JetmanUK Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 21 minutes ago, Spanner said: Idea: A option to change the 50/60hz because some games are better at playing at say 60hz then 50hz on a PAL machine, some games are to slow and are better faster, like Pole Position 2 7800, I always play it at 60hz even if its meant to be 50hz and sometime Retroarch does not change it from 60hz to 50hz even if you asked it to because it says `will not adjust` so will not change it from 60hz to 50hz so play the game at 60hz anyway. You could put it on the SELECT switch by pressing it down and holding it for 2 seconds then it says on the top of the screen `Changed to 60hz` or `Changed to 50hz` If you use the SELECT like normal then it will change the option in the game. This is just a idea so please do not shoot me....lol... A great idea. I have previously mentioned that I'd like to be able access the speed menu of Stella, I've used it before on PC to speed up a PAL game. Adding it to a switch would be even better. With my collecting I have mostly NTSC carts now as most PAL carts are inferior, but it would be nice to improve my PAL carts in this way. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 1 hour ago, JetmanUK said: With my collecting I have mostly NTSC carts now as most PAL carts are inferior, but it would be nice to improve my PAL carts in this way. Mostly PAL Activision games are affected by the PAL slowdown. E.g. Atari and Imagic compensated the slower frame rate. Note: There even is a chapter in the old Stella Programmers Guide (from 1979) for this topic. It describes that one should not base the game speeds on frames per second and use fractional speeds instead. Now guess what Activision did. 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spanner Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 oh and one more idea... 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JetmanUK Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 10 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said: Mostly PAL Activision games are affected by the PAL slowdown. E.g. Atari and Imagic compensated the slower frame rate. Note: There even is a chapter in the old Stella Programmers Guide (from 1979) for this topic. It describes that one should not base the game speeds on frames per second and use fractional speeds instead. Now guess what Activision did. Ah naughty Activision, and they were supposed to be the tech superior guys. But even speed correct carts often suffer from large borders top and bottom and incorrect colours. The suggestion of a PAL speed up would be nice, then stretch the screen with your TV settings, but it may still have duff colours. I hope modern homebrew, which will be the next thing I get into (I can feel it! Haha) treats PAL better, full screen, PAL60 and good colours. I guess I will find out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JetmanUK Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 (edited) 17 minutes ago, Spanner said: oh and one more idea... This is essential as the current message is just incorrect, and surely it's super easy to impliment, I remember it was talked about around Christmas before the first update too. I'd go a little further and suggest as this is what a user sees after the initial boot it would be nice to have an Atari logo displayed there too, maybe even colour and animated? That would be low priority, but nice when all the biggies have been implimented. Edited March 18 by JetmanUK 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 52 minutes ago, JetmanUK said: I hope modern homebrew, which will be the next thing I get into (I can feel it! Haha) treats PAL better, full screen, PAL60 and good colours. I guess I will find out. ARFIK all the well known ones do. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DEANJIMMY Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 1 hour ago, JetmanUK said: Ah naughty Activision, and they were supposed to be the tech superior guys. But even speed correct carts often suffer from large borders top and bottom and incorrect colours. The suggestion of a PAL speed up would be nice, then stretch the screen with your TV settings, but it may still have duff colours. I hope modern homebrew, which will be the next thing I get into (I can feel it! Haha) treats PAL better, full screen, PAL60 and good colours. I guess I will find out. Currently I go for NTSC AA homebrews. My 2600 PAL60 games show wrong colors which is normal and obvious. The 2600+ compatibilty outlook for NTSC seems to be better. For 7800 emulation it is no big deal. If an by the system unkwown PAL cart starts in NTSC mode you can press A+B+Down on pad right when the game starts. So far if I reported it, the md5 hash got included in next load. Hopefully AA will test and include the md5 if necessary when new carts get released. Currently my real 7800 and 2600 consoles are my backup for the 2600+ but I go down from 8 to 4 consoles and finally maybe 2. I got used to the nice hdmi output so much😊 As I now focus on NTSC games , I rather will need a 2600+ backup/spare some day, as these games won't run well or at all on my real PAL HW🤔 Would be great if the 2600+ will be sold for years and fixes will be triggered by new games in AA store. Replacement from ebay will only get available, if many got sold. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariYMás009 Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 (edited) As a PAL user, I totally disagree with this idea. 50Hz is the speed at which I, and all other PAL users, played our games. And given that the Atari 2600+ already has a kind of ''recognition system'' to display games at 50Hz if they are PAL50, I see this change as totally unnecessary. Furthermore, we must not forget that 60Hz in PAL50 games was the main cause of the problems related to the jerky movement of the sprites. And believe me, playing my Yars' revenge PAL cartridge at 60Hz was a real torture, the quotile moved so jerkily that it was difficult to determine its direction. And if this were not enough, the idea of implementing this unnecessary option for me is also totally absurd. There are many games where you actually have to hold down the Select switch to switch between different game modes. The clearest example would be E.T. the extraterrestrial. Edited March 18 by AtariYMás009 4 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spanner Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 (edited) I am quite good at making logos(I like the working out how to do it) so if need one made I can make it, I know my way around Adobe Photoshop, its a brilliant app... I made this in it, I made all the images in PCUAE too, there was no A500 logo with white font, so had to make it and redraw it, I made one for THEC64 Mini too, sorry if its off topic, thats it... Edited March 18 by Spanner 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JetmanUK Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 12 minutes ago, Spanner said: I am quite good at making logos(I like the working out how to do it) so if need one made I can make it, I know my way around Adobe Photoshop, its a brilliant app... I made this in it, I made all the images in PCUAE too, there was no A500 logo with white font, so had to make it and redraw it, sorry if its off topic, thats it... Nice, but... Where's the Atari logo? 😊 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spanner Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 Just now, JetmanUK said: Nice, but... Where's the Atari logo? 😊 I was thinking of making one like the system loader on the A800 where has a white background and black Atari logo and add the boot sound to it but then realised it has its own logo in the Atari2600 Plus kernel so no need for it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sean_1970 Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 22 minutes ago, Spanner said: I was thinking of making one like the system loader on the A800 where has a white background and black Atari logo and add the boot sound to it but then realised it has its own logo in the Atari2600 Plus kernel so no need for it. Surely we’d use the strobing rainbow Fuji? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spanner Posted March 19 Share Posted March 19 (edited) I hate the RED`Loading Game Failed` message, why because it mainly comes up when there's no cart in the slot so not in the right place, It needs replacing with `Please Insert Game Cartridge` screen in its firmware for when you take a cart out on the fly and do a quick switch instead of `Loading Game Failed` and if you start it up without a cartridge in the slot and it shows it again`Loading Game Failed`, instead of it saying `Loading Game Failed` when that's incorrect of what its doing, loading did fail but only because there's no cartridge in the slot so no loading game failed really.. It could be triggered by the EA coming from the dumper because that tells it that there is no cart in the slot... it even could say Loading Game Failed and then say Please Insert Game Cartridge after it quicky, once it sees EA from the dumper... The words on the screen are printed out by SDL2, thats what the dmenu uses. One way of doing this is like I have and show it on the screen like a boot screen using SDL2 Display to show it for 5 seconds on the screen before it loads the dmenu.bin, that way it gives you time to insert a game cartridge and then you do not need to mess around with the dmenu.bin source code, I like to try and leave things the way they are and that way your only modifying things, not changing them and everything still works the same way... . How I made the screen was by capturing the dmenu loading on my PC and then changing the `Loading Game...` to `Please Insert Game Cartridge` in Adobe Photoshop and make a new png file with it and making sure it was 1280x720 px. Edited March 19 by Spanner 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NicodemusLegend Posted March 19 Share Posted March 19 Shouldn't they NOT add messages that encourage users to take cartridges out while the machine is turned on (something we've all been told never to do since the '70s)? 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spanner Posted March 19 Share Posted March 19 (edited) 1 hour ago, NicodemusLegend said: Shouldn't they NOT add messages that encourage users to take cartridges out while the machine is turned on (something we've all been told never to do since the '70s)? All it does it dump the ROM on the cart so copies it as a bin file to the /tmp folder on the system then run it in Retroarch(Emulator) so it can be hot swapped, it not the same as the original console where it reads the cart and then is loaded into the real hardware RAM so it needs the cartridge in continually to run the game on it because its a ROM and can mess up the cart or system if you pull it out and because its connected to its RAM. Edited March 19 by Spanner 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shane857 Posted March 19 Share Posted March 19 3 hours ago, NicodemusLegend said: Shouldn't they NOT add messages that encourage users to take cartridges out while the machine is turned on (something we've all been told never to do since the '70s)? Yes, I agree 👍 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spanner Posted March 20 Share Posted March 20 its not the real thing and if you keep turning it off with the power switch, it will be the first thing to go because its mechanical so will stop working eventually, why turn it off when you do not need to, pulling out the cartridge will not damage it, the cartridge is dumped not loaded in to its RAM like the real thing, it will stop the emulator and rerun the dmenu.bin file because it in a while loop it has $RUNBIN in it, that why it has .bin in its name so you can switch the cartridge on the fly, when you pull out the cartridge it will just say `Loading Game Error` and when you put in another cartridge it will say `Loading Game...`and then load it on the screen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+LS650 Posted March 20 Share Posted March 20 I was always been lead to believe that sudden disconnection of electrical components can lead to a discharge that could cause damage - something like yanking a kettle's electrical cord out of a wall socket. On the other hand, the switch is designed to take that disconnection, and is a relatively easy component to repair or replace if necessary. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Stamos Mullet Posted March 20 Share Posted March 20 2 hours ago, LS650 said: I was always been lead to believe that sudden disconnection of electrical components can lead to a discharge that could cause damage - something like yanking a kettle's electrical cord out of a wall socket. On the other hand, the switch is designed to take that disconnection, and is a relatively easy component to repair or replace if necessary. With the 2600+ once it is done dumping the rom to local storage, it is no longer maintaining an electrical connection to the cart. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeM_ Posted March 20 Share Posted March 20 5 minutes ago, John Stamos Mullet said: With the 2600+ once it is done dumping the rom to local storage, it is no longer maintaining an electrical connection to the cart. Isn’t there some connection still there though, since it detects when the cart has been pulled out? 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrChickenz Posted March 20 Share Posted March 20 (edited) 18 minutes ago, John Stamos Mullet said: With the 2600+ once it is done dumping the rom to local storage, it is no longer maintaining an electrical connection to the cart. I’m not sure about this. Because when I play Starmaster in order to access the map the COLOR and B/W switch is used. And sometimes the vibration from flipping the switch causes the game to reload. Rarely happens but I believe that’s the cause. I thought when the game is dumped it’s loaded in memory but I’m not so sure. I feel once the switches get used a bit it won’t be a problem though. Edited March 20 by MrChickenz 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shane857 Posted March 20 Share Posted March 20 1 hour ago, MikeM_ said: Isn’t there some connection still there though, since it detects when the cart has been pulled out? A good reason maybe not to hotswap carts maybe...🤔 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DEANJIMMY Posted March 21 Share Posted March 21 9 hours ago, shane857 said: A good reason maybe not to hotswap carts maybe...🤔 Hot swap is fine to do and the way I go since day two! On day one I was a little bit disappointed about my new 2600+ With problematic carts you learn the sweet spot for a good dump while inserting them. Some Activision carts did not work until pulling them a bit. After inserting them quite often, they are a no brainers now. Without hot swap the process to load a game is too long and I might have given up on Enduro, Pitfall and HERO... The power switch is no real power switch anyway. 99% of the time hot swap loads your next game fine. When a game is not dumped right or supported yet, you can end up with a condition which needs a soft reset of the emulation by the power switch. It happened to me once, that the joystick MCU got spoiled some how and no fire buttons did work. I had to unplug the USB cable to fix it. By that I've learned the power switch is rather a reset switch. The manual sbould tell about hot swap is possile and it's the way to go. It should tell you also to clean every cart before first play (as the 2600+ connector is less tight and fails to read dirty carts which worked on original HW)! Cleaning and hot swap changed my mind about the 2600+ on 2nd day to the positive😊 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sean_1970 Posted March 21 Share Posted March 21 12 hours ago, MikeM_ said: Isn’t there some connection still there though, since it detects when the cart has been pulled out? Indeed, I was going to say if it never touched the cart after then surely I should be able to pull the cart and keep playing without it? I think it keeps checking the slot; maybe it’s intermittent so less/no risk? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+karri Posted March 21 Share Posted March 21 I have a multicart with a thumbwheel on the side for changing binaries. Just rotating the thumbwheel detects the cart change. So it must be polling the rom content periodically. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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