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Atari Flashback X Custom Firmware for USB roms and boxart


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Wondering if someone with ATARI v3.1 and a set of paddles could test this for me? (or go-crowd-source-donate-fund a pair of old-jittery-shitty paddles from some box to me for testing purposes).

 

I've got FinalBurn Alpha set up with a decent number of working games and it looks like Arkanoid and Arkanoid 2 will run at 100%ish speed but I don't have a pair of paddles to test it.

drop this folder on the root of your device, copy over the old files. let me know what you find out. Anyone else... Here are some arcade games!


A.T.A.R.I. v3.1.1 (ARCADE UPDATE):

 

 

rom_alt_2.rar

Edited by Draxxon
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13 hours ago, Draxxon said:

on xevious, can you set button1/shoot to rewind, for continuous gun fire, and set bombs/button2 to the red fire button instead?

Yes, good idea and that does play a lot better.  However, I realized you have to hit rewind a couple times (going into the menu and back out) before the rapid fire effect happens.  I might be happy to stick with the none and one buttoners for my Atari system!  ?   Someday (not soon though) I would  like to port this new approach to the Legends Flashback units with more buttons.  I like the Atari joystick better, but would really like Colecovision and I think it is going to be possible on the Legends Flashback 2018 using this new approach.

 

For the buzzing games, (like I had in Canyon Bomber) it worked well in mame2000.  My thought is use fba as first choice, then fall back on mame2000.  Maybe some setting for the retroplayer.ini file may help though.

 

MrFister, The recent FBX firmware .zip attachment still looks good to me.

 

I made some good progress on the changes.  The key parts appear to be working.  I want to put together some examples and test things more.  It is slow going because debugging anything takes logging to a file and going back and forth between the AFBX and my Linux system.   There seems to be a pretty full set of commands on the device, but some shell script type things I test as working on my Linux box just don't work in the device environment.

 

That wireless file is an interesting one.  If I look at it with a hex editor, it has references to starting some atari roms, and also things like "test SD card" an it looks like also wireless controller setup.  I will try running it sometime. 

Edited by rocketfan
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I have a lot of the LFB work done already. Colecovision is completely finished, but only works on the LFB2 (2019). It uses BlueMSX core so there is no Super Game Module support for newer style homebrew. It did cross my mind the other day that it would be much easier to just add atari to the LFB2D, lol. I plan on looking for that AtGames "Legends Core Gamer Majiggy" this weekend.

As far as FBa vs MAME. ill load both on to the menu, and nix the one that is inferior later. maybe make a note in the game descriptions i never fill out which emu is running the game. I should start noting FBa roms now, I suppose.

 

Take your time on the updates. There is no hurry. I know all about going back and forth, PC to Atari, I cant imagine linux to pc to atari. triple workflow. As far as the wireless sticks.. that AA link i posted went into it all but i dont really remember. The files are there, the antenna is there, the error about wireless sticks when using paddles that pops up outta nowhere still on the AFBX is mentioned, but i seem to remeber something about a lead or a chip or some junk and stuff that was NOT there. IDK, I just do box art.... lol.

My question is...... FBalpha also plays TG16, and MSX and a bunch of other jazz, with bios.... but.... how....??? Could FBa go in the "Default slot" like gen+gx and catch all those different rom extensions? can we figure out how to/where to place the correct folder with bios where the core is "looking"?

 

 



 

Edited by Draxxon
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What is the highest firmware for the Deluxe version seen in the wild?  I know I seen v0.1.7 before, but is there a version higher?

The reason I ask is because I didn't pay no mind to the v01.21 partition files that Schnafe posted were for the regular Flashback X and not the deluxe and 

I ended up installing the 0.1.21 version to my Deluxe console flawlessly and the realized in the about tab that is was for the regular version.

Also I figured whoever has a Deluxe Edition with some wireless controllers laying around could install it and see if they work on the Deluxe. (Everything is reversible).

I really don't think they do work on the Deluxe because my PC bluetooth doesn't pick up anything and vice versa, but who knows for sure.  

Well anyway I know how to install the partitions now and can install updates without a atari_update.img file, so thats a bonus i guess!

Edited by MrFister
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AFBXD - 0.1.7 and AFBX - 0.1.21 are the highest ive seen, i think.
 

the only other number i saw was 0.1.20

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've found quite a few more one-buttoners. Ive doubled back and started to remove games that were actually two buttons

and games that run so slow they are no fun. Puzzle games were you can only rotate the bricks in one direction are the

only "almost working" games left in the list.

Some of the almost working NES games were neat when that was all we could add, at this point in the game, I dont see the

value in keeping games that are only half playable and can be played on 100 other different types of systems and setups.

I also figured out why exiting a game to the menu and rewind is so clunky. Menu is Select+Down. So if you hold menu button and tap down to anticipate exit game, it registers another press of select+down and you exit all the way out to the main menu. its probably why there is that funky lag when you get to the exit game menu, so you dont accidentally double-press it more often. changing it to L+R or something makes more sense to me. also Rewind is select+up so if you hold rewind and start holding up to anticipate returning to gameplay, and let go of rewind it stays stuck in rewind. again, U+D might have been better.

I do have one thought, if we can get into mame button settings, can you set P2 up, down, left, right, and fire to P1 action buttons? because if so, a joystick that connects to both controller ports could support a stick with 6 buttons + select and start for one player. just an idea.

Edited by Draxxon
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11 hours ago, Draxxon said:

I do have one thought, if we can get into mame button settings, can you set P2 up, down, left, right, and fire to P1 action buttons? because if so, a joystick that connects to both controller ports could support a stick with 6 buttons + select and start for one player. just an idea.

Great idea, and yes! 

 

A) You can use the fire button on joystick 2 as your second button (kind of hard to hold the second stick though ?).

B) So far the mame config screen has always come up when I use .zim/2000, by remapping the menu open from <tab> (rewind) to say joytick 2 down that no longer happens!  Something about that tab...  Much nicer to go straight in to the game!

C) You can start a 2 player game by mapping "2 player start" to say joystick 2 up.  Then you can play Xevious 2 player mode (it uses joystick one for both players, probably because the original only had one set of controls)

D) Yes you could build a "franken-stick" for sure to plug into both ports for these mame games.  Get one of those Chinese fight sticks from AliExpress, cut an old RS-232 nine-pin cable in half, and go to town!

 

BTW, I thought the config wasn't saving, but going into and out of the general config window sure is.  I now have default.cfg and xevious.cfg in /rom/data/mame2000/cfg.  Unfortunately those are binary and not .xml or something so they can't be hand modified.  

 

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Here is the next iteration.  Again, all this is enabled by the original custom FW provided by Brad_from_the 80s.

 

I am laying off the tweaking of this stuff now, in favor of going back to the Atari800 "dream" I have.

 

There is afbx_internals_2_readme.txt in the zip that covers a lot of the gory details, including specific installation instructions.  I just thought of some things I forgot though:

 

Having a different "retromenu.?" in each rom folder is no longer needed or used.  Every type of game is supported in every rom folder.  HOWEVER, only .a26, .zip, .zim and apparently .bin (which currently maps to picodrive) are used to populate the list from the /game folder.

 

Draxxon: you can have atari, homebrew, and other with this.  Suggestion (take it or leave it) is to put all the naughty games in a separate folder.  Would make it easier for people to go "family friendly" just by changing the allgames.ini.

 

Current extension/core mappings:

.a26 = Atari VCS

.nes = Original Nintendo

.zip = FInal Burn Alpha

.zim = mame2000

.bin = Picodrive (works really well for Sonic, not sure about other specific games)

.gg (or .sgg), .sms, .md, .gen, .sg = Genplusgx is the default, so should catch the rest of Sega, such as the ones listed.

 

 Please let me know if I forgot something else, or if you find anything broken.  I did some testing, but my testing drive is pretty hacked up by now.

afbx_internals_2.zip

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On 2/12/2021 at 12:03 AM, Draxxon said:

My question is...... FBalpha also plays TG16, and MSX and a bunch of other jazz, with bios.... but.... how....??? Could FBa go in the "Default slot" like gen+gx and catch all those different rom extensions? can we figure out how to/where to place the correct folder with bios where the core is "looking"?

It's easy to add entries to the runcommand script.  I added pce an msx, and they are still in there in the files I just attached, but in quick tests (without BIOS) they wouldn't work.  If anyone wants to try dumping BIOS files I think the most likely place to work would be right in the rom folders, but that is just a WAG.  Looking at the core in hex edit. there are references to msx and pce roms in there...

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Thank you, I will get this up and running and check it out.

While you're working on Atari800, ill see what i can do to get Coleco, MSX, PCE/TG-16 and any others that FBAlpha supports working. In retroarch sometimes BIOS go in a /system folder. I'll check the libretro docs and see what i can figure out.

About the XXX games, IDGAF about them, we can nix them all together, or I can provide a separate all-games.ini file that omits them. I don't see the point in giving them their own folder. But where do I draw the line? 21 Blue? Porky's? Texas Chainsaw Massacre? IDK.

Only thing I can think to ask is, any luck with 32X support for PicoDrive?

Edited by Draxxon
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So, I have everything flipped over to the new system and it is working. I implemented the Reboot, Shutdown and Clear Recent Games List utilities.

The question now is, how do you guys want it set up? it IS completely flexible. I still think the best way to set it up as is would be to have Real Games, Homebrew, and Others. In a sense it is a three section carousel that rotates both ways for easy access to everything. You can call it "The Lazy Susan". But, that won't leave a lot of room for adding more games because at about 500 games your load times are bad. Currently, I think "other" games is around 150.

Ideas are to power on to a "top menu" with nothing but folders to rom sets. but that leaves the sub-sections blank on your first screen and you would STILL have to load the Real Atari Games. I think if you load to the Real Games from power on would be best.

That said, you could power on to Real Games and have just one folder that goes to a hub/nexus of all the other systems that are supported, plus atari Homebrew, PAL?, XXX?, 6-button frankenstick games, etc., and a back to Real Games entry.

We could actually do both. I could finish up this three part carousel and post it, then move on to make an overly organized set up for adding as much as you can to this system, and make it future proof as possible. What are youre guys thought?

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AtariAge - Text, Art & Rom Injector v3.2

CODENAME: "Lazy Susan"

Make sure you have installed Brad's totally rad Custom Firmware.

Thank you to RocketFan for Everything you have done! This $#!+ is seriously dope!

Thanks Again to MrFister for setting us all up with a perfect A2600 NTSC rom set.


Add new Atari 2600 roms to /rom_alt_1 and add other supported system's roms to /rom_alt_2
If you want to mess with any setting or cores, etc., RocketFans AFBX Internals 2 ReadMe file is

in the /emulator folder. It covers basically everything we know. And the legacy system files

from past flashback units are in there as well if you want to experiment.

 

Now that I can get that into everyone's hands to play around with, and incase you prefer that setup,

I can now get to work on a more organized and nicer looking layout. It may take a little while though.

You can call it, CODENAME: "Nexus"

A.T.A.R.I. v3.2

 

ATARIv3.2.rar

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6 hours ago, Draxxon said:

AtariAge - Text, Art & Rom Injector v3.2

CODENAME: "Lazy Susan"

Make sure you have installed Brad's totally rad Custom Firmware.

Thank you to RocketFan for Everything you have done! This $#!+ is seriously dope!

Thanks Again to MrFister for setting us all up with a perfect A2600 NTSC rom set.


Add new Atari 2600 roms to /rom_alt_1 and add other supported system's roms to /rom_alt_2
If you want to mess with any setting or cores, etc., RocketFans AFBX Internals 2 ReadMe file is

in the /emulator folder. It covers basically everything we know. And the legacy system files

from past flashback units are in there as well if you want to experiment.

 

Now that I can get that into everyone's hands to play around with, and incase you prefer that setup,

I can now get to work on a more organized and nicer looking layout. It may take a little while though.

You can call it, CODENAME: "Nexus"

A.T.A.R.I. v3.2

 

ATARIv3.2.rar 163.33 MB · 3 downloads

Yes, thank you @Brad_from_the_80s, @MrFister, @Draxxon, @rocketfan (And anyone else I missed). This has made a good Atari 2600 replica machine into a great one.

 

Quote

 

Current extension/core mappings:

.a26 = Atari VCS

.nes = Original Nintendo

.zip = FInal Burn Alpha

.zim = mame2000

.bin = Picodrive (works really well for Sonic, not sure about other specific games)

.gg (or .sgg), .sms, .md, .gen, .sg = Genplusgx is the default, so should catch the rest of Sega, such as the ones listed.

I have been reading the thread religiously and I am impressed with all the progress so far. I am slow to implement changes though and haven’t modified my AFBX after the 1.0 (or maybe 1.2) drop of themes, instructions, and rom sets.

 

I too am looking forward to a combined Atari 800 dream setup for my AFBX. While I find the support for NES and other systems interesting, I have other emulator solutions for those systems. I can see putting maybe a handful of MAME games from the Golden Age of the arcade on the box (Galaga, Mr. Do, Ms. Pacman, etc), but I cannot see myself interested in hacking together a different controller for more button support, or playing non-Atari branded games on the system.

 

I look forward to trying out all the improvements to box artwork and themes, load times, and library culling in the 3.2 collection.

 

Edited by CapitanClassic
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4 minutes ago, MrZarniwoop said:

For what it's worth, most Atari 7800 games play just fine with one button, in case they can be supported.

Certainly. I could see myself playing 2600, 5200/a800, or 7800 games on this system, because they are Atari branded. My big hope is 800 support, since I owned both a VCS and 800XL bitd. 800 support will be interesting,  since most games will need at least 3 additional keys, Start, Select, Option and the AFBX really only has 2 assuming Rewind and Menu cannot be remapped. (Menu certainly cannot, since you need a button to exit Emulation and go back to the main menu.)

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I agree with most stuff said. There are quite a few good running Atari arcade games, I can deff see keeping those though. And, believe it or not, playing a lot of these one button games on an atari joystick is kind of a fun, unique play experience.  I also feel its going to be easier in the long run for end users to remove rom sets they dont want than to add them themselves. Once the new folder system is set up, you will be able to just delete any folder of roms you dont want, and remove the one "goto" link in the nexus/hub all-games.ini file. As it stands now, you could just delete the /rom_alt_2 folder and remove the link to it in the all-games.ini file in /rom and in /rom_alt_1. You would be left with just two folders, Real Games and Homebrew. It IS completely flexible once you figure it out.

While I agree that 2600 along with 5200, 7800, 800, (and atari arcade games) is best, it still remains that none of those other emulators are working in the afbx yet.



 

Edited by Draxxon
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8 hours ago, Draxxon said:

AtariAge - Text, Art & Rom Injector v3.2

CODENAME: "Lazy Susan"

Draxxon, that looks great!  You turned that around unbelievably fast.  I like how the restart and so on are at the back of the lists.  I also like the 2600 games coming up right away. when booted.  I just emptied my previous "clean" thumb drive, dropped your contents on, and good to go.  BTW, there are various .txt file in the root, that are just leftover log files from debug which could be deleted.  There are some arcade games on there I have never played before!

 

On the comments about the Atari games for Atari systems, I mainly agree (started working on the cross-compilation for A800, but it is a steep curve).  However, I still like the extra games.  The set is well curated by Draxxon to be playable, and IMO a lot of games play better than ever with an Atari joystick ?.

 

I'm attaching an updated readme for the internal stuff.  I went back to put in the missing info. and noticed I also had a ton of typos.

 

On my system I added the required retroplayer.ini lines for mame2000 and went through some games, plus some that work I don't see in your distro:

 

FBA games that worked

ccastles.zip

1942.zip

colony7.zip

bombjack.zip

pooyan.zip

mooncrst.zip  (which is just like Eagle with different sprites)

 

Results of testing with mame2000  - a lot of games lag, but some perform better than FBA.

junglek.zim and jungleh.zim - these work really well in mame2000   (these also work in FBA, but with that they have sound issues)

bzone.zim - works well.

bouldash.zim - works - unplayably slow but better than FBA

gorf.zim - works - too slow, but borderline playable.

rtype.zim - works - too slow and sound a little bad, but playable for me - I stink at full-speed r-type!
mtrap.zim (mtrap3, mtrap4) - these work but certain sounds are really messed up and slow down the game.  Unplayable, IMO
fantzone.zim  - way too slow on fba, almost playable on mame2000 but crashes after a little while, I think it probably uses too much memory for the device.  

 

BTW, when playing a lot of games and including some stuff that crashed, I had the system get into a mode it would not start games.  I used "reboot" and it was good.  I think possible the core files are filling up temp or something.  Something to look into someday...

 

 

 

 

afbx_internals_2_readme.txt

Edited by rocketfan
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i believe the black screen/fails to load screen comes up when you browse a lot of games and fill up the memory. Just like youre saying. The NES Classic had a similar issue with the C8 errors.
Having the "Reboot" option really helps IMO.

 

About the newly added Arcade games.... KLOVG has a search function with a filter for 1-button games. You do have to make an account to use all the functions of the search engine. So, unlike other systems, I found somewhat of a guide for arcade 1-Buttoners. There are a handful of games, like fast eddie and Kangaroo, that i must have played on arcade as a small child and have forgotten all about. It blows my mind that i have memories of games in my brain that can't be accessed until i play the actual arcade version again. And I'm not sure I would have ever tried them if it wasn't for the "only one button catch" on the joystick.
Museum of the Game - Arcade, Videogame, Pinball Machine, Game, and Antique Coin-Operated History -- International Arcade Museum (arcade-museum.com)

Also, I changed the few sounds effects around. The cursor moving sound effect when changing pages or games is now the soft click sound.  Your ears will thank me.

Edited by Draxxon
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Project Nexus.

I hid the rom.goto as a "reset switch". this way i can sneak a back to the top menu button in every folder. And I made switches instead of buttons. And I installed the /emulator/res/font MrEadsHEAVY font so the words under the switches are the same font that is in the settings page of the menu.


I'm going to set this up for just Atari Games Only. NTSC, PAL, HB, and Atari Branded Arcade. You will have to sort the pal section tho, it will have a handful to get started, maybe. Then I will add the rest of the games. that way if someone just wants atari only, they can have a set up. Im going to take some time and make it look nice.

these red atari squares are placeholders. what kind of art do you guys want for the systems categories?

150837039_202623081608872_3011492345214951113_n.jpg

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Project Nexus update:

So you boot to here; (around 4 secs/stock time):
151261069_273870007639595_5902341984120688214_n.jpg

 

 

...and RetroArch takes you here, to the "Nexus/Hub" of folders:

150906967_177737450461441_4544925456854824746_n.jpg

 

So far, Arcade has Centipede, Millipede, Kangaro and Fast Eddie

A800 is empty (coming soon)

Pal has Klax and Fatal Run

Tele-Games has Steeplechase and Stellar Track

Homebrew is homebrew
The "Atari Flashback" section has the two ports and all the other flashback only titles that have appeared over the years.
The "Legends Flashback" is a catch all for all the random one button-ers. Plus the "theme" is a straight port of the LFBD-2019 /res folder.
(The LFBD-2019 had .a26 support, so I crammed it in there and reaped the rewards of all the games that dont fit.)

Some of the other sections have their own "theme" as well! ;) 

Edited by Draxxon
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new theme for the new pack. And it also new BG music and digital clock style systems font. i just renamed the digital font to MrEads_Bold.tff in the /res/font folder and pulled the old switcheroo. It also worked for injecting atari font into the main "sans black/afbx" theme. :) 

 

bkg_launcher.png

Edited by Draxxon
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Draxxon, thanks for the updates, looks good so far.  Don't forget ccastles.zip (Crystal Castles) is an Atari game and seems to work well with the fba core.

 

I'm chipping away at a800, but it is a slow go.  The toolchain from the marsboard website doesn't seem complete enough to cross-compile anything complex.  So I went to the suggestion from Brad_from_the_80s and have been experimenting with buildroot.  That is it's own can of worms.  After fiddling a lot with the CPU options and so on I have only really succeeded in making a "hello world" type application run.  ?  The difficulty is that we can't really just "upgrade the system" to a new image fully built by buildroot (which buildroot does for lots of open systems like Raspberry Pi and Beagleboard) so there is a process of trying to match the "sdk" you get out of buildroot to the system.  That's not exactly the intent of buildroot, and I am no expert so there is a lot of trial and error.   Also, it is much easier to make something statically linked (carries all it's own libraries) than dynamically linked (uses the libraries on the system) , but unfortunately AFAIK the latter one is needed for the libretro core.  That might allow "ports" of some homebrew games out there to be made a little more easily than the emulator, and I might experiment with that a bit. 

 

Type of things you need to know:

uname -a from the AFBX: Linux marsboard-rk3066 4.4.103+ #54 SMP PREEMPT Tue Jul 14 11:00:26 CST 2020 armv7l GNU/Linux

Which says the AFBX Kernel Header version is 4.4.

The OS contains glibc V 2.25

You want " Target ABI" to be "EABIhf"  in buildroot, so when you cross compile, your executable will have the right "interpreter" for dynamic linking.  The file would look like this:

hello_world: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, EABI5 version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3, for GNU/Linux 4.4.0, not stripped

 

Each time I get past something, there seems to be another roadblock.  And still only 30% sure I can make it work.  If I get something that works well I will put a copy of the sdk up here.

 

Meanwhile, if anyone out there knows a better way.  Or if atGames wants to publish their cross-compile toolchain? ? Please speak up!

 

 

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you may have luck emailing atgames directly. they are helpful and friendly, but not sure if they will come thru for this.

I havent added any games lately, just working on theme and folder art and programming gotos. Ill make sure ccastles gets in there. i have of list of everything mentioned so far and will make it happen.
I would say im about 50% finished with the new setup. The "hub" is finished. I'm just testing and finishing up the categories. I really dig the sears tele-games setup.

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