Vexorx Posted February 18 Share Posted February 18 I’ve been concentrating on strictly original 2600 NTSC carts. I do have one PAL cart, Klax, works fine. Out of 128 current carts, only a few are not working: Pitfall II (I know…) Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel’s Castle [white Coleco] (jumbled screen/sound) Zaxxon [white Coleco] (black screen, buzz sound) I’ve seen some said Zaxxon was working…wonder if it is worth trying to get another cart, or could this be something related to the random white Coleco cart issue that may have a fix in the future?) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JetmanUK Posted February 18 Share Posted February 18 4 minutes ago, Vexorx said: I’ve been concentrating on strictly original 2600 NTSC carts. I do have one PAL cart, Klax, works fine. Out of 128 current carts, only a few are not working: Pitfall II (I know…) Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel’s Castle [white Coleco] (jumbled screen/sound) Zaxxon [white Coleco] (black screen, buzz sound) I’ve seen some said Zaxxon was working…wonder if it is worth trying to get another cart, or could this be something related to the random white Coleco cart issue that may have a fix in the future?) My Zaxxon does the same, the experimental firmware confirms that it's the dumper that is currently at fault, it's reporting the wrong size. Should be fixed in time. 3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeM_ Posted February 18 Share Posted February 18 1 minute ago, Vexorx said: Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel’s Castle [white Coleco] (jumbled screen/sound) Zaxxon [white Coleco] (black screen, buzz sound) I’ve seen some said Zaxxon was working…wonder if it is worth trying to get another cart, or could this be something related to the random white Coleco cart issue that may have a fix in the future?) Exact same issue with those two for me. Smurf looks like the dumper is only downloading 4k instead of 8k according to what I’m seeing over in the experimental FW thread. I suspect Zaxxon is doing the same but won’t know for sure unless I install the experimental FW on one of my systems. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KainXavier Posted February 20 Share Posted February 20 (edited) I was able to narrow down what caused Juno First to stop working for me, and it looks like it's related to whatever changes were made to the dumper firmware on v1.1.0.9. The game runs just fine on Rev 2 firmware with the v1.1.0.4 dumper. Edit: That said, I'd still argue in favor of keeping v1.1.0.9. Edited February 20 by KainXavier 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DEANJIMMY Posted February 20 Share Posted February 20 5 hours ago, KainXavier said: I was able to narrow down what caused Juno First to stop working for me, and it looks like it's related to whatever changes were made to the dumper firmware on v1.1.0.9. The game runs just fine on Rev 2 firmware with the v1.1.0.4 dumper. Edit: That said, I'd still argue in favor of keeping v1.1.0.9. My Juno First cart was dumped right only once on V1.0 and so many have issues with theirs it is finicky cart #1, pushing it to the far left helped me once, maybe I try an old dumper again. None of these finicky carts are dirty, I guess. I mean it is a quite new homebrew and makes more trouble than any 40 year old cart. Some got it running with the latest dumper, pushing it left. I hope the dumper could maybe try to catch 32k when detects Juno first. I always thought my cart has got just physical issues but on the latest dumper good working carts became finicky for others. That gives me hope, my finicky cart might get dumped some day. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KainXavier Posted February 20 Share Posted February 20 (edited) 6 hours ago, DEANJIMMY said: My Juno First cart was dumped right only once on V1.0 and so many have issues with theirs it is finicky cart #1, pushing it to the far left helped me once, maybe I try an old dumper again. None of these finicky carts are dirty, I guess. I mean it is a quite new homebrew and makes more trouble than any 40 year old cart. Some got it running with the latest dumper, pushing it left. I hope the dumper could maybe try to catch 32k when detects Juno first. I always thought my cart has got just physical issues but on the latest dumper good working carts became finicky for others. That gives me hope, my finicky cart might get dumped some day. I think it will. A cart being "finicky" just means we don't understand why it's failing yet. It could be something simple like testing for one cartridge type too early or something more insidious like slight timing differences between hardware revisions. (I'm sure Al has had to source his cartridge parts from different vendors over the years too.) Regardless, it's simply a lack of information and/or a lack of access to the problematic cartridges. I think including debug text in future beta firmware releases is a good idea. The more useful information we can provide to the people working to fix the issues, the better! Edit: I think this also goes to show just how important game preservation is. Embracer, Plaion's parent company, has an entire archive of 2600 games, but there are clearly cartridge variants they didn't know existed. And the community at large didn't either, until we discovered that some worked on the 2600+ and others didn't. I don't envy the task of trying to support everything but that doesn't mean it's not worth doing either. Edited February 20 by KainXavier I had to gush a bit about the 2600+ and game preservation... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rodney Hester Posted February 21 Share Posted February 21 On 2/20/2024 at 2:14 PM, KainXavier said: Edit: I think this also goes to show just how important game preservation is. Embracer, Plaion's parent company, has an entire archive of 2600 games, but there are clearly cartridge variants they didn't know existed. And the community at large didn't either, until we discovered that some worked on the 2600+ and others didn't. I don't envy the task of trying to support everything but that doesn't mean it's not worth doing either. Not sure I agree here - I haven't seen a variant mentioned here yet for which the ROM isn't already dumped, which by definition means they are known to exist. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
itsphillip Posted February 21 Share Posted February 21 (edited) Frogger Parker Bros (2600) is still having issues with the frog disappearing, in both video modes, while on land or at sea. Anyone else having this issue? M-Network Armour Ambush, Adventures of Tron seem to work good. Edited February 21 by itsphillip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shane857 Posted February 21 Share Posted February 21 On 2/18/2024 at 8:49 PM, JetmanUK said: My Zaxxon does the same, the experimental firmware confirms that it's the dumper that is currently at fault, it's reporting the wrong size. Should be fixed in time. I think the dumper should be one of the top priorities in the next update... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeM_ Posted February 21 Share Posted February 21 15 minutes ago, shane857 said: I think the dumper should be one of the top priorities in the next update... All remaining issues with my games are dumper related so I 2nd this. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vexorx Posted February 21 Share Posted February 21 1 hour ago, itsphillip said: Frogger Parker Bros (2600) is still having issues with the frog disappearing, in both video modes, while on land or at sea. Anyone else having this issue? M-Network Armour Ambush, Adventures of Tron seem to work good. I just noticed Frogger a couple days ago…though frog didn’t disappear, the game went to black screen and reset when I was 3/4 of the way to the top from the 1st level. Tried again and happened again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz0red Posted February 21 Share Posted February 21 1 hour ago, itsphillip said: Frogger Parker Bros (2600) is still having issues with the frog disappearing, in both video modes, while on land or at sea. Anyone else having this issue? M-Network Armour Ambush, Adventures of Tron seem to work good. 10 minutes ago, Vexorx said: I just noticed Frogger a couple days ago…though frog didn’t disappear, the game went to black screen and reset when I was 3/4 of the way to the top from the 1st level. Tried again and happened again. What firmware version did you use to test these on? Thanks, Chris. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vexorx Posted February 22 Share Posted February 22 1 hour ago, raz0red said: What firmware version did you use to test these on? Thanks, Chris. Hi Chris, sorry…the one for this thread…1.1 rev.2. I’ll clean it up a bit again and see if I can replicate the issue before the weekend. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KainXavier Posted February 22 Share Posted February 22 4 hours ago, Rodney Hester said: Not sure I agree here - I haven't seen a variant mentioned here yet for which the ROM isn't already dumped, which by definition means they are known to exist. I'm not sure if it was mentioned in this thread specifically, but chad5200 and others discovered that the white Coleco cartridges have multiple hardware variations for certain games. You can read about it here. That said, I also believe that more variations exist as it would explain some of the inconsistent behavior we're seeing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NicodemusLegend Posted February 22 Share Posted February 22 15 hours ago, KainXavier said: I'm not sure if it was mentioned in this thread specifically, but chad5200 and others discovered that the white Coleco cartridges have multiple hardware variations for certain games. You can read about it here. That said, I also believe that more variations exist as it would explain some of the inconsistent behavior we're seeing. Speaking only for myself, I've seen LOTS of different ROM variations for a lot of cartridges, so when I read Rodney's post, I assumed that was exactly what he was talking about. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laladien Posted February 22 Share Posted February 22 20 hours ago, itsphillip said: Frogger Parker Bros (2600) is still having issues with the frog disappearing, in both video modes, while on land or at sea. Anyone else having this issue? M-Network Armour Ambush, Adventures of Tron seem to work good. I’m using the current dumper and debug v1 firmware and I am not having this problem. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KainXavier Posted February 23 Share Posted February 23 14 hours ago, NicodemusLegend said: Speaking only for myself, I've seen LOTS of different ROM variations for a lot of cartridges, so when I read Rodney's post, I assumed that was exactly what he was talking about. Gotcha. I'm not familiar with Rodney's work so no disrespect was intended. I wasn't sure if he was aware of the Coleco revisions so that's why I linked to them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariLeaf Posted February 23 Share Posted February 23 I haven't been following this too closely but was wondering if there's a ballpark announcement for an official release for the firmware that might be announced 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorkbot Posted February 23 Share Posted February 23 People like to test the problem games but I hope people are testing simpler stuff too, in case the revisions break something that used to work. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rodney Hester Posted February 23 Share Posted February 23 1 hour ago, Glorkbot said: People like to test the problem games but I hope people are testing simpler stuff too, in case the revisions break something that used to work. I think one regression has been identified so far. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorkbot Posted February 23 Share Posted February 23 24 minutes ago, Rodney Hester said: I think one regression has been identified so far. Then there a probably more, unidentified. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KainXavier Posted February 24 Share Posted February 24 16 hours ago, Glorkbot said: People like to test the problem games but I hope people are testing simpler stuff too, in case the revisions break something that used to work. I don't always get to it right away, but I've been re-testing my entire collection with each firmware and dumper revision. The only ones I have not tested extensively are dumper v1.1.0.4 and r1 of the experimental firmware. 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorkbot Posted February 24 Share Posted February 24 6 hours ago, KainXavier said: I don't always get to it right away, but I've been re-testing my entire collection with each firmware and dumper revision. The only ones I have not tested extensively are dumper v1.1.0.4 and r1 of the experimental firmware. Oh that's fantastic! I don't have easy access to a PC to run the updates. So I'm waiting until the updates are out of beta. But thank you very much for your efforts in testing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
itsphillip Posted February 26 Share Posted February 26 On 2/22/2024 at 12:21 PM, Laladien said: I’m using the current dumper and debug v1 firmware and I am not having this problem. interesting, using the following files: AtariDumper1.1.0.9.exe update-012324.img DriverAssitant_v5.12.zip RKDevTool_Release_v2.74.zip Those are the correct ones, right? Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swiller Posted February 26 Share Posted February 26 Has anyone noticed a weird line on the chopper in River Raid? I thought it was my cart but the same thing happens on a second cart Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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