Kiloparsec OS ROM

[+x=usr(1536)]

Just curious - any news on the Kiloparsec OS ROM?  Been looking forward to this for some time, but haven't heard much about it recently.

 

 

[Jinks]

Cool game. I would never chip my 7800 unless it was a pal I do not see the advantage. 

 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

2 hours ago, Jinks said:

Cool game. I would never chip my 7800 unless it was a pal I do not see the advantage. 

 

Well it does remove the encryption check so both PAL and NTSC 7800 games can be used on the console. However, most PAL games don't play that well with the NTSC version. Still it has been nice to run the PAL 7800 music demos and such from my flash cart with the new BIOS in place. And I never get tired of seeing that new graphic loader come up.

 

It is also great for quick testing since a game comes up without a game inserted to easily know if the 7800 is an issue or a game cart. 

 

[+x=usr(1536)]

3 hours ago, Jinks said:

Cool game. I would never chip my 7800 unless it was a pal I do not see the advantage.

Yep, I'm mainly just in it for the game (the alternate boot logo is kinda nifty, though).

 

There's always the distant possibility of a multi-BIOS EPROM surfacing at some point too, I suppose.  That really is wishing into one hand at this time, however.

[juansolo]

It wouldn't be difficult to make a switchable bios board so you could choose between them. I considered doing it with my NTSC machine as it's currently got the Asteroids PAL/NTSC bios in there when this one came along. I may still do it, it all depends on how much it ends up costing now.

7 hours ago, Jinks said:

Cool game. I would never chip my 7800 unless it was a pal I do not see the advantage.

With a PAL machine there's less of an advantage because it's already multi region to a degree and already has a game in there. The PAL machine does multi-region way better than the NTSC machine with the Asteroids bios, but neither are great at it... The new bios might fix some odd compatibility issues with some PAL machines in some situations. But it's unknown as to whether it will or not.

Edited July 27, 2022 by juansolo

[Jinks]

What pal games would you need to run on the ntsc machine?

What if you tried to play toki with thia bios whichever lifetime that is released with  the pal version on a ntsc machine? 

Probably someone that has tired in the underground 7800 club. 

?

 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

1 hour ago, Jinks said:

What pal games would you need to run on the ntsc machine?

What if you tried to play toki with thia bios whichever lifetime that is released with  the pal version on a ntsc machine? 

Probably someone that has tired in the underground 7800 club. 

?

 

I can't think of any PAL games specifically, but there are quite a few demos scene like stuff that has been released that was initially PAL only since those demos didn't have the encryption key on them to pass the NTSC checks. And at least in my case, those demos did seem to work okay on my NTSC console after I put this BIOS in. I also have a PAL Ikari Warriors cart that until I did this, I assumed it was a bad cart. But apparently that isn't the case since it works with some graphical glitching and odd game play timings.

 

[juansolo]

I went from a PAL machine to NTSC and had quite a few 7800 homebrews that were PAL or PAL60. None of them worked in a satisfactory manner on the NTSC machine with the Asteroids bios (my reason initially for getting it) so I ended up selling them. However I also have a few NTSC ones that did work fine on the PAL machine. The only one that was an issue was Frenzy that worked perfectly, but ran a little slowly. None of my PAL commercial games played nice with the NTSC machine, but again I've had NTSC ones play ok on the PAL machine with minor graphical corruption. In the grand scheme of things however, I'd consider neither machine as functionally multi-region.

Edited July 28, 2022 by juansolo

[mimo]

2 hours ago, juansolo said:

I went from a PAL machine to NTSC and had quite a few 7800 homebrews that were PAL or PAL60. None of them worked in a satisfactory manner on the NTSC machine with the Asteroids bios (my reason initially for getting it) so I ended up selling them. However I also have a few NTSC ones that did work fine on the PAL machine. The only one that was an issue was Frenzy that worked perfectly, but ran a little slowly. None of my PAL commercial games played nice with the NTSC machine, but again I've had NTSC ones play ok on the PAL machine with minor graphical corruption. In the grand scheme of things however, I'd consider neither machine as functionally multi-region.

same here

[Lynxpro]

My preference would be for the title screen to have Atari under the Fuji and do the rainbow color flow as fast as Atari Inc did it on various 2600 carts like Centipede [and from top-to-bottom]. And then play a TIA or POKEY version of "Have You Played Atari Today?"... either like the classic commercial jingle or like the Jaguar's rendition...