19 replies to this topic

[Bootay]

Hello,

I have had my Harmony cart for a while now and I love it.

I have every rom working except for a few and I would like to here from the experts why they aren't working or if there is an alternate dump I need etc.

Burger Time (Locks up as soon as rom is loaded)
Double Dragon (Screen flips like it's PAL)
Kool-Aid Man (Locks up as soon as rom is loaded)
Survival Island (I think I read that this is a SuperCharger game and won't work)
Sweat! - The Decathalon Game (I get no response from the controller. It keeps saying pick another event on the screen)
F-14 Tomcat (Screen flips like it's PAL)

That's it. Every other rom works fine for me. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

[Bootay]

Bootay, on Wed Aug 3, 2011 10:04 PM, said:

Hello,

I have had my Harmony cart for a while now and I love it.

I have every rom working except for a few and I would like to here from the experts why they aren't working or if there is an alternate dump I need etc.

Burger Time (Locks up as soon as rom is loaded)
Double Dragon (Screen flips like it's PAL)
Kool-Aid Man (Locks up as soon as rom is loaded)
Survival Island (I think I read that this is a SuperCharger game and won't work)
Sweat! - The Decathalon Game (I get no response from the controller. It keeps saying pick another event on the screen)
F-14 Tomcat (Screen flips like it's PAL)

That's it. Every other rom works fine for me. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Actually I found new dumps of Double Dragon and f-14 Tomcat that work. No luck on the rest.

[thegoldenband]

You might try the Kool-Aid Man ROM that Nukey Shay hacked for Supercharger (and Stella) compatibility here. Probably you just have a bad ROM, though. Also, Supercharger games should work on the Harmony.

[batari]

Bootay, on Wed Aug 3, 2011 10:04 PM, said:

All of those games you listed should work. Could be bad dumps. Some of the others could be as follows:

Quote

Burger Time (Locks up as soon as rom is loaded)

One of the difficulty switches works as a pause switch in this game, and it won't play until you move it to the other position.

Quote

Kool-Aid Man (Locks up as soon as rom is loaded)

This game has a bug that prevents it from working properly on some consoles.

Quote

Sweat! - The Decathalon Game (I get no response from the controller. It keeps saying pick another event on the screen)

This is a prototype and most of the events were never programmed.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

batari, on Thu Aug 4, 2011 1:03 AM, said:

Bootay, on Wed Aug 3, 2011 10:04 PM, said:

Kool-Aid Man (Locks up as soon as rom is loaded)

This game has a bug that prevents it from working properly on some consoles.

Also it could simply be that the game is paused by one of the difficulty switches.

[Bootay]

Thanks everyone....it was the difficulty switches in the case of ALL the listed games except Sweat which I am going to delete because I didn't know it was a prototype.

[thegoldenband]

batari, on Thu Aug 4, 2011 1:03 AM, said:

Bootay, on Wed Aug 3, 2011 10:04 PM, said:

Kool-Aid Man (Locks up as soon as rom is loaded)

This game has a bug that prevents it from working properly on some consoles.

Is that bug remedied by Nukey Shay's hack, or does his hack only help with the Supercharger (and Stella)?

Bootay, on Thu Aug 4, 2011 5:24 PM, said:

Thanks everyone....it was the difficulty switches in the case of ALL the listed games except Sweat which I am going to delete because I didn't know it was a prototype.

Glad it worked out, and a good reminder for some of us who haven't played those games in a while.

[pimpmaul69]

i cant get air raid to work properly

[Mitch]

pimpmaul69, on Tue Sep 13, 2011 9:43 PM, said:

i cant get air raid to work properly

If you are talking about the screen rolling then that is due to bad programming on the original game. It happens on the real cart as well.

Mitch

[pimpmaul69]

Mitch, on Wed Sep 14, 2011 5:21 PM, said:

pimpmaul69, on Tue Sep 13, 2011 9:43 PM, said:

i cant get air raid to work properly

If you are talking about the screen rolling then that is due to bad programming on the original game. It happens on the real cart as well.

Mitch

then how does one play it on a real system

Edited by pimpmaul69, Wed Sep 14, 2011 5:25 PM.

[Mitch]

pimpmaul69, on Wed Sep 14, 2011 5:24 PM, said:

Mitch, on Wed Sep 14, 2011 5:21 PM, said:

pimpmaul69, on Tue Sep 13, 2011 9:43 PM, said:

i cant get air raid to work properly

If you are talking about the screen rolling then that is due to bad programming on the original game. It happens on the real cart as well.

Mitch

then how does one play it on a real system

Use a different TV that is more tolerant.

Mitch

[keilbaca]

Does anyone have issues with the Moonsweeper ROM? It does not display a complete black background when playing the game, it looks white with two black strips on the left and right side.

I am also having issues with Frantic, no build whatsoever will work on my cart. It could be my Sears Video Arcade II... I need to try it on a different Atari. Medieval Mayhem works, which is also 32kb, where Moonsweeper and Frantic is not working. Does anyone have any resolutions?

[BrianC]

keilbaca, on Fri Oct 7, 2011 7:54 AM, said:

Does anyone have issues with the Moonsweeper ROM? It does not display a complete black background when playing the game, it looks white with two black strips on the left and right side.

I am also having issues with Frantic, no build whatsoever will work on my cart. It could be my Sears Video Arcade II... I need to try it on a different Atari. Medieval Mayhem works, which is also 32kb, where Moonsweeper and Frantic is not working. Does anyone have any resolutions?

Did you try updating the bios to 1.05, as mentioned in the other thread?

[ComputerSpaceFan]

BrianC, on Mon Oct 10, 2011 8:33 PM, said:

keilbaca, on Fri Oct 7, 2011 7:54 AM, said:

I am also having issues with Frantic, no build whatsoever will work on my cart. It could be my Sears Video Arcade II... I need to try it on a different Atari. Medieval Mayhem works, which is also 32kb, where Moonsweeper and Frantic is not working. Does anyone have any resolutions?

Did you try updating the bios to 1.05, as mentioned in the other thread?

For what it's worth, I also cannot get Frantic working on my Harmony Cart (and yes I have BIOS 1.05) but that is because I am playing on a FlashBack 2 modded to play cartridges. From what the Frantic folks tell me, there's nothing they can do about that.

[keilbaca]

Yes I am updated to the latest BIOS, that was the first thing I did. I am playing on a Sears Video Arcade II.

[Nukey Shay]

thegoldenband, on Thu Aug 4, 2011 7:20 PM, said:

Is that bug remedied by Nukey Shay's hack, or does his hack only help with the Supercharger (and Stella)?

The collision-detection bug from the original game is corrected in the hack - it should work regardless of what hardware or emulator you use. It was pure serendipity on the programmer's part that the original game ever worked correctly at all

[thegoldenband]

Nukey Shay, on Mon Oct 31, 2011 4:55 AM, said:

The collision-detection bug from the original game is corrected in the hack - it should work regardless of what hardware or emulator you use. It was pure serendipity on the programmer's part that the original game ever worked correctly at all

Heh, interesting. I wish I knew more about VCS hardware so as to better appreciate this, though there's a writeup here that gives me some sense of what the details are.

Were all of the issues with this game caused by a single bug, then? Or was adding Supercharger compatibility a separate and distinct step, unrelated to the collision-detection bug? Either way, thanks for doing it!

[Nukey Shay]

Unrelated. The original program steps on the ROM (cartridge) memory address that the Supercharger uses as it's "bankswitching hotspot". By calling that address, the Supercharger unit is intended to swap out 2k of it's ram memory with an alternate 2k...a 3rd 2k of memory holding the program lines that handle the swapping (the Supercharger uses 6k of RAM memory to hold a loaded program treated as ROM memory by the 2600, but the 2600 by design can only "see" 4k of it at any time due to the use of the hobbled 6507 CPU). It's fortunate for everyone that they chose to use an address that is close to the end of cartridge memory addressing as the hotspot trigger (so a good deal of 4k roms will run perfectly without modification). Those that do use that ROM memory address in any way would need to be altered (or the Supercharger itself needs to be modified to ignore the triggering request)...otherwise, the unit bankswitches and the empty 2k of RAM memory is swapped in - typically corrupting a running program in the process. Basically, forgetting half of the program that has been loaded.

Anyway, the games in that thread are altered so that they no longer use that triggering address in any way...making them compatable with unmodified Superchargers. And I figured as long as I was altering that, I might as well apply a collision fix as well. The glitch and it's cause was described by the guys at [Stella], so it didn't take any effort on my part...other than scrounging up a couple of bytes in ROM memory space to insert the program line.

Edited by Nukey Shay, Fri Nov 4, 2011 1:37 PM.

[PFL]

I just got my Harmony cart today and I'm loving it except I can't seem to get Beamrider to start properly...

I am in the UK so I'm using PAL ROMs on my 2600 Jnr. Everytime I start the game it jumps to Sector 8 and I get my arse handed to me! I've never owned the original so I'm not sure about difficulty settings though after messing around nothing seems to make the game start at Sector 1... Any help?

[Omegamatrix]

PFL, on Sat Feb 4, 2012 4:40 PM, said:

I just got my Harmony cart today and I'm loving it except I can't seem to get Beamrider to start properly...

I am in the UK so I'm using PAL ROMs on my 2600 Jnr. Everytime I start the game it jumps to Sector 8 and I get my arse handed to me! I've never owned the original so I'm not sure about difficulty settings though after messing around nothing seems to make the game start at Sector 1... Any help?

I just tried it in emulation, and if you have the left difficulty switch in position A (i.e. Pro setting) it will start in sector 8.


Push the left difficulty switch to the B position. If that doesn't work post the rom and we'll take a look.