Re: [stella] 7800 programs -- potential problems?

Subject: Re: [stella] 7800 programs -- potential problems?
From: Eckhard Stolberg <Eckhard_Stolberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 18:37:12 +0100
>I was probably one of the people who said "don't do it".  I stand by that.
>Even for you, Kevin.  :P
>
>Seriously, now...why go to all that trouble?  Why not just replace the rom
>with a non-domestic chip?  I'm not as knowledgable about the 7800...is there
>any reason that this is difficult, other than acquiring a European chip?

It's not really an European chip. It just has a build in game instead of
the encryption check. Atari itself called it "O.S.W/ASTRDS". The build in
Asteroids even checks if it is running on a PAL or a NTSC machine and does
the setup accordingly.

The problem for homebrew games is that they would sell even less, if
you tell the potential customers that they have to do some soldering in
their console before they can play the new game. ;-) Kevin's solution is
meant to be installed in the carts and not in the console, right?

And for two signals driving the bus at the same time being dangerous:
2600 games decode only some of the address lines and therefore overlap
with parts of the internal RAM. (This is why the RAM gets turned off in
2600 mode) Accessing the RAM with a 2600 game installed would also lead
to two signals driving the bus, right? At least the Asteroids version of
the OS does write something to the RAM and reads it back as one of the
tests for 2600 games. If that doesn't kill the 7800, then maybe Kevin's
solution is save as well. On the other hand this might be the reason why
the colours of 2600 games fade away quickly when played on my PAL 7800s,
while 7800 games work fine. ;-)


Thanks, Eckhard Stolberg




--
Archives (includes files) at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archives/
Unsub & more at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/

Current Thread