I disassembled Super Cobra

[Captain Cozmos]

As soon as I am done with all of my disassembly's of course I will share with everyone.

Until then here are the preliminary results.

 

It uses the Coleco BIOS and, as suspected, it maps ram at $6000

As I mentioned in my Centipede thread, using $6000 may have conflicts when you try and run the game on other than Colecovision hardware.
I distinctly remember returning this game back to Lionel Play World because it crashed on my ADAM.

So, I changed all references in Centipede from $6000 ram to $7000.  What I have found out from Dig Dug is that too uses $6000.
The weird thing is that those two games worked on ADAM without patching, as far as I am aware of.

I also believe I had issues with Defender on the ADAM back in the day, a problem with Smart Bombs not working?
Defender uses $7000 so I will investigate that bug later when I have more time.
 

Once I have completed disassembly, clean and update it to $7000 then we will see the result.

I am aware of the other version of SC that was already patched for the ADAM and it will be interesting to know what was done.

If it was the $6000 issue or something else.  If it was $6000, were all areas patched or just the stack?  I want to investigate.

 

Until then

O3 Cozmos

Edited September 13 by Captain Cozmos

[Captain Cozmos]

A quick update.

I just disassembled the patched version and the only differences I have found so far is that whomever did the patching, changed it to $7000

So, my hunches may be right.

I think this also played into what will run in ram vs the rom argument.

I have often read that some believe this was some copy protection scheme or it wasn't programmed to run from ram.
It may have been intended that way but I am skeptical only because of the mapping arrangement and the ADAM was not even a factor when some of these games were written.
Coleco shot themselves in the foot with this one.  Just provide the ram and they would have had such a huge lead on everyone else.

Regardless, I think a lot of these folks were a bit antsy because when they used Ben Hinkles copy program back in 84, their games did not work from ram and thought it was some huge deal when all it turned out to be that it was addressing Colecovision ram which the hardware mapped to $7000 and was having conflicts of sort because ADAM can access $6000.

 

I could be wrong on all of this.

Correct me.  It's not about ego, it's about the historical record.

 

What I do want to add is that Coleco sold a license and in that kit it said use the BIOS and standards that they put forth.  Any deviation can result in game failure.  Especially if there was an update.  Use the jump tables and area's they told you to.

 

Now you get to Activision, Parker Brothers and the like...They be saying we ain't buying no license.  Just sell your hardware

So, the reverse engineering in some of these games is very evident like Atari.  They use 100% of that 1k, no BIOS routines, everything directs access through ports and came out with excellent games.

 

If anything, Coleco programmed games are rather complicated for no reason.  Smurf and Zaxon being the worst of the bunch.

C0 Cozmos

Edited September 13 by Captain Cozmos