Problem Using the Menu Generator

[Max-T]

Please don't flame me -- I know I'm a moron. I didn't want to bother Mr. Schell with this question, so hopefully some kind soul will help me out here. And this is a long message, so be warned.

 

I am so looking forward to my CC2 that I tried to create the proper ROM directory and menu, so that I could use my new toy as soon as I get it.

 

I have not had a problem with my Atari 2600 ROMs; the Menu Generator from Mr. Schell's web site recognized about 660 of 2,700 ROMs that I have. And the majority of files it did not recognize are duplicates, PAL versions, Multicarts, or homebrews that I don't really need anyway. However, I cannot seem to get the Menu Generator program to recognize any of my Atari 7800 ROMs.

 

I have 130 ROMs for the 7800 (again, some are PAL versions, protos and homebrews), which I downloaded all in one package from the Usenet. They all have the file extension ".a78". The Menu Gen would not recognize any of these. I then renamed them all to ".bin" files, like the 2600 ROMs which were recognized by the program. Still not a single one worked. Last, I tried several different names for each file. Reading the CCRomdb.txt file which accompanies the Menu Generator program, I saw that, for example, "Food Fight" is supposed to appear in the CC2's on-screen menu as "7800: Food Fight" and the file name on the memory card is supposed to be "FOOD78.BIN". So I tried " Food Fight.bin", "FoodFight.bin", "food78.bin" and "FOOD78.BIN". Still, the Menu Generator would not recognize this file. I did the same with Ace Of Aces for the 7800, and I could not get that file to work either.

 

So I guess my question is, in what format should the 7800 ROMs be named? I assume that the *.a78 files I have are the same as the games with a .bin extension. I know that the CC2 menu file can be edited manually, but I'd rather not have to type in the info for every 7800 game by hand. Can anyone clue me in?

 

Thanks to all for your time.

[Goochman]

IIRC, the CC2 utilities only work with .bin files and not .a78 - any .a78 files wont show up in the menu result set due to this.

[+kheller2]

You can convert the .a78 to .bin by removing the first 128 Bytes.

 

On a unix box, or Wintel box with Unix utils:

 

tail -c +129 xevious.a78 > xevious.bin

 

 

There are other ways of doing this as well. (+129 means start at the 129th character).

[+Mitch]

Or you can just download the 7800 bin files.

 

Mitch

[Max-T]

Thanks very much to Goochman, kheller2, and Mitch for your help. It never occurred to me that *.a78 files might be different than *.bin. I wonder what the extra 128 bytes is used for... Anyway, I've got things working now. Thanks for the advice!

[+Mitch]

Thanks very much to Goochman, kheller2, and Mitch for your help.  It never occurred to me that *.a78 files might be different than *.bin.  I wonder what the extra 128 bytes is used for...  Anyway, I've got things working now.  Thanks for the advice!

 

The A78 header is used by several 7800 emulators, among other things. The header includes info such as size, bankswitching type (if any) and controller usage.

 

Mitch