Experimental 2600+ Firmware and Dumper

[Dionoid]

11 hours ago, Striker667xbl said:

Does the homebrew Tower of Rubble work on the experimental builds?

I'm not finding a list with this game on it and I'd like to pick it up.

Yes, Tower of Rubble uses standard F8 bankswitching, so it already worked on the stock 2600+ firmware. The latest firmware also adds support for the PAL60 version of Tower of Rubble, so it displays in the correct colors.

Edited July 20 by Dionoid

[MrChickenz]

2 hours ago, DEANJIMMY said:

Looks my monitor is interesting😉

But as with my TVs I googled a lot before I bought it.

 

Edit: I am not in the mood to play the frickin flickin Frogger game again now but I see at once it looks like the missing objects will happen on my monitor...😉

Sorry! I couldn’t help but notice you have chattering teeth, I too have chattering teeth! 😂🤣😁
 

 

Edited July 20 by MrChickenz

[Thomas Jentzsch]

I haven't followed the whole discussion about flickering objects disappearing after a while. Has anyone considered that the console itself is overheating and throttling?

[MrChickenz]

2 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

I haven't followed the whole discussion about flickering objects disappearing after a while. Has anyone considered that the console itself is overheating and throttling?

I believe someone mentioned that it’s PAL related. But I’m not positive.

[John Stamos Mullet]

15 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

I haven't followed the whole discussion about flickering objects disappearing after a while. Has anyone considered that the console itself is overheating and throttling?

The games that are flickering aren’t games that overtax the system. It’s a Pal games vs. modern tvs issue. 

[Striker667xbl]

2 hours ago, Dionoid said:

Yes, Tower of Rubble uses standard F8 bankswitching, so it already worked on the stock 2600+ firmware. The latest firmware also adds support for the PAL60 version of Tower of Rubble, so it displays in the correct colors.

Thank you! I can purchase with confidence now!

[Ripweade]

10 hours ago, JetmanUK said:

Hi

Great post! I am glad you are enjoying your Plus, and this community. 

I will take a look at Moon Patrol later, but one thing came to mind straight away...

 

There is a little quirk with the Plus  whereby the difficulty switches are actually BA from the front of the console, instead of the expected AB. The console is labeled as if you were reading it from the back and not the front, hence it's BA in normal use. The launch firmware was actually configured the wrong way round on version 1.0,  it was AB, but as the console is labeled as BA (from the front remember 🤣) then it was flipped to the correct (incorrect?!🤣) way in the updated firmware. 

 

I have mine labeled to avoid any confusion. A high tech solution! 💁🏻🤣

 

 

If that made sense, and you don't need to lie down after my rambling, are you sure that you are selecting the difficulty that you think you are? 🤔

Thank you for the reply an explanation!

 

Yes, I did check mine and already am used to the BA setup.  I had the left difficulty on B (and even looked at it to be certain) and no music.  Switched to A, and music played.  As I said, it's a very minor bug to me and can easily deal with it.  I wasn't sure if it's only this game or others also have it backwards for me, and wasn't sure if there was a "whoops" in R5.  I'm also on R5 and the second dumper, NTSC Moon Patrol.

 

And, once again, I am extremely grateful to all involved with designing, producing, updating, programming, etc. this machine.  That is a lot of hard work!  THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!  (I'm a bit excited and happy with this device, if you can't tell.  🙂  )

[DEANJIMMY]

1 hour ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

I haven't followed the whole discussion about flickering objects disappearing after a while. Has anyone considered that the console itself is overheating and throttling?

It then should happen to the NTSC version as well, I guess?

 

So far it looks like a power cycle and reseating the cart gets it working again. Not sure if it then works again for the same time as before?

 

On my monitor I could see missing PAL cars so I will compare it with the NTSC version of Frogger, once I got it.

The 50p hdmi input problems at some TVs are one problem, which can be explained easily.

 

Why some people get the issue after an hour (not playing the game!) is a miracle to me. To answer your question those gamers need to tell if they need to let the unit cool down after reseat but I don't think so.

 

Some get the issue from level 4 on. I am a lousy frogger gamer but due to all this testing I get there quickly and the console is not warm yet. Here it is rather related again to the fact that the TV needs to add frames and once the flickering mess gets faster, chances are higher to multiply a bad frame?

 

 

[Ripweade]

Uh oh!  I'm now having an issue upgrading to R6.

 

I upgraded the dumper just fine.  When I try to upgrade to R6, I load the new Firmware, click on "Upgrade," and it starts.  There's a disconnect tone, reconnect tone, but it hangs at "Wait for MASKROM Start" and then fails.  I've updated this machine before without any issues but now R6 won't seem to update.

 

Any ideas?  Thanks!!!

 

EDIT:  Please disregard.  I just updated it and all is fine.  In case anyone else has this happen, this is my finding:  When I had the DevTool launched, I located the Firmware, but noticed that my hard drive light was flashing, showing it was doing something.  I waited until the hard drive stopped and did the upgrade, which worked well.  My belief is that Windows was still loading and/or processing the device driver for the 2600+ and I was acting too quickly to do the upgrade before the device driver was fully loaded.

Edited July 20 by Ripweade

[+Fred_M]

1 hour ago, DEANJIMMY said:

To answer your question those gamers need to tell if they need to let the unit cool down after reseat but I don't think so.

Nope, did not even powered it off 🙂 Asteroids PAL (many flickering "sprites") shows the same problem and I did not have to wait for an hour...

[MrChickenz]

13 hours ago, Ripweade said:

I have noticed one oddity.  I was playing Moon Patrol with left difficulty in B, which enables background music, but mine was silent.  Switched it to A, and the music played.  It seems that for this cart, the difficulty switch is reversed.  Has anyone noticed this or can test?  It's nothing major but an odd bug.

It’s not a bug in the firmware. Same here! But I also checked on my Six switcher and it’s the same there also. It has to be a typo in the manual. Difficultly set to A plays background music B turns it off.

Edited July 20 by MrChickenz

[DEANJIMMY]

41 minutes ago, Fred_M said:

Nope, did not even powered it off 🙂 Asteroids PAL (many flickering "sprites") shows the same problem and I did not have to wait for an hour...

You wrote it before

 

 

Sorry, I did not remember that.

The problem started after Frogger ran for an hour in demo mode and reseating the cart fixed it right away, while powering off the TV did not👍

 

Does Asteroids show the problem right after start or after some time?

[shane857]

4 hours ago, MrChickenz said:

Sorry! I couldn’t help but notice you have chattering teeth, I too have chattering teeth! 😂🤣😁
 

 

A Jawbreaker fan, maybe? 

[+Fred_M]

 

36 minutes ago, DEANJIMMY said:

Sorry, I did not remember that.

No reason to be sorry at all.

 

I was looking for another game which uses a lot of flickering "sprites", so Asteroids was a good choice. I started playing for about 10 minutes and several times a bunch of Asteroids were disappearing for about 1 to 2 seconds and even the ship disappeared for the same amount of time (no hyperspace!). When the ship disappeared I was still able to fire (the bullets were visible) and the asteroids themselves were still able to destroy me. (I did not move the ship when I could not see it)

 

So, no I did not have to wait. 🙂

 

Looking at the the effects I saw, it reminded me of a video about incorrect refresh rates. (https://youtu.be/2CeZ0xbtfDo?si=5ynP9eZEjoeKOTqr&t=116 ) Sometimes only the top part of a (bigger) asteroid was visible. I do not have enough knowledge about frame rates, but with the debug info on screen I can see that the framerate of Frogger and Asteroids is fluctuating between 49hz and 51hz while playing the game. Maybe current TVs can not support that kind of fluctuation??

 

Edited July 20 by Fred_M

[DEANJIMMY]

10 hours ago, mastic_man said:

The full champ game roms ( not demos) were modified by John Champeau to work on Ver 1.0 of the 2600+ firmware and had QT, Save key and game pad disabled as some of them were unplayable otherwise. 

Could the modifications somehow get part of the 2600+ software, so the old carts will run?

Edited July 20 by DEANJIMMY

[JetmanUK]

2 hours ago, MrChickenz said:

It’s not a bug in the firmware. Same here! But I also checked on my Six switcher and it’s the same there also. It has to be a typo in the manual. Difficultly set to A plays background music B turns it off.

Mystery solved!

 

I still recommend my stickers though, I'll send anyone who wants some for £50. Free P&P (S&H to some). 😁 Bargain eh?! 

[Ripweade]

2 hours ago, MrChickenz said:

It’s not a bug in the firmware. Same here! But I also checked on my Six switcher and it’s the same there also. It has to be a typo in the manual. Difficultly set to A plays background music B turns it off.

Thank you SO much for checking and also verifying the Firmware is good.  A simple typo and it confused me, not that it takes much at times.  Lol!

[DEANJIMMY]

1 hour ago, Fred_M said:

I can see that the framerate of Frogger and Asteroids is fluctuating between 49hz and 51hz while playing the game. Maybe current TVs can not support that kind of fluctuation??

Maybe some can not...

I tested 2 of my 3 TVs with Frogger and the issue only happened twice. Will check Asteroids...

I have not enough knowlede about how these TVs work but if the panel is 50Hz, no frames need to be added. If it is 60Hz, some frames need to be added. For 100/120 Hz many frames need to be added. If those frames with no ship but bullets get copied... and as TVs get sold worldwide, the target might be 60/120Hz. This is a no brainer for 60p input but for 50p it depends very much on the TV SW.

 

I guess we have to open a side topic, if we want to go on with this discussion?

 

Edit: When I bought my last TV nobody had the guts to show me a live soccer match on their "brilliant, excellent" TV in shops in Germany because I would have seen right away if it is crap. I wonder if I should show up with a 2600+ and PAL Frogger next time in a Media Markt or Saturn😅

Edited July 20 by DEANJIMMY

[MrChickenz]

19 minutes ago, DEANJIMMY said:

Maybe some can not...

I tested 2 of my 3 TVs with Frogger and the issue only happened twice. Will check Asteroids...

I have not enough knowlede about how these TVs work but if the panel is 50Hz, no frames need to be added. If it is 60Hz, some frames need to be added. For 100/120 Hz many frames need to be added. If those frames with no ship but bullets get copied... and as TVs get sold worldwide, the target might be 60/120Hz. This is a no brainer for 60p input but for 50p it depends very much on the TV SW.

 

I guess we have to open a side topic, if we want to go on with this discussion?

I’m probably way off base but, is it possible the HDMI cable could be the cause? I was just wondering if you need a High Speed HDMI cable for certain monitors or TVs. I would guess most HDMI cables today are high speed anyway.

Edited July 20 by MrChickenz

[DEANJIMMY]

1 minute ago, MrChickenz said:

I’m probably way off base but, is it possible the HDMI cable could be the cause? I was just wondering if you need a High Speed HDMI cable for certain monitors or TVs

No, I don't think so.

It is about software in TVs, how they handle a 50Hz input signal... and of course the input signal, which is the 2600+ output signal.

The Sky and DAZN receivers for soccer matches improved like the TVs did.

 

[JetmanUK]

8 hours ago, Dionoid said:

Yes, Tower of Rubble uses standard F8 bankswitching, so it already worked on the stock 2600+ firmware. The latest firmware also adds support for the PAL60 version of Tower of Rubble, so it displays in the correct colors.

This has made me think about the games I bought from here recently, that were PAL60. I should check if the colours are correct against running them on my light sixer. 

 

 

EDIT:

These are my recent purchases.

 

Deepstone Catacomb

Space Rocks

Dungeon Stalker

Boulderdash (Not currently compatible)

Lode Runner (Not currently compatible)

 

Anyone know if the first three are displayed with the correct colours at PAL60?

I'll try them out soon and post here if I spot a problem. 

Edited July 20 by JetmanUK

[raz0red]

2 hours ago, Fred_M said:

 

No reason to be sorry at all.

 

I was looking for another game which uses a lot of flickering "sprites", so Asteroids was a good choice. I started playing for about 10 minutes and several times a bunch of Asteroids were disappearing for about 1 to 2 seconds and even the ship disappeared for the same amount of time (no hyperspace!). When the ship disappeared I was still able to fire (the bullets were visible) and the asteroids themselves were still able to destroy me. (I did not move the ship when I could not see it)

 

So, no I did not have to wait. 🙂

 

Looking at the the effects I saw, it reminded me of a video about incorrect refresh rates. (https://youtu.be/2CeZ0xbtfDo?si=5ynP9eZEjoeKOTqr&t=116 ) Sometimes only the top part of a (bigger) asteroid was visible. I do not have enough knowledge about frame rates, but with the debug info on screen I can see that the framerate of Frogger and Asteroids is fluctuating between 49hz and 51hz while playing the game. Maybe current TVs can not support that kind of fluctuation??

 

Not to sound too repetitive, but this comes down to the television and 50hz compatibility (including enabled modes, etc.). 

 

Here is a video I just recorded of PAL Asteroids after playing for about 20 minutes (sorry about the periodic blurriness, my phone was having issues).

 

 

As discussed previously, I think the only solution that will satisfy all is to provide the option to disable 50hz, and the ability to enable/disable phosphor (independently).

 

Chris.

Edited July 20 by raz0red

[AtariYMás009]

36 minutes ago, raz0red said:

As discussed previously, I think the only solution that will satisfy all is to provide the option to disable 50hz, and the ability to enable/disable phosphor (independently).

I totally agree with you, precisely because of the ambiguity and different causes and nuances that the problem presents.

[MrChickenz]

41 minutes ago, raz0red said:

 

As discussed previously, I think the only solution that will satisfy all is to provide the option to disable 50hz, and the ability to enable/disable phosphor (independently).

Agree.

[+Fred_M]

56 minutes ago, raz0red said:

Not to sound too repetitive, but this comes down to the television and 50hz compatibility (including enabled modes, etc.). 

I know, I know and I agree with you until I experienced it myself. Yes, this is getting repetitive, so I am done trying to help finding the cause. I am going to enjoy the 2600+.

 

And again, I think your solution is a big help.