BIN file from a cart

[lbaeza]

Hi

I need to know how do I get a .BIN file from a cart?

I think I need some hadware (maybe a cable to connect the cart end

with the PC via COM1 or LPT1?) and some software too (capable of

getting the cart info provided by the cable, and save it as a .BIN file?).

Any hints are welcome.

Thanks!

 

PS: Previosly found a "cart reader" for the 7800 but I am looking

for something based on the 2600 architecture.

[GrizzLee]

One of the reasons the 7800 cart dumper was developed over the 2600 was the fact that the 7800 had an O/S. I believe it was easier to create a cart dumper on the 7800 for this reason. Also, 7800 games can be dumped and read into a RAM cart as well using the 7800. Eckhard Stolberg and John Seager can shed more light on this than I. I just provided test hardware, testing and an alternate O/S to help them get started. I can say that the 7800 cart dumper (al Trac-Mar) is a neat piece of work.

 

BTW: Do you have something that needs to be dumped? I think most bins, with the exception of a couple of known protos, are floating around on the net somewhere.

 

Good luck,

-Lee

[Thelen]

i did make a cartridge reader/ writer, it's not that difficult to make but you need some knowledge. building a cart reader over the internet is not easy. do you have something special that need's to be dumped ?

 

TheleN

[lbaeza]

No - I don't have something special to dump.

 

But I am interested in the process of dumping a cart - where can I find some information about it? I think AA should have a section describing the entire process, HW and SW involved, and schematics also. BTW, is the 7800 optional for dumping 2600 carts or is it a must?

 

Regards

[Cassidy Nolen]

It seems to me you would need:

 

A cartridge slot from a 2600

EPROM Writer

EPROM software

 

From that and the schematics, make the cartridge slot configure correctly to the port on your writer, and just move the cartridge contents to your computer. Simple as that.

 

I was under the impression that all 2600 stuff has been dumped, new and old. Of course, its hard to say all, but a good bit.

 

Cassidy

[lbaeza]

But all I have in mind is just a cart reader! I am not planning burning eproms or something like that - I just want to dump the content of a cart into a PC .BIN file. That's all. Is this interface hard to build? Is there any schematic somewhere with instructions on how to build it? What software do I need?

 

(BTW, thanks for replying, all of you!)

[Paul Slocum]

Cassidy: that's how I was thinking it would be done too. A cartridge reader basically does the same thing as an EPROM burner. If you were going to build a ROM dumper from scratch, it could probably be adapted from one of the many schematics to build an EPROM burner.

 

But reading the data can be more complicated with bankswitched ROMs. You'd have to read a specific range of data, then write into a location, then read again, etc.

 

There's not much demand for a dumper since all the ROMs have been dumped. I suspect that even the prototypes we haven't seen yet have been dumped since they are prone to bit rot.

 

-Paul

 

[ 03-26-2002: Message edited by: Smart Patrol ]

[DanBoris]

Building a cart dumper is not a trivial task. If you really want to do it, the easiest solution would probably be the one on this page:

http://quadrun.tripod.com/

 

Which is built from an Atari 7800 (which might be the one mentioned above). This will dump both 7800 and 2600 carts. It would be very hard to build a device like this out of a 2600 since it doesn't have a BIOS ROM or extra RAM to put the dumping code in.

 

You could build something from scratch but this is tricky. Probably the easiest way would be to buy an EPROM reader/programmer and make an adaptor that connected the EPROM socket on the programmer to the cart.

 

The 2600 cart dumper I built a long time ago was built on an PC ISA card with a peripherial interface chip.

 

Dan

[Paul Slocum]

Dan: That 7800 cart dumper is a really great concept. I'd never seen that before.

 

-Paul

[lbaeza]

OK It seems like the cart reader cannot be built without using an EPROM burner - I dont have an EPROM burner - I dont have a 7800 - Is it possible to build a 2600 cart reader without the help of a 7800 and an EPROM burner???

[Eckhard Stolberg]

It should be possible to build a 2600 cart reader without the help of an EPROM programmer and a 7800 console. But depending on how many different bankswitching types you want to support, it might get much more expensive and complicated than the 7800 modification. Therefore I don't think anyone has any simple instuctions for something like this available. There is a cartridge reader for the SMS, which is based on a special PC IO cart. This could probably be modified quite easily to read VCS games as well.

 

The reasons why we chose to build our 2600 cartridge reader from a 7800 are basically that I had a 7800 console and not too much experience with soldering at that time. Luckily the changes needed to do my PAL 7800 were really trivial, so that not too much soldering was involved. Also the 7800 already operates at the right speed to read 2600 cartridges, which made creating the basic software rather simple.

 

Other advantages are that it also works as a 7800 cartidge reader, and when you have read all your games, you can turn it into a nice development system for 2600 and 7800 games by just adding a RAM cart.

 

BTW, the "new" URL for this project is buerger.metropolis.de/estolberg/. The second version there isn't quite as new anymore though. We have done some improvements since (especially Graham Percy has created some really nice bankswitching 7800 RAM carts), but I need to find some time to catch up with the software and documentation before we can have another release. Since I always have more plans than time, you shouldn't expect anything in the near future.

 

 

Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg