Retron77 Compatibility List

[Jstick]

 

I had the same issue, also fixed by re-imaging the card. Menu fine, in the emulation, nothing.

 

When I checked the card, the Stella directory was completely corrupted with odd filenames and the settings file "STELLARC" could not be opened.

 

I also had an issue where I lost sound and fire function, again re-imaging the card restored it.

 

This is something Hyperkin need to get on immediately (if they haven't already); many folks will be buying the Retron '77 because they want the ease and peace of mind of a plug & play solution and don't want to mess around with OS or emulator settings.

[+Muddyfunster]

Added another batch of tests, Coleco NTSC, PAL CBS and and a few more Activision / Absolute / Salu

 

158 in the index so far.

[Noah98]

Just wanted to post this here as well. I had a strange issue with my fire button not registering. It stopped registering, and all my controllers stopped working. The only time a button press was working was in the home menu selecting a rom. The issue was resolved by reformatting the SD card and downloading the R77 image from here: https://www.hyperkin.com/r77.

 

When I follow the link, I get the following:

 

[mckafka99]

 

When I follow the link, I get the following:

 

Copy and paste the link into a new tab rather than clicking and then remove everything after r77 in the link.

[phoenixdownita]

Link cleaned up https://www.hyperkin.com/r77

 

 

At the bottom of that page:

 

Disclaimer: Please keep in mind the included controller's joystick was engineered to create an experience faithful to your childhood, which may result in apparent wear from heavy use. A different option is in the works. In the meantime, please contact support@hyperkin.com should you have any problems or concerns.

 

LOL

[Arenafoot]

Disclaimer: Please keep in mind the included controller's joystick was engineered to create an experience faithful to your childhood, which may result in apparent wear from heavy use. A different option is in the works. In the meantime, please contact support@hyperkin.com should you have any problems or concerns.

 

LOL

 

So the joysticks are not going to last???......but 40 year old original joysticks still work..............hmmmm

[RugglesTx]

So the joysticks are not going to last???......but 40 year old original joysticks still work..............hmmmm

 

Very valid point. Hard to believe modern tech can build at least the same quality of a low cost item like a joystick.

 

They do get points for being so open and honest about it. They seem to

Want to fix it so that’s a great start. I’m sure it will be corrected long term.

[Obadiah64]

Just got an email from Hyperkin informing me that my order has shipped. Tracking number from the USPS gives an expected delivery of July 9th. Will post results of game testing.

[Ballblaɀer]

Been having great fun playing with the 77 tonight and testing carts out at the same time. I'll test more as time allows, but here are some early results for a part of my collection, including some unusual stuff (everything NTSC unless otherwise noted):

 

Carts that Failed for me (not unexpectedly, for the most part):

- the M-Network games that use E7 bankswitching (Bump 'n' Jump, Burgertime, He-Man: MOTU), as well as Kool-Aid Man (which loads for me, but exhibits the player-stuck-in-upper-left glitch that happens with some 2600 TIA revisions, like with my 2600 Jr)

- the three Konami titles (Marine Wars, Pooyan, Strategy-X)

- many red label 16K Atari games -- tested and failed so far for me: Crossbow, Dark Chambers, Desert Falcon, Klax (PAL), Midnight Magic, RealSports Boxing, Solaris

- some homebrews (Chetiry, Juno First, Zippy the Porcupine)

- MegaBoy (64K, Dynacom)*

- Fatal Run (32K, Atari, PAL)

- three Tigervision titles (Jawbreaker, Marauder, Miner 2049er); I believe they all use 3F bankswitching**

- Popeye (the only Parker Brothers cart I tested so far, but I imagine all the E0 bankswitched titles from PB will fail)

- Rescue Terra I

- Room of Doom (I think all CommaVid games will fail, not positive though)

- Tooth Protectors (uses the same Parker Brothers' E0 bankswitching)

 

Carts that Worked for me (again, largely as expected):

- some homebrews: Halo 2600, Pac-Man 4K, Thrust+ Platinum

- oddball CCE (Brazil NTSC) titles: A Misterious Thief, Immies & Aggies, Pizza Chef, Stone Age

- most PAL carts that would roll or otherwise get cut off on my TV: Ghostbusters II, Hole Hunter, Schussel der Polizistenschreck, Ski Hunt, to name a few

 

Most interestingly (to me), there are some unusual cases when it comes to 16K titles and Atari Inc carts vs. Atari Corp carts, it seems. Some examples:

- The Atari Inc. silver label version of Crystal Castles worked for me, but the gray label version did not. Tested numerous times to be sure. Both carts work fine on my 2600 Jr. I'd be interested to know if others also experience this. On the other hand, Dig Dug (silver Atari Inc. label) failed, but Dig Dug (1985 Atari Corp label) loaded up fine. Mario Bros. (silver Atari Inc. label) worked, but the gray label version failed. Both the Inc. and a Corp. version of Stargate failed for me. Everything works normally when using my 2600 Jr. I'll do some more testing along these lines for sure.

 

* My cart is extremely difficult to get seated just right to work in my 2600, so I can't say with 100% certainty that it won't work with the 77, but in all likelihood it'd fail regardless due to the unique F0 bankswitching.

 

** This includes Octopus, the PAL release (from Carrere Video) of Name This Game, which came in a Tigervision case. I'm not sure whether the Carrere releases use the same hardware as the original releases.

[AtariLeaf]

This is posted on the facebook group. Apologies to the person who posted and I hope it's ok to post this here but if true it explains why many carts fail to be recognized which begs the question - if so many of the games have to be played from the SD card why does this thing even have a cart slot? If you have to put half your collection on this thing in rom form you might as well put them all on and be done with it.

 

 

I don’t know how the cart slot reads the data from the cart and passes it to Stella, but the “reading data process” must not have the list of “bank-switch types” that Stella uses to play everything. Tricks had to be developed to bank-switch for games using more than 4K & each company developed their own ways to do this. Simplifying banking: 2600 wasn’t designed with a data pin out, so developers had to trick a backwards input to cause a 4K switch. The dump/reader needs to know this or it can’t read all the ROM data.
For instance, it plays Pitfall II on a file - but the cart fails right? Where Stella looks up the “cart type” and sees the bank-switching is the DPC helper chip with RAM so Stella uses the emulation for the helper chip. The cart reader gives Stella an incomplete file that it fails to run. Stella may use the beginning of the data and see it is Pitfall II but needs all the ROM game data because it cannot run code that isn’t there.

 

 

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

I am pretty sure the hit rate of the cart dumper could be improved. But as of now, we have no access to the software, so we have to hope for Hyperkin to either improve their software or release the code.

 

The Facebook post is about right. The bankswitching is the most likely the key problem here. Stella always has access to the whole ROM, it can use its build-in heuristics to check the whole ROM and it can use a checksum to correct rare wrong heuristic results. Now, the cart dumper always only sees 4K initially. For an 8K ROM this may be the first or the second 4K, he cannot know. So the heuristics initially can only work with these 4K and with checksums over 4K banks of known ROMs. Obviously, with less information available, the potential for error is much higher. And the code to reduce mistakes, has to be more complicated than what Stella is using currently. But I am pretty optimistic, that this gap can be closed almost completely. It just takes more time, testing and coding.

[atarifan88]

This is posted on the facebook group. Apologies to the person who posted and I hope it's ok to post this here but if true it explains why many carts fail to be recognized which begs the question - if so many of the games have to be played from the SD card why does this thing even have a cart slot? If you have to put half your collection on this thing in rom form you might as well put them all on and be done with it.

 

 

 

And if you have to put half your collection on the SD, there shouldn't be a limit to the number of ROMs it will read. I read that they were lifting the 18 rom limit, but it was never mentioned what that new number would be or if it would be unlimited.

[AtariLeaf]

Either way I'm definitely waiting for the bugs to get ironed out before I buy one. I'm still hopeful but as it is I'm going to wait it out. If it doesn't fixed satisfactorily then a rumored flashback 9 with sd cart support might be the better way to go.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Most interestingly (to me), there are some unusual cases when it comes to 16K titles and Atari Inc carts vs. Atari Corp carts, it seems. Some examples:

- The Atari Inc. silver label version of Crystal Castles worked for me, but the gray label version did not. Tested numerous times to be sure. Both carts work fine on my 2600 Jr. I'd be interested to know if others also experience this. On the other hand, Dig Dug (silver Atari Inc. label) failed, but Dig Dug (1985 Atari Corp label) loaded up fine. Mario Bros. (silver Atari Inc. label) worked, but the gray label version failed. Both the Inc. and a Corp. version of Stargate failed for me. Everything works normally when using my 2600 Jr. I'll do some more testing along these lines for sure.

Hm... Without access to code I can only speculate. But it might be, that the hardware used is slightly different so that maybe the working version have a different startup bank than the non-working ones.

 

If you haven't done already, you should test the non-working ones several times. The more banks the more tries, at least 2 or 3 times the number of banks to be quite sure.

[+stephena]

Several of the games listed above not working are because the version of Stella used is extremely old (3.7.5, released in 2012 or so). If (IF!) someone can get the latest version of Stella running on it, then some of those ROMs will start working. Note that this is true even if you're using the ROM instead of the cart; some of the schemes just aren't supported in Stella 3.x.

 

The problem with Kool-Aid Man is incomplete TIA emulation, again because of the old version of Stella.

 

Note that none of this addresses 'issues' with the cart reader. One would need the software released to even attempt to fix that. There's every indication that this can be made more compatible, if we get all the source code released and someone is willing to help in doing the work.

[+stephena]

This is posted on the facebook group. Apologies to the person who posted and I hope it's ok to post this here but if true it explains why many carts fail to be recognized which begs the question - if so many of the games have to be played from the SD card why does this thing even have a cart slot? If you have to put half your collection on this thing in rom form you might as well put them all on and be done with it.

 

Can you point me to this Facebook group where you read this?

[AtariLeaf]

 

Can you point me to this Facebook group where you read this?

 

No problem - https://www.facebook.com/groups/Atari2600homebrew/

Edited July 8, 2018 by AtariLeaf

[+evg2000]

Wonder if the magicard will boot, I know it won't work as it needs the keypad. Just interested if the cart itself would boot.

[DirtyHairy]

From my analysis of the R77 hardware and the source code published by Hyperkin, the dumper code runs on a Microcontroller that drives the cartridge bus. The man (linux) system that runs Stelle communicates with the dumper over a serial connection. In order to improve the dumper (and this may well be possible), one would need access to the source of the dumper firmware running and the MCU and a possibility to reflash it from linux.

 

The source published by Hyperkin so far contains everything that is necessary to build and modify the linux system (which is more than enough to comply with the GPL, to be clear on this ), but not the firmware of the dumper MCU. In addition, I am not sure whether it is even possible to reflash the MCU from linux.

Edited July 8, 2018 by DirtyHairy

[Jess Ragan]

Man, that's a bummer. Sounds like this is almost as much of a mess as the Atari Flashback 8.

[Keatah]

Does R77 have enough grunt to power Stella 5.x and later?

What's the CPU? Is it that AllWinner crap?

[Keatah]

Very valid point. Hard to believe modern tech can't build at least the same quality of a low cost item like a joystick.

 

BELIEVE IT! Modern tech is saddled with cost-cutting and more scrutiny towards that end than ever before. So. Yeh. It can't.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Does R77 have enough grunt to power Stella 5.x and later?

What's the CPU? Is it that AllWinner crap?

Yes, its powerful enough (by far!), even though it is an Allwinner "crap".

[atarifan88]

Either way I'm definitely waiting for the bugs to get ironed out before I buy one. I'm still hopeful but as it is I'm going to wait it out. If it doesn't fixed satisfactorily then a rumored flashback 9 with sd cart support might be the better way to go.

 

That's exactly the way I am looking at it. Between the two systems, one has to be able to play close to 100% of the original games (not counting homebrew). With the Flashback 9, assuming they put an SD card slot in for playing ROMS, I hope they improved the compatibility from the handhelds.

[Bill Loguidice]

 

That's exactly the way I am looking at it. Between the two systems, one has to be able to play close to 100% of the original games (not counting homebrew). With the Flashback 9, assuming they put an SD card slot in for playing ROMS, I hope they improved the compatibility from the handhelds.

 

Yes, it will be using different emulation from the handhelds.