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New Retron 77 NTSC Cartridge Compatibility List


SmartSped

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1 hour ago, SmartSped said:

Is there a better alternative for playing carts on a modern TV? I honestly don't know. I haven't investigated. I know there's lots of other choices for NES games but haven't really dug into Atari systems.

I'm not aware of any modern solution if you want to play actual cartridges.
Probably an original console with a good A/V mod installed (preferably with s-video or RGB output) and an upscaler specific for retrogaming is the best option at the moment.

 

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Is there a known hardware mod that can be applied to the Retron 77 to enable expanded support? Would that even be feasible?

A simple mod could be to wire a on/off switch between pins 12 and 24 of the cart connector.

vcs_cart_port.png.cf0df5480d7ec8f9348b6661ca3665e2.png

This might (slightly) increase compatibility: closing the switch would signal the R77 that a cart is in the slot, if it failed to automatically detect its presence.

The other limitations (limited supported types and wrong type detection) would still apply, though.

 

Note that I don't have a R77, so I haven't tried this myself.

Edited by alex_79
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19 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

The cartridge is dumped and a ROM file is created on the SD card. Which is identical to the file in any ROM collection. And then this file is put into Stella. There is zero difference between emulating the new dump or the collection file. 

As I've stated previously, I know how this all works. I'm not an idiot. But I prefer the nostalgia of inserting the cartridge and playing it that way even though it's not playing directly from the cartridge. There's a very old school feel about plugging in a cartridge and playing it that way rather than scrolling through modern menus and loading through a GUI. Don't get me wrong, I have all the ROMs installed too but I'd like to get use out of my old cartridges.

Edited by SmartSped
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12 minutes ago, alex_79 said:

I'm not aware of any modern solution if you want to play actual cartridges.
Probably an original console with a good A/V mod installed (preferably with s-video or RGB output) and an upscaler specific for retrogaming is the best option at the moment.

 

A simple mod could be to wire a on/off switch between pins 12 and 24 of the cart connector.

vcs_cart_port.png.cf0df5480d7ec8f9348b6661ca3665e2.png

This might (slightly) increase compatibility: closing the switch would signal the R77 that a cart is in the slot, if it failed to automatically detect its presence.

The other limitations (limited supported types and wrong type detection) would still apply, though.

 

Note that I don't have a R77, so I haven't tried this myself.

Thanks for the pinout. I may try this soon and see what it does.

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1 hour ago, alex_79 said:

A simple mod could be to wire a on/off switch between pins 12 and 24 of the cart connector.

vcs_cart_port.png.cf0df5480d7ec8f9348b6661ca3665e2.png

This might (slightly) increase compatibility: closing the switch would signal the R77 that a cart is in the slot, if it failed to automatically detect its presence.

The other limitations (limited supported types and wrong type detection) would still apply, though.

 

Note that I don't have a R77, so I haven't tried this myself.

I decided to temporarily jumper pin 12 and 24 and this did increase compatibility as seen here with Miniature Golf. Maybe I'll install a switch sometime. Thanks for the heads up

PXL_20220311_212655145.jpg

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14 minutes ago, alex_79 said:

Yep. You need a switch, else it thinks there's always a cart in there, so it dumps the non-existing cart and sends the resulting rom to Stella.

Question: Would the only issue this jumper cause be that Retron 77 always thinks there's a game in there? Would there be any issues with any other games? I was thinking of adding some sort of switch that activates only when a cart is physically pushed into the socket. Similar to how GBA detects older Game Boy games.

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A switch that's activated by inserting the cartridge is the best solution if you can find something that fits. The games that work without the mod have those two pins connected internally, so the jumper simply becomes redundant, but it doesn't have any ill effect.

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12 minutes ago, KaeruYojimbo said:

He was asking about the cartridge, which doesn't work. I don't doubt that the ROM would work with the community build.

Sorry, missed that. Thanks.

 

And yes, since the cartridge slot is only a lousy gimmick, only a few modern homebrew cart will work in it. And since DC is an ARM game, it definitely won't work.

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You are really wasting your time here. Which bankswitching type a game uses, is known (there exist extensive lists for the original games) or can be looked up in an emulator. And whether a physical cart of the remaining games work in the R77 slot depends on how it got produced. Even if your cart works, that only means "some" carts of the game work. 

 

In the end, IMO it absolutely makes no sense to invest any effort into such a list. 

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1 minute ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

You are really wasting your time here. Which bankswitching type a game uses, is known (there exist extensive lists for the original games) or can be looked up in an emulator. And whether a physical cart of the remaining games work in the R77 slot depends on how it got produced. Even if your cart works, that only means "some" carts of the game work. 

 

In the end, IMO it absolutely makes no sense to invest any effort into such a list. 

I think you're forgetting that not everyone knows to look up bakswitching type. To people searching Google for a compatibility list, this is really the easiest option for them.

 

I get: You don't like the Retron 77. You've mentioned it numerous times, lol, and I hate that my post triggers you so much, But please back off and let me continue my list, dude.

 

Thanks.

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1 minute ago, SmartSped said:

I get: You don't like the Retron 77. You've mentioned it numerous times, lol, and I hate that my post triggers you so much, But please back off and let me continue my list, dude.

Maybe you should know that I am member of the Stella team. 😁

 

And I only dislike the R77 cart slot, because of its lousy, not fixable implementation. Which leads to all kind of expectations, even anger towards the Stella team.

:D:)

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1 minute ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Maybe you should know that I am member of the Stella team. 😁

 

And I only dislike the R77 cart slot, because of its lousy, not fixable implementation. Which leads to all kind of expectations, even anger towards the Stella team.

:D:)

Well I appreciate your contributions to the development of Stella. Just know I don't have any expectations of you to fix what isn't fixable.

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