Experimental 2600+ Firmware and Dumper

[MrChickenz]

19 minutes ago, Alex_813 said:

I updated the FW and dumper and tried Omega Race with the Booster Grip. It only partially works. The Thrust button is working 100%. The Fire button however is intermittent. No real timing or anything. Sometimes it fires one shot, sometimes 2 in a row, sometimes none at all.

 

Edit:

I see what's going on here. Looks like the button is working backwards. If I hold it down, nothing happens, but as soon as I let go, it fires a shot.

The ship only fires two shots at a time.

 

 

[Alex_813]

Just now, MrChickenz said:

The ship only fires two shots at a time.

 

 

Yes. It does that on OG hardware fine. Not sure if you saw my edit of original post. The button is working in reverse. Push button=no fire. Release button=fire.

[2LTIME6100]

8 hours ago, DEANJIMMY said:

And I've got another X Files story about Flicker aka Frogger PAL: The cart warms up🙄

Cleaning the once clean cart again brought a lot of dirt to surface, probably because of the heat at the connector. The cart smell a bit and was quite warm. 

Never noticed something like this on the plus before🤔

 

Edit: Empire Strikes Back PAL gets a little bit warm too (not hot), so maybe normal for Parker PAL carts...

 

 

I can confirm that my PAL Fogger also had noticeably dirty contacts when I cleaned the contacts again. Cleaning had no effect on the Issues described. Turning it on and off didn't change anything either. I always turn the console off when changing the cart. I can't see any heating of the cart. How long did you have it in the console before it got warm?

 

For me, the issues described often occur from level 1 onwards (see disappearing tree trunks in my video). Very strange... 🧐

 

 

Edited July 18 by 2LTIME6100

[DEANJIMMY]

3 hours ago, 2LTIME6100 said:

I can confirm that my PAL Fogger also had noticeably dirty contacts when I cleaned the contacts again. Cleaning had no effect on the Issues described. Turning it on and off didn't change anything either. I always turn the console off when changing the cart. I can't see any heating of the cart. How long did you have it in the console before it got warm?

 

For me, the issues described often occur from level 1 onwards (see disappearing tree trunks in my video). Very strange... 🧐

 

 

 

IMG_0851.mov 8.96 MB · 1 download

Your vid looks very similar like when I had my glitches, seems to be the same issue but it did not happen often to me and power cycle plus reseating the cart solves the problem

The question is, is the dump bad, which happens for most maybe 1% and in your case 100% of the time or does the emulation go wrong.

 

As said, I have a Medieval cart causing me maybe similar trouble 90% of the time, while others are happy, so I guess it is a cart/dumper combination issue, might be the same for frogger.

 

About the heat: 

I was away and had the cart maybe 2 hours running. I guess all carts get a bit warm, maybe some more, probably normal, even strange as the system just checks if it gets removed. I read about a Yars Return cart which got hot but my cart was just a bit warm.

I guess it is normal?

 

Anyway the temperature could not haven an impact on the performance, once it is dumped.

Still expect bad dumps causing the issue.

 

Edit:

I get NTSC versions of Parker  Empire strikes back and Frogger soon, so I can compare the temperature and performance with PAL Frogger.

Edited July 18 by DEANJIMMY

[+Fred_M]

13 hours ago, Dionoid said:

Not exactly: the debug info is helpful to the developers of the Atari 2600+ firmware and the dumper software; the Stella developers are not part of this.

Now I am confused..... At the bottom of each post announcing a new experimental release is this message: "@Ben from Plaion feel free to utilize or/and modify for anything official from Plaion/Atari." So this firmware is clearly not made by Plaion/Atari. So who is making what?

[AtariYMás009]

To tell the truth, apart from the region errors of those three games on my multigame cartridge, I did not have any compatibility problems with any of my games in the factory firmware.
And I honestly prefer a thousand times for games to have slightly jerky movement than for sprites to disappear, since, at least in my case, the problem is very frequent and I can't play almost any of my games comfortably.
So yes, I have made the "drastic" decision to revert to stock firmware.
So please let me know when the sprite issue is fixed.

[Trebor]

3 hours ago, Fred_M said:

Now I am confused..... At the bottom of each post announcing a new experimental release is this message: "@Ben from Plaion feel free to utilize or/and modify for anything official from Plaion/Atari." So this firmware is clearly not made by Plaion/Atari. So who is making what?

When Plaion/Atari agree on what will be the "official" firmware update posted to their website/support page, @Ben from Plaion will receive confirmation of that.  It is extremely likely to be the most recent "Experimental" version that has been posted by @raz0red, or very close to it, will be earmarked as official version "2.0", or similar.

 

Each "Experimental" version release, any respective tool or driver that may be needed for some, and step-by-step instructions on how to install, is packaged together into one convenient zip archive download, after which I create a post here on this forum.

 

I am not employed directly by Plaion/Atari, but want to make it 100% clear, at the bottom of each of those respective posts, that I am fine with them utilizing the zip archive and anything associated with it that I created, in case there are any concerns of legal liability or ownership rights.

[DEANJIMMY]

35 minutes ago, AtariYMás009 said:

To tell the truth, apart from the region errors of those three games on my multigame cartridge, I did not have any compatibility problems with any of my games in the factory firmware.
And I honestly prefer a thousand times for games to have slightly jerky movement than for sprites to disappear, since, at least in my case, the problem is very frequent and I can't play almost any of my games comfortably.
So yes, I have made the "drastic" decision to revert to stock firmware.
So please let me know when the sprite issue is fixed.

For me it is the total opposite situation.

1.0 is unusable as the best 7800 PAL games and homebrews fail.

1.1 Rev1(?) caused Spries to disappear due to PAL 50 Hz output.

 

The x loads brought up a good video driver, so PAL games run fluent again and all carts except some Champ Games work On 1.1x-r6 x3. HERO, Galaga, Centipede give fluent movements, which were jerky before the video driver update.

 

As now maybe Frogger PAL has got some issues, which are maybe related to bad dumps and not the video driver (I am not an expert!)?

I don't care and ordered the NTSC version of Frogger and hope they fix it.

 

I am not going back to stone age because of Frogger😉

[AtariYMás009]

4 minutes ago, DEANJIMMY said:

As now maybe Frogger PAL has got some issues, which are maybe related to bad dumps and not the video driver (I am not an expert!)?

I don't care and ordered the NTSC version of Frogger and hope they fix it.

 

I am not going back to stone age because of Frogger😉

For me it's not just frogger: it's frogger, venture, pac-man, Ms. Pac-man, beany bopper (PAL), Mr. Run and Jump (PAL), riddle of the sphinx, dark chambers...
And I don't have joust but I know that this game also has this problem. A problem that, as I said before, is especially common in my case.

[DEANJIMMY]

27 minutes ago, AtariYMás009 said:

For me it's not just frogger: it's frogger, venture, pac-man, Ms. Pac-man, beany bopper (PAL), Mr. Run and Jump (PAL), riddle of the sphinx, dark chambers...
And I don't have joust but I know that this game also has this problem. A problem that, as I said before, is especially common in my case.

That is strange and I understand 😞

Theses games are not in my top 30 because many of them I play the 7800 version or not at all.

 

I once had a closer look on Frogger only, as I could easily dupe it and verify the improvement. Now it is very random in my case (had two times glitches, one on x-r1 and now on x-r6).

Those disappeared like the stutter in scrolling @JetmanUK once had with River Raid. On Rev1 I had this stutter too, never seen it on x loads 🤔

 

Did you swap your Mr. Run and Jump via @Ben from Plaion for PAL? Those first games were sold as NTSC only🤔

 

 

@raz0red @RevEng

Do you have any idea what have all these PAL games in common and why so far just a few people experience it?

Could it be that retroarch kicks in with the old video driver in some rare occasions?

That would explain why a power cycle fix it for some people.

Edited July 18 by DEANJIMMY

[tradyblix]

59 minutes ago, DEANJIMMY said:

That is strange and I understand 😞

Theses games are not in my top 30 because many of them I play the 7800 version or not at all.

I understand why you're like this, but don't discount the 2600 versions. in some cases, like ms pac man and centipede, joust, etc, the 2600 has some charm over the 7800 version. 

 

Wish I could help more with my experiences but 1.1x-r6 has been rock solid for me so far. I'm an NTSC Bunny. I have one PAL game, maybe 2 and one of them sucks lol.

 

It's inconceivable to me that I would have to go back to using only the original firmware. We've come too far for that. There's been so many fixes in the experimental series for me. 

 

I've been using game mode on my relatively recent TV. I know older flat panel TVs didn't always have this or didn't have a consistent set of features, like Game mode and Filmmaker mode, that more modern TVs do. I wonder if TV settings are responsible for some issues. 

Earlier on, I experienced some moments of frustration with some games, like back on 1.1 Beta I had issues getting the older dumper, the second revision we got ever, i think, from reading Juno First consistently, but that's gone now. While the dumper isn't perfect, it's far, far better and I understand what's happening with it much much more ever since we got the recent revisions. Activision carts are still a slight problem but pulling them out ever so slightly helps a lot, seemingly, so does "cleaning" (again). 

 

Honestly only time I experienced sprite issues that weren't part of the game was with CBS's game Gorf back on 1.0 where sometimes I thought I'd get bit by invisible sprites. 

 

Even now that game has some kinda janky animation, so I wonder if it was just that. Especially in the second wave. But I'm no longer noticing anything invisible hitting me. 

 

Sadly I don't have frogger, although that's on my list of games to track down. I wonder if I would have issues with it, if I did I would certainly report back. 

 

 

Edited July 18 by tradyblix

[Ben from Plaion]

1 hour ago, Trebor said:

When Plaion/Atari agree on what will be the "official" firmware update posted to their website/support page, @Ben from Plaion will receive confirmation of that.  It is extremely likely to be the most recent "Experimental" version that has been posted by @raz0red, or very close to it, will be earmarked as official version "2.0", or similar.

 

Each "Experimental" version release, any respective tool or driver that may be needed for some, and step-by-step instructions on how to install, is packaged together into one convenient zip archive download, after which I create a post here on this forum.

 

I am not employed directly by Plaion/Atari, but want to make it 100% clear, at the bottom of each of those respective posts, that I am fine with them utilizing the zip archive and anything associated with it that I created, in case there are any concerns of legal liability or ownership rights.

Thanks @Trebor for all your help.

 

You are correct. There will be no difference to any official update to the (latest) experimental version. In fact we have already shipped re-stocks of the 2600+ with experimental firmware.

 

The only thing stopping an official version is the lack of a more streamlined update process. Which we are working on but progress is slow. 

[Ben from Plaion]

2 hours ago, AtariYMás009 said:

To tell the truth, apart from the region errors of those three games on my multigame cartridge, I did not have any compatibility problems with any of my games in the factory firmware.
And I honestly prefer a thousand times for games to have slightly jerky movement than for sprites to disappear, since, at least in my case, the problem is very frequent and I can't play almost any of my games comfortably.
So yes, I have made the "drastic" decision to revert to stock firmware.
So please let me know when the sprite issue is fixed.

Have you tried it on a different TV or different settings on your TV. Remember the stock firmware is 60Hz and recent experimental firmware plays PAL at 50Hz. 

 

I've not experienced missing sprites at 50Hz. 

[+Fred_M]

17 hours ago, DEANJIMMY said:

Ok, I am too stupid to survive level 3 but I did not see any issues, will try later again to reach level 4😅

 

BUT then I powered down the console.

I really powered it down, not just switched it off. Later I came back and switched it on with the cartridge still in place (runing fine before) and I got my glitches for a second time in my life🤗

 

In the vid you see the almost disappearing tree trunks?

If this happens from the beginning, later some trunks disappear, the frog is almost invisible after changing the color due to fun with the female frog, the frog disappears in some rows on the street, some cars on the street disappear, frogs and crocodiles in the top row flicker like hell, the whole game feels wrong and gets worse with every level/speed up.

 

I switched off, reseated the cart and problems were gone...

 

So very rarely I get the problem when I power on with the cart seated and others maybe after playing a while. Never saw it after a hot swap.

It's like somethig is getting out of sync.

The debug info did not look different when the problem happened.

 

 

I was very sceptical about the problems @2LTIME6100 described, but I have to admit that I should not have been sceptical. My apologies and Entschuldigung!

 

I turned on my 2600+ with Frogger PAL inserted and left it in demo mode for about an hour. In the meantime I was testing some cartridges on real old 2600 hardware (some Taiwan games were detected as NTSC by the 2600+ and it turned out that the 2600+ was right). After that hour I started playing Frogger on the 2600+ and I saw the same probems @2LTIME6100 described. So I was able to reproduce it too! But this seems to be happening only after the 2600+ has been powered on for a longer period of time.

Edited July 18 by Fred_M

[tradyblix]

16 minutes ago, Fred_M said:

 

I was very sceptical about the problems @2LTIME6100 described, but I have to admit that I should not have been sceptical. My apologies and Entschuldigung!

 

I turned on my 2600+ with Frogger PAL inserted and left it in demo mode for about an hour. In the meantime I was testing some cartridges on real old 2600 hardware (some Taiwan games were detected as NTSC by the 2600+ and it turned out that the 2600+ was right). After that hour I started playing Frogger on the 2600+ and I saw the same probems @2LTIME6100 described. So I was able to reproduce it too! But this seems to be happening only after the 2600+ has been powered on for a longer period of time.

So is it only the PAL version of this game ? 

[+Fred_M]

34 minutes ago, tradyblix said:

So is it only the PAL version of this game ? 

I don't have the NTSC cartridge, but @DEANJIMMY has ordered one, so we will know soon 🙂

[AtariYMás009]

2 hours ago, Ben from Plaion said:

Have you tried it on a different TV or different settings on your TV. Remember the stock firmware is 60Hz and recent experimental firmware plays PAL at 50Hz. 

 

I've not experienced missing sprites at 50Hz. 

Tried all my TVs and monitors, issue persists

[Striker667xbl]

On the subject of missing sprites over time.

 

I play NTSC, however when I first played Mr. Run and Jump when it released, after a while of playing the flickering sprite would disappear..Made playing later levels impossible. I noticed people streaming the game had the same issue for the viewers but the player didn't notice anything. I was playing the game through my capture card so decided to flip over to direct to TV(through a receiver first). Problem was gone. Had something to do with the frames from the game becoming out of sync with the capture card. I'm guessing something similar is happening with the PAL carts not staying in sync with some TVs for whatever reason.

Just my experience anyway.

Edited July 18 by Striker667xbl
typo

[tradyblix]

16 hours ago, Alex_813 said:

Yes. It does that on OG hardware fine. Not sure if you saw my edit of original post. The button is working in reverse. Push button=no fire. Release button=fire.

Not how it works for me, just as another anecdotal point of interest. Works as expected here. The shot goes off even if I never release the button from the press. 

Edited July 18 by tradyblix

[DEANJIMMY]

5 hours ago, Fred_M said:

 

I was very sceptical about the problems @2LTIME6100 described, but I have to admit that I should not have been sceptical. My apologies and Entschuldigung!

 

I turned on my 2600+ with Frogger PAL inserted and left it in demo mode for about an hour. In the meantime I was testing some cartridges on real old 2600 hardware (some Taiwan games were detected as NTSC by the 2600+ and it turned out that the 2600+ was right). After that hour I started playing Frogger on the 2600+ and I saw the same probems @2LTIME6100 described. So I was able to reproduce it too! But this seems to be happening only after the 2600+ has been powered on for a longer period of time.

Many thanks for sharing this.

 

As I had my 2600+ running almost 10 hours on a the gathering at the Homecomputer Museum Frankfurt with many PAL carts, I thought that is impossible but there I used a big Tablet screen made for gaming and none of the mentioned games.

 

I am afraid this makes total sense. 

The 50Hz Hdmi output might not be in synch right after start or gets out of sync after extended time and power cycle get it in synch for most people.

 

It then also depends on the TV and how much the game flickers, if you see the problem right away or later, or never?

 

It is just a theory but 50Hz Hdmi is not so common as 60Hz is (e.g. my scanline generator only works with 60Hz Hdmi in).

 

I will heat up my frog again and see what happens🤔

If it can be duped at will, a debug load might give info about how to fix it🤙

 

Anyway, just a theory like the earth might be flat😉

[+Fred_M]

43 minutes ago, DEANJIMMY said:

Many thanks for sharing this.

 

As I had my 2600+ running almost 10 hours on a the gathering at the Homecomputer Museum Frankfurt with many PAL carts, I thought that is impossible but there I used a big Tablet screen made for gaming and none of the mentioned games.

 

I am afraid this makes total sense. 

The 50Hz Hdmi output might not be in synch right after start or gets out of sync after extended time and power cycle get it in synch for most people.

 

It then also depends on the TV and how much the game flickers, if you see the problem right away or later, or never?

 

It is just a theory but 50Hz Hdmi is not so common as 60Hz is (e.g. my scanline generator only works with 60Hz Hdmi in).

 

I will heat up my frog again and see what happens🤔

If it can be duped at will, a debug load might give info about how to fix it🤙

 

Anyway, just a theory like the earth might be flat😉

 

I don't know what is exactly happening either. I am using a very cheap TV (Dyon from Amazon), that does not have all the fancy modern features. I use that TV for many modern consoles. For example I am normaly using that TV for the Atari Flashback (nr. 10, the nice small replica of the 2600) and I have never experienced similar problems while playing 2600 games on it.

 

Luckily it only happens after a long while, I think not many people will play 1 single game for over an hour 😉 (how many people wil reply that they do 🤣)

 

43 minutes ago, DEANJIMMY said:

The 50Hz Hdmi output might not be in synch

I don't know if this is valid information, but in the Debug info on screen I see many PAL cartridges where the framerate is fluctuating (for example 50.xx or 49.xx).

 

Edited July 18 by Fred_M

[DEANJIMMY]

1 hour ago, DEANJIMMY said:

Many thanks for sharing this.

 

As I had my 2600+ running almost 10 hours on a the gathering at the Homecomputer Museum Frankfurt with many PAL carts, I thought that is impossible but there I used a big Tablet screen made for gaming and none of the mentioned games.

 

I am afraid this makes total sense. 

The 50Hz Hdmi output might not be in synch right after start or gets out of sync after extended time and power cycle get it in synch for most people.

 

It then also depends on the TV and how much the game flickers, if you see the problem right away or later, or never?

 

It is just a theory but 50Hz Hdmi is not so common as 60Hz is (e.g. my scanline generator only works with 60Hz Hdmi in).

 

I will heat up my frog again and see what happens🤔

If it can be duped at will, a debug load might give info about how to fix it🤙

 

Anyway, just a theory like the earth might be flat😉

It does not dupe by just waiting more than an hour and play until level 4 in my case.

If I switch on my power strip, the TV boots and at a certain point I switch on the 2600+

If I am unhappy, it is out of synch and that is only noticable in games like Frogger and Pac Man, so I do not see it usually at all.

Other TV might show the issue right away or drift after some time.

Again just a theory... there is something but the root cause is difficult to narrow down.

 

Edit: Gave up, no dupe today...

Edited July 18 by DEANJIMMY

[AtariYMás009]

It is possible that the problem of the sprites disappearing only happens on certain televisions (all in my case), but in the face of an official update we cannot expect people to try different televisions and different settings, it must be a software that works correctly from the beginning, for the correct comfort and enjoyment of consumers for whom I believe I speak for everyone when I say this.
So I think it is necessary to be able to address this problem instead of looking for other displays or settings.

[raz0red]

6 minutes ago, AtariYMás009 said:

It is possible that the problem of the sprites disappearing only happens on certain televisions (all in my case), but in the face of an official update we cannot expect people to try different televisions and different settings, it must be a software that works correctly from the beginning, for the correct comfort and enjoyment of consumers for whom I believe I speak for everyone when I say this.
So I think it is necessary to be able to address this problem instead of looking for other displays or settings.

So, the initial requirement was for it to display at 50hz for PAL content.

 

One of my televisions doesn't even support that mode. So, not sure it could ever just work on all televisions unless there was an option to disable 50hz.

 

50hz in general is not well supported consistently on modern televisions, especially when you consider the various filters and modes that televisions support. 2600 content where sprites come and go per frame further exacerbates the issue. With that said, my particular monitor doesn't exhibit any of the missing sprite issues at 50hz, even when left for days at a time.   

 

I think the best possible approach is to provide options for PAL-based content. Specifically, providing the option to disable 50hz mode, and another distinct option to enable phosphor effects for games that are likely to exhibit issues. This will take some time to implement as we will need a custom configuration screen, but it is likely the best approach to accommodate all variations.

 

Chris. 

 

[JetmanUK]

17 minutes ago, raz0red said:

So, the initial requirement was for it to display at 50hz for PAL content.

 

One of my televisions doesn't even support that mode. So, not sure it could ever just work on all televisions unless there was an option to disable 50hz.

 

50hz in general is not well supported consistently on modern televisions, especially when you consider the various filters and modes that televisions support. 2600 content where sprites come and go per frame further exacerbates the issue. With that said, my particular monitor doesn't exhibit any of the missing sprite issues at 50hz, even when left for days at a time.   

 

I think the best possible approach is to provide options for PAL-based content. Specifically, providing the option to disable 50hz mode, and another distinct option to enable phosphor effects for games that are likely to exhibit issues. This will take some time to implement as we will need a custom configuration screen, but it is likely the best approach to accommodate all variations.

 

Chris. 

 

Thanks Chris. 

As I've said here, personally I've not had the disappearing sprite issue, but have noticed some flicker in PAL Joust, slightly more than it appears on Stella on my laptop. Perfectly tolerable though. 

 

How would we chose to switch between 50hz and 60Hz? Holding something down on boot?

Edited July 18 by JetmanUK