Experimental 2600+ Firmware and Dumper

[Glorkbot]

43 minutes ago, John Stamos Mullet said:

hdmi-cec is not the handshake. That's just the control standard so that you can allow the devices to talk to one another to allow control of power, audio volume. etc.

 

The handshake is a security feature built in since HDMI 1.2, and is to enable copy protection, you cannot turn it off as a user. It would need to be turned off in the device firmware.

Thanks for the correction. Nonetheless, my point remains: turning off hdmi-cec fixes tons of weirdness when TVs and consoles have difficulty communicating together.

[John Stamos Mullet]

44 minutes ago, Glorkbot said:

Thanks for the correction. Nonetheless, my point remains: turning off hdmi-cec fixes tons of weirdness when TVs and consoles have difficulty communicating together.

It does, this is correct. It was mostly implemented for "ease of use" for TV/DVD/Blu-ray remotes on home theater systems, but doesn't play nicely with gaming consoles.

[John Stamos Mullet]

1 hour ago, DEANJIMMY said:

👍

Thanks for your comment!

 

He thinks in different ways and installs other stuff on such kind of hardware. Maybe he thought someone wants to run Coleco emulation via retroarch on it, whatever and the the slot would not fit. The SNES mini hardware was used by many to run a Playstation emulation as it has got more performance than the PS Classic.

 

Anyway, life is too short to hold some sort of parade because of such a misleading comment and it is not nice to insult him.

 

PS:

I am not a native speaker and all I wrote could be misleading too, but I don't care😉

 

Back to topic!

This site is owned by Atari. This sub forum is dedicated to discussing the 2600+ and Atari’s support and plans for it.

 

Atari has no plans to make this console compatible with Colecovision carts. and to discuss such things here, regardless of how technically possible it might be is rude and unnecessary. 

but to add on top of that he was suggesting that it is possible through a “universal cart adapter” that neither exists, nor is even feasible is not only counter productive to the point of this particular thread/discussion, but also factually incorrect.

 

i don’t care about his thought process. 

[Ben from Plaion]

19 hours ago, Philsan said:

Are they going to be supported someday?

I would like to hope so. I've heard its technically possible. 

[Spanner]

On 2/29/2024 at 5:17 PM, Laladien said:

I think they mean the Coleco games created for the Atari 2600 (white casing, black label - Zaxxon, Donkey Kong, Smurfs, DK jr, Carnival, etc)

Oh sorry, didn't know Coleco made games for the 2600, I Have Coleco games but only for my Colecovison so they don't work on the 2600, me bad... .

Edited March 1 by Spanner

[nopaybob]

When is there going to be an official firmware update?

[Spanner]

2 hours ago, John Stamos Mullet said:

This site is owned by Atari. This sub forum is dedicated to discussing the 2600+ and Atari’s support and plans for it.

 

Atari has no plans to make this console compatible with Colecovision carts. and to discuss such things here, regardless of how technically possible it might be is rude and unnecessary. 

but to add on top of that he was suggesting that it is possible through a “universal cart adapter” that neither exists, nor is even feasible is not only counter productive to the point of this particular thread/discussion, but also factually incorrect.

 

i don’t care about his thought process. 

I said a `adapter` because I had a Atari2600 Cartridge Adapter on my Colecovison so it could play 2600 games, and I thought they might of made one the other way around too.

Edited March 1 by Spanner

[Albert]

3 minutes ago, nopaybob said:

When is there going to be an official firmware update?

I just asked the same question yesterday.

 

..Al

[Spanner]

4 minutes ago, Albert said:

I just asked the same question yesterday.

 

..Al

When its ready its ready...

[+Defender_2600]

2 hours ago, Spanner said:

I said a `adapter` because I had a Atari2600 Cartridge Adapter on my Colecovison so it could play 2600 games, and I thought they might of made one the other way around too.

 

5 hours ago, John Stamos Mullet said:

 

Atari has no plans to make this console compatible with Colecovision 

 

 

 

[Spanner]

9 minutes ago, Defender_2600 said:

 

 

 

cool..  mine already can play MSX/Colecovision games via rom file anyway so its already is compatible using Retroarch ...

[John Stamos Mullet]

33 minutes ago, nopaybob said:

When is there going to be an official firmware update?

Probably not until they've made significant progress on all the varied dumper issues, and performance issues that they are still working on. There's quite a few left to tackle, and they don't exactly have a huge crew working on it. Lots of it is volunteer work right here in the forum.

[John Stamos Mullet]

33 minutes ago, Spanner said:

I said a `adapter` because I had a Atari2600 Cartridge Adapter on my Colecovison so it could play 2600 games, and I thought they might of made one the other way around too.

that "adapter" is an entire 2600 console basically only using the Colecovision power supply and video out. It doesn't use any of the actual processing hardware of the Colecovision.

 

It's also identical to the Coleco Gemini, minus the RF out section. It's not really an "adapter". It's a whole separate console in reality.

[MikeM_]

38 minutes ago, Spanner said:

I said a `adapter` because I had a Atari2600 Cartridge Adapter on my Colecovison so it could play 2600 games, and I thought they might of made one the other way around too.

This has gotten way off topic. 
 

the Colecovision is not relevant to this topic, and the original post I made was referring to 2600 games made by Coleco working with the 2600+. 
 

please drop the Colecovision from this thread. If anyone would like to discuss 2600 adapters on other consoles, then please open a new topic in the main 2600 forum. 

[Goochman]

free advice for anyone managing the firmware release - whenever one of the best VP of Product Mgmt I worked with was asked a similar question his answer was always:

"Not soon enough"

 

So - for everyone that wants to ask when it will be production you can self answer the question now.

Edited March 2 by Goochman

[Pac-Man Senior]

I deleted one issue in the unofficial firmware testing list. Frogger: I noticed that the line the frog is standing on is also flickering and a bit graphically changing on original hardware. I didn't remember but I saw it on my old 4-switch-woody (PAL) with my PAL Frogger Cart.

[shane857]

I have gone back to using original hardware for 2600 for now. Using the 2600+ for problematic NTSC games that do not work on the original console and 7800 games. Keep up the good work, and hopefully most issues will be resolved. 👍

[raz0red]

6 minutes ago, shane857 said:

I have gone back to using original hardware for 2600 for now. Using the 2600+ for problematic NTSC games that do not work on the original console and 7800 games. Keep up the good work, and hopefully most issues will be resolved. 👍

What were your problematic 7800 NTSC games or were they all 2600?

 

Thanks,

Chris.

Edited March 3 by raz0red

[shane857]

2 minutes ago, raz0red said:

What were your problematic 7800 NTSC games?

 

Thanks,

Chris.

No problematic NTSC games for the 7800. Just the PAL 7800 version of Crossbow that has sound issues. The sound lags quite badly.

No issues with NTSC carts on the 2600+. I just prefer playing my 2600 carts on my Original PAL sixer. 

[raz0red]

2 minutes ago, shane857 said:

No problematic NTSC games for the 7800. Just the PAL 7800 version of Crossbow that has sound issues. The sound lags quite badly.

No issues with NTSC carts on the 2600+. I just prefer playing my 2600 carts on my Original PAL sixer. 

Yeah, the sound issues are because it isn’t dumping correctly. It also had graphical issues. Hopefully that gets resolved at some point.

 

Thanks,

Chris.

[MikeM_]

57 minutes ago, raz0red said:

Yeah, the sound issues are because it isn’t dumping correctly. It also had graphical issues. Hopefully that gets resolved at some point.

 

Thanks,

Chris.

Would it be safe to say that a majority of the remaining issues for NTSC carts are dumper related, not emulator? 

[John Stamos Mullet]

4 minutes ago, MikeM_ said:

Would it be safe to say that a majority of the remaining issues for NTSC carts are dumper related, not emulator? 

Considering they all work with proper roms in other ports of those emulators, that is pretty likely.

 

but it is possible some games won’t even be compatible with the dumper. The way the carts are built/coded in some cases, like specialty chips like ARM and DPC, makes it hard for the dumper to read them all. 

[raz0red]

5 minutes ago, MikeM_ said:

Would it be safe to say that a majority of the remaining issues for NTSC carts are dumper related, not emulator? 

Yes, I am not aware of any issues that are emulator-related at this time other than:

 

• Control selection issues (Paddles vs. Joysticks, etc.).
• Some PAL carts may be running as NTSC (These are easy to resolve if they are reported).

 

Thanks,

Chris.

[MrChickenz]

15 minutes ago, John Stamos Mullet said:

Considering they all work with proper roms in other ports of those emulators, that is pretty likely.

 

but it is possible some games won’t even be compatible with the dumper. The way the carts are built/coded in some cases, like specialty chips like ARM and DPC, makes it hard for the dumper to read them all. 

They way I see it, most 2600 games are working, 7800 games are working, a lot of homebrews are working!

Any homebrews working I consider a big plus! Paddle games work! I’m satisfied! If they ever produce a new model it most likely will expand beyond what we have now!  (DARTH VADER)
 

What modern HDMI unit do we have now that works well with paddles, plays original cartridges 2600/7800 and homebrews 

Edited March 3 by MrChickenz

[DEANJIMMY]

7 hours ago, raz0red said:

Yes, I am not aware of any issues that are emulator-related at this time other than:

 

• Control selection issues (Paddles vs. Joysticks, etc.).
• Some PAL carts may be running as NTSC (These are easy to resolve if they are reported).

 

Thanks,

Chris.

I agree to that very much.

 

Some games do not run fine or at all due to the dumper. Sometimes related to the personal cart. E.g. most Medieval Mayham do not dump with latest dumper,  mine does. I am unlucky with Juno first PAL60 from day one but my Crossbow 7800 dumps fine which gives ugly graphics and sound to others.

 

Crazy Brix 7800 (PAL) is an example for failing control selection. Joystick does not work anymore and paddles not supported yet, so autodetection fails.