What would you like to see on a 7800 cartridge

[Astal4]

Hello! My 2600 cartridge project is finishing up soon, and I was wondering what anyone would want to see for a 7800 cartridge in terms of features. I'm guessing POKEY/HOKEY support or some other sound chip, RAM (but how much!) and ROM (Also how much!), also maybe some EEPROM for game saves? What sort of coprocessors would go on the card well also! I was thinking about a blitter possibly. 

 

Thanks everyone and have a great weekend!

[Ecernosoft]

On 10/7/2022 at 7:40 PM, Astal4 said:

Hello! My 2600 cartridge project is finishing up soon, and I was wondering what anyone would want to see for a 7800 cartridge in terms of features. I'm guessing POKEY/HOKEY support or some other sound chip, RAM (but how much!) and ROM (Also how much!), also maybe some EEPROM for game saves? What sort of coprocessors would go on the card well also! I was thinking about a blitter possibly. 

 

Thanks everyone and have a great weekend!

RAM AT $8000-$8FFF, $A000-$AFFF, $C000-$CFFF, $E000-$EFFF and bank switching between the "DMA hole" areas minus $F000-$FFFF since that holds vectors, and $7000-$7FFF isn't a DMA hole.

12K*256 + 20K = 3092K. Not as big as SUPER can be but the RAM locations are more useful. (And you can have a POKEY at $4000-$7FFF too if needed!)

[Astal4]

I'm talking about a cartridge idea with an experienced programmer currently and we have an interesting concept, I'll make an announcement post if we work out the details @Ecernosoft

[+x=usr(1536)]

On 10/7/2022 at 6:40 PM, Astal4 said:

Hello! My 2600 cartridge project is finishing up soon, and I was wondering what anyone would want to see for a 7800 cartridge in terms of features.

100% Concerto compatibility.  Nothing against the Dragonfly; it's a great cartridge in its own right.  But the Concerto is pretty much the de facto 7800 multicart.

On 10/7/2022 at 6:40 PM, Astal4 said:

I'm guessing POKEY/HOKEY support or some other sound chip,

POKEY / HOKEY, definitely.  As for anything else...  It's good to have options, but if we start getting into things like YM (or other) audio, it'll need software supporting it in order to make a compelling argument in its favour.

On 10/7/2022 at 6:40 PM, Astal4 said:

RAM (but how much!)

1MB.  Arbitrary, but addressable with modifications.

On 10/7/2022 at 6:40 PM, Astal4 said:

and ROM (Also how much!),

Up to 1MB.  May as well match the underlying memory.

On 10/7/2022 at 6:40 PM, Astal4 said:

also maybe some EEPROM for game saves?

Sure, why not?

On 10/7/2022 at 6:40 PM, Astal4 said:

What sort of coprocessors would go on the card well also!

Well, faster maths are generally a plus.

On 10/7/2022 at 6:40 PM, Astal4 said:

I was thinking about a blitter possibly.

Fair point, but MARIA already does that in some ways.

[Ecernosoft]

56 minutes ago, Astal4 said:

I'm talking about a cartridge idea with an experienced programmer currently and we have an interesting concept, I'll make an announcement post if we work out the details @Ecernosoft

Thanks @Astal4

[Astal4]

Well it's going to be a production cartridge not SD multicart

29 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said:

100% Concerto compatibility.  Nothing against the Dragonfly; it's a great cartridge in its own right.  But the Concerto is pretty much the de facto 7800 multicart.

POKEY / HOKEY, definitely.  As for anything else...  It's good to have options, but if we start getting into things like YM (or other) audio, it'll need software supporting it in order to make a compelling argument in its favour.

1MB.  Arbitrary, but addressable with modifications.

Up to 1MB.  May as well match the underlying memory.

Sure, why not?

Well, faster maths are generally a plus.

Fair point, but MARIA already does that in some ways.

 

[Ecernosoft]

5 hours ago, Astal4 said:

Well it's going to be a production cartridge not SD multicart

 

Definetly, although a re-writable FLASH mem would be nice.

[juansolo]

7 hours ago, x=usr(1536) said:

100% Concerto compatibility.  Nothing against the Dragonfly; it's a great cartridge in its own right.  But the Concerto is pretty much the de facto 7800 multicart.

I suspect the opposite is true in the UK/EU. All down to where they were made and costs, rather than one being better than the other. I know lots of DFs out here and no one with a Concerto for example.

Edited October 10, 2022 by juansolo

[+Muddyfunster]

You know what I'd like to see on a 7800 cart? Games, lots of nice games!

[+DrVenkman]

1 hour ago, juansolo said:

I suspect the opposite is true in the UK/EU. All down to where they were made and costs, rather than one being better than the other. I know lots of DFs out here and no one with a Concerto for example.

Regional distinctions aside, the bottom line is right now you can order a Concerto but you can’t order a Dragonfly - that’s something that really shouldn’t be ignored by homebrew authors right now, it seems to me. So if someone is going to produce a single-use, non-SD/flash cart for the 7800, ensuring that binaries designed for Concerto can be flashed to an EEPROM and used as-is would help a lot.

 

Bear in mind, I own both a DF and Concerto and I’m glad to have them!

[+Muddyfunster]

I'm not sure the OP's point is for a multicart, I think it's more of a "format" or "framework", kinda like DPC+ or CDFJ+, with extra "helpers" on cart.

 

[Cris1997XX]

29 minutes ago, Muddyfunster said:

I'm not sure the OP's point is for a multicart, I think it's more of a "format" or "framework", kinda like DPC+ or CDFJ+, with extra "helpers" on cart.

 

Yeah, I'm pretty sure he isn't trying to make yet another multicart (They're already good enough as is). The 7800 could really benefit from a MARIA+ or something that allows 32 colors in the 320 pixel modes 😁

[+DrVenkman]

Clearly people aren’t reading what I wrote - we KNOW the OP isn’t proposing another multi-cart. But designing one that is compatible with the extra hardware (RAM, POKEY/Hokey addressing, whatever ….) already provided by Concerto means that homebrew authors would be more easily able to target Concerto for their own development and distribution of WIP versions to testers, then simply flash an EEPROM for use on this putative new 7800 cartridge board.

[+Defender_2600]

1 hour ago, Cris1997XX said:

The 7800 could really benefit from a MARIA+ or something that allows 32 colors in the 320 pixel modes 😁

 

So in this way you would have the same number of colors as the Amiga....

Curiosity, Froggie in 320 mode has over 20 colors on screen + transparent.

[Astal4]

Thanks everyone, I appreciate all the feedback, I would love to do a MARIA+ or something eventually but that could not work in the cartridge as the 7800 extra pins are EXT Audio, A13-15, an interrupt, R/W, halt, and phase 2 clock, there is no way to get video into the console that way I know of unless there's some second feature somewhere on one of those pins, possibly via the expansion port on early models though. I will be using SST flash chips as I usually do in my designs, and I will look for potential Concerto compatibility on a separate project, however I cannot promise this will be compatible with Concerto, and I am talking with a developer or two about this and we have what I feel is an interesting idea for a new custom wavetable-esque sound chip and extra features for video space for MARIA and large ROM and RAM space for Sally. I'll post an update once it gets out of the planning stage.