip+RAM+Pokey" which leads me to believe that the Concerto isn't detecting Pokey in the header.

[Trebor]

Ensure the Bentley Bear *.a78 ROM file being utilized is not a ProSystem emulator hacked version, by grabbing the one Bob posted here, which is also included in the HHDP pack at the bottom of this post.

 

As discussed previously, batari had only implemented POKEY sound at $4000. Bentley Bear (and Donkey Kong XM) support of POKEY sound was improperly implemented, due to taking a page from the ProSystem emulator's hardware impossible hack configuration of RAM at $4000 and POKEY at $4000.

 

Whatever BIOS/firmware is running on a particular Concerto cart, it has to support as a possible configuration, POKEY at $0450 and RAM at $4000, for Bentley Bear (and DK XM) sound to work properly under real hardware.

[78001987]

Ensure the Bentley Bear *.a78 ROM file being utilized is not a ProSystem emulator hacked version, by grabbing the one Bob posted here, which is also included in the HHDP pack at the bottom of this post.

 

As discussed previously, batari had only implemented POKEY sound at $4000. Bentley Bear (and Donkey Kong XM) support of POKEY sound was improperly implemented, due to taking a page from the ProSystem emulator's hardware impossible hack configuration of RAM at $4000 and POKEY at $4000.

 

Whatever BIOS/firmware is running on a particular Concerto cart, it has to support as a possible configuration, POKEY at $0450 and RAM at $4000, for Bentley Bear (and DK XM) sound to work properly under real hardware.

Is there a fixed version of the DK XM for Pokey sound as well?

 

I will try this bentley rom tonight. Thanks!

[Trebor]

Is there a fixed version of the DK XM for Pokey sound as well?

 

I will try this bentley rom tonight. Thanks!

 

The proper/correct DK XM ROMs are included within the aforementioned HHDP ROM Pack, or can be downloaded directly at the bottom of this post.

 

The one you want is from this section:

MESS properly manages and emulates the hardware. Those ROMs have correct headers.

 

For convenience, here are the direct ROM links: NTSC | PAL

 

FYI...The hacked hardware ROMs to be avoided for the ProSystem emulator is from this section:

 

Last but not least, along similar lines...

 

Super Circus Atari Age does not contain RAM utilization at $4000, as a result Bob was able to provide two different versions. A version which accesses POKEY@$4000, and a version that accesses POKEY@$0450.

 

*EDIT: Correction regarding DKXM. The 'hack' accommodation was for ProSystem emulator's lack of proper HSC management. The hack provides "dummy" HSC code to the ProSystem emulator. Actual ROM code for DKXM is believed to check for POKEY at both $4000 and $0450, and then provision accordingly.

[Everett1954]

RevEng, I have tried Bon-q and your modified Basketbrawl. Bon-q does not play for me, all I get is a white screen.

and BasketBrawl plays the same as the version I have, it get to the court screen and it is filled with graphic artifacts.

 

After many tries I got your latest 7800 utility with cart integrity to work. I let the integrity test run for an hour with no on screen changes.

 

I observed: 16K BIOS E0B9 4K BIOS D337 4K RAM FOUND. NTSC1 4K BIOS FOUND

 

Internal ram test 0,1,18,21,22 PASSED. Mirror 21 PASSED.

 

External CARTRAM found...bar completed no errors.

 

Cart Integrity test (RED BLOCKS) at 800,804,900,904,90C,C00 and C04.

 

Does any of this mean anything to you?

[RevEng]

Thanks for taking the time to test, and the thorough report on the results. The info definitely does mean something to me.

 

Some of the info is immediately useful, like the reports on the games. The Bonq demo had some unorthodox stuff in it's startup that I thought might have been causing the failures. Basketbrawl used memory at 4000 without flagging it in header, which I thought might have been the cause of it's failure. Both theories are scratched, which is progress of a sort.

 

The other info you provided, combined with info from the others, tells a story about the units having failures. It looks like none of the units have been found to have problematic RAM. All of them seem to have trouble initially loading the game into ARM memory (as opposed to failing when serving it out from ARM memory) and the failures are all at more or less the same places. These failure locations may likely mean more to batari, if they indicate some kind of functional/architectural/timing boundary.

 

We have 1 tester that doesn't have the loader/integrity issue, 1 that has the issue but it goes away after warming up, and another 2 with issue that doesn't ever improve after warming up. To me that's highly suggestive that an out-of-spec 7800 component is the root cause.

 

All of this groundwork should be very helpful for batari. It's a lot more than we knew about the problem a week ago.

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

 

Cart Integrity test (RED BLOCKS) at 800,804,900,904,90C,C00 and C04.

 

Does any of this mean anything to you?

This sounds a lot like the test screenshot I posted earlier. Occasionally I also get a red square in the C column at 90C but it's infrequent.

 

Odd that everyone is getting bad sectors in the same places. Do you think this can be fixed with updated firmware, an adjustment mod to the 7800 hardware, or will we all need to send our Concerto boards back to Batari?

[RevEng]

Odd that everyone is getting bad sectors in the same places. Do you think this can be fixed with updated firmware, an adjustment mod to the 7800 hardware, or will we all need to send our Concerto boards back to Batari?

Sheer speculation at this point (since we don't know the exact cause, nor do we know the exact constraints Concerto is working within) but it seems to me it might be worked around in firmware, with loader-based crc checks and re-processing if a page fails.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Sheer speculation at this point (since we don't know the exact cause, nor do we know the exact constraints Concerto is working within) but it seems to me it might be worked around in firmware, with loader-based crc checks and re-processing if a page fails.

That would be amazing if it could get fixed. However if a CRC check is added for redundancy and any overlying hardware issues causing the bad writes don't get fixed, ROM loading could get stuck in an infinite loop writing the same bad sectors over and over...

[78001987]

This sounds a lot like the test screenshot I posted earlier. Occasionally I also get a red square in the C column at 90C but it's infrequent.

 

Odd that everyone is getting bad sectors in the same places. Do you think this can be fixed with updated firmware, an adjustment mod to the 7800 hardware, or will we all need to send our Concerto boards back to Batari?

They aren't. I get no bad sectors on the integrity test when POKEY isn't plugged in. All Green, every time.

[78001987]

 

The proper/correct DK XM ROMs are included within the aforementioned HHDP ROM Pack, or can be downloaded directly at the bottom of this post.

 

The one you want is from this section:

DKXMMESSREALHW.PNG

MESS properly manages and emulates the hardware. Those ROMs have correct headers.

 

For convenience, here are the direct ROM links: NTSC | PAL

 

FYI...The hacked hardware ROMs to be avoided for the ProSystem emulator is from this section:

DKXMProsystem.PNG

 

Last but not least, along similar lines...

 

Super Circus Atari Age does not contain RAM utilization at $4000, as a result Bob was able to provide two different versions. A version which accesses POKEY@$4000, and a version that accesses POKEY@$0450.

 

*EDIT: Correction regarding DKXM. The 'hack' accommodation was for ProSystem emulator's lack of proper HSC management. The hack provides "dummy" HSC code to the ProSystem emulator. Actual ROM code for DKXM is believed to check for POKEY at both $4000 and $0450, and then provision accordingly.

well - Neither the above "fixed" Bentley rom, nor the DKXM rom produce any sound when pokey is attached on my concerto. However, it might be a bad pokey on my end. I have a test/loaner known good working pokey on the way to rule that out, so I will report back when that surfaces. The games themselves play just fine, however, just silent.

 

Bentley is awesome, but it's like NES Battletoads hard, though!

[Trebor]

Just want to thank all testers reporting in and RevEng for his usual fantastic work and support. Getting the Concerto to work properly on the variety of 7800 consoles out there can be an overwhelming task for one person, and really happy to see the great team effort for this project. Excellent work, guys!

[Everett1954]

I had not mentioned but I did not have a Pokey installed when I ran the Integrity test.

[Jinks]

Do you guys get crashes when moving the cursor around in the menu. Not all the time ot happens to me but if you do not wait a few seconds before each button press a crash will happen.

Or navigating too quickly will cause a crash as well.

[78001987]

Do you guys get crashes when moving the cursor around in the menu. Not all the time ot happens to me but if you do not wait a few seconds before each button press a crash will happen.

Or navigating too quickly will cause a crash as well.

I have not seen this. Once the menu loads, it's good for me.

 

The only crashing I have seen is on boot up, where after the flashing concerto text/logo I get just nothing, or colored vertical bars and a whining noise appear. a reboot usually fixes it the first time. but this is maybe one in 20 boot ups without pokey installed, and 1 in 5 boot ups with pokey installed.

 

As mentioned before, the only in-game crashes I've seen are with Alien Brigade and BasketBrawl (with No Pokey). With Pokey in - crashes happen more frequently on the supergame carts, including Ninja Golf, Midnight Mutants, etc.

 

again - it might be my pokey chip, so I will rule that out this week when my tester arrives.

[Everett1954]

Sometimes the Menu freezes on me and the only out is to re power up.

[RevEng]

That would be amazing if it could get fixed. However if a CRC check is added for redundancy and any overlying hardware issues causing the bad writes don't get fixed, ROM loading could get stuck in an infinite loop writing the same bad sectors over and over...

I'm sure batari could make it fail after a number of tries.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Do you guys get crashes when moving the cursor around in the menu. Not all the time ot happens to me but if you do not wait a few seconds before each button press a crash will happen.

Or navigating too quickly will cause a crash as well.

Very rarely mine hangs when loading a game. Haven't had any issues with the menu though. If I can make it to the initial "press fire to begin" message, I am good until after I selected and loaded a game ROM.

 

I do have a good working Pokey and it does not influence the behavior of my Concerto on any appreciable level. Only no audio in games that support it when it is pulled from the socket. I have it stored in a safe place; don't want to risk damaging it by repeated insertions and removals, at least until the integrity issue gets resolved. Most games are unplayable or extremely buggy atm.

 

Does anyone have a 2600 ROM with built in integrity test? That might be useful for testing the 2600 side. Currently all ROMs that don't use exotic bankswitch boot fine with no issues, so it appears on my 7800 that the ROM corruption only affects 7800 mode.