Atari Flashback 50th Anniversary UPDATED CFW for USB roms, boxart, Nexus

[Brad_from_the_80s]

On 1/7/2024 at 2:36 PM, Simmo said:

Hello, I'm new to forum. I have been gifted an AR3070 model, Flashback non-gold edition. I see there are no official firmware update and I was keen to fix the paddle issues and add games. I note that an earlier version of the custom firmware was shown to work on a non-gold unit but this one requires the official firmware update on before it's updated to custom. Does anyone know if I can apply the official firmware for the gold edition (AR3080) to my AR3070 unit? 

 

Thanks in advance.

I believe that should work, but as there is not any official firmware for your model you can flash it back to in the unlikely event it doesn't work you incur some slight risk.  But I feel like somebody around here "upgraded" their non-Gold with the gold firmware and CFW via this route.  Maybe peruse the original AFB 50 firmware thread in this forum.

[Simmo]

6 minutes ago, Brad_from_the_80s said:

I believe that should work, but as there is not any official firmware for your model you can flash it back to in the unlikely event it doesn't work you incur some slight risk.  But I feel like somebody around here "upgraded" their non-Gold with the gold firmware and CFW via this route.  Maybe peruse the original AFB 50 firmware thread in this forum.

@Brad_from_the_80s Thanks for helping and providing the CFW, it's much appreciated. I'll try and see if I can obtain a copy of the Original AFB 3070 firmware or dump it myself before attempting to apply the 3080 standard v1.1.1 firmware then your CFW to patch it.

[Simmo]

On 1/9/2024 at 3:44 PM, Brad_from_the_80s said:

I believe that should work, but as there is not any official firmware for your model you can flash it back to in the unlikely event it doesn't work you incur some slight risk.  But I feel like somebody around here "upgraded" their non-Gold with the gold firmware and CFW via this route.  Maybe peruse the original AFB 50 firmware thread in this forum.

@Brad_from_the_80s I emailed AT Games and asked them if they could provide me a copy of the Stock Firmware for the AR3070 and they replied sending me an Image file the looked very much like the v1.1.1 firmware for the 3080. Sure enough, when I Flashed it, it turned my 3070 into a Gold Edition and the about section showed it was the latest 3080 Firmware. Afterwards I flashed your custom firmware and all was fine. Thanks for your help. If anyone else is wondering, I hope this answers a their questions.

[Rockymin]

Can you play 5200 and 8 bit Atari games with this cfw and will it work with the Flashback 12?  The 12 seems to be identical to the 50th anniversary one.

[Pac-Man Senior]

On 9/11/2023 at 11:08 AM, Ole said:

There is an updated Firmware V. 1.1.1 (released on Jul 26, 2023) available for the 50th gold edition. Are there any plans on updating the custom FW to that patchlevel? Or is it safe to upgrade with the official 1.1.1 and then apply the patched one?

Alternatively, could someone provide me the 1.1.0 firmware as it's not available on the ATGames website anymore.

 

Thanks!

Hi, I found the old firmware on my PC. No guarantee, at your own risk, here is the file I used in october 2023 for my Flashback 50 Gold.

AR3080_V1.1.0.img

[Rockymin]

Posted this in the other topic and wanted to get it on this one too.

 

I just flashed my Flashback 12 with the 1.1.1 custom firmware.  I put the mount_sd.ini on the root of my USB and only the ROM directory dumped to it.  I tried putting some other ROMs into the rom directory like Pac-Man, Ms Pac-Man and Raiders and put the USB drive back into the OTG cable and when I turned on my Flashback it only displayed a single white rectangle instead of all the game boxes.

 

I noticed the all_games.ini file in the ROM directory is an empty 0k file.  Should there be something in this so it knows where to find the files? Thanks.

[LOSFLASH]

On 7/4/2023 at 7:39 AM, Brad_from_the_80s said:

AtGames recently released an updated firmware for the Atari Flashback 50th Anniversary Gold unit to address paddle response issues.  Here is a patched version of that firmware with my changes to support Nexus, or hand-customized roms and boxart in the main games menus.

 

You should apply this on top of the new AtGames firmware.  IE, apply the AtGames firmware upgrade first, then this one.  I did not ship everything that was in the updated firmware, just the minimal partitions I had to patch.  I don't really use my FB50, but I briefly tested it to confirm the unit was still working with this firmware and allowed me to launch Pac-Man from my own customized menu.  This should restore Nexus package support as before.  I don't think you'll have any problems if you are using a decent storage device, but let me know if you run into anything weird.

 

You can apply this firmware by simply extracting to an attached USB storage device and booting the AFB unit.  Remove the firmware file after patching.

 

Please refer to this thread for further details:

 

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/346547-atari-flashback-50th-anniversary-custom-firmware-for-usb-roms-and-boxart/

 

Standard disclaimer: Use at your own risk, etc.

AFB50_GOLD_AR3080_V1.1_CFW.zipFetching info...

Hi Brad,

 

hope you do not mind me contacting you.

 

i flashed my atari flashback gold 12 using the updated firmware.

 

i then flashed my unit again, using your update AFB50_GOLD_AR3080_V1.1.CRW.

 

my unit works fine but i have noticed no difference to my unit!

 

i now have a pen drive with a roms folder that includes all 130 games that was already on my unit, also a emulator folder and 2 files, one called mount_sd  and the other called startup_sh.

 

if i start up my atari flashblack 12, with my pen drive attached, the unit does not start up, i just get a back screen that flickers every 5 secs, i have to eject my pen drive and restart my unit before it starts up again properly.

 

am i doing some thing wrong? All i want to do is add more games via my pend drive.

 

thanks again for any help.

[Shaardvark]

1 hour ago, LOSFLASH said:

Hi Brad,

 

hope you do not mind me contacting you.

 

i flashed my atari flashback gold 12 using the updated firmware.

 

i then flashed my unit again, using your update AFB50_GOLD_AR3080_V1.1.CRW.

 

my unit works fine but i have noticed no difference to my unit!

 

i now have a pen drive with a roms folder that includes all 130 games that was already on my unit, also a emulator folder and 2 files, one called mount_sd  and the other called startup_sh.

 

if i start up my atari flashblack 12, with my pen drive attached, the unit does not start up, i just get a back screen that flickers every 5 secs, i have to eject my pen drive and restart my unit before it starts up again properly.

 

am i doing some thing wrong? All i want to do is add more games via my pend drive.

 

thanks again for any help.

just a guess, but you put the AF50 patch on an AF12 device... even after updating to 1.1.1, that was never its purpose.

Edited January 28 by Shaardvark
typo

[Brad_from_the_80s]

5 hours ago, Rockymin said:

Posted this in the other topic and wanted to get it on this one too.

 

I just flashed my Flashback 12 with the 1.1.1 custom firmware.  I put the mount_sd.ini on the root of my USB and only the ROM directory dumped to it.  I tried putting some other ROMs into the rom directory like Pac-Man, Ms Pac-Man and Raiders and put the USB drive back into the OTG cable and when I turned on my Flashback it only displayed a single white rectangle instead of all the game boxes.

 

I noticed the all_games.ini file in the ROM directory is an empty 0k file.  Should there be something in this so it knows where to find the files? Thanks.

Depending on how fast your storage media is, you may have to wait longer for the dump to complete.  The all_games.ini should be several KB when properly dumped, as it is basically the contents of the menu system.  If it is 0KB then that is why you don't see anything.  Delete the rom directory and try again, and be patient.  Let the system fully launch and try playing a game while dumping to USB.

[Brad_from_the_80s]

2 hours ago, LOSFLASH said:

Hi Brad,

 

hope you do not mind me contacting you.

 

i flashed my atari flashback gold 12 using the updated firmware.

 

i then flashed my unit again, using your update AFB50_GOLD_AR3080_V1.1.CRW.

 

my unit works fine but i have noticed no difference to my unit!

 

i now have a pen drive with a roms folder that includes all 130 games that was already on my unit, also a emulator folder and 2 files, one called mount_sd  and the other called startup_sh.

 

if i start up my atari flashblack 12, with my pen drive attached, the unit does not start up, i just get a back screen that flickers every 5 secs, i have to eject my pen drive and restart my unit before it starts up again properly.

 

am i doing some thing wrong? All i want to do is add more games via my pend drive.

 

thanks again for any help.

The latest CFW is actually V1.1.1, from about the 10th or 11th post in this thread.  However, it was only ever intended for the AFB 50th Anniversary unit.  I think somebody around here did apply it to an AFB12 with success, but it's not technically supported.

 

I had meant to put out an AFB12 CFW version, think I got sidetracked.  Maybe I can do that tomorrow.

[LOSFLASH]

9 hours ago, Brad_from_the_80s said:

The latest CFW is actually V1.1.1, from about the 10th or 11th post in this thread.  However, it was only ever intended for the AFB 50th Anniversary unit.  I think somebody around here did apply it to an AFB12 with success, but it's not technically supported.

 

I had meant to put out an AFB12 CFW version, think I got sidetracked.  Maybe I can do that tomorrow.

Hi Brad,

 

sorry i meant to say that i did update mt AFB12 using your latest firmware V.1.1 But i still had the same outcome 🤕

 

i also know, it was not really meant for the AFB12, but i was recommended to give it a try (as they are all basically the same AFBs)

 

i know your very busy- but if you do put out a AFB12 CFW version, i will make sure i am the first to try. Thanks.

 

can i ask you, what was the point of the atari_update.img. I did flash my AFB12, but cannot see what the difference is ?

i thought it was meant to show up your USB pen drive on the left hand menu when your AFB12 is booted up (so you can load you own games from the Games folder on your pen drive)

but again no Joy.

 

 

 

[Rockymin]

11 hours ago, Brad_from_the_80s said:

Depending on how fast your storage media is, you may have to wait longer for the dump to complete.  The all_games.ini should be several KB when properly dumped, as it is basically the contents of the menu system.  If it is 0KB then that is why you don't see anything.  Delete the rom directory and try again, and be patient.  Let the system fully launch and try playing a game while dumping to USB.

 

Thanks Brad.  Should I flash it again?  Or just boot with the USB drive again with the mount-sd.ini file on it?  By the way, that also seems to be an empty file, should there be anything the mount-sd file?

[LOSFLASH]

2 hours ago, LOSFLASH said:

Hi Brad,

 

sorry i meant to say that i did update my AFB12 using your latest firmware V.1.1 But i still had the same outcome 🤕

 

i also know, it was not really meant for the AFB12, but i was recommended to give it a try (as they are all basically the same AFBs)

 

i know your very busy- but if you do put out a AFB12 CFW version, i will make sure i am the first to try. Thanks.

 

can i ask you, what was the point of the atari_update.img. I did flash my AFB12, but cannot see what the difference is ?

i thought it was meant to show up your USB pen drive on the left hand menu when your AFB12 is booted up (so you can load you own games from the Games folder on your pen drive)

but again no Joy.

 

 

 

anyways,

 

i have flashed my AFB12 back to AR3080_V1.1.1

 

which was the update meant for the AFB12. Though again, i see no difference.

 

if anyway has any other ideas how i can load games from a USB Pen (apart from Brad hopefully making a firmware) i would much appreciate it

Edited January 28 by LOSFLASH

[LOSFLASH]

13 hours ago, Shaardvark said:

just a guess, but you put the AF50 patch on an AF12 device... even after updating to 1.1.1, that was never its purpose.

Hi Brad,

 

yes i did a AF50 patch on a AF12 device.

(i was recommended to give it a try)

 

but, only after updating my ATF12 using AR3080_V1.1.1

 

as mentioned, i now reverted back to AR3080_V1.1.1

[Brad_from_the_80s]

3 hours ago, LOSFLASH said:

can i ask you, what was the point of the atari_update.img. I did flash my AFB12, but cannot see what the difference is ?

i thought it was meant to show up your USB pen drive on the left hand menu when your AFB12 is booted up (so you can load you own games from the Games folder on your pen drive)

but again no Joy.

 

 

Actually starting with the AFB 9, and I believe this functionality still exists in the AFB X, 50th and maybe 12, you can put a /GAME folder on your flash media and copy your own game roms to it.  Used to they would show up on the menu as an "SD Card" option on the bottom left.  Clicking on it you would see some generic icons representing each playable rom.  The file names have to have the .a26 or maybe .bin extension and cannot have any spaces in them.  As far as I know this functionality is still already built into the system.  Try it out.

 

As far as atari_update.img, that is how AtGames ships firmware updates, to fix bugs or whatever.  My CFW uses the same method to make some small changes to the system to allow you to dump the internal roms and emulator to flash storage and run them from there.  This enables people to add roms, box art, emulator cores, etc and edit them into the menu system for a nicer UI integration.

[Brad_from_the_80s]

1 hour ago, Rockymin said:

 

Thanks Brad.  Should I flash it again?  Or just boot with the USB drive again with the mount-sd.ini file on it?  By the way, that also seems to be an empty file, should there be anything the mount-sd file?

No need to flash firmware again.  Just remove the bad /rom dump (delete the folder) and power up again with mount_sd.ini present and it will again try to dump to flash media.  When mount_sd.ini is present and it sees /rom on flash drive the system will try to use it, even if the data there is missing or corrupt.  If you remove the flash drive then it goes back to using the built-in data.

 

And yes, mount_sd.ini is an empty file.  The system is just checking that it is present.  We never came up with any other options to add to it.

[Rockymin]

24 minutes ago, Brad_from_the_80s said:

No need to flash firmware again.  Just remove the bad /rom dump (delete the folder) and power up again with mount_sd.ini present and it will again try to dump to flash media.  When mount_sd.ini is present and it sees /rom on flash drive the system will try to use it, even if the data there is missing or corrupt.  If you remove the flash drive then it goes back to using the built-in data.

 

And yes, mount_sd.ini is an empty file.  The system is just checking that it is present.  We never came up with any other options to add to it.

Thanks again.  Is there supposed to be other folders as well besides /rom?  I saw on the board that other people had other folders besides /rom like one called /emulator.

[Brad_from_the_80s]

25 minutes ago, Rockymin said:

Thanks again.  Is there supposed to be other folders as well besides /rom?  I saw on the board that other people had other folders besides /rom like one called /emulator.

There are startup scripts that can dump /emulator but I don't think it was strictly necessary.  At least the default dumper doesn't extract it.  Probably used with the Nexus packages to drive different cores.  There were different tricks you can do, like dump and modify the UI images, etc.

Edited January 28 by Brad_from_the_80s

[LOSFLASH]

6 hours ago, Brad_from_the_80s said:

 

Actually starting with the AFB 9, and I believe this functionality still exists in the AFB X, 50th and maybe 12, you can put a /GAME folder on your flash media and copy your own game roms to it.  Used to they would show up on the menu as an "SD Card" option on the bottom left.  Clicking on it you would see some generic icons representing each playable rom.  The file names have to have the .a26 or maybe .bin extension and cannot have any spaces in them.  As far as I know this functionality is still already built into the system.  Try it out.

 

As far as atari_update.img, that is how AtGames ships firmware updates, to fix bugs or whatever.  My CFW uses the same method to make some small changes to the system to allow you to dump the internal roms and emulator to flash storage and run them from there.  This enables people to add roms, box art, emulator cores, etc and edit them into the menu system for a nicer UI integration.

Hi Brad,

 

you are spot on.

 

all i had to do was a add a folder to my usb pen drive and name the folder (on my usb pen drive) GAME

 

my usb pen drive then showed up as an ext usb pen drive on my AFB12 menu.

 

and again you were spot, the file names in my folder (.a26 or .bin) i had to make sure there were no spaces in them.

i could then load and play the games (happy days)

 

but we are never happy (he says-laugh) is it possible to add box art or does that require another update.

 

many many thanks for you time and help.

 

 

[Brad_from_the_80s]

1 hour ago, LOSFLASH said:

but we are never happy (he says-laugh) is it possible to add box art or does that require another update.

 

That is essentially what my custom firmware enables.  Instead of using /GAME, it will dump and remap the internal /rom to your flash device, which includes all the game roms and box art from the menu system and the all-games.ini file that contains their info.  You can edit this file to add custom entries and add box art that matches the size and shape of the existing games (generally there are two box art files, one larger and one smaller). 

 

But people (not me) have already done a lot of this work, and that's what the Nexus packages that you see people talk about here were about.  Even if you just want to add a few entries to the menu, it's sometimes easier to use the all-games.ini entries and box art that somebody else already created.

[LOSFLASH]

11 hours ago, Brad_from_the_80s said:

That is essentially what my custom firmware enables.  Instead of using /GAME, it will dump and remap the internal /rom to your flash device, which includes all the game roms and box art from the menu system and the all-games.ini file that contains their info.  You can edit this file to add custom entries and add box art that matches the size and shape of the existing games (generally there are two box art files, one larger and one smaller). 

 

But people (not me) have already done a lot of this work, and that's what the Nexus packages that you see people talk about here were about.  Even if you just want to add a few entries to the menu, it's sometimes easier to use the all-games.ini entries and box art that somebody else already created.

Ok Brad,

 

sorry for sounding like a dope, am new to all this-

 

i think i understand you, but did you not tell me to keep away from your custom firmware as it was not meant for the AFB12 ?

 

I presume a custom firmware has not been made for the AFB12, as you stated you may engineer one if and when you have time.

 

Nexus packages? are these and custom firmware updates one and the same thing?

 

if they are different, can you point me towards Nexus packages as i am looking around but no joy.

[Brad_from_the_80s]

17 hours ago, LOSFLASH said:

Ok Brad,

 

sorry for sounding like a dope, am new to all this-

 

i think i understand you, but did you not tell me to keep away from your custom firmware as it was not meant for the AFB12 ?

 

I presume a custom firmware has not been made for the AFB12, as you stated you may engineer one if and when you have time.

 

Nexus packages? are these and custom firmware updates one and the same thing?

 

if they are different, can you point me towards Nexus packages as i am looking around but no joy.

Please refer to this thread I just posted if you want to try a firmware specifically made for the AFB12, but I cannot test it so use at you own risk.

 

 

Nexus packages were developed here on this forum as collections of roms, artwork, menu configuration files and even emulator cores for other game system, all built on top of my custom firmware.  i did not develop and do not support them.  Some of the threads and info were removed, although you can still find info about Nexus here I believe.  If you go to archive.org and search for "Nexus 1.5.1.Slim" you may still find a version of the package, and there may be one or two other variations out there.  Essentially these were designed to just unzip to your flash drive and just work if you have one of my CFW installed, although they were technically built for slightly older Flashback models 9 and X and may or may not work as expected.

 

[Rockymin]

16 hours ago, Brad_from_the_80s said:

Please refer to this thread I just posted if you want to try a firmware specifically made for the AFB12, but I cannot test it so use at you own risk.

 

 

Nexus packages were developed here on this forum as collections of roms, artwork, menu configuration files and even emulator cores for other game system, all built on top of my custom firmware.  i did not develop and do not support them.  Some of the threads and info were removed, although you can still find info about Nexus here I believe.  If you go to archive.org and search for "Nexus 1.5.1.Slim" you may still find a version of the package, and there may be one or two other variations out there.  Essentially these were designed to just unzip to your flash drive and just work if you have one of my CFW installed, although they were technically built for slightly older Flashback models 9 and X and may or may not work as expected.

 

Hi Brad,

 

     Is there any benefit to using this over your AFB50 CFW?  As you may remember from the other thread, I and others have loaded it onto the AFB12 and it works great.  So I just wondered if there might be a reason to use this CFW instead.  Thanks.

[Brad_from_the_80s]

4 hours ago, Rockymin said:

Hi Brad,

 

     Is there any benefit to using this over your AFB50 CFW?  As you may remember from the other thread, I and others have loaded it onto the AFB12 and it works great.  So I just wondered if there might be a reason to use this CFW instead.  Thanks.

There's not a major reason if it works.  Just the AFB12 CFW applies to software that was intended for that device.  They do make extremely minor changes here and there, but hard to say what effect they have.  The AFB12 may have a slightly different built-in game list, so the right CFW would match that.  Not a big deal.  Beyond that there have been some consistent reports of AFB50 freezing up, although the root cause, whether hardware or software, custom or oem firmware, has never been clear.  So I can't say whether using an AFB12 firmware would help with or avoid that issue if you're even seeing it.  At the end of the day it is no surprise to me that the various firmwares work across different versions of the device, as they are nearly identical in most ways that matter.  I'm just not going to explicitly recommend people to mix and match indiscriminately if they want a reasonable expectation of things working correctly.

[TampaBay]

@Brad_from_the_80s  Before I reply to @LOSFLASH, I just wanted to say thank you for all your work on the CFW for these units.  I'm currently running it with the Nexus build on top, and it's incredible.  Thanks for your effort.  Super appreciated.

 

@LOSFLASH The Nexus build is awesome, but you'll want to know what it is before you think about whether or not you want to install it or not.  Leveraging the flexibility you get with the CFW, a separate group of people put together "Nexus".  Nexus is user interface that totally changes the way your Flashback looks and most importantly, it includes other "emulators" so that the Flashback can play not only Atari 2600 games, but also many other consoles from Atari, and also other consoles like Sega Genesis, Nintendo Entertainment System, Sony Playstation, and games from real arcade cabinets.  The setup files all together are fairly large for this box.  The latest build is over 4.5 gigabytes.  I have it currently running on my Flashback 9.  I believe it is currently officially for the Flashback 9 and X.  I can't confirm either way if it would work on a Flashback 12.  (Coincidentally, I have a Flashback 12 Gold, but I did not install Nexus on it.  I'm using my 12 Gold primarily to play paddle games).

 

The main thread on this forum for Nexus can be found here, and the current version of Nexus is 1.6.