Experimental 2600+ Firmware and Dumper

[ForceInfinity]

Some carts I tested but not previously covered by others on this new revision:

 

- Aardvark : working (others have tested, but working for me)

- Cave-In :  working (didn't previously)

- Boulderdash: not working (black screen)

- Lode Runner: not working (black screen)

- Penult : not working (dumper gives up after 2 seconds and says no game detected)

- Scramble : working (someone else also tested, but still pleasant surprise)

- Stay Frosty 2: working 

Edited May 24 by ForceInfinity

[Ampersound]

8 hours ago, MrChickenz said:

To me it seems great! I thought there was an issue with Super Breakout but it was the paddle. It was baffling me because I used the same paddle set on all my paddle games and only Super Breakout was jittery. When I touched the DB9 connection it was fine. I put a skinny piece of electrical tape around the DB9 connector for a snug fit on the paddle set that was giving me the problem and it works great now.

All my other paddles sets work great!

 

So I’m not having an issue with any paddle games!

I'll have to try this later. I get exactly the same issue with Super Breakout yet every other paddle game I have (Warlords / 4 in 1) all work great.

[Trebor]

5 hours ago, Billiesan said:

I updated both the firmware and the dumper and I cannot get Pitfall 2 to load. Most of the time it's not even detected. I got it to load once but it was a garbled mess.

I had that experience the first time I tried Pitfall II.  Same cart worked without issue under Atari 2600 4-switch 'Woody' consoles and 7800 consoles.

Cleaned the cart. (Q-tip x2 and 91% Isopropyl Alcohol).  This time recognized cart - though only saw 8K, and the bankswitching/mapper incorrect.

Cleaned the cart again (Q-tip x2 and 91% Isopropyl Alcohol).

Works perfectly now.

[CPUWIZ]

30 minutes ago, Trebor said:

I had that experience the first time I tried Pitfall II.  Same cart worked without issue under Atari 2600 4-switch 'Woody' consoles and 7800 consoles.

Cleaned the cart. (Q-tip x2 and 91% Isopropyl Alcohol).  This time recognized cart - though only saw 8K, and the bankswitching/mapper incorrect.

Cleaned the cart again (Q-tip x2 and 91% Isopropyl Alcohol).

Works perfectly now.

 

And that's with the old port, right?  I am still putting my office back together, before I can monkey with the 2600+.

[Dionoid]

I just tried out my PAL copy of Pitfall II and it works like a charm!

Does this mean that now 100% of the original games are supported?

[+sramirez2008]

16 hours ago, chad5200 said:

Coleco's Smurfs Rescue in Gargamel's Castle (NTSC) seems to still be eluding the 2600+.

 

It is the only non-homebrew original era game I have that does not work in the 2600+ (now that Pitfall II is fixed).

 

I've also confirmed that Coleco's Smurfs Rescue in Gargamel's Castle is seen as MD5.

[MrChickenz]

edit

Edited May 24 by MrChickenz

[+sramirez2008]

9 hours ago, ForceInfinity said:

Some carts I tested but not previously covered by others on this new revision:

- Scramble : working (someone else also tested, but still pleasant surprise)

 

I just tested my Champ Games Scramble cart and epected it to fully work, as it is a DPC+ cart. However, I can only get the game to work in Single Shot mode. Setting the Left Difficulty Switch to B should produce 5 shots in total (3 missiles and 2 bombs). Setting Left Difficulty to A should provide Single Shot mode. No matter what I set the Left Diff switch to, I only get Single Shot. Can you, @TheRingBearer and anyone else with a Champ Games Scramble Cart, please confirm that the 5 Shot Burst Mode is working when setting the Left Difficulty to B?

 

Everything else seems to be fine, including Pause support via the B/W switch

 

Thanks.

[CPUWIZ]

46 minutes ago, MrChickenz said:

edit

 

LOL, why did you edit that away?  I can still read it anyway. 🤣

[MrChickenz]

2 hours ago, CPUWIZ said:

I am still putting my office back together, before I can monkey with the 2600+.

You don’t monkey with the 2600+! You worship it! Lol

[Dionoid]

1 hour ago, sramirez2008 said:

I've also confirmed that Coleco's Smurfs Rescue in Gargamel's Castle is seen as MD5

? MD5 is a hashing algorithm, right?

[+sramirez2008]

3 minutes ago, Dionoid said:

? MD5 is a hashing algorithm, right?

Yes. I should have said that the debug mode of the FW displays MD5, the cart is seen as a 4K cart.

[John Stamos Mullet]

3 hours ago, Trebor said:

I had that experience the first time I tried Pitfall II.  Same cart worked without issue under Atari 2600 4-switch 'Woody' consoles and 7800 consoles.

Cleaned the cart. (Q-tip x2 and 91% Isopropyl Alcohol).  This time recognized cart - though only saw 8K, and the bankswitching/mapper incorrect.

Cleaned the cart again (Q-tip x2 and 91% Isopropyl Alcohol).

Works perfectly now.

Pitfall II is a finicky cart in general, even on original Atari consoles. That one came out when Activision was trying to cut costs, so they used cheap boards that are just slightly thinner than standard 2600 boards, so sometimes they don't hit all the contacts in the cart slot correctly.

Edited May 24 by John Stamos Mullet

[AtariYMás009]

I can confirm super breakout has issues

Here is in an original Jr with original paddles

 

And here in the 2600+ (last firmware and dumper)

 You can see how the paddle moves like in little steps with de 2600+

 

[2LTIME6100]

My only game that doesn't run perfectly is Frogger (Parker/PAL).
 

The frog sometimes disappears and there is a lot of flickering. But sometimes it runs normally without any errors.

Does anyone have PAL Frogger with similar errors?

[RevEng]

52 minutes ago, 2LTIME6100 said:

My only game that doesn't run perfectly is Frogger (Parker/PAL).
 

The frog sometimes disappears and there is a lot of flickering. But sometimes it runs normally without any errors.

Does anyone have PAL Frogger with similar errors?

Frogger uses 30Hz flicker, which causes problems with modern TVs that attempt to smooth and improve motion. If you have a game mode on your TV, you should enable it, or otherwise play around with disabling enhancements.

 

Here's a report about Frogger from earlier in the thread...

 

 

[MarcinJ]

10 hours ago, ForceInfinity said:

Scramble : working (someone else also tested, but still pleasant surprise)

Do you mean Champ Games Scramble?

[chad5200]

1 hour ago, AtariYMás009 said:

I can confirm super breakout has issues

Here is in an original Jr with original paddles

 

And here in the 2600+ (last firmware and dumper)

 

 You can see how the paddle moves like in little steps with de 2600+

 

Yes.  Those who are saying that the paddle emulation has improved since the first version code that came with the 2600+ are not helping.

 

The paddles have not changed at all and remain "course" and have "less resolution" compared to the classic 2600.

 

Hoping to encourage the programmers to take a look at this and make the 2600+ paddles play just like the classic 2600.

 

[ForceInfinity]

4 hours ago, sramirez2008 said:

I just tested my Champ Games Scramble cart and epected it to fully work, as it is a DPC+ cart. However, I can only get the game to work in Single Shot mode. Setting the Left Difficulty Switch to B should produce 5 shots in total (3 missiles and 2 bombs). Setting Left Difficulty to A should provide Single Shot mode. No matter what I set the Left Diff switch to, I only get Single Shot. Can you, @TheRingBearer and anyone else with a Champ Games Scramble Cart, please confirm that the 5 Shot Burst Mode is working when setting the Left Difficulty to B?

 

Everything else seems to be fine, including Pause support via the B/W switch

 

Thanks.

So I tried the A/B thing.   On the one, I have to press the button each time I want an individual bullet/bomb to fall (up to the limits of 2 bombs 3 bullets).   On the other difficulty setting, pressing and holding the button gives me 2 bombs fired and the 3 bullets for the one button press

[ForceInfinity]

36 minutes ago, MarcinJ said:

Do you mean Champ Games Scramble?

Yes, the Champ Games Scramble 🙂

[Dionoid]

1 hour ago, 2LTIME6100 said:

Does anyone have PAL Frogger with similar errors?

Yes, I had similar issues with my PAL fogger.

50 minutes ago, RevEng said:

Frogger uses 30Hz flicker, which causes problems with modern TVs that attempt to smooth and improve motion. If you have a game mode on your TV, you should enable it, or otherwise play around with disabling enhancements.

Frogger PAL even uses 25Hz flicker  The issue of disappearing objects is indeed caused by your TV trying to reduce noise and flickering. Of course for every TV the fix is different, but on my Samsung TV, I had to disable the picture option “Digital Clean View”.

Edited May 24 by Dionoid

[MrChickenz]

1 hour ago, chad5200 said:

Yes.  Those who are saying that the paddle emulation has improved since the first version code that came with the 2600+ are not helping.

 

The paddles have not changed at all and remain "course" and have "less resolution" compared to the classic 2600.

 

Hoping to encourage the programmers to take a look at this and make the 2600+ paddles play just like the classic 2600.

 

I agree, I never said it improved I was only stating my experience with my paddles and system. It may not be like the original hardware IDN I didn’t compare. But all my paddles and paddle games work great with the exception of Super Breakout there is some jitter sometimes more than others! And yes I agree with your description of a course feel to it. But I only notice the course feel with Super Breakout.

 

I have tried many paddle games on Flashbacks systems they never work right.

The Atari 2600+ paddle games and paddles are far better than any modern Atari clone consoles 

Edited May 24 by MrChickenz

[DEANJIMMY]

1 hour ago, chad5200 said:

Yes.  Those who are saying that the paddle emulation has improved since the first version code that came with the 2600+ are not helping.

 

The paddles have not changed at all and remain "course" and have "less resolution" compared to the classic 2600.

 

Hoping to encourage the programmers to take a look at this and make the 2600+ paddles play just like the classic 2600.

 

The resolution is still the same.

Hope next update will cover this and support the Trakball too🧐

However for PAL paddle games one could see improvements with the experimental loads, as the problems with 50Hz output made them even worse😊

The games I play are fine (Solarstorm, Tac Scan, Eggomania, Medieval (if it works), Video Olympics, Brik). If I would directly compare them with original hardware, I expect to notice the difference but for these games it is OK.

[Plumbob]

Stella’s Stocking works!

[shane857]

9 hours ago, Trebor said:

I had that experience the first time I tried Pitfall II.  Same cart worked without issue under Atari 2600 4-switch 'Woody' consoles and 7800 consoles.

Cleaned the cart. (Q-tip x2 and 91% Isopropyl Alcohol).  This time recognized cart - though only saw 8K, and the bankswitching/mapper incorrect.

Cleaned the cart again (Q-tip x2 and 91% Isopropyl Alcohol).

Works perfectly now.

Pitfall 2 does not work EVERY time for me also. I thought at first it might be the dumper...probably the cartridge slot thou. Inserting the cart at a lower angle seems to make it boot(for me)more often. Works every time on my original VCS.