"AgaCart" my version of the Atari Lynx SD cartridge

[Nop90]

1 hour ago, Felyx said:

I am wondering if it is possible to display anything else than "Insert game" when turning the Lynx on? 

No, that mage is hardcoded in the lynx chips.

 

1 hour ago, Felyx said:

I tried to add the demo of Robby on the micro SD card, renaming the file in 176.lyx (of course the file was in LYX format) but it doesn't work (I got the E message that means the file is not recognized)...

Will investigate tomorrow to try to understand what's wrong (possibly not the "256ko" format required????) 

If you have an hex editor, adding 64 bytes of data before the lyx image should work. Probably the cart just ignore the content of the lnx header, so the values are not important, use al zero. This is not true if you are going to use the same lnx file on an emulator or with an HQ SD cart.

[Fadest]

From my understanding, on the basis of a 256kb game (I tried with my Yastuna)

.lyx files that you can find in releases archives are usually"raw" cartridges that can be flashed (with a programer or with Bernd's Flashcard) and cannot be used by emulators or Agacart. Size can vary from few kb to less than 256kb (if we speak about a 256kb cart target)

.lnx files are .lyx files with an header for emulators, and padded with 0 at the end to the correct sizes (256kb for example)

.lyx files awaited by Agacart are .lnx files without the header (but still padded to have the full size size)

 

So, if I'm correct, in order to transform a .lnx to .lyx file for Agacart, you should remove (delete, not set to 0) the first 64 bytes of the .lnx file, or add 0 bytes to a developer .lyx file in order to have the correct size.

I guess that on Mac, you should be able to do this with an Unix command on a terminal.

[Felyx]

Thank you for your answers. 

I fond some bit editors for Mac: let see what is the easiest way to edit roms

that will remind me when I was typing kilometers of hexadecimal code in my Apple II to get some pixels moving at the screen            

[power]

I love the "Insert Game" screen, as much as I had previously associated it in the past with the game not being inserted correctly now it means something different

[UHATEIT]

I'll be the unknowledgeable one and say "there was Mortal Kombat 2 for the lynx?" That I did not know. But saw it on the screen when you showed the agacart loaded up Felyx

[Fadest]

Mortal Kombat II for the Lynx source :

http://www.ataritimes.com/index.php?ArticleIDX=314

 

[UHATEIT]

1 hour ago, Fadest said:

Mortal Kombat II for the Lynx source :

http://www.ataritimes.com/index.php?ArticleIDX=314

 

Sweet thank you! I bet there are plenty of random non-commercial roms out there I need to scope around for.

[rj1307]

1 hour ago, Fadest said:

Mortal Kombat II for the Lynx source :

http://www.ataritimes.com/index.php?ArticleIDX=314

 

And in the attachment .lyx file.

 

mk2.lyx

[UHATEIT]

Sorry for flooding this thread. I ordered mine and it shipped already tho I have a question. One of the guys posted in June showing the picture with a list of like 100 games. Did that list come with the cart and are they already loaded on the cart itself? Does it come with any micro sd card? Hoping it's already loaded upa nd I can just ad stuff to it. I always seem to have issues with formatting things.

[Felyx]

The Agacart is full of roms, including a lot of homebrews, not all of them but let say about 95% of them which is amazing and very helpful because you don't need to remove the header on each .LNX file to get the required .LYX file.

[UHATEIT]

6 minutes ago, Felyx said:

The Agacart is full of roms, including a lot of homebrews, not all of them but let say about 95% of them which is amazing and very helpful because you don't need to remove the header on each .LNX file to get the required .LYX file.

Thats good to know. I just didnt see if it it included the microsd card with it and if anything was loaded. One of the posters showed a picture of a folded list of like 100 games or so and I thought that would be a nice touch if that was included with it! As another poster show3ed their box but that paper wasn't there.

[Fadest]

It's ready to play with commercial & homebrews.

As Felyx said, Rafal made a nice work to compile and prepare most of free available homebrew and demo.

But don't expect to find commercial homebrew on it (which is a really nice thing in my opinion, such hardware is very cool but shouldn't stop developers from creating and selling new games).

[Felyx]

The Agacard comes with a micro SD card of 2 Go and this card is populated with 175 roms that we can all find on the net, let say the public domain.

Basically the Agacart is a easy way to run on a realLynx what you can find on the net and run under Handy emulator.

As far as I understood, the card can be filled in up to 199 .lynx files but of course, you can use any micro SD card you want.

 

Like Fadest said, the roms on the card are the ones anyone can download from the net but nothing more. Don't expect to find roms you can't easily download by yourself.

For example, the rom for Raiden is the version floating on the net but not the best version sold by Telegames.

Edited August 20, 2019 by Felyx

[Felyx]

OK guys I am super proud of attaching here the LYX file for Lynx ops, the demo game of what could have been Operation Wolf on our Lynx.

I just converted the LNX rom into a LYX file i.e.

 

To do that it is easy and below are some screenshots to illustrate:

A LNX rom = a LYX rom for which a header has been added. This header must be removed.

I opened the LynxOps.LNX with the first free bit editor I found on the net (for info, it is Hex Fiend for Mac OS X  )

 

The header are the 16 first octets that appear in blue:

Select them and delete them:

Now the file starts with FF81CA33 and that's cool.

The second step consists of giving the file the right weight:

After saving the file with .LYX extension, I can see it weight is only of 34Ko:

The file goes up to line 34416:

 

I opened a LYX rom that works on the Agacart and found the file must includes 00000000 up to line 262128:

 

I added manually 00000000 to finish the line 

 

and I did a copy and paste for all the other 00000000 octets needed from the exiting LYX to the one for Lynx op, i.e. from line 34464 to line 262128:

then I saved the file.

Now its weight is 262 ko:

 

I copied the file on my Agacart micro SD card: as the last rom on it was 176.LYX, I renamed LynxOps.lYX into 177.LYX

Now when turning on my Lynx with the Agacart, I simply chose the game 177 and...

Here we are:

 

Now I feel like Dora the Explorer: yeah we did it we did it 

 

177.lyx

Edited August 20, 2019 by Felyx

[+bhall408]

12 hours ago, Felyx said:

I fond some bit editors for Mac: let see what is the easiest way to edit roms

 

I use a wonderful tool call Synalyze It!. It supports custom "grammars" to define binary file layouts, and I created one for LNX files and contributed it back to the author (so it should show up via the grammar browser)

 

[+bhall408]

5 hours ago, Felyx said:

OK guys I am super proud of attaching here the LYX file for Lynx ops, the demo game of what could have been Operation Wolf on our Lynx.

I just converted the LNX rom into a LYX file i.e.

If you want to post the LNX file, I can double check it with Synalyze and also try it in our emulator.

 

Of note, we're picking up the manufacturer field from the file and showing that in the UI, so set that if you want it to show up.

 

It turns out that almost nobody sets the game title field correctly (so we now went back to using the filename), but the vast majority set the publisher/developer field correctly (or at least left it blank).

 

Mid-term, we're implementing a server side database with all the meta-data in JSON and will just hash the ROM and use that to look up the matching entry in the database.

[Felyx]

OK but like said I took the first free hex editor I could find and it was enough to modify a .LNX rom into a .lyx one.

Feel free to use the editor you want.

 

[Felyx]

Some Goodies to thank once again Rafal for his cool card: a box "à la Atari Lynx" manner

 

 

Edited August 21, 2019 by Felyx

[joora]

Hello,

 

long time lurker and registered here just to say that I am very interested in the AgaCart for my Lynx II

 

So, if you post to EU and still taking orders, I would very much like to buy one.

 

 

[UHATEIT]

1 hour ago, Felyx said:

OK but like said I took the first free hex editor I could find and it was enough to modify a .LNX rom into a .lyx one.

Feel free to use the editor you want.

 

I have a question for you. Does it read .lnx and .lyx? I thought that .lyx was for emulators. I tried a .lyx on my cell phone in an amulator and it wouldn't work. I changed the format name to .lnx and it worked. So I was wondering if the agacart accepts both file names. 

[Felyx]

.LYX files = readable by a real Lynx

.LNX = file for emulators such as Handy

The difference between the both is that LNX = LYX + a header

 

If you try to open a .LNX rom with an emulator, it works:

 

As you can see, on Mac, the LNX files are recognized by Handy and this is visible because they receive an icon in form of Lynx cartridge.

On the contrary, .LYX files are not recognized by Handy: their icon stays the general one for a document and if you try to open them with Handy, it fails:

 

Concerning the Agacart, it reads only .LYX and not .LNX which sounds normal: a real Lynx don't need any header and this is why we need to convert .LNX files to .LYX to make them readable by a real Lynx.

As described in my small tutorial, you need to to 2 things:

- removing the header i.e. the 16 first octets of the .LNX file

- adding 00000000 octets so the .LYX file will have a size of 256bk (i.e. 262ko) or 512 kb (i.e. 524 ko)

 

Last thing to do: naming the .LYX file with a number from 1 to 199, this time because the Agacart has 2 buttons to select the file you want to run by its number, this is why in the tutorial I renamed manually my LynxOps.LYx into 177.LYX (because there were already 176 .LYX files on my SD card)

[Felyx]

Now Rafal provides the Agacart with a Micro SD cart already full of 175 LYX files (all Lynx cartridges released by ATARI + almost all the known existing homebrews) ready for use with a real Lynx.

There are only few missing roms that were not there such as LynxOps or Robby and both are prototypes of unfinished games.

Roms of some commercial games are not there as well as well such as the best version of Raiden (still sold by Telegames) and post ATARI games (Songbird games, Alpine Games, Zaku, HotDog...)

To give a complete landscape, there is a third file format for the Lynx which is .O that can be sent to the real Lynx.

As far as I understood, .O files are objects files i.e. files a real Lynx can't execute but Matthias Domain developed Lynxer, a DOS app that convert .O files into .LYX files.

There are few Lynx roms floating around on the net in .O format such as Para Lemi! for example:

 

[UHATEIT]

Ok that makes sense why you named it 177.lyx and then why Rafal uploaded the MK2 rom here with a .lyx instead of .lnx and then also explains why the cart will come with that list of 175 games on it since they are stored by number instead of names.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

16 minutes ago, UHATEIT said:

Ok that makes sense why you named it 177.lyx and then why Rafal uploaded the MK2 rom here with a .lyx instead of .lnx and then also explains why the cart will come with that list of 175 games on it since they are stored by number instead of names.

The AgaCart pretty much works like a GoTEK floppy emulator does for PCs. Each number.lyx file is essentially a different bank that the games exist in. When you are switching the numbers on he back, you are switching the active bank to load data from off the AgaCart. That is why the printed list is needed with blanks to add more to write on. The files have to be copied in #.lyx form as there is no onscreen menu to tell you this.

 

I know that when I did my video, I didn't mention the fact it came with the roms only because I was still thinking this to a be grey area.

[UHATEIT]

it's all good, I keep busting out questions, I ordered and paid mine just hasn't arrived yet or I'd already know these things and have tried it out. I saw a pic with a list and another without it, so it's good there is a list for sure!