Concerto firmware thread

[John Stamos Mullet]

44 minutes ago, Trebor said:

Does it appear similar to the below image?

 

 

If so, it's likely the result of the screen showing more visible scanlines than the average (CRT) would display.

 

yes, but a bit more pronounced. I am using a UAV modded 7800 via S-Video through a RetroTink to a Samsung 4k, so what you said makes sense, and I kind of thought that might be the case.

[+Trebor]

2 minutes ago, John Stamos Mullet said:

yes, but a bit more pronounced. I am using a UAV modded 7800 via S-Video through a RetroTink to a Samsung 4k, so what you said makes sense, and I kind of thought that might be the case.

Just a heads-up, Food Fight I believe has some garbage too, though not as rough as Choplifter.

[Dauber]

Just updated my Concerto from 0.94 to 0.95. A couple of homebrews weren't loading (off the top of my head, b*nQ freezes when the URL appears on the screen, and a few of frankodragon's get scrambled) but I did notice some improvement -- including how Commando now plays POKEY sound!

 

However...not a single 2600 ROM works for me. ? I try to load one, and basically the menu screen stays up but there's some scrambling going on. Disclosure: did not try any 2600 ROMs BEFORE upgrading to 0.95, so I don't know if the upgrade might have zonked out 2600 support...

[+Trebor]

9 hours ago, Dauber said:

...a few of frankodragon's get scrambled)...

Draker Quest, Draker Quest II, Panda Racer, Rider of the Night...all of them are 512 KB in size game ROMs, not supported by Concerto (yet).

[+batari]

13 hours ago, Dauber said:

Just updated my Concerto from 0.94 to 0.95. A couple of homebrews weren't loading (off the top of my head, b*nQ freezes when the URL appears on the screen, and a few of frankodragon's get scrambled) but I did notice some improvement -- including how Commando now plays POKEY sound!

 

However...not a single 2600 ROM works for me. ? I try to load one, and basically the menu screen stays up but there's some scrambling going on. Disclosure: did not try any 2600 ROMs BEFORE upgrading to 0.95, so I don't know if the upgrade might have zonked out 2600 support...

2600 support isn't complete, but most 2600 games should work, so try a few games that have different bank-switching methods. If absolutely none of them do, I might check to see if you have a bad TIA or RIOT chip on your 7800. Try out a normal 2600 cart on it or a Harmony cart, if you have one.

[John Stamos Mullet]

I've created a spreadsheet of the 7800 game testing results here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1142MUsmV0EF8FQdFNWVHx7x6qTJRmhJQ/view?usp=sharing

 

these are my results on an A1 serial 7800, with UAV mod, on a 4k Samsung through a Retrotink mini. 

 

[Dauber]

3 hours ago, batari said:

2600 support isn't complete, but most 2600 games should work, so try a few games that have different bank-switching methods. If absolutely none of them do, I might check to see if you have a bad TIA or RIOT chip on your 7800. Try out a normal 2600 cart on it or a Harmony cart, if you have one.

2600 functionality works great with actual 2600 carts and my (first-gen) Harmony cart. It might be the ROMs that I happened to use. (What's one 2600 game that SHOULD work?)

 

But truth be told, I EFFING LOVE THIS THING! Congratulations on a great product! I mainly care about 7800 stuff.

[+DrVenkman]

9 minutes ago, Dauber said:

It might be the ROMs that I happened to use. (What's one 2600 game that SHOULD work?)

Get the Rom Hunter Collection at Atarimania ... Once you unpack the archive, you'll find a sub-folder in there called "Harmony" where he's carefully curated the roms and put them all into alphabetical folders. Just take that and drop it into your Harmony/Concerto and you should be good to go. 

 

 

[Dauber]

That's the exact source I used.

[+DrVenkman]

5 minutes ago, Dauber said:

That's the exact source I used.

Then at least you can be sure the ROMs are good - that collection is the gold standard for hobbyists, imho. 

[Dauber]

I know they're good -- they work on my Harmony cart.

[+DrVenkman]

16 minutes ago, Dauber said:

I know they're good -- they work on my Harmony cart.

Well, you asked for some good 2600 ROMs ... *shrug* I would say most of those vintage ROMs should work; Fred suggested you try a few different bankswitching schemes. Start with Asteroids (the very first bankswitched 2600 game) and then work through 8K and 16K ROMs from different publishers.  You can see the bankswitch type if you open up Stella and browse the ROMs from the emulator file selector. As you highlight each one, the details will be shown in an info pane at right. 

[Swami]

26 minutes ago, Dauber said:

I know they're good -- they work on my Harmony cart.

If none of the 2600 roms work, I would start with Combat and Video Olympics.

[John Stamos Mullet]

17 minutes ago, Swami said:

If none of the 2600 roms work, I would start with Combat and Video Olympics.

and if those don't work, start with another SD card.

[Dauber]

I just ran through a bunch of non-homebrew titles. I found a similar glitches to what JSM found:

 

Chopper Command -- I'm getting that same graphics glitch listed on JSM's spreadsheet, but the screen kind of shakes a lot; on the actual cart it's fine.

Food Fight -- VERY minor graphical glitch that I think is the same one JSM mentioned, but unlike with Chopper Command, the screen is solidly in place.

RealSports Baseball and Tower Toppler -- I don't even get the title screen; if I try to start it up, the progress indicator goes beyond 100% (into B0%!), and the console crashes.

Hat Trick and Tomcat - I concur; buttons not working on mine. (No huge disappointment with Tower Toppler, though; I hate the 7800 version of that game!)

 

Now...the weird thing is...I'm still having problems running 2600 games off the Concerto at first...but if I swap in the SD card from my Harmony cart, they play fine off that card, and then when I put the SD card that I was using in the Concerto before, the same ROMs play fine off THAT card...so...weirdness. I'm guessing it's the SD card giving me problems. For comparison's sake, my Harmony SD card is an old Inx 512mb card, while the one I've been trying in the Concerto is a 32gb SanDisk ExtremePro.

 

My 7800 I believe is one of the last ones made: no evidence that there ever was supposed to be an expansion port (no port, no cut-out, no nothin'), but plays every cartridge I've ever tried: 7800, 2600 (including Decathlon and Robot Tank) and the Supercharger.

[John Stamos Mullet]

If I load a 7800 game first, then a 2600 game after, it always fails unless the rom size was the same. The concerto clearly has a problem of clearing out ram before it loads a cart, and when you go from a larger 7800 game to a smaller 2600 game, it can crash.

[Shawn]

Here to confirm another machine working with the Concerto.

Console is from the A1 flavor with no expansion port.

All stock parts motherboard version CA025234.

SALLY is an NCR with a production stamp of F830296 N8822.

GM76C28-10 SRAM without a resistor pulling WE low.

 

All 7800 games work perfectly, some 2600 games are off a bit but all play

as they should. The game I'm using the check for the 2600 hiccups is BMX

Airmaster as it shows a pixel shift on the halfpipe that it normally should not.

 

 That has been present on all 3 machines I've tried the Concerto on now which

I am chalking up to the 2600 side of things not being completely implemented yet.

I personally don't care about the 2600 side as I have a million ways to play 2600

games. 7800 games work as intended on this console.

[Shawn]

Forgot to add I'm still on firmware .93 and this is with a POKEY installed.

[John Stamos Mullet]

16 hours ago, Shawn said:

Here to confirm another machine working with the Concerto.

Console is from the A1 flavor with no expansion port.

All stock parts motherboard version CA025234.

SALLY is an NCR with a production stamp of F830296 N8822.

GM76C28-10 SRAM without a resistor pulling WE low.

 

All 7800 games work perfectly, some 2600 games are off a bit but all play

as they should. The game I'm using the check for the 2600 hiccups is BMX

Airmaster as it shows a pixel shift on the halfpipe that it normally should not.

 

 That has been present on all 3 machines I've tried the Concerto on now which

I am chalking up to the 2600 side of things not being completely implemented yet.

I personally don't care about the 2600 side as I have a million ways to play 2600

games. 7800 games work as intended on this console.

Try to see whether subsequent reloads of the same 2600 game fixes the pixel offset. On mine, I found that if you restart it and load the same game again, it fixes it the second, or sometimes third time.

[Mikebloke]

Hi everyone, I received mine today, didn't think I was going to get it till monday so it was a nice bonus.

 

I only have 2 SD cards at hand, I think there might be one in my NES romcart I can try though as well.

 

First one is a 32GB card in FAT32, which worked better. Under 0.94 I got no games to work which I tried. Under 0.95 I got games like Centipede 7800 and Commando 7800 to work, but not games like F18, Xenophobe 7800 (locked up after player selection). The Diagnostic rom doesn't work, nor does any 2600 games. I got a couple of homebrew games to boot, but graphical glitches similar to other reports.

 

Second is a 2GB card in FAT - actually its my Harmony Encore SD card. Again, nothing in 0.94, it just broke when it got into the directory. In 0.95 I could look around the directory but the text went blue on selection and went no further. Is it worth formatting this into FAT32 and having another go?

 

With both, I get the same blinking concerto message with graphics at the bottom as others have reported. I have to admit I find the flashing colours after this and before the WIP message hard on the eyes too - I imagine Epilepsy sufferers wouldn't be too great with it either. The menu looked funny in 0.94, but in 0.95 it looks fine.

 

Stock PAL 7800, no cart problems from anything I got physically, I got all grey box 7800 games and a few hundred 2600 carts.

[Zoyx]

Just got my Concerto a few days ago. The firmware is 0.95. No .a76 files will load. I am having some luck with 2600 games, though. Could this be SD card related? I scavenged an old Harmony SD card to use in my Concerto.

 

Where are the instructions for loading in firmware? I might try to roll back and see if I have some luck there.

[Shawn]

9 hours ago, John Stamos Mullet said:

Try to see whether subsequent reloads of the same 2600 game fixes the pixel offset. On mine, I found that if you restart it and load the same game again, it fixes it the second, or sometimes third time.

 

It does not.

[+x=usr(1536)]

Late to the party on this one due to the holidays, but finally upgraded to 0.95 today.  Overall, this seems to be a *hugely* improved version - no menu lockups so far, and all of the 2600 & 7800 titles I've tried have played without issue.

 

The big one was the Millie & Mollie demo - under previous firmware, only the title screen was visible, with the game proper not displaying correctly.  It now works fine, though there are a few characters that appear to be being overwritten with random data.

 

I'll explain that later after I've had a chance to sleep properly for the first time in three days

Edited January 3, 2021 by x=usr(1536)

[Mikebloke]

I formatted my 2GB card to FAT32 and it worked a lot better. The most stable game seems to be commando, but I managed to get some other games working (Baseball, the karate one (not karata!), centipede etc) however it doesn't seem to work 100% of the time, and turning off turning on 7800 straight away seems to ensure the next file loaded won't work. Leaving the console off for a bit seemed to increase the chances of a rom working. Roms that worked before had no guarantee of working again later. 

 

No 2600 roms working yet, no major 7800 homebrew working. 

 

Edit : some 7800 games like xenophobe and dark chambers load, but crash after menu selection. 

Edited January 3, 2021 by Mikebloke

[Zoyx]

15 hours ago, Zoyx said:

Just got my Concerto a few days ago. The firmware is 0.95. No .a76 files will load. I am having some luck with 2600 games, though. Could this be SD card related? I scavenged an old Harmony SD card to use in my Concerto.

 

Where are the instructions for loading in firmware? I might try to roll back and see if I have some luck there.

Update:  I got my other 7800 functioning. This one is A/V modded and wasn't booting at all. I opened it up, tightened some things down, and now it works. Magic.

 

Anyway, the Concerto works with this console. I tested Ms. Pacman and Centipede, and they both loaded. I tried Bonq, and no luck there, but I see other people have had problems with that game.

 

But anyway, if additional info is needed on the 7800 console that isn't playing well with the Concerto, let me know.

 

If someone has a more formal test regime for me to go through on the one that is working, I would like that info as well.