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RetroN 77 Community Build Image


remowilliams

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Stella is not involved in cart dumping at all.

 

Just to add to this, and then we will resume development. Some carts will never be dumpable (is that a word?) by this device, or any similar device for that matter. It's just a function of how certain carts work, and how a dumper works. It's not a matter of figuring out how to do it; it is impossible to do it (in a general purpose way, without making assumptions on how the cart is implemented).

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Amazing! Does that include the cart dumping routines? It would be awesome if it could read all the carts also that would be a dream :o

 

 

The cart dumping routines reside in a MCU, and it is unclear to me if or how the MCU can be reprogrammed in software. As far as I can tell, the cart dumping routines cannot be updated by anyone other than Hyperkin, and maybe not even them.

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Coiuldn't the MCU still partly dump an unplayable cart, generate a signature, and use that to look-up the ROM from the micro-SD card? This way you'd be simulating playing the cart. Heck, that's what the unit does anyways once it reads it.

 

I would imagine that each ARM game would make a different checksum, consistently, however inaccurately. Draconian would be different from Scramble for instance.

Edited by Keatah
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Might work, but all that effort just for a show effect? Why not directly starting the ROM via menu instead?

 

BTW: It is more complicated for many old carts. Their initial bank is random, so you need checksum for each bank. And if the banks are split into smaller slices, you need checksums and logic for these cases too.

Edited by Thomas Jentzsch
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This is being worked on.

 

This is also being worked on.

Some answers:

  • We have 3D acceleration and SDL2 running on the R77
  • We have Stella mainline (=6.x) running merrily on the device at full speed
  • We still have to port several of the R77-specific changes from 3.x to the mainline
  • We don't have an ETA ;)

Hyperkin is not involved in this in any way.

 

EDIT: If anyone is curious, you can find the source of the updated firmware on github. The firmware is not suitable for playing yet, though, and there is currently no prebuild image, either.

 

I need to remember to send you guys some more pizza money.

Edited by Nathan Strum
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Some answers:

  • We have 3D acceleration and SDL2 running on the R77
  • We have Stella mainline (=6.x) running merrily on the device at full speed
  • We still have to port several of the R77-specific changes from 3.x to the mainline
  • We don't have an ETA ;)

Hyperkin is not involved in this in any way.

 

EDIT: If anyone is curious, you can find the source of the updated firmware on github. The firmware is not suitable for playing yet, though, and there is currently no prebuild image, either.

 

Thank you all for the tremendous work you've put in to this. I cannot wait to give newer versions of Stella a shot.

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Kind of off topic, but I looked in to it and was shocked to see that the Retron77 is running fairly similar hardware to what is in the SNES and NES Classics. Sounds like half the RAM (128MB vs 256MB) but I had no idea the SoC was as capable as it was. The benchmarks I have found put this around the speed of a Raspberry Pi 2 or twice as fast as a Raspberry Pi 0, which is honestly better than I'd thought. I'm really excited to see what running Stella 6+ on this feels like. :D

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Same situation here. Paddle works with this setup in USB input, but can only navigate the menu with Joystick in the Retron 77... but I'm ok with that too.

 

I cannot get this to work for the life of me. My retron77 just does not see the paddles. I updated to the firmware to the community build that removes the Rom limitation. Does that build not work? I've turned auto sense on and off. Maybe I got a faulty adapter? What settings did you use ? How did you boot the game? Cartridge or Rom?

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I cannot get this to work for the life of me. My retron77 just does not see the paddles. I updated to the firmware to the community build that removes the Rom limitation. Does that build not work? I've turned auto sense on and off. Maybe I got a faulty adapter? What settings did you use ? How did you boot the game? Cartridge or Rom?

 

You have to use this test build currently.

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Some answers:

  • We have 3D acceleration and SDL2 running on the R77
  • We have Stella mainline (=6.x) running merrily on the device at full speed
  • We still have to port several of the R77-specific changes from 3.x to the mainline
  • We don't have an ETA ;)

Hyperkin is not involved in this in any way.

 

EDIT: If anyone is curious, you can find the source of the updated firmware on github. The firmware is not suitable for playing yet, though, and there is currently no prebuild image, either.

 

Does this mean that TV effects (s-video, composite, etc) could be enabled in Stella on the Retron77? That would make the graphics soooo much better!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Okay, I've read this, and it didn't really help at all.

 

I tried reverting my desktop Stella to its default keymap, configuring it to the R77's settings, then modifying that to my preferred settings for the R77. I then copied the keymap line from the desktop stellarc to the R77's stellarc. This resulted in the R77 using the previous defaults(Fry key on BackSpace, instead of Esc for example,) but not as configured.

 

I'm guessing that's a result of keymap being specific to the version of Stella in use. It does seem to indicate that the current community build does still read the keymap line, even if it will not write to it. Unfortunately I am stuck at this point.

 

All I'm really trying to do, is to add SpaceBar to P0 fire, and Keypad 5 to Return to Launcher. This works well, but the change is not saved by Stella, even if you Ctrl-Q out of it, so I have to have leave a keyboard plugged into the R77 to reconfigure if I want to use the Wiimote.:(

 

The default is to have the Wiimote's "+" button as fire, and no other usable buttons(other than the dpad) which is not desirable.

 

It would be nice to also have Return as Reset, which works wonderfully when configured temporarily, as that would allow me to play and switch games using my Wiimote without touching the R77, although I guess that Return as Reset would disable P0 firebutton for the front-left joystick port, without a kernel mod if I understand correctly.

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You're not going to have much luck with this until I find some time to work on a few parts of it. The currently released community image was done before we knew how to add USB hubs, 2600-daptors, keyboards, etc, so I made some assumptions in the code to get a quick hack working. And I mentioned at the time that it was a quick hack. Remapping wasn't an option then, so I didn't bother to test or accommodate for it.

 

The proper approach is to use the latest code and build based on Stella 6. But again, I haven't yet found time to work on this. TBH, your best bet is to wait a few weeks until I get back to working on this, and then we can properly handle remapping, etc. I won't be working on the old code any further; all future development is on Stella 6, which is now compatible with the R77, but is not yet available for public testing.

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