When will there be a scheduled firmware update for the 2600+?

[Gsparis]

18 minutes ago, scifidude79 said:

There's no way to connect the 2600+ to the internet. As far as I know, you download the update file to your computer, plug the 2600+ into your system using the provided USB-C to USB-A cable, then somehow flash the file to the system. I'm sure Ben will have more specific instructions once they release the file.

I see !

Nice ! 👍

Thanks for taking the time to reply ! 🙏

[Ben from Plaion]

33 minutes ago, John Stamos Mullet said:

It's a Festivus Miracle!

Well I'm in the right forum for people to air their greviences!

[raz0red]

Just to clarify a bit... Hopefully this doesn't come off sounding like the Grinch. 🙂

 

As far as the 7800 portion of the update goes, @RevEng and I have been working on it for some time now. 

 

On the emulation side, everything we have tested works. However, there has been limited testing on the dumper portion which has been updated to support homebrew (now supports "unknown"/non-retail cartridges). While theoretically, most cartridges should work with a few exceptions (see below), our testing of real cartridges has been fairly limited. Therefore, I am sure there will be issues discovered. However, our goal is to address those issues as quickly as possible

 

Now as far as the exceptions go.

 

Rikki & Vikki: We have had no chance to test this on a real cartridge, but it does work on the emulation side. However, if it does work, it won't have music as we don't have the ability to dump that portion.

 

Attack of the PETSCII Robots: Again, this is working fine on the emulation side. However, we have been unable to get the HALT portion of the dumper to work successfully. Without this, we are unable to dump the full cartridge. 

 

Hope this helps clarify the current status. And again, as issues are raised, we hope to address them as quickly as possible.

 

Thanks,

Chris.

 

 

[SuperZapperRecharge]

5 hours ago, raz0red said:

Just to clarify a bit... Hopefully this doesn't come off sounding like the Grinch. 🙂

 

As far as the 7800 portion of the update goes, @RevEng and I have been working on it for some time now. 

 

On the emulation side, everything we have tested works. However, there has been limited testing on the dumper portion which has been updated to support homebrew (now supports "unknown"/non-retail cartridges). While theoretically, most cartridges should work with a few exceptions (see below), our testing of real cartridges has been fairly limited. Therefore, I am sure there will be issues discovered. However, our goal is to address those issues as quickly as possible

 

Now as far as the exceptions go.

 

Rikki & Vikki: We have had no chance to test this on a real cartridge, but it does work on the emulation side. However, if it does work, it won't have music as we don't have the ability to dump that portion.

 

Attack of the PETSCII Robots: Again, this is working fine on the emulation side. However, we have been unable to get the HALT portion of the dumper to work successfully. Without this, we are unable to dump the full cartridge. 

 

Hope this helps clarify the current status. And again, as issues are raised, we hope to address them as quickly as possible.

 

Thanks,

Chris.

 

 

Thanks for your and @RevEng 's dedication. Although I have plenty of ways to play Atari amongst old school, SD carts, and emulation, I really appreciate the engineering feat associated with this working on the 2600+. I hope to get more involved in 2600, 5200, 7800 development in 2024. I know 6502 development but not the graphics side for Atari development.

 

Total respect to you all for your dedication!

[+mksmith]

@raz0red @RevEng thank you for jumping onboard and assisting to improve the emulation. We are in very safe hands having you both involved! Merry Christmas 🎄🎄🎄

[SoundGammon]

I got a 2600+ for Christmas, very disappointed! Space Invaders you can only see the invaders shots or just the players shots, NOT TOGETHER! Pac-Man you can only see 2 ghosts at a time, you find the others when you run into them, very un-playable! The 2600 UNO cart doesn't work. Big let down!

[MysticSword]

@SoundGammon Playing Space Invaders (NTSC version I have as far as I know) on my 2600+, invaders and players shots both show at the same time for me.

As for Pac-Man and UNO, I can't say as I don't currently have those games, so maybe someone else with them can let you know if it's the same issues for them or not.

[fluxit]

34 minutes ago, SoundGammon said:

I got a 2600+ for Christmas, very disappointed! Space Invaders you can only see the invaders shots or just the players shots, NOT TOGETHER! Pac-Man you can only see 2 ghosts at a time, you find the others when you run into them, very un-playable! The 2600 UNO cart doesn't work. Big let down!

Check your TV's picture settings.  Some of them can apparently cause that effect if turned on.

[SoundGammon]

Thanks for the tip! I hooked it up to my computer monitor with a HDMI input and it looks and plays great!

 

I had it hooded into my Onkyo reciever that upscaled it 4K, I believe that was causing the problem.

 

And I put in my 7800 Dragonfly cart and it works!

 

Only game that won't come on is Realsports Baseball. Probably a bad file. I'll be trying more games and see what happens!

 

Going to see if some homebrew/hacked games work!

[SoundGammon]

Seems only the orginal games for the 7800 work!  Hacks and all others won't!

 

I'm thinking Atari put in a database into the 2600+ with a checksum that checks to see if the original game is being loaded.

 

Each original game would have it's own checksum!

 

If it doesn't find a match it won't work!

[DEANJIMMY]

1 hour ago, SoundGammon said:

Seems only the orginal games for the 7800 work!  Hacks and all others won't!

 

I'm thinking Atari put in a database into the 2600+ with a checksum that checks to see if the original game is being loaded.

 

Each original game would have it's own checksum!

 

If it doesn't find a match it won't work!

Please scroll up and read what raz0red wrote:

 

"homebrew (now supports "unknown"/non-retail cartridges). While theoretically, most cartridges should work with a few exceptions (see below),"

 

That will come with an update!

On 1.00 no 7800 hombrews run and 8 original PAL games fail. There are other threads about compatibilty... no Trakball, no Driving Controller, no Keypad... they are working on it and there is a list in a thread what will be fixed in the first update coming soon and more to follow.

Edited December 26, 2023 by DEANJIMMY

[Pinballs]

1 hour ago, DEANJIMMY said:

Please scroll up and read what raz0red wrote:

 

"homebrew (now supports "unknown"/non-retail cartridges). While theoretically, most cartridges should work with a few exceptions (see below),"

Does this include support for everdrives i.e. Harmony Encore and 7800GD? 

[Glorkbot]

Please don’t make the firmware updater be a windows-only app.

[Sean_1970]

2 minutes ago, Glorkbot said:

Please don’t make the firmware updater be a windows-only app.

Yeah that would be a big problem for me as my work laptop is locked down so I wouldn’t have access to the update being a Mac house. I can’t see buying a Windows license and some kind of bootloader just for this.

[SuperZapperRecharge]

8 hours ago, SoundGammon said:

I got a 2600+ for Christmas, very disappointed! Space Invaders you can only see the invaders shots or just the players shots, NOT TOGETHER! Pac-Man you can only see 2 ghosts at a time, you find the others when you run into them, very un-playable! The 2600 UNO cart doesn't work. Big let down!

Try setting your HDMI TV to game mode just like you would for any advanced console, Playstation 5 and whatever xBox calls there's nowadays. Frames are most likely being skipped and this is probably why you don't see your bullets or some of the ghosts.

 

I have yet to try those two games as I opened mine up for Christmas and only played Circus Atari.

 

The Uno cart was never on the compatibility list.

[DEANJIMMY]

4 hours ago, Pinballs said:

Does this include support for everdrives i.e. Harmony Encore and 7800GD? 

 

No, you can find the list on first page of this thread.

 

[SuperZapperRecharge]

4 hours ago, Pinballs said:

Does this include support for everdrives i.e. Harmony Encore and 7800GD? 

Harmony will work but only in single game developer mode. 7800GD will not work. These cartridges aren't simple ROM(memory chips), they have complex processors in them which makes it impossible for a emulation based system to read the contents of the cartridges as a ROM dump. If the 2600+ was reading directly off the cart for each memory address requested by the processor then more complex carts would work but this is simply not the case. The 2600+ just dumps the data from a cart in sequential fashion, for the most part, and then lets the emulator use that cartridge data to emulate the 2600 running the game.

[John Stamos Mullet]

7 hours ago, SoundGammon said:

Seems only the orginal games for the 7800 work!  Hacks and all others won't!

 

I'm thinking Atari put in a database into the 2600+ with a checksum that checks to see if the original game is being loaded.

 

Each original game would have it's own checksum!

 

If it doesn't find a match it won't work!

Dude, you gotta read the thread. 

[Raphowl]

I have some issues with this in the UK. Pole position has a black road instead of grey so you can’t see the car and Defender has all the sprites flashing continuously. Wondering if my console is faulty or PAL cartridges don’t work properly. No TV settings make any difference and I tried it on 3 different TVs. 

[Jello]

On 12/25/2023 at 4:48 AM, Ben from Plaion said:

Apparently every single retail and homebrew 7800 game works with the update, including Rikki and Vikki.

 

I've got a revised build this morning and sent it on for checks.

Hi Ben From Plaion, is there a chance that the 2600 homebrew HERO2 will work in this or a future update? When I try to play it on the 2600+ the screen just goes black without a red cartridge failed message. 

[JetmanUK]

9 hours ago, Raphowl said:

I have some issues with this in the UK. Pole position has a black road instead of grey so you can’t see the car and Defender has all the sprites flashing continuously. Wondering if my console is faulty or PAL cartridges don’t work properly. No TV settings make any difference and I tried it on 3 different TVs. 

The colour pallette issue has been discussed in these forums and is going to be adjusted in the update, which is due shortly. 

[M4rvin1979]

Yesterday Ive got my Atari 2600+, unfortunately the 10in1 game dont start  "Error loading Game".

Hope, the update will fix these problems. 😃

[+LS650]

4 hours ago, M4rvin1979 said:

Yesterday Ive got my Atari 2600+, unfortunately the 10in1 game dont start  "Error loading Game".

Hope, the update will fix these problems. 😃

- Do other carts work? 

- Do you have another 2600 you can test the 10 in 1 with?

- Have you inspected the cart slot and cart pins to see if they need cleaning?

[DEANJIMMY]

5 hours ago, M4rvin1979 said:

Yesterday Ive got my Atari 2600+, unfortunately the 10in1 game dont start  "Error loading Game".

Hope, the update will fix these problems. 😃

The update won't help!

The cart must work on V1.00.

Try to clean the contacts of the cart with Q-Tip and alcohol. Check the dip switches and select another game (do they all fail?), move the the cart a little left or right in the slot or better lift it a bit up (do not push it full in) when loading fails.

Test another cart!

Either the cart or the 2600+ slot is having an issue, this is not firmware related at all.

[scifidude79]

6 hours ago, M4rvin1979 said:

Yesterday Ive got my Atari 2600+, unfortunately the 10in1 game dont start  "Error loading Game".

Did you try all games? And did you try more than once? Sometimes cartridges won't load on the first try and you have to remove and reinsert them. I got a paddle set and the 4-in-1 cartridge that comes with it yesterday. I inserted the cart, it wouldn't load, then I removed it and reinserted it and it worked fine. If you tried all of the games and you tried loading it multiple times, you may have gotten a bad cartridge.