Experimental 2600+ Firmware

[John Stamos Mullet]

3 hours ago, Gamma Ray said:

Wake me when the paddle support is fixed.

This is helpful. 😏

[John Stamos Mullet]

I can report that H.E.R.O. performance is notably better, but still has the occasional stutter/tic when there's a lot going on on screen (multiple enemies + Miner). Not nearly as frequent as before and less noticeable. But in general is definitely better.

Edited February 18 by John Stamos Mullet

[+sramirez2008]

Yep, paddles in the left port work with Tac Scan.

 

[chad5200]

Can someone with a ticking Pitfall test their game with this update?  Wondering if the performance boost fixed that. 

[John Stamos Mullet]

Also - California Games is flawless now.

[AtariYMás009]

I have tested all my games (PAL 50) and as far as the image is concerned everything is more than correct, I do not notice jerks in the image even with fast games like yars revenge; However @raz0red, I have noticed a problem that was also present in revision 1 of build 1.1, and that is that games that contain music at the beginning (in my case E.t., raider of the lost ark and q*bert,) do not show that music correctly, in all cases they omit the first notes.

Edited February 18 by AtariYMás009

[raz0red]

12 minutes ago, AtariYMás009 said:

I have noticed a problem that was also present in revision 1 of build 1.1, and that is that games that contain music at the beginning (in my case E.t., raider of the lost ark and q*bert,) do not show that music correctly, in all cases they omit the first notes.

Just for clarification, they omit the initial notes after launch, but then play correctly after that?

 

Thanks a lot,

Chris.

 

[Dionoid]

14 minutes ago, AtariYMás009 said:

...games that contain music at the beginning (in my case E.t., raider of the lost ark and q*bert,) do not show that music correctly, in all cases they omit the first notes.

I think this is caused by the Stella emulator, because I get that same behavior (i.e. sometimes first music notes are missing) when running Stella on my PC. Maybe this is even correct emulation of a 2600?

[John Stamos Mullet]

16 minutes ago, raz0red said:

Just for clarification, they omit the initial notes after launch, but then play correctly after that?

 

Thanks a lot,

Chris.

 

I noticed this as well with California Games.

[+Atari_Warlord]

I took 4 games off my problem list with this update (All NTSC):

 

1. Fall Down now works for 2 players

2. Journey Escape music plays correctly while the screen is busy

3. The Music Machine plays music correctly now

4. Time Pilot works

 

I put in Juno First and Medieval Mayhem and they played fine also.

[AtariYMás009]

49 minutes ago, raz0red said:

Just for clarification, they omit the initial notes after launch, but then play correctly after that?

 

Thanks a lot,

Chris.

 

yes, the games worked correctly after that

[AtariYMás009]

50 minutes ago, Dionoid said:

I think this is caused by the Stella emulator, because I get that same behavior (i.e. sometimes first music notes are missing) when running Stella on my PC. Maybe this is even correct emulation of a 2600?

I think not, because it didn't happened when the games were displayed at 60Hz

[DEANJIMMY]

12 minutes ago, Atari_Warlord said:

I took 4 games off my problem list with this update (All NTSC):

 

1. Fall Down now works for 2 players

2. Journey Escape music plays correctly while the screen is busy

3. The Music Machine plays music correctly now

4. Time Pilot works

 

I put in Juno First and Medieval Mayhem and they played fine also.

I can confirm Time Pilot 2600 NTSC finaly works (white cart)🤗

 

Fall Down PAL works now with 2 players🤙

 

And... Omicron works twinstick now🕹🕹

 

Conquest of Mars still fails to start, maybe not dumped correctly, which size should it be?

 

And Tac Scan NTSC works with paddle in port one (left)!

[Dionoid]

16 minutes ago, AtariYMás009 said:

I think not, because it didn't happened when the games were displayed at 60Hz

Ah, ok. Maybe the first notes get lost while switching from 60Hz to 50Hz?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

4 hours ago, chad5200 said:

For Tac-Scan, the old manual says to use paddles in the Right port.  The classic 2600 only works with paddles in the the Right port.

 

However, this firmware build that @raz0red has shared needs the paddles to be in the Left port.

 

Stella 6.7 even mentions Left port by default:

 

I suppose I would prefer it if this firmware matched the old manual (or better yet if both Left and Right port worked) but I guess that is debatable.  It is kind of nice to just keep the paddles plugged into the Left port if you are in a "paddle game playing mood" where you are playing a bunch of paddles games.

Oh, this firmware finally uses Stella's build in properties? Great! Then the ports and paddles are swapped.

 

BTW: Is there another thread where this firmware was/is discussed?

Edited February 18 by Thomas Jentzsch

[DEANJIMMY]

3 hours ago, John Stamos Mullet said:

I can report that H.E.R.O. performance is notably better, but still has the occasional stutter/tic when there's a lot going on on screen (multiple enemies + Miner). Not nearly as frequent as before and less noticeable. But in general is definitely better.

The PAL version of HERO runs with not stutter (at least the first 8 levels, didn't play far) and Galaga 7800 PAL runs with no stutter, if you move the ship left/right over full distance.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

37 minutes ago, DEANJIMMY said:

I can confirm Time Pilot 2600 NTSC finaly works (white cart)🤗

 

Not for me. Even with repeated cleaning the game loads up with corrupted text at the top. When I start the game I get a solid white playfield and can hear that I'm moving the plane around, and hear my shots. But NOTHING registers as getting hit and I never seem to hit anything either. 

 

So at least for me... Time Pilot is still a no go with this release.

 

Wait! NM... this release is newer than what I was presented with the other day. This one in the posts does work for Time Pilot without issue. Now to check the game I was initially testing on the other FW.

 

[Ben from Plaion]

58 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Oh, this firmware finally uses Stella's build in properties? Great! Then the ports and paddles are swapped.

 

BTW: Is there another thread where this firmware was/is discussed?

No, new thread for new build.

[MrChickenz]

15 hours ago, John Stamos Mullet said:

So this is where everyone went!

[Plumbob]

Here is some debug info for Hero2, NTSC, with 1.1x-r1 firmware installed:

 

 

My Hero 2 cartridge works just fine on my 7800:

 

Please let me know if there is anything else I can do to help get this game working. 
 

I appreciate all the hard work and thanks for this latest update, I’ll spend the rest of the day enjoying testing/playing through all my games!  

[shane857]

Absolutely no problems for me so far testing mainly PAL games. Great to have 50hz back and correct colour palette for PAL 7800 games so far...👍

[TheRingBearer]

Medieval Mayhem NTSC

 

Centipede Trak-Ball Series NTSC

 

Millipede Trak-Ball Series NTSC

 

[TheRingBearer]

Alpha Beam with Ernie NTSC

 

[DEANJIMMY]

14 hours ago, KainXavier said:

Here's Aardvark after it freezes:

 

 

With Juno First, I had a hard time even getting it to boot, but here's a photo of the debug text when it did:

 

 

As for Maze Craze, it's gone back to failing to display 9 / 10 times.  I'm guessing my TV just doesn't support 720p at 50hz.  I doubt it'll help but here's a photo of when it did run:

 

 

Lastly, I can't get Zippy the Porcupine to display at all but that was the case even with the Rev 2 beta.

 

I hope that helps!

 

P.S.: Dungeon II and T:ME Salvo seemed to work just fine.  (I already had them on-hand.)

 

Edit: Just to be clear, the version of Maze Craze I'm running is the one included in the NTSC release of the 10 Games In 1 cartridge.

Did your Juno First ever work on the 2600+?

 

Mine worked only once when I moved the cart in the slot long time ago.

The debug load shows that only the half of the rom is dumped as in your case.

[infinite.pies]

I can use my iPad as a screen now. Yay!

 

There's still some flicker with sprites (a bit more than I get when using the TV), but it's usable and the sprites aren't disappearing. The slight extra flickering is probably not due to any issue with the 2600+ itself, more to do with the way the HDMI video output is being converted to a USB-C input for the iPad, so I wouldn't expect this to be addressed in any way, it's just a great little bonus to be able to plug into my iPad for a quick gaming session occasionally.

 

I'm very happy with this!