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Uber Cartridge -- Library/Programs Thread


Omega-TI

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What would be nice to see is the development of a thread just for library/program support of this amazing Uber Cartridge.

 

Imagine a central place, here on Atari Age, where the 'average guy' could pick and choose the programs they wanted for their own personalized specialty cart. I think this was the plan from the start, if I'm not mistaken. So, where is 'this place' going to be? Here maybe?

 

Some ideas for future specialty packages could be:

 

1) Specific programs or utilities for F18A users that exploit it's 80 column abilities.

2) Utilities and support package for Nano-PEB users.

3) A telecommunications or Web Browser package.

4) A DOS environment for the TI (hey, I can dream can't I) ;)

5) HDX Support Utilities

6) Games 'flavor of the month' type packages.

7) _________________ whatever else you can dream of.

 

You get the idea. Since many of us have different floppy controllers, memory packages, displays, needs and wants, it would be nice to have instantly available our most used or cherished programs, without taking up valuable disk space and this new Uber Cart is perfect for that.

 

Now that this cartridge is idiot/brick proof and even has the new breakthrough playground loader available for it, the average guy is 'good to go'.

 

Over time, I think this cartridge has the potential to create it's own niche group of users and programmers. I doubt any of us know where this cartridge is eventually going to take us all, but after seeing some of the neat stuff Gazoo has done, I think the future looks very bright. Let's find out....

 

 

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One thing to note--the loader allows you to program the Atmel with the contents of GROMs. Any ROM files would still have to be burned into the separate 512K chip in an EPROM burner, unless someone writes a loader that can initialize and program the Flash chip.

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Now that this cartridge is idiot/brick proof

 

It was actually released as brick proof. The XB27 cart disabled the anti-bricking features, which is fine since it wasn't originally meant to be reprogrammed ;). If you run stock you don't even need the playground loader. ;)

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It was actually released as brick proof. The XB27 cart disabled the anti-bricking features, which is fine since it wasn't originally meant to be reprogrammed ;). If you run stock you don't even need the playground loader. ;)

 

It wasn't possible to brick it until you released GROMCFG. :)

 

Actually, if I were to go back and do it again I would have left your powerup code in place and just changed the hotkey from the spacebar to the equals key. That way, it wouldn't have interfered with my spacebar hotkey. I have a cart here that I did that mod to and it works well.

 

It would be nice to have a utility to rewrite the last 8k of the flash to put the hotkey back in, though. ... or just make the dumpfile for GROMCFG 8k larger to include the entire flash area. ;)

 

Gazoo

Edited by Gazoo
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It wasn't possible to brick it until you released GROMCFG. :)

 

Actually, if I were to go back and do it again I would have left your powerup code in place and just changed the hotkey from the spacebar to the equals key. That way, it wouldn't have interfered with my spacebar hotkey. I have a cart here that I did that mod to and it works well.

 

It would be nice to have a utility to rewrite the last 8k of the flash to put the hotkey back in, though. ... or just make the dumpfile for GROMCFG 8k larger to include the entire flash area. ;)

 

 

GROMCFG was always a part of the release plan. Unfortunately, several people got excited and gave you that code before I gave permission for it to be released. The config tool was 90% done at that point. It doesn't do anything fancy, though, all the information one needs to implement it is in the manual.

 

I didn't implement a way for the AVR portion to be updated because I never intended the code to escape like it did. I also requested, much like you do with your code, that it NOT be released modified. At any rate, the TI can not see nor write that last block of flash code (at least if the fuses are set correctly). If you tried to write it from the TI you would overwrite the code that was handling the cartridge interface and crash the chip. Then it /would/ be bricked. ;) That part is meant to be set once, at the "factory" (so to speak), and never touched again.

 

It'd be theoretically possible to do some kind of a bootstrap loader that reprogrammed it from a different area of the flash, but... I don't envision the need. I hope the part is used more for projects like yours, new releases, and less as some kind of generic reprogrammable device.

 

One thing you CAN do is set the write protect jumper on your carts (although I guess that advice comes a little late now). That was also a part of the plan, to make write-once carts that people can't accidentally reprogram later. Unfortunately, that part isn't perfect, it still allows the EEPROM settings to be changed, it should have locked down the configuration space as well, I guess.

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So... My dream cartridge would be one that took an SD card and you could load it up with whatever you wanted and the cartridge had a menu to pick & load.

 

Of course, I'm not an engineer but I can say it sounds hard.

 

+1 on that unhuman!

 

Here we have a full-fledged COMPUTER, without the SD card solution, but I'll let the picture below of a mere 'game machine' tell the story...

 

Atari 5200 - SD Cartridge

sd_4.jpg

 

Believe it or not even the Atari 2600 has it's own SD cartridge... and has since 2009!

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Most systems have some form of multicart SD loader. Nobody on the TI has been interested in creating one thus far. They tend to sell well but I don't feel they're very rewarding from the design side. ;) Maybe the Everdrive guy can be coerced - he's got his little device running on a remarkable number of systems, and the hardware is quite well built, that I've seen.

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One of the guys on the VintageComputerForum was considering doing one about a year ago. I provided him a couple of cartridge boards and technical data on how things worked through the cartridge port (and the bank-switching scheme we were using for ROMs). I haven't heard much from him since. . .

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In the end it may just be as simple as return on investment. There were a lot of 5200's, even more 2600's in use. Compared to the previous two mentioned units, the TI's active user base might seem like chump change. So, it might not be rewarding from the financial aspect either. It's a pity we don't have one in the TI community, because the load time on a cartridge really kicks butt.

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Most systems have some form of multicart SD loader. Nobody on the TI has been interested in creating one thus far. They tend to sell well but I don't feel they're very rewarding from the design side. ;) Maybe the Everdrive guy can be coerced - he's got his little device running on a remarkable number of systems, and the hardware is quite well built, that I've seen.

 

And yes, I can attest to his quality. Both NES and Gameboy versions :) :) :) Rock solid, very well done.

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I dunno... I haven't done any actual sales yet, but from observation the market looks like about 200 units? Is that higher than truth? I've seen a lot of other devices go out with under 200 units, it seems reasonable.

 

Depends on the guy doing it, though. :)

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Based on numbers produced for the various cartridge boards, you start hitting the wall at about 200 to 300 units (individual cartridge production then becomes the only further modifier for any given board, and that is in groups of 30-60 boards max), so your estimate is about right, Tursi.

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I imagine it would be very easy to load up an SD card with RPKs.

 

But, really, with XB2.7 being exclaimed as being the Alpha and Omega of cartridges, why bother with an SD? Tony's loading up these carts* with pretty much everything we can find and ask for, so what's the use case?

 

* game collections, etc.

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I think the nanoPEB is a good option (edit: to the SD cartridge) that exists today. Not only does it provide the 32K needed to run most of the dumped cartridges, it can be used as "mass storage" to house game disks, utilities, and most any other program out there.

 

With some 'simple' code to mount different disk images, you could create a single loader in XB (with assembly support) that would allow you to launch programs in a similar fashion to the auto-load GPL interpreter loaders of old.

 

Granted, nothing beats the simplicity and plug-and-play of the cartridge but the TI has other options ;)

Edited by InsaneMultitasker
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I think the nanoPEB is a good option (edit: to the SD cartridge) that exists today. Not only does it provide the 32K needed to run most of the dumped cartridges, it can be used as "mass storage" to house game disks, utilities, and most any other program out there.

 

With some 'simple' code to mount different disk images, you could create a single loader in XB (with assembly support) that would allow you to launch programs in a similar fashion to the auto-load GPL interpreter loaders of old.

 

Granted, nothing beats the simplicity and plug-and-play of the cartridge but the TI has other options ;)

 

Not impossible. A list of volumes on the CF with maybe a one-liner of instructions each ("E/A 5: TITANIUM," etc.) or automagically auto-loading an XB LOAD-able after a CALL MOUNT I think would be easy and simple enough.

 

I mentioned a while back that it seems (to me, at least) that disk games are kind-of a cheat on the TI. Probably just because I never had anything beyond an unexpanded console, so cartridges were king for me. When I thought of TI software, "on disk" never came to mind, unlike other platforms like the Commodore 64 where I have felt cartridges to be the cheat. Meh.

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I imagine it would be very easy to load up an SD card with RPKs.

 

But, really, with XB2.7 being exclaimed as being the Alpha and Omega of cartridges, why bother with an SD? Tony's loading up these carts* with pretty much everything we can find and ask for, so what's the use case?

 

* game collections, etc.

 

For me a generic cartridge with an SD slot is about the most desirable addition to the TI that I can think of. The use case would be to enable the distribution of software on cartridge files that people can use on their hardware as easy and inexpensively as people can use disk images today. There would be no need to program an EPROM to see Tursi's latest video clip, for instance, and during the development of cartridge games like Sabre Wulf people could test beta versions on the hardware. I wouldn't mind having one SD card with all the old cartridges either, but that's not the most important to me. This would be the cartridge for the future...

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For me a generic cartridge with an SD slot is about the most desirable addition to the TI that I can think of. The use case would be to enable the distribution of software on cartridge files that people can use on their hardware as easy and inexpensively as people can use disk images today. There would be no need to program an EPROM to see Tursi's latest video clip, for instance, and during the development of cartridge games like Sabre Wulf people could test beta versions on the hardware. I wouldn't mind having one SD card with all the old cartridges either, but that's not the most important to me. This would be the cartridge for the future...

 

Or a Fetzner 512k cart with a flash ram and a loader program..

 

Greg

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Or a Fetzner 512k cart with a flash ram and a loader program..

 

Greg

 

Do you mean a 512K board with NVRAM? I don't think that's nearly as attractive for the following reasons: 1. You would have to do the loading on the TI. 2. It can only contain one cartridge image. 3. It doesn't support GROM. 4. It only supports images up to 512K.

 

Provided we had a loader for these boards, is there a solution for write protecting the RAM to prevent it from being modified during bank changes etc.?

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This would be the cartridge for the future...

 

I agree, IMHO truer words were never spoken.

 

I see an SD cartridge as a positive from so many different angles, just a few that pop into mind without much thought...

 

A 'hook' to attract newbies to the platform.

There are gamer's out there who simply collect retro-computers. This type of cartridge might put the TI on their radar.

It might also attract a younger generation of 'casual users' to a simple method of using the TI. Once hooked, a percentage of them might decide to go further.

 

Personalized Cartridges

I don't know about you, but there are a lot of decent games that I don't play, being the old fart that I am, I'd rather not have a bunch of unused games cluttering up my selection menu. My current 'playlist' changes over time as well, so it would be advantageous to have my flavors of the month ready at a seconds notice.

 

The Future

Simple & Easy to use, that's what will bring in the new blood. People have busy lives and many don't want to feel overwhelmed or invest countless hours learning the in's and out's of a lot of technical stuff... at least until they have some skin in the game. I think Rasmus is right, this cartridge could mean the future, quite literally for the TI's legacy and an for an ongoing user base. So using an SD cartridge as bait, and giving the newbies some time in the shallow end of the pool will be a great way to get people acquainted with the TI-99/4A.

 

Pure Selfishness :D

If the above reasons are not enough, how about having ALL current and future Rasmus games in one cart with no loading time? Works for me!

 

Nothing seems easier than having a place like Vorticon's, where the user can just... download it, drag & drop it, pop it in, and start playing.

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