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2600 Rom Comparisions and Dumps


Omegamatrix

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So because emulators and the Harmony Cart don't correctly emulate the multi-load games they should not be included and the hacked versions should be? Sounds to me like it should be the other way around. :ponder:

I don't think there is a "correct" way to emulate those games. Z26 and Stella are the most polular emulators for the vcs and they use a single file to represent a supercharger tape, which seems a reasonable choice to me. Moreover, anyone can obtain the single loads by splitting the multi-load files into 8448 bytes chuncks. I checked all the files and they match 100%, so they're actually duplicates.

 

"Party Mix" on the other hand is not a multi-load game, so the single file version is useless in emulators, since you can only access the first part.

 

Usually correct means that you handle it the way the original media did which in this case was in multiple parts. For instance if you wanted to play the ROMs on the Supercharger you would need them in separate files.

At this point I don't see any reason for changing the current format of having both the multi-part and single file versions. Get rid of true duplicates, sure, but don't remove the original versions.

 

Mitch

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Usually correct means that you handle it the way the original media did which in this case was in multiple parts. For instance if you wanted to play the ROMs on the Supercharger you would need them in separate files.

At this point I don't see any reason for changing the current format of having both the multi-part and single file versions. Get rid of true duplicates, sure, but don't remove the original versions.

My opinion is that they are true duplicates. There aren't original or hacked versions, they are just two different ways to store the exact same information. I'd keep the single file because most people will use the roms in emulation and that was the method chosen by the authors of emulators. In addition to that, having a game in a single file is more practical. Anyone can split the files in a few seconds with any OS using built-in commands or free tools available on the web. That's not more difficult than playing the resulting files in a real supercharger with PlayBin or converting them to audio files with makewav. (And I think that those tools could be easily modified to work directly with the multi-load roms)

Edited by alex_79
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Why does Tempest call the Suicide Mission prototype "Meteoroid", while everyone else calls it "Meteoroids"?
I searched for a long time for the correct title and found several different ones.

 

Finally I found the title "Meteoroids" on the Stella Gets a New Brain CD.

 

If these boys don't know their stuff, then I don't know it either.

 

Hence: Meteoroids

You say you only found the plural title on the Stella CD, but before that you found several different ones? What alternate titles did you find, and where? I would trust something from the original maker more than the CD, unless Arcadia/Starpath themselves were very inconsistent about whether the name should be singular or plural.

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Usually correct means that you handle it the way the original media did which in this case was in multiple parts. For instance if you wanted to play the ROMs on the Supercharger you would need them in separate files.

At this point I don't see any reason for changing the current format of having both the multi-part and single file versions. Get rid of true duplicates, sure, but don't remove the original versions.

My opinion is that they are true duplicates. There aren't original or hacked versions, they are just two different ways to store the exact same information. I'd keep the single file because most people will use the roms in emulation and that was the method chosen by the authors of emulators. In addition to that, having a game in a single file is more practical. Anyone can split the files in a few seconds with any OS using built-in commands or free tools available on the web. That's not more difficult than playing the resulting files in a real supercharger with PlayBin or converting them to audio files with makewav. (And I think that those tools could be easily modified to work directly with the multi-load roms)

 

I should point out that the CC2 correctly plays the multi-part ROMS just fine. It's also probably easier to combine the multi-part than to split the single file version, though most people probably would not have a clue how to do either. Much better to keep both versions.

 

Mitch

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Concerning the Starpath roms, I think we can all agree that a clean rom is better. The issue seems to be whether or not to have them split or combined. Since neither party agrees on this I suggest leaving both the split and joined roms in the collection. Then the cleaned-up versions can be substituted in where need be.

 

 

For my personal set of roms I will just keep the joined ones though. I try to keep it to the bare mininmum, with no duplicates (like most of the Sears titles).

 

 

@Alex: That is an nice bit of coding. I don't think you give yourself enough credit as a programmer.

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I recently researched weather or not it is possible to accurately read the data in bank switch hot spots, and have discovered that it is only possible to accurately read some hotspots. For example: in an F6 cart, it is possible to read $1FF6 in bank 0, $1FF7 in bank 1, $1FF8 in bank 2, and $1FF9 in bank 3. The other hot spots will be filled with hot spot data from other banks.

 

Say for example you have an F6 cart with the following data in the hot spots:

 

bank 0    38 26 F3 DC
bank 1    46 19 EC AB
bank 2    98 2B A7 3D
bank 4    74 89 1F 55

 

When you dump the cart, the hot spots in all four banks will contain:

 

38 19 A7 55 

 

Just thought I'd share that with you guys :)

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Shall I replace the Starpath ROMs in the collection with the cleaned up versions mentioned in post #870, or doesn't it really matter?

The clean versions are easier to compare, but there is not difference in the actual game code. The utility used to convert the audio to a binary file doesn't initialize the filler data and doesn't write the checksums because they're not needed by emulators. Those areas are just filled with garbage data that only depends on the computer used to convert the audio.

 

Eckard Stolberg explained it here

 

The files which have wrong checksums and garbage filler data in V5 collection are:

Sweat! - The Decathlon Game (1 of 4) (Paddle) (1983) (Starpath Corporation, Scott Nelson) (13) (Prototype) ~.bin

Sweat! - The Decathlon Game (2 of 4) (Paddle) (1983) (Starpath Corporation, Scott Nelson) (13) (Prototype).bin

Suicide Mission (Meteoroids) (1982) (Arcadia Corporation, Steve Hales, Stephen Harland Landrum) (4) (AR-4102) (Prototype).bin

Phaser Patrol (1982) (Arcadia Corporation, Dennis Caswell) (1) (AR-4000, AR-4100) (Prototype).bin

Phaser Patrol (1982) (Arcadia Corporation, Dennis Caswell) (1) (AR-4000, AR-4100) (Prototype) [a].bin

Meteoroids (Suicide Mission Beta) (1982) (Arcadia Corporation, Steve Hales, Stephen Harland Landrum) (4) (AR-4102) (Prototype).bin

Labyrinth (Escape from the Mindmaster Beta) (1982) (5) (AR-4200) (Arcadia Corporation, Dennis Caswell).bin

Labyrinth (Escape from the Mindmaster Beta) (1982) (5) (AR-4200) (Arcadia Corporation, Dennis Caswell) [a3].bin

Labyrinth (Escape from the Mindmaster Beta) (1982) (5) (AR-4200) (Arcadia Corporation, Dennis Caswell) [a2].bin

Labyrinth (Escape from the Mindmaster Beta) (1982) (5) (AR-4200) (Arcadia Corporation, Dennis Caswell) [a1].bin

Killer Satellites (1983) (Starpath Corporation, Kevin Norman) (7) (AR-4103) (Prototype).bin

Fireball (Frantic) (Paddle) (1982) (Arcadia Corporation, Scott Nelson) (3) (AR-4300) (Prototype).bin

Excalibur Version 39 (Dragonstomper Beta) (1982) (Arcadia Corporation, Stephen Harland Landrum) (6) (AR-4400) (Prototype).bin

Excalibur Version 36 (Dragonstomper Beta) (1982) (Arcadia Corporation, Stephen Harland Landrum) (6) (AR-4400) (Prototype).bin

Excalibur (Dragonstomper Beta) (1982) (Arcadia Corporation, Stephen Harland Landrum) (6) (AR-4400) (Prototype).bin

Excalibur (Dragonstomper Beta) (1982) (Arcadia Corporation, Stephen Harland Landrum) (6) (AR-4400) (Prototype) [a].bin

 

 

If you want to keep both the split and joined files for multiload games (they match 100% and have correct checksums and cleared filler data), then the duplicates which can be removed are:

 

- Labyrinth (Escape from the Mindmaster Beta) (1982) (5) (AR-4200) (Arcadia Corporation, Dennis Caswell) [a2].bin

(same as "Labyrinth (Escape from the Mindmaster Beta) (1982) (5) (AR-4200) (Arcadia Corporation, Dennis Caswell) [a1].bin")

 

- Labyrinth (Escape from the Mindmaster Beta) (1982) (5) (AR-4200) (Arcadia Corporation, Dennis Caswell) [a3].bin

(same as "Labyrinth (Escape from the Mindmaster Beta) (1982) (5) (AR-4200) (Arcadia Corporation, Dennis Caswell).bin")

 

- Party Mix - Bop a Buggy, Tug of War, Wizard's Keep, Down on the Line, Handcar (Paddle) (1983) (Starpath Corporation, Dennis Caswell) (10) (AR-4302) (PAL).bin (useless both in emulators and in flash carts as Party mix is not a multi-load game and it matches 100% with the split files)

 

- Party Mix - Bop a Buggy, Tug of War, Wizard's Keep, Down on the Line, Handcar (Paddle) (1983) (Starpath Corporation, Dennis Caswell) (10) (AR-4302) ~.bin (same here)

 

- Sweat! - The Decathlon Game (2 of 4) (Paddle) (1983) (Starpath Corporation, Scott Nelson) (13) (Prototype).bin

(same as "Sweat! - The Decathlon Game (1 of 4) (Paddle) (1983) (Starpath Corporation, Scott Nelson) (13) (Prototype) ~.bin")

 

- Sweat! - The Decathlon Game (Paddle) (1983) (Starpath Corporation, Scott Nelson) (13) (Prototype).bin

(this correspont to "Sweat! - The Decathlon Game (3 of 4) (Paddle) (1983) (Starpath Corporation, Scott Nelson) (13) (Prototype).bin" and "Sweat! - The Decathlon Game (4 of 4) (Paddle) (1983) (Starpath Corporation, Scott Nelson) (13) (Prototype).bin" joined together. Both parts have the MULTILOAD INDEX NUMBER set to 0, so they only work as single loads).

 

In the file "supercharger_info.txt" (it's in the zip in post 868) there's detailed info about all the supercharger files in the collection, including wrong checksums (marked by an exclamation mark followed by the correct value between brackets) and duplicates. The file is generated by the "sc_info" utility in the same post.

Edited by alex_79
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Ok, what I would like to know now, is this:

 

Shall I replace the Starpath ROMs in the collection with the cleaned up versions mentioned in post #870, or doesn't it really matter?

 

8)

I vote yes, you should replace the Starpath roms. My reasons are that you do have unwanted duplicates in there. I define unwanted as they differ only in the areas that aren't game code.

 

 

I would do exactly as Alex has said in his previous post, and leave both the split and joined files in the collection.

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I recently researched weather or not it is possible to accurately read the data in bank switch hot spots, and have discovered that it is only possible to accurately read some hotspots. For example: in an F6 cart, it is possible to read $1FF6 in bank 0, $1FF7 in bank 1, $1FF8 in bank 2, and $1FF9 in bank 3. The other hot spots will be filled with hot spot data from other banks.

 

Say for example you have an F6 cart with the following data in the hot spots:

 

bank 0    38 26 F3 DC
bank 1    46 19 EC AB
bank 2    98 2B A7 3D
bank 4    74 89 1F 55

 

When you dump the cart, the hot spots in all four banks will contain:

 

38 19 A7 55 

 

Just thought I'd share that with you guys :)

 

Wickey, I never knew that this would happen when you dumped a game. I wonder if the 7800 dumper does the same? The bigger question is do all 2600's read the hotspots the same way your dumper does? If so then this leads to some great possibilites!

 

Say for $F8 bankswitching why not do CMP $FFF8 or BIT $FFF8 in bank 1, and use the byte at the hotspot to make a decision?

 

 

 

;bank 0 - origin arbitrarily chosen as $1000, and bank 1 origin arbitrarily chosen as $F000


;currently somewhere in bank 1...say $F2F0

LF2F0  lda  titleScreenFlag ; when #$80 do title screen, it is #$00 otherwise...
LF2F2  cmp  $FFF8           ; trigger a bankswitch to bank 0, and check harcoded value there

;bankswitch occurs to bank 0, 4 cycles have passed, and zero flag set of cleared...
L12F6  bne   .doGameScreen
;if branch not taken, code to do title screen starts here...



;values at hotspots in bank 0
L1FF8  $80
L1FF9  doesn't matter (no effect)


 

Over of course you could simply load the value there and use it. This is a great finding and needs testing on actual hardware, and lots of different Atari's! If you could be quaranteed to read these hotspots it means great things!! :cool:

 

 

 

I did a similar project over Christmas. See the post here:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/103737-2600-rom-comparisions-and-dumps/page__view__findpost__p__1931735

 

I found that yes, you can read the hotspot of the bank you were in. Makes sense, but I never thought of the dumping consequences. For $F8 bankswitching, you could have a data table including $FFF8 in bank 0. A subroutine would be no good as a RTS at $FFF8 in bank 0 would trigger a bankswitch! And likewise you can use $FFF9 in bank 1 for data.

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Wickey, I never knew that this would happen when you dumped a game. I wonder if the 7800 dumper does the same?

 

 

I believe the 7800 dumper fills hotspots with zero.

 

 

 

The bigger question is do all 2600's read the hotspots the same way your dumper does? If so then this leads to some great possibilites!

 

Say for $F8 bankswitching why not do CMP $FFF8 or BIT $FFF8 in bank 1, and use the byte at the hotspot to make a decision?

 

 

 

;bank 0 - origin arbitrarily chosen as $1000, and bank 1 origin arbitrarily chosen as $F000


;currently somewhere in bank 1...say $F2F0

LF2F0  lda  titleScreenFlag ; when #$80 do title screen, it is #$00 otherwise...
LF2F2  cmp  $FFF8           ; trigger a bankswitch to bank 0, and check harcoded value there

;bankswitch occurs to bank 0, 4 cycles have passed, and zero flag set of cleared...
L12F6  bne   .doGameScreen
;if branch not taken, code to do title screen starts here...



;values at hotspots in bank 0
L1FF8  $80
L1FF9  doesn't matter (no effect)


 

Over of course you could simply load the value there and use it. This is a great finding and needs testing on actual hardware, and lots of different Atari's! If you could be quaranteed to read these hotspots it means great things!! :cool:

 

 

Looks like that would be possible, but jumping from bank to bank that way would get messy ;) It should behave this way on any 2600, though I have only tried it on one of mine.

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I believe the 7800 dumper fills hotspots with zero.

The 7800 can read the hotspots. You just need to use a newer version of Eckhard's software.

 

Looks like that would be possible, but jumping from bank to bank that way would get messy ;)

I like it because it makes use on otherwise unused space. :) The option of using NOP $1FF8 to preserve all flags is still there too.

 

 

It should behave this way on any 2600, though I have only tried it on one of mine.

I'm definitely going to experiment on some more 2600's when I can.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I have a problem with a couple of ROM files. This one from Rom Hunter's v5 collection:

Targ (Universal Chaos Beta) (1989) (Telegames) (7062 A305) (Prototype).bin

 

is byte-for-byte identical to this one from Impaler_26's Hacks and Homebrews v1.2 collection:

Targ (Universal Chaos Hack) (2002) (Scott Stilphen).bin

 

So, did Scott claim to have made a hack that is really an unaltered dump? Where did the prototype dump come from? If it came from Scott, it becomes possible that the opposite is the case -- he made a hack, then claimed it's a prototype.

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I have a problem with a couple of ROM files. This one from Rom Hunter's v5 collection:

Targ (Universal Chaos Beta) (1989) (Telegames) (7062 A305) (Prototype).bin

 

is byte-for-byte identical to this one from Impaler_26's Hacks and Homebrews v1.2 collection:

Targ (Universal Chaos Hack) (2002) (Scott Stilphen).bin

 

So, did Scott claim to have made a hack that is really an unaltered dump? Where did the prototype dump come from? If it came from Scott, it becomes possible that the opposite is the case -- he made a hack, then claimed it's a prototype.

 

I'm pretty sure it's a prototype and that the hack info is wrong.

 

Mitch

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No, it's not.

 

I asked Scott about this and he says it's his hack only and not a genuine Telegames beta.

 

Therefore, I will remove the so called Telegames beta from my V6 collection.

 

The CBS Targ proto is a different ROM, though.

 

8)

Edited by Rom Hunter
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  • 2 weeks later...

Recent talks of Demon Attack have brought up the Imagic roms that have the Activision logo on their screen. These were thought to be either the blue label, late release carts from Activision, or from the playstation Activision Anthology. A third possibilty was that they could have been done by some unknown hacker.

 

 

Buzbard has helped me out, and I looked at the actual roms on the playstation release. They 100% match the roms out there (with Activision on the screen) for Demon Attack, Moonsweeper, and Atlantis.

 

 

Note that there are 2 roms out there for "Activision" Atlantis. The playstation Anthology matches the rom with the original Atlantis fonts. I don't know where the other rom marked "Atlantis (1988) (Activision) (AIX-010) [different font].bin" in Rom's collection came from.

 

 

It is my belief that none of the black boxed, blue label Activison re-releases have the Activision logo on the game screen. I think they all have Imagic. I know I checked a Moonsweeper myself, and it had an Imagic logo. It seems a few other people have checked too. Relevant thread:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/100757-various-questions-i-need-solved/

 

 

 

As a final note, Activision actually converted the Demon Attack rom that ends after wave 83 or 84 instead of the fixed version.

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Before I remove the Activision logo ROMs, I would like to know if the blue label Atlantis and Demon Attack have the Imagic logo too.

 

8)

Well, maybe PM Christophero Sly. I think he might have all three titles as noted in the thread I linked. Also in that thread I linked Deteacher says he's got 2 blue Atlantis's, and they both had Imagic logos on the game screen.

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Also, the PS Activision Anthology was released in 2002, while the ROMs seem to be from 1998.

 

Here is a .zip containing the ROMs from 16-02-1998 to 18-02-1998, all at 1:00.

 

1998 ROMs.zip

 

I notice a lot of Activision logo input in these.

 

Where exactly did these ROMs come from and are they truly old era (1977 - 1992)?

 

BTW: of course the 4K versions are not included in my V6 collection anymore, but I added them here anyway.

 

8)

Edited by Rom Hunter
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And of course we still don't know 100% certain where the different font ROM comes from.

Well, it's in your collection, so where did you get it from? What's the source?

 

And with Demon Attack, did you PM Christophero? It really sounds to me like he has all 3 titles.

 

 

Also, the PS Activision Anthology was released in 2002, while the ROMs seem to be from 1998.

 

There was more than one release by Activision:

http://www.mobygames.com/game-group/activision-collections

 

 

I looked at the ps1 disc "A Collection of Activision Classic Games for the Atari 2600". On that site it says the release date was 23 Sep 1998, which is too late as these dumps were done on 2/19/1998. It has an Atlantis on it, but no Demon Attack or Moonsweeper. The earlier computer discs from '95 also have Atlantis, but no Demon Attack or Moonsweeper.

 

 

But here's some things to ponder:

 

1) There were lots of demo discs for released for the playstation. I used to get a monthly demo disc with upcoming games for the PS1 from OPM (Official Playstation Magazine). Each disc had multiple games, and maybe one disc had a preview of the Activsion complimation? Demon Attack and Moonsweeper could have been on that disc and cut from the final version for whatever reason. Also there are more demo discs then the OPM ones.

 

2) Demon Attack and Moonsweeper might actually be on the released verision, and not listed on the back of the box. I'm thinking Easter egg here. I did check Game FAQ's, but I found no mention of these games as unlockables. None the less maybe it's an egg not widely known.

 

3) These games could be on either the released or demo version, and are simply unreachable by normal playing. However they can be found by reading the disc. I remember playing a Resident Evil 2 demo disc many moons ago. There was a lot more on that disc then Capcom showed! Using a gameshark, you could see a whole bunch of areas of the game not quite finished. Capcom simply stopped you from getting to these areas by blocking them off, but they were still on the disc.

 

 

Anyhow just throwing some ideas out there. I still say that checking if the Activison logo is on the game screen for the blue labels is your best bet. If it's not, then it was done for a collection by Activision or some unknown hacker. Try asking Christophero and see what he says.

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