Jump to content

Open Club  ·  76 members

StellaRT
IGNORED

Compatibility list for all bankswitching types


Recommended Posts

Banking Publisher       Game              PlusCart                    UnoCart               Harmony         Cartridge
2K      Atari           Combat            OK                          untested              untested        OK
CV      CommaVid        Video Life        OK                          untested              untested        untested (no cart)
4K      Atari           Missile Command   OK                          untested              untested        OK
F8      Atari           Galaxian/Ms.PacM  OK                          untested              OK (MarcoJ)     OK
F6      Atari           RS Boxing         OK                          untested              untested        OK
F4      Atari           Fatal Run         OK                          untested              untested        untested (no cart)
FA      CBS             Omega Race        OK                          untested              untested        OK (MarcoJ)
F0      Dynacom         Mega Boy          OK                          untested              untested        untested (no cart)
DF      Homebrew        PrinceOfIndiana 2 OK                          untested              untested        untested (no cart)
BF      Homebrew                          untested                    untested              untested        untested (no cart)
SB      Homebrew        PrinceOfIndiana 3 OK                          untested              untested        untested (no cart)
F8SC    Atari           Defender          OK                          untested              untested        untested (no cart)
F6SC    Atari           Dig Dug           OK                          untested              untested        OK (Kroko)
F4SC    Homebrew        Aardvark Demo     OK                          untested              untested        untested (no cart)
DFSC    Homebrew        Penult Demo       OK                          untested              untested        untested (no cart)
BFSC	Homebrew                          untested                    untested              untested        untested (no cart)
32in1	Atari           32 in 1           untested                    untested              untested        OK (5V on/off switches games)
FE      Activision      Decathlon         Crashes at startup          untested              untested        Crashes at startup
DPC     Activision      Pitfall II        OK                          untested              untested        OK ? (MarcoJ)
E0      Parker Bros     Super Cobra       OK                          untested              untested        untested (no cart)
3F      Tigervision     River Patrol      OK                          untested              untested        untested (no cart)
3E+     Tigervision?    RPG Demo(MarcoJ)  OK?                         untested              untested        untested (no cart)
E7      M-Network       Burgertime        OK                          untested              untested        untested (no cart)
DPC+    Homebrew                          not supported               untested              untested        untested (no cart)
CDFJ    Homebrew                          not supported               untested              untested        untested (no cart)
CDFJ+   Homebrew                          not supported               untested              untested        untested (no cart)
ACE     Homebrew                          untested                    untested              not supported   untested (no cart)
ELF     Homebrew                          untested                    untested              not supported   untested (no cart)
AR      Starpath        SuperCharger      Crash after load screen     untested              untested        Crashes at startup
GL      CVC             GameLine MM       not supported               not supported         not supported   Crashes at startup
CM      Spectravideo    Compumate         Black Screen                untested              untested        Black Screen (needs Joystick plugs)
MVC     rbairos         MovieCart         not supported               not supported         not supported   untested
  • Like 2
6 minutes ago, bent_pin said:

Need a supercharger? I would be willing to provide one to @Al_Nafuur or @Thomas Jentzsch on loan for the duration, provided that they covered both shipping charges.

I have one, already tested -> Black screen

  • Like 1

I tested the Spectravideo CompuMate yesterday. It seems it is not working on the 2600 without the 2 joystick plugs plugged in. On a real 2600 the screen stays black if the plugs are not plugged. On my breadboard the screens stays also black, the code in Stella debugger looks okay, but stays in an endless loop.

 

Is there anything known about the protocol used by the compumate? Would a stelladaptor (or something similar) handle this communication?

3 hours ago, Al_Nafuur said:

Is there anything known about the protocol used by the compumate? Would a stelladaptor (or something similar) handle this communication?

I don't think a stella-daptor can handle this.

 

Is your code stuck here (Lfb3f)?

image.png.3c2005ab1cc4c91592d7449b674c040b.png

It gets there from the code at Lfb36, which checks if left pin 5 and right pin 9 are dumped. I suppose this happens when the keyboard is plugged in. Have you tried to plugin two pairs of paddles?

 

It could also well be, that Stella does not know the cart is a CM (different MD5). Please check the game properties.

Edited by Thomas Jentzsch
1 hour ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

I don't think a stella-daptor can handle this.

 

Is your code stuck here (Lfb3f)?

image.png.3c2005ab1cc4c91592d7449b674c040b.png

It gets there from the code at Lfb36, which checks if left pin 5 and right pin 9 are dumped. I suppose this happens when the keyboard is plugged in. Have you tried to plugin two pairs of paddles?

Yes, that is exactly how it looks like in the debugger:

 

IMG_20230916_204121.thumb.jpg.5d0d72b7c086378329d7dc4378b0dc01.jpgIMG_20230916_204112_2.thumb.jpg.3f8fcb53ccad208f2b77627c2e022f4c.jpg

 

 

1 hour ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

It could also well be, that Stella does not know the cart is a CM (different MD5). Please check the game properties.

There is no bankswitching in Stella, it is in the cartridge! The CartPort driver doesn't know (just like a real 2600) anything about banking and they both don't need to know, its all happening inside the cartridge and we don't care.

 

 

7 minutes ago, Al_Nafuur said:

There is no bankswitching in Stella, it is in the cartridge! The CartPort driver doesn't know (just like a real 2600) anything about banking and they both don't need to know, its all happening inside the cartridge and we don't care.

I forgot. :) 

1 hour ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

It gets there from the code at Lfb36, which checks if left pin 5 and right pin 9 are dumped. I suppose this happens when the keyboard is plugged in.

Can I emulate this (left pin 5 and right pin 9 dumped) in the debugger?

 

Don't think so. Almost everything is locked (and not fully implemented) for the CompuMate in Stella. There is quite a lot of special handling.

 

Why do you of all things concentrate on it?

 

But you could change the code or the registers. So that the code continues.

Edited by Thomas Jentzsch

I made some changes to our write cycle, now Pitfall II (DPC banking) works. Unfortunately the changes slowed the emulation even more down:

 

 

  • Like 4

Also (re)tested on the PlusCart with the new build:

 

  • F8SC: Atari Defender OK
  • F6SC: Atari Dig Dug not working
  • CV: CommaVid Video Life running but half of the RAM is not written correctly?
  • F0: DynaCom Mega Boy OK
  • E0: Parker Bros Super Cobra OK
  • E7: M-Network Burgertime not working

  • Like 2

Hi @Al_Nafuur, while I'm not participating in this project (but following with great interest!), I see you're currently focusing on getting different bankswitching schemes to work.

But I just have a gut feeling that increasing the speed from the current 85% to eventually 100% is the biggest challenge of this project. I'm just wondering what the approach is to increase the speed; does that require changes in Stella? A faster Raspberry Pi? Or maybe additional hardware interfacing with the cartridge?

Edited by Dionoid
  • Like 1
12 hours ago, Dionoid said:

Hi @Al_Nafuur, while I'm not participating in this project (but following with great interest!),

Thanks!

12 hours ago, Dionoid said:

I see you're currently focusing on getting different bankswitching schemes to work.

Basically I am focusing on letting the read/write cycles (transitions) on the bus look like a real 2600 for the cartridges, if we can do this correctly all bankswitchings inside the cartridges will just work.

 

12 hours ago, Dionoid said:

But I just have a gut feeling that increasing the speed from the current 85% to eventually 100% is the biggest challenge of this project. I'm just wondering what the approach is to increase the speed; does that require changes in Stella? A faster Raspberry Pi? Or maybe additional hardware interfacing with the cartridge?

We have tested different timers and techniques to get the delay inside the CartPort driver as close as possible to a 6502 running at ~1.19Mhz. But to me it looks like that at about 1/2 the speed of the 6502 we don't have any more speed gains in Stella increasing the driver to "full" speed. I have not seen any big differences running on an Pi3B at 1200Mhz or an Pi3B+ at 1400Mhz and I think a Pi4 at 1500Mhz will also make no difference.

 

@DirtyHairy already mentioned (here) that Stella's main loop is not optimized for what we are trying to do, and he is currently working on a rework of Stella's main loop and threaded model.

  • Like 2
  • Thanks 2

  

5 hours ago, Al_Nafuur said:

Basically I am focusing on letting the read/write cycles (transitions) on the bus look like a real 2600 for the cartridges, if we can do this correctly all bankswitchings inside the cartridges will just work.

Good point; thanks for explaining.

 

5 hours ago, Al_Nafuur said:

@DirtyHairy already mentioned (here) that Stella's main loop is not optimized for what we are trying to do, and he is currently working on a rework of Stella's main loop and threaded model.

That is great news! Thanks for sharing!

Edited by Dionoid

After fixing a bug in the drivers write cycle I have retested a few bankings with RAM on the PlusCart:

  • F6SC: Atari Dig Dug OK
  • CV: CommaVid Video Life OK
  • E7: M-Network Burgertime OK

  • FA: CBS Omega Race OK

  • F4SC: Homebrew Aardvark Demo OK

  • FE: Activision Decathlon Still crashes at startup

  • AR: Starpath The Official Frogger  Still crash after load screen

I also tested 2 cartridges:

  • Starpath SuperCharger Now crashes at startup
  • Activision Decathlon Now crashes at startup
  • Like 2
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...