The Atari 2600+ is live for preorders!

[m.o.terra kaesi]

I mean, Atari already got 13 pages of talk for this thing in here (actually twice!). How long ago they got this for any product!?😜

Edited September 5, 2023 by m.o.terra kaesi

[+HatNJ]

its been brought up about the 2nd button for 7800 games Would it be possible that the Booster grip could be used?

[Giles N]

On 9/4/2023 at 10:38 PM, batari said:

I have used privately requires that the cart port hardware is set up a certain way. If the hardware is not set up this way (and it likely isn't if the hardware is already designed) then it is probably not possible

Could an add-on cart-dumper of higher quality, made to be inserted into the 2600+ slot, make it possible for all 7800 (and perhaps also prototypes and homebrews) to be detected and read successfully, or will the inbuilt cart-dumper always be the ‘gate’ for whats possible to pass on from cartridge to hardware?

 

I’m just asking here for your opinion (or quite simply if know) whether its possible, not some fleshed-out solution (I, at least wouidn’t understand a dot of it, just hope Atari do some really hard research on how to provide as-broad-possible compatibility).

[Giles N]

Anyhow, Atari needs both to not estrange the core-fans (like all of us here and on similar sites), while also creating a much broader interest.

 

I see here snd the some sites (not even gaming-sites, but gadget-, hobbyist- and ‘MenStuff’-sites, mention this thing.

 

I’d like to see Atari get-on with having more money and better production-means, really.

 

But, in my estimate, if they estrange the core-fans, it could be really a short-lived game they play.

 

They need to balance both (in my estimation).

 

I definitly like the project-concept; a modern console using original carts (many things here that favours players, customers, even though used dumper + emulation), running on modern tvs etc.

 

Only dislike from my side on this waa the limited compatibility.

 

Had all officially released 7800 games run and much more of the ‘heavy/advanced’ 2600 games, it wouid be for me only a matter of time before I got one.

(I probably wouid’ve ordered one as soon as worldwide launch began, if I knew that the compatibility range was much higher, the minimum as described above).

[polyex]

 Is there are wireless solution for people with big TVs?

[+jgkspsx]

I hope Atari and their partners make use of the community expertise to deliver a good product. It would be a surprise but I hope they surprise us.
 

If this has good compatibility (i.e. works with more or less everything that doesn’t have an onboard processor) I will get one of these.

 

But until then here’s a song.

 

 

[+bent_pin]

2 hours ago, polyex said:

 Is there are wireless solution for people with big TVs?

Just skip using the wires. No, seriously, just use a longer HDMI cable. The speed of the signal is about 3 X 10^8 meters/second. You should have no issues using 20m cable with absolutely no human-discernable lag. Wireless HDMI connections suck for lag though.

[+batari]

2 hours ago, Giles N said:

Could an add-on cart-dumper of higher quality, made to be inserted into the 2600+ slot, make it possible for all 7800 (and perhaps also prototypes and homebrews) to be detected and read successfully, or will the inbuilt cart-dumper always be the ‘gate’ for whats possible to pass on from cartridge to hardware?

 

I’m just asking here for your opinion (or quite simply if know) whether its possible, not some fleshed-out solution (I, at least wouidn’t understand a dot of it, just hope Atari do some really hard research on how to provide as-broad-possible compatibility).

Sure, something like that could work somewhat, but this would need the software support on the 2600+ side of things.

 

If the 2600+ dumper can be expanded, I would highly recommend that they put some thought into detecting more banking schemes.

 

I still can't find my source code, but I found a note I wrote about the detection algorithm. I will summarize what I wrote:

 

Spoiler

1. Read hotspot 1.

2. Read some data from the cart (I think $1200-$17FF should be enough?).

3. Read hotspot 2. Read the same data, compare with previous data.

4. If changed, we have a positive match for this bankswitch type. STOP.

5. If not changed, we do not have a match. Go to the next line.

 

It appears that my code has to do the following in order to properly detect carts, because bankswitch types have overlap.

 

hotspot 1, hotspot2 = bankswitch type:

1FEE,1FEF = E0
1FEA,1FEB = E7
1FF0,1FF0 = MB
1FF4,1FF5 = F4
1FF6,1FF7 = F6
1FF9,1FFA = FA
1FF8,1FF9 = F8

To detect 3F, hotspot reads will not work. You also need to drive D0 with 0 then 1 along with the address.

 

I think my code also detects FE (also called SCABS), but there is no note about how this is done.

 

I found a note about Sara RAM games as well. Detecting these would require that several bytes of data are "written" to the RAM and read back. For my cart dumper, I didn't find it necessary to discern whether a game used Sara RAM or not, as emulators can run the dumped Sara RAM binaries by specifying the bankswitch type. Also, the emulator could probably detect Sara RAM games by searching for stores to $1000-$107F.

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

3 hours ago, batari said:

I will summarize what I wrote:

That's about how the r77 dumper works.

 

But I think you do not have to read that many bytes. If you test e.g. 4 bytes per bank (which could be 1K, 2K, or 4K, depending on the tested scheme), you should get a good enough fingerprint. And you could test multiple schemes in parallel and do a binary search.

[kevtris]

This talk of cart dumpers made me dig deep.  back in 1997 I made a hardware 2600 cartridge dumper that would detect all the known at the time bankswitch formats and then dump the game.   I managed to find the 8085 asm that runs it.  The one major secret to making it work, is you need to latch all 13 bits of the address at the exact same time.  I used two 8 bit latches for this purpose.  Using your typical 8 bit microcontroller probably is non optimal because of this (seeing how its ports can only be updated 8 bits at a time).  Using some latches would fix that problem, however.

 

It looks like it detects all the usual stuff, but I remember have a few problems with decathlon/robot tank.  These days that should be pretty easy to test for, now that we know better how it works.

 

The fun part is that it then used Zmodem to automatically send a file, named via CRC, back to the PC thru a serial port / terminal program. 

 

At the time, I ran every cartridge I owned (mostly complete set) through it and everything dumped fine except for robot tank and decathlon, which I could dump sometimes.  The rest autodetected just fine though.  Later on I hacked this to autodump those power based multicarts, where you cycle the power to make them switch games, dumping each one after it cycled the power automatically. 

 

I can post some info and the asm if anyone was interested.  It's very old and crusty now but back in 1997 I thought it was pretty hot stuff. haha.  I still have the dumper itself, and I should take some pics of it and post those.  I probably used it last 10 years ago to dump some carts.

 

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

6 minutes ago, kevtris said:

It looks like it detects all the usual stuff, but I remember have a few problems with decathlon/robot tank.  These days that should be pretty easy to test for, now that we know better how it works.

I am curious, how do you detect FE?

[alex_79]

I think that to trigger FE you do something like this:

 

• put $01FE on address bus
• set bit 5 of the data bus: 1 = bank 0, 0 = bank 1 (*). The other bits are not relevant.
• change address bus (but keep the value on the data bus) to trigger the bankswitch

 

Not sure if the last step is all you need to latch the bank number, or if you have to closely match the timing of a real console for it to work.

 

-------------

(*) the order of banks in the "standard" FE rom used by emulators and flashcarts is reversed compared to the logical order they have according to the patent. The scheme also allowed up to 8 banks, but no game ever used more than 2.

[kevtris]

2 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

I am curious, how do you detect FE?

it looks like my algorithm did this:  (which most likely isn't correct, but it was 1997)

 

* dump 1200-12ff and save it

* output 01fe

* dump 1200-12ff again and compare

* if they are different, this is FE, else it isn't

 

the dumping part: (looks very rube goldberg)

 

* output address 1ffc

* turn off cart power(!)

* wait awhile

* turn on power

* dump 4K of data to a buffer from 1000-1fff

* read address 01fe

* dump another 4K, and send all 8K

 

it ended up working, but again these days we know so much more and it didn't have to be this hacky. 

 

looks like the other methods were relatively straight forward.

 

* 2K checks to see if the data repeats exactly twice at 1000-17ff and 1800-1fff

* F4 selects 1ff4, dumps 1200-12ff, then 1ff5 and dumps 1200-12ff again. if different, we found F4

* F6 works similar to F4, but uses 1ff6 and 1ff7

* F8 works similar to F4, but uses 1ff8 and 1ff9

* FA works similar to F4, but uses 1ff8 and 1ffa

* 3F works by selecting bank 2 and bank 0 and comparing the data at 1200-12ff.  banksel is done by selecting add 1000, selecting add 003f, writing D0/D1, then selecting add 103f. if the data is different we found 3F

* E0 works by selecting 1fe0, dumping 1200-12ff, then selecting 1fe7 and dumping 1200-12ff and testing. if different, we found E0

* E7 is similar to E0, but uses 1fe4 and 1fe5, then dumps 1400-14ff so we avoid the first 1K, which would falsely detect E0 (since E7 has a 2K bank)

 

I tended to choose addresses 1200-12ff because it would be past any RAM on the cartridge.  I didn't have a magicard or video life so I had no way to test detecting those.

 

the order that they are checked is important, F4 must be tested first, since it could be falsely detected as F8 the way I do it if F8 was tested first.  My order:

 

* FE

* E7

* E0

* 3F

* F4

* FA

* F6

* F8

* 2K

 

It looks like I had some prototype stuff in to detect RAM on F4/F6/F8 but didn't do anything with it.  you can test this easily with the cart dumper by attempting to write to it though.  you should be able to use

"Relaxed" timing to do it.  i.e. output address i.e. 0, then output AA, output address 1000, then wait awhile, output address 0 again, then output address 1080 to see if your AA shows up.  repeat with 55

to make sure.

 

that's about it for my 1997 level tech.  it worked on my entire collection at the time, which was pretty extensive.

 

 

[Spriggy]

16 hours ago, John Stamos Mullet said:

How is having 98% compatibility with game cartridges that are approaching 50 years old at this point even remotely considered "bad compatibility"?

 

People who are bothered that this stuff doesn't work with IP-stealing hacks, "homebrew ports" that require ARM chips to run have to be kidding themselves.

Because I can buy a 40+ year old 2600 that can play 100% of all games , including homebrews (ARM or not) and cheap composite mod cheaper than this emulator.  Pretty sad you call the hard working homebrew scene "IP-stealing hacks".

[hizzy]

6 hours ago, kevtris said:

This talk of cart dumpers made me dig deep.  back in 1997 I made a hardware 2600 cartridge dumper that would detect all the known at the time bankswitch formats and then dump the game.   I managed to find the 8085 asm that runs it.  The one major secret to making it work, is you need to latch all 13 bits of the address at the exact same time.  I used two 8 bit latches for this purpose.  Using your typical 8 bit microcontroller probably is non optimal because of this (seeing how its ports can only be updated 8 bits at a time).  Using some latches would fix that problem, however.

 

It looks like it detects all the usual stuff, but I remember have a few problems with decathlon/robot tank.  These days that should be pretty easy to test for, now that we know better how it works.

 

The fun part is that it then used Zmodem to automatically send a file, named via CRC, back to the PC thru a serial port / terminal program. 

 

At the time, I ran every cartridge I owned (mostly complete set) through it and everything dumped fine except for robot tank and decathlon, which I could dump sometimes.  The rest autodetected just fine though.  Later on I hacked this to autodump those power based multicarts, where you cycle the power to make them switch games, dumping each one after it cycled the power automatically. 

 

I can post some info and the asm if anyone was interested.  It's very old and crusty now but back in 1997 I thought it was pretty hot stuff. haha.  I still have the dumper itself, and I should take some pics of it and post those.  I probably used it last 10 years ago to dump some carts.

 

 

You are our only hope. Please save us!!

[Nall3k]

5 hours ago, Spriggy said:

Because I can buy a 40+ year old 2600 that can play 100% of all games , including homebrews (ARM or not) and cheap composite mod cheaper than this emulator.  Pretty sad you call the hard working homebrew scene "IP-stealing hacks".

Nobody is forcing you to buy anything. People bought the NES and SNES classic that had limited amount of games on them. 

Believe it or not, you can look at a product and say "that's not for me" and move on.

[zzip]

8 minutes ago, Nall3k said:

Believe it or not, you can look at a product and say "that's not for me" and move on.

Impossible!  You have you make speculations about the product based on limited information, then relentlessly attack said product based on these unconfirmed speculations for hundred or thousands of forum posts.  Repeat this process until either:

  1) the product releases, and people actually like it in spite of your best efforts.

  2) the product never releases,  then you must continue to beat the dead horse for all of eternity (see Amico thread)

[+GoldLeader]

53 minutes ago, Nall3k said:

Nobody is forcing you to buy anything. People bought the NES and SNES classic that had limited amount of games on them. 

Believe it or not, you can look at a product and say "that's not for me" and move on.

 

33 minutes ago, zzip said:

Impossible!  You have you make speculations about the product based on limited information, then relentlessly attack said product based on these unconfirmed speculations for hundred or thousands of forum posts.  Repeat this process until either:

  1) the product releases, and people actually like it in spite of your best efforts.

  2) the product never releases,  then you must continue to beat the dead horse for all of eternity (see Amico thread)

 

I Do think there's a middle ground here.

 

You can look at said product;  Call a spade a spade,  Hope Nutari will do Better,  decide it's not for you,  discuss it a little bit,  and then move on...

[famicommander]

1 hour ago, Nall3k said:

Nobody is forcing you to buy anything. People bought the NES and SNES classic that had limited amount of games on them. 

Believe it or not, you can look at a product and say "that's not for me" and move on.

This attitude is why Atari has been producing pretty much nothing but trash. Because people will defend said trash, buy it anyway, and chastise people who point out it's trash.

[zzip]

27 minutes ago, GoldLeader said:

decide it's not for you,  discuss it a little bit,  and then move on...

This would be ideal.     no need to keep beating the horse.

[polyex]

15 hours ago, bent_pin said:

Just skip using the wires. No, seriously, just use a longer HDMI cable. The speed of the signal is about 3 X 10^8 meters/second. You should have no issues using 20m cable with absolutely no human-discernable lag. Wireless HDMI connections suck for lag though.

I meant controllers. Something like the product released recently for the TG16 emulator thing, wireless controllers. You can reset and start a new game from the sofa. 

[+x=usr(1536)]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

Impossible!  You have you make speculations about the product based on limited information, then relentlessly attack said product based on these unconfirmed speculations for hundred or thousands of forum posts.  Repeat this process until either:

  1) the product releases, and people actually like it in spite of your best efforts.

  2) the product never releases,  then you must continue to beat the dead horse for all of eternity (see Amico thread)

3) Tacos

[+bent_pin]

[+frankodragon]

Hmmmm..Taco Horse

 

[Nall3k]

1 hour ago, famicommander said:

This attitude is why Atari has been producing pretty much nothing but trash. Because people will defend said trash, buy it anyway, and chastise people who point out it's trash.

I don't own their hardware, so I can't speak on that. But their Recharge lineup is really fun, as is Atari 50, and they were on Metacritic's top publisher list for 2022. So, clearly new management is doing something right.