MegaManFan Posted September 6, 2023 Share Posted September 6, 2023 12 hours ago, John Stamos Mullet said: That seems a bit harsh. It will play 99% of commercially released 2600 and 7800 games. Honestly, that's all they are required to do with this thing. It would be... if I was talking about the 2600+? I was talking about the Retron 77. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Stamos Mullet Posted September 6, 2023 Share Posted September 6, 2023 55 minutes ago, MegaManFan said: It would be... if I was talking about the 2600+? I was talking about the Retron 77. You were directly comparing them assuming the specs are the same and suggesting the 2600+ won’t have custom firmware before it’s even released. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MegaManFan Posted September 6, 2023 Share Posted September 6, 2023 42 minutes ago, John Stamos Mullet said: You were directly comparing them assuming the specs are the same and suggesting the 2600+ won’t have custom firmware before it’s even released. Let’s go through this step by step: ”I think at this point whatever it does or doesn't support,” I’m saying I don’t know what that specs of the 2600+ are. I haven’t the foggiest idea of what’s under the hood. “it can't be more of a pile than Hyperkin's Retron 77,” I’m saying that even if it wasn’t good, it would STILL be better than Retron, because it simply couldn’t not be. “which without the community making custom firmware for it might as well be an expensive paperweight.” I can’t even conceive how this could be misinterpreted. How could I be talking about custom firmware for something that hasn’t been released yet? I’m clearly saying the community had to fix the Retron with CFW. Since the 2600+ can play both 2600 and 7800 games out of the box, it is ALREADY better than Retron, and not the expensive paperweight the Retron is without the AtariAge community making it usable. “Maybe this will turn out the same way but I'm willing to take a shot in the dark and see how it turns out.” Why would I be saying I’m willing to “take a shot in the dark” on the 2600+, putting down the full pre order price, and then 💩 on it? I’m EXPECTING it to be better but ACKNOWLEDGING that I could be wrong. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roots.genoa Posted September 6, 2023 Share Posted September 6, 2023 15 hours ago, John Stamos Mullet said: We're all fans of the homebrew community here, but we're not even 1/100,000th of the audience for this kind of thing, and most of them don't even know modern homebrews exist. I mostly agree with you but I'm wondering about that assumption. Like some said earlier (or in another 2600+ topic, it's hard to follow), the 2600+ doesn't really cater to a mainstream audience (at least not as much as plug & play systems) since it plays actual carts. Do you think people who collect or just kept their Atari 2600 carts to this day don't know about homebrew games? Once again I'm not saying you're wrong about that, but I'm wondering. Since a cart is included, it may also make some people without any cart collect them. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+-^CrossBow^- Posted September 6, 2023 Share Posted September 6, 2023 7 hours ago, roots.genoa said: I mostly agree with you but I'm wondering about that assumption. Like some said earlier (or in another 2600+ topic, it's hard to follow), the 2600+ doesn't really cater to a mainstream audience (at least not as much as plug & play systems) since it plays actual carts. Do you think people who collect or just kept their Atari 2600 carts to this day don't know about homebrew games? Once again I'm not saying you're wrong about that, but I'm wondering. Since a cart is included, it may also make some people without any cart collect them. To add to this, the recent emails sent to Atari subscribers for the new XP Outlaw limited edition release, even mentions at the bottom that it will play on the upcoming 2600+. So this in part exists to help promote additional physical cartridge sales and drum up interest in future releases as well. It is that last part that interests me the most as while I'm not really in the market for another copy of Outlaw, I was on board for buying games they released that I didn't already have a physical cartridge of. And curious to see what comes in the future from this new Atari for additional cartridge releases. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Defender_2600 Posted September 22, 2023 Share Posted September 22, 2023 Which emulator is used for the 7800? The 7800 developer and beta tester community would prefer "a7800" emulator to be used. It was forked from Dan's original Mame a7800 driver, and is nearly cycle accurate, allows for mid-scanline graphical changes, has faithful pokey emulation, ym2151 emulation, etc. "Prosystem 1.3. I was advised to use a7800 and we did try, but I dont beleive it was fully compatible with arm based chips like the Rockchip 3128 we use." 2 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SmittyB Posted September 22, 2023 Share Posted September 22, 2023 🤢 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+x=usr(1536) Posted September 22, 2023 Share Posted September 22, 2023 1 hour ago, Defender_2600 said: Which emulator is used for the 7800? The 7800 developer and beta tester community would prefer "a7800" emulator to be used. It was forked from Dan's original Mame a7800 driver, and is nearly cycle accurate, allows for mid-scanline graphical changes, has faithful pokey emulation, ym2151 emulation, etc. "Prosystem 1.3. I was advised to use a7800 and we did try, but I dont beleive it was fully compatible with arm based chips like the Rockchip 3128 we use." As far as I'm aware, ProSystem is Windows-only, which would be an interesting OS choice for the machine. Have a question in already to (hopefully) clarify that: 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Stamos Mullet Posted September 22, 2023 Share Posted September 22, 2023 2 hours ago, x=usr(1536) said: As far as I'm aware, ProSystem is Windows-only, which would be an interesting OS choice for the machine. Have a question in already to (hopefully) clarify that: Prosystem has been ported to every OS I can think of. Prosystem is the 7800 emulator of choice for RetroArch, and RetroArch has been ported to everything. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+x=usr(1536) Posted September 22, 2023 Share Posted September 22, 2023 35 minutes ago, John Stamos Mullet said: Prosystem has been ported to every OS I can think of. Prosystem is the 7800 emulator of choice for RetroArch, and RetroArch has been ported to everything. Well, TIL Guess that's what I get for not fact-checking my cross-platform compatibilities once in a while 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Stamos Mullet Posted September 22, 2023 Share Posted September 22, 2023 32 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said: Well, TIL Guess that's what I get for not fact-checking my cross-platform compatibilities once in a while Originally, it was Windows only, but the dev Greg Stanton released the source along time ago. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebor Posted September 23, 2023 Share Posted September 23, 2023 On 9/22/2023 at 5:52 AM, Defender_2600 said: Which emulator is used for the 7800? The 7800 developer and beta tester community would prefer "a7800" emulator to be used. It was forked from Dan's original Mame a7800 driver, and is nearly cycle accurate, allows for mid-scanline graphical changes, has faithful pokey emulation, ym2151 emulation, etc. "Prosystem 1.3. I was advised to use a7800 and we did try, but I dont beleive it was fully compatible with arm based chips like the Rockchip 3128 we use." As posted, when leveraging ProSystem core, JS7800 source files should be utilized. It is of a magnitude greater in hardware accuracy and homebrew support. 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bakasama Posted September 23, 2023 Share Posted September 23, 2023 On 9/22/2023 at 6:58 AM, John Stamos Mullet said: Prosystem has been ported to every OS I can think of. Prosystem is the 7800 emulator of choice for RetroArch, and RetroArch has been ported to everything. Last time I checked there isn’t version of prosystem on Linux or MacOSX. I had to wrap it in WINEskin make work on an old MacBook. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+chriswhit Posted September 23, 2023 Share Posted September 23, 2023 On 8/22/2023 at 12:48 PM, MegaManFan said: Well I've gone ahead and put in an order so I'll test as many of those UNTESTED games as I own myself. Also if you're thinking about doing the same thing WELCOME15 will get you 15% off. I bought Mr. Run and Jump and the paddle controller too so I saved $30 total. I bought one to and gonna test many modern home brews in 2600 and 7800 and some rarity 8-10 carts. Also got some socketed eeprom boards and a burner I’ll be experimenting with. If someone makes a post we can fill in some of the blanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Stamos Mullet Posted September 24, 2023 Share Posted September 24, 2023 5 hours ago, Bakasama said: Last time I checked there isn’t version of prosystem on Linux or MacOSX. I had to wrap it in WINEskin make work on an old MacBook. Retro arch does exist on both. you can set up retro arch to only have 1 core - prosystem Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebor Posted September 24, 2023 Share Posted September 24, 2023 2 hours ago, John Stamos Mullet said: Retro arch does exist on both. you can set up retro arch to only have 1 core - prosystem RetroArch leveraging ProSystem is pretty bad though. Worse than I remember. Even smaller size games such as Dig Dig and Xevious have graphical issues. Additional games such as Ace of Aces, Commando, Double Dragon, Kung-Fu Master also have very apparent graphical problems. Asteroids, Commando, Karateka, One-On-One Basketball, demonstrate timing-speed issues being off slightly; pretty obvious for the latter two titles when viewing the demo/intros. For the casual issue, they may not notice, or/and be ignorant of the above issues, all of which are not evident under the original hardware, or under (much) closer to hardware accurate emulators. It's a shame. Spoiler From the 7800Test suite - Tests 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 17 fail miserably. Not even close. The accuracy and timings are atrocious: Spoiler Once again, the 7800 will receive poor representation and demonstrate lousy due to less than adequate resources being leveraged for it. I can't even imagine how poorly many of the homebrews will run, if at all. 3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Stamos Mullet Posted September 24, 2023 Share Posted September 24, 2023 35 minutes ago, Trebor said: RetroArch leveraging ProSystem is pretty bad though. Worse than I remember. Even smaller size games such as Dig Dig and Xevious have graphical issues. Additional games such as Ace of Aces, Commando, Double Dragon, Kung-Fu Master also have very apparent graphical problems. Asteroids, Commando, Karateka, One-On-One Basketball, demonstrate timing-speed issues being off slightly; pretty obvious for the latter two titles when viewing the demo/intros. For the casual issue, they may not notice, or/and be ignorant of the above issues, all of which are not evident under the original hardware, or under (much) closer to hardware accurate emulators. It's a shame. Reveal hidden contents From the 7800Test suite - Tests 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 17 fail miserably. Not even close. The accuracy and timings are atrocious: Reveal hidden contents Once again, the 7800 will receive poor representation and demonstrate lousy due to less than adequate resources being leveraged for it. I can't even imagine how poorly many of the homebrews will run, if at all. So then help rewrite a7800 to work on ARM chips. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SmittyB Posted September 24, 2023 Share Posted September 24, 2023 The use of ProSystem was my main concern with this project and while I'm not the target audience I've gone from sitting on the fence to a definite no. What use is a 7800 that can't play 7800 games properly? Hopefully they can do something with JS7800's fixes before release but if not then the 7800 side is effectively worthless. 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebor Posted September 24, 2023 Share Posted September 24, 2023 8 hours ago, John Stamos Mullet said: So then help rewrite a7800 to work on ARM chips. It ports to Linux and can run under ARM. The not "fully compatibility" issue is the nearly decade old Rockchip RK3128 being leveraged for the project is likely not fast enough to handle running A7800 in some or many situations. Best we can realistically hope for is Atari integrating the updates readily available via JS7800 posted sources, which several from the community, myself included, have assisted with updating. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Karl G Posted September 24, 2023 Share Posted September 24, 2023 2 hours ago, Trebor said: It ports to Linux and can run under ARM. The "not fully compatibility" issue is the nearly decade old Rockchip RK3128 being leveraged for the project is likely not fast enough to handle running A7800 in some or many situations. Best we can realistically hope for is Atari integrating the updates readily available via JS7800 posted sources, which several from the community, myself included, have assisted with updating. Possibly this may be a dumb question, but if JS7800 is a port of the ProSystem emulator translated to Javascript, has anyone backported these fixes back to C/C++ for use with the original ProSystem emulator, then? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Stamos Mullet Posted September 24, 2023 Share Posted September 24, 2023 (edited) 3 hours ago, Karl G said: Possibly this may be a dumb question, but if JS7800 is a port of the ProSystem emulator translated to Javascript, has anyone backported these fixes back to C/C++ for use with the original ProSystem emulator, then? At this point I’m waiting for Mark Ball to swoop in and claim he can fix it, get to 50% done, steal other people’s codebase, then pull a Keyser Soze. Edited September 24, 2023 by John Stamos Mullet 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevEng Posted September 24, 2023 Share Posted September 24, 2023 17 hours ago, John Stamos Mullet said: So then help rewrite a7800 to work on ARM chips. How about the for-profit company do it for their product, instead? This isn't rocket science - the source code is all there, and thoroughly commented. One could back-port the a7800 driver improvements to an earlier mess code-base (the mame4all approach) or port them to prosystem. (basically what I did with the a7800 pokey driver, for js7800) 13 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebor Posted September 25, 2023 Share Posted September 25, 2023 Here are many post original retail/homebrew release... Test Results under ProSystem 1.3e Core via RetroArch: 7ix = Works without issue 1942 = Black screen 2048 = Graphic issue throughout A.R.T.I. = Black screen A Roach in Space - Part 2 = Works without issue Ah Zombies = Graphic issue throughout Alpha Race = Works without issue Apple Snaffle = Some graphic corruption after screen scrolls Arkanoid = Black screen Armor Attack II = Works without issue Asteroids Deluxe = Speed/Timing Issue present Astro Blaster = Works without issue Astro Fighter = Works without issue Attack of the Petscii Robots = Black screen Baby Pac-Man = Graphic issue pinball screen Beef Drop = POKEY sound not present, enemies absent, player will not move Bentley Bear's Crystal Quest = No POKEY music or TIA sound effects present Bernie and the Cubic Conundrum = Graphic issue throughout Bernie and the Tower of Doom = Black screen BlocDrop = Works without issue Block'em Sock'em = Black screen BonQ = Works without issue Cannon in D - D for Defense = Work without issue Cartesian Chaos = Graphic issue throughout Crazy Brix = Brix display incorrectly Crazy Otto = Works without issue Danger Zone = Graphic issue throughout Death Merchant = Graphic issue throughout Donkey Kong PK = No audio DopeWars = Graphic issue throughout Dragon's Cache = Works without issue Dragon's Descent = Works without issue Dragon's Havoc = Graphic issue throughout Drelbs = Works without issue Drone Patrol = Black Screen Drunk Witch = Works without issue Dungeon Stalker = Works with issue E.X.O. = Black screen FailSafe = Works without issue FlappyBird = Works without issue Freeway = Graphic issue throughout Frenzy (w-Berzerk) = Works without issue Froggie = Some POKEY notes incorrect Frogus = Black screen Galaxian = Plays without issue Game of the Bear - Polar Opposites = Works without issue Get Lost = Works without issue Ghosts'n Goblins = Graphic issue throughout Graze Suit Alpha = Works without issue Harpy's Curse = Black screen Harry's Hen House = Works without issue Heartlight = Works without issue I.C.B.M. = Graphic issue throughout Jacks or Better = Graphic issue throughout Jr Pac-Man = Works without issue K.C. Munchkin = Works without issue Keystone Koppers = Black screen Klax = Black screen Knight Guy - Quest for Something = Works without issue Knight Guy in Low Res World - Castle Days = Works without issue Knight Guy on Board - 30 Squares of Fate = Works without issue Legend of Silverpeak = Black screen Lunar Patrol = Graphic corruption throughout Meteor Shower = Works without issue Millie & Molly = Black screen Missing In Action = Graphic issue throughout Moon Cresta = Works without issue Ms. Pac-Man Twin = Works without issue Ninjish Guy - Perilous Island = Works without issue Oozy the Goo - Gaiden = Works without issue Pac-Man - Energy Drink Edition = Graphic issue with sprite bottom of maze Pac-Man Collection - 40th Anniversary Edition = Black screen Pac-Man Collection - 40th Anniversary Edition (Short Mazes) = Black screen PentaGo = No POKEY sound and graphic issue throughout Pirate Cove = Works without issue Plink = Graphic issue throughout Plumb Luck DX = Works without issue Plutos = Graphic issue throughout Poetiru = Works without issue Pong = Graphic issue throughout Popeye = No POKEY sound and graphic issue throughout RatTrap = No POKEY sound and graphic issue throughout Rescue On Fractalus = Black screen after starting game ReZolve = Works without issue Rikki and Vikki (No Music) = Works without issue Rip-Off = Works without issue Robbo = No sound Robots Rumble = Black screen Santa Simon = Works without issue Scramble = Sound issue Sentinel = Needs light gun support Serpentine = Black screen Sick Pickles = Works without issue Sirius = Works without issue Slide Boy in Maze Land = Works without issue Space Duel = Speed/Timing Issue Space Invaders = Works without issue Space Peril! = Graphic issue throughout Space Race = Graphic issue throughout Spire of the Ancients = Graphic issue throughout Super Circus AtariAge = Works without issue Super Pac-Man = Works without issue T:ME Salvo = Works without issue Touchdown Challenge = Graphic issue throughout Tunnels of Hyperion = Works without issue UniWarS = Works without issue Wasp! = Works without issue Wizard's Dungeon = No background sound and graphic issue throughout Wordle = Graphic corruption - letter selection area Worm! = Works without issue Not even a good showing for the 7800 to state the least. Hopefully, @TrogdarRobusto and @Ben from Plaion are able to take note and ensure this is communicated fully to the necessary parties to ensure a better product is delivered; or at least, a planned firmware upgrade accordingly. Between this post and the one listing issues with the original Retail library since ProSystem 1.3e is being leveraged for the 2600+ system, there is still a lot to be desired concern 7800 compatibility and respectable playability. 2 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JagChris Posted September 25, 2023 Share Posted September 25, 2023 Ugh emulation... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Defender_2600 Posted September 25, 2023 Share Posted September 25, 2023 Thanks a lot for your support, @Trebor. As unfortunately expected, it is clear that under ProSystem 1.3 Core most games are unplayable. This is the usual big disappointment. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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