Unicorns season: Prince of Persia for the A8!

[_The Doctor__]

Never heard anyone ask if there was an interest, but wouldn't you think just by the thirst for new titles on any retro platform that it would easily be surmised folks would want such a thing?

[Beeblebrox]

2 hours ago, JagChris said:

..... (Henry's House) or do the sequel he planned.

As I've said before it would be amazing if a sequel was made which equalled if not improved/built on the original in all elements. 

 

I agree, the interview is fantastic.

Edited February 13, 2023 by Beeblebrox

[Solitaire01]

Hi! I'm trying to run PoP on an NTSC 130XE but the cartridge and disk images hang at the Atari logo. The top half of the logo disappears and everything freezes. Any ideas?

[_The Doctor__]

What cartridge? What Disk Drive or image? What modifications in the Atari 130XE NTSC?

 

[Beeblebrox]

6 hours ago, Solitaire01 said:

Hi! I'm trying to run PoP on an NTSC 130XE but the cartridge and disk images hang at the Atari logo. The top half of the logo disappears and everything freezes. Any ideas?

Hi. Yeah, kinda need to know specifics as the Doc says. 

Are you using the final release version from the first post. 

 

FYI you won't be able to run it on certain carts. 

 

For example the car images will only run off a cart that supports mounting car files. Also unfortunately you won't be able to run any of the car or Atr files off Side 3. (Search this thread for reasons as its been discussed before. ) 

 

Generally as you will see reading this thread getting it to work on the multitude of A8 hardware as well as multicarts was a real headache. 

 

If you have a multicart such as Ultimate, or AVG, or a cart like atarimax Maxflash or SiC, you can pop the car version on there and run it. 

 

Also if you have an sio2sd, or sio2usb you can run the Atr disk images afaik. 

 

But yeah, give the details of your hardware, and which carts and images you are trying.

 

 

 

 

[flashjazzcat]

3 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

Also unfortunately you won't be able to run any of the car or Atr files off Side 3.

I think the CAR files work. I fixed some bugs in the loader at the time the game was released which the cart images had helpfully exposed.

[woj]

I could swear I tried it on my Side3 and it worked just fine.

[Beeblebrox]

2 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

I think the CAR files work. I fixed some bugs in the loader at the time the game was released which the cart images had helpfully exposed.

That's great news then. Woohoo!!! I'll try it on my side3.1 this eve using one of the car files. Thanks 

[Beeblebrox]

1 hour ago, woj said:

I could swear I tried it on my Side3 and it worked just fine.

Which car file did you try just out of interest on your side3? Will try this eve. Happy dayzzz!!

[flashjazzcat]

2 minutes ago, Beeblebrox said:

I'll try it on my side3.1 this eve using one of the car files.

Yep: they all work, AFAIK (AtariMax, MegaCart, SIC!).

[Beeblebrox]

2 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

Yep: they all work, AFAIK (AtariMax, MegaCart, SIC!).

[+-^CrossBow^-]

The ATR images have always worked on my 130xe through my FujiNet I believe and I thought it worked on my UnoCart too?

 

[Beeblebrox]

Clearly my brain is malfunctioning!!! I got it in my head it was Side3 that couldn't load PoP images. Just realised I was actually getting confused with the 800 upgrade Incognito. Incognito can't run the PoP Atrs. (Just tried just in case the new Incognito Jan 23 firmware had somehow miraculously rectified this).

 

Incidentally of course I didn't attempt the PoP CARs on Incognito given the hardware doesn't support CARs by design at the time Incognito was released.

 

So apologies - my bad for the misinformation. SIDE3 is indeed fine with PoP.

 

With Incognito when you try to run PoP ATR's (the Dec 2021 ones also btw), it just hangs. Whether it is the single DD ATR or the 2 part SD ATRs mounted, same hang. (Again I think the reasons for this have been covered in this thread at some stage in the last year or so).

Edited April 3, 2023 by Beeblebrox

[flashjazzcat]

1 hour ago, Beeblebrox said:

Again I think the reasons for this have been covered in this thread at some stage in the last year or so

You could say that, yes. A bit of skim-reading will satisfy any interested party of the solidly unarguable design decisions which resulted in that situation.

[Solitaire01]

Hey all -- thanks for the offers for assistance.  I'm running the .CAR (I've tried both AtariMax and MegaCart versions) from a BackBit Pro, as well as loading the single-disk ATR file from a FujiNet 1.6.  Otherwise the 130XE is stock.

 

Cheers!

[_The Doctor__]

You need to send the Back Bit Pro People the various .CAR versions so they can fix their Cartridge emulator.

.ATR issue is a problem with FujiNet that might be fixed by turning down it's SIO divisor it's from inside the web interface, I'd give that a try, and make sure it's R: device is off and not loading in during initial polling.

 

POP has worked with just about any Flash Cartridge etc I've used and I haven't had problem loading VIA APE or floppy drive etc.

 

If a device/cart doesn't handle the .CAR versions, the problem is with the device either not emulating the Cartridge type properly or the device interfering with the normal Atari registers. If the device doesn't load the .ATR then it's either the device is using a RAM based OS or loader that is in the way of the software. APE, some other loaders allow you to pick loader addresses, and most true SIO emulation devices won't have an issue with POP .atr images. The list of it will run on devices far outweigh the few that don't.

Edited April 4, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[+MrFish]

Another question to ask: is your 130XE's extended RAM functional? Have you run any other software requiring 128 KB successfully?

 

 

[flashjazzcat]

7 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said:

If the device doesn't load the .ATR then it's either the device is using a RAM based OS or loader that is in the way of the software.

Erm, no. The ATRs only run (at 1x SIO) from serial IO drives, period.

[_The Doctor__]

SIO divisor was covered in the list before moving to the next possible reason for failure including interfering driver loading.

  Happy drives have Un-Happy mode, while APE allows for SIO speed divisor control along with loader address config. Any number of other more modern devices such as SIO2SD also allow for control over which loader/config menu/Divisor/Device ID/Unit ID (FujiNet also allow divisor config etc). Some devices don't need to be forced lower since they follow Atari SIO conventions or fall back on their own. We moved on to other reasons like loaders that don't allow for programs to load in certain memory spaces (ApeLoader allows its' to be elsewhere) . So if a device doesn't do what has been commonplace from the dawn of such devices, it's the newer thing that is lacking.

Going beyond what the person stated he has available at the moment, also consider MIO, Black Box, allow for the serial ports, parallel ports, to be configured as not present to avoid conflicts and the Black Box also allows SIO modification even more so than the MIO. There is very little out there that interferes with loading POP in some configuration on nearly all previous devices as well as most newer ones.

  Some things to consider when running other software with protection or using larger amounts of memory are to use boot-loader disks and remembering to use the X command and configs in SpartaDos X or a version of Sparta that uses less memory and works on an 800 etc v1.1 perhaps.

There are a multitude of reasons why something might not want to load, most devices have been able to accommodate said issues, only a couple do not. I am sure that the developers of most new devices are interested in making everything run and either have the answer to make a proper config or will work on fixing their products to work in all possible ways.

[_The Doctor__]

One other thing that sometimes works on older software or newer ones that don't always load as expected is to press a key, spacebar, start key, or fire button, etc to skip introduction screens, loading screens, etc. You may find that old game will load and run just fine if they are skipped in some instances.

 

I hope that covered current and future issues and will make some sense of things for you over time.

Edited April 4, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[rensoup]

I'm glad I added a readme so that everybody can skip reading it 

Quote

-PAL/NTSC Atari 800+incognito/600XL/800XL/1200XL/65XE/130 XE/XEGS or compatible (576NUC+/1088XEL/...) 

 

-128KB of RAM minimum (Rambo/U1MB/...). 
 More RAM is fine (256KB/320KB/512KB/...) but makes no difference.

 For Ultimate 1MB or Incognito BIOS, 576K CompyShop or 1088KB Rambo should be used. 
 Not compatible with AXLON 4MB which uses a different banking scheme.

 

-Megacart/SIC!/Atarimax compatible device for the CAR versions (AVG/Ultimate/SIC!/Side3/The!Cart/...).

 

-SD/DD disk drive (810/1050/XF551/IndusGT/...) for the disk versions or compatible device (SIO2SD/Fujinet(1.0,1.3,1.5)/SDrive/...). 

 The game loads at 1x SIO but HSIO can be left enabled on PBI-BIOS.
 DD media needs to be formatted with standard DD sector-interleave (like SDX or DOS XL,...)

All the above configs were tested by AtariAge members at some point.
 

 

[_The Doctor__]

All good information, but he is using a BACKBIT Pro! Which is and untested device with POP, and a FujiNet 1.6 which also wasn't tested at the time and seems to have some growing pains and or random stuff with ongoing firmware updates. The best thing he can do is let the BackBit Pro! people look at their cartridge emulation, and to make sure the FujiNet is set in the most compatible way without loading any of it's handlers or drivers.

 

I hope he's copied the POP disk to the SD card and is running it from there as well perhaps in full read write mode. TNFS issues can be a bear so that's what I'd try to do.

 

Here's the BackBit Pro documents link http://backbit.io/downloads/

 

@evietron can you get together with @Solitaire01 and check out his POP .car files.

 

Maybe some help at the forums https://forum.backbit.io/

Edited April 5, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[_The Doctor__]

one last idea make sure that if the Atari had a 74ls08 in it, it might need to be a 74F08 instead.

 

[evietron]

I support MAX & MEGA banking schemes. Just updated AtariMax scheme to use 0x80 for disable. Not sure what else the issue would be, and I can't test as I only have a 64K XEGS.

[rensoup]

On 4/8/2023 at 9:38 AM, evietron said:

I support MAX & MEGA banking schemes. Just updated AtariMax scheme to use 0x80 for disable. Not sure what else the issue would be, and I can't test as I only have a 64K XEGS.

Did you try any other cart image supporting any of those schemes?

 

I believe Atariblast would be a good test since it only requires 16KB of RAM 

 

or the sampled sound demo by NRV: