41 replies to this topic

[supercat]

Moondoggie1968, on Mon Jan 23, 2006 7:59 PM, said:

would it be possible to make a card adapter for my eprom burner and read it in there?

Dumping 4K carts that way is pretty straightforward. As for other ones...

You need to be able to read out memory non-sequentially. In particular, for a typical 8K cart, the sequence is: Read $1FF8. Read $1000-$1FFF **skipping $1FF8-$1FF9**. That's the first 4K (address $FF9 in the first 4K isn't readable so put whatever you like there). Then read $1FF9. Then read $1000-$1FFF **skipping $1FF8-$1FF9**. That's the second 4K (address $FF8 in the second 4K isn't readable either).

Batari's dumper is designed for 8K or 16K games using either F8 bankswitching (described above) or F6 bankswitching: read $1FF6, then $1000-$1FFF skipping $1FF6-$1FF9. That's the first 4K. Then read $1FF7, then the second 4K, then $1FF8 and the third 4K, then $1FF9 and the last 4K.

I can tell you in advance: Parker Brothers games use a different bank-switching method so you'll need a different sequence for them.

[alex_79]

bump!

batari, on Sat Oct 22, 2005 8:10 AM, said:

If you are successful dumping any games, please post and let everyone know!

I just found this thread and I tried the software to dump regular carts on the 2600.

I loaded the cart dump rom into a PAL vcs using a supercharger (unmodded) and followed the instructions. It worked first try! On my Linux pc I used the minicom terminal emulator to communicate with the vcs, WPlayBin (through wine) to load the rom on the supercharger and dosemu to run the hex2bin utility. I tested it with 4k, 8k and 16k carts and it worked perfectly.


thank you for sharing this!

VCS serial adapter:


test with River raid cart:

[Albert]

Please do not post dumps of the Flashback 2 games here, or post links to them.

Thanks,

..Al

[Wickeycolumbus]

Very interesting!

I am having trouble getting my connection to work. I set all of the right settings and soldered the cable right, but still cant get characters to show up on the terminal screen. I tried this out in both hyperterminal and realterm. I just was wondering If I am doing somenting wrong before I try it on a different computer.

ps, I am trying to dump the dumper cart.

[Wickeycolumbus]

Yay, I used a different computer and it worked! I dumped the dumper cart and a defender cart I had sitting around. Cant do the built in games yet because I dont have one of those special switches, I have a series of jumpers. I will find a switch tomarrow!

[Wickeycolumbus]

sorry for triple posting, but I dumped most of the games

Some I could not get the ready screen (3d tic tac toe, Human Cannonball, combat), but that did not matter, because those can be downloaded anywhere. Atari Climber gave me some trouble because the connection never terminated and it would keep inserting "B0" into the terminal screen, so I had to turn the fb2 off when the dump screen went away and deleat the excess B0's in the text file. Also, I could not dump Fatal Run because it is 32k. Has anyone been able to dump fatal run?

Thank you very much Batari for posting this tutorial

[Mitch]

Wickeycolumbus, on Sat Sep 20, 2008 8:10 PM, said:

sorry for triple posting, but I dumped most of the games

Some I could not get the ready screen (3d tic tac toe, Human Cannonball, combat), but that did not matter, because those can be downloaded anywhere. Atari Climber gave me some trouble because the connection never terminated and it would keep inserting "B0" into the terminal screen, so I had to turn the fb2 off when the dump screen went away and deleat the excess B0's in the text file. Also, I could not dump Fatal Run because it is 32k. Has anyone been able to dump fatal run?

Thank you very much Batari for posting this tutorial

Do you mean you couldn't dump Fatal Run or you couldn't convert it?

Mitch

[Wickeycolumbus]

Mitch, on Sat Sep 20, 2008 10:30 PM, said:

Wickeycolumbus, on Sat Sep 20, 2008 8:10 PM, said:

sorry for triple posting, but I dumped most of the games

Some I could not get the ready screen (3d tic tac toe, Human Cannonball, combat), but that did not matter, because those can be downloaded anywhere. Atari Climber gave me some trouble because the connection never terminated and it would keep inserting "B0" into the terminal screen, so I had to turn the fb2 off when the dump screen went away and deleat the excess B0's in the text file. Also, I could not dump Fatal Run because it is 32k. Has anyone been able to dump fatal run?

Thank you very much Batari for posting this tutorial

Do you mean you couldn't dump Fatal Run or you couldn't convert it?

Mitch

I could not dump it, the dumper only dumped 16k I think...

I tried to dump it at different points of the game to see if I could dump it when the upper 16k is accessed and then combine the binary files after converted, but I had no luck doing that either.

[Nukey Shay]

Standard 32k differs from standard 16k/8k in that it uses the NMI vector address as the hotspots to the last 2 banks. $1FF4-$1FFB = hotspot triggers. If $1FF2 was assumed to be the first trigger, you would end up with 16k of missing data ($1FF2 and $1FF3 would yield redundant data of whatever bank you happen to be in, and the last 2 banks would never had been dumped at all). Is this the problem?

[Wickeycolumbus]

Nukey Shay, on Sat Sep 20, 2008 10:54 PM, said:

Standard 32k differs from standard 16k/8k in that it uses the NMI vector address as the hotspots to the last 2 banks. $1FF4-$1FFB = hotspot triggers. If $1FF2 was assumed to be the first trigger, you would end up with 16k of missing data ($1FF2 and $1FF3 would yield redundant data of whatever bank you happen to be in, and the last 2 banks would never had been dumped at all). Is this the problem?

I believe so. The text file that I get from it is 32k like all of the others, so I only end up with 16k of game when I dump it. I cant tell you that is the problem for sure though, I know almost nothing about bankswitching.

[Syntaxerror999]

Mitch, on Thu Jan 19, 2006 2:55 PM, said:

Moondoggie1968, on Thu Jan 19, 2006 5:39 AM, said:

can I use the dump utility on a regular 2600?

Yes, but you will be pulling out and putting in carts with the power on. If that bothers you.

Mitch

what if you have a pause switch installed?

[Wickeycolumbus]

Syntaxerror999, on Tue Jul 19, 2011 4:21 PM, said:

Mitch, on Thu Jan 19, 2006 2:55 PM, said:

Moondoggie1968, on Thu Jan 19, 2006 5:39 AM, said:

can I use the dump utility on a regular 2600?

Yes, but you will be pulling out and putting in carts with the power on. If that bothers you.

Mitch

what if you have a pause switch installed?

Actually, now that you mention it, it may be beneficial to pause the 2600 when you're swapping cartridges Don't take my word for it though.

[batari]

A pause switch might make it less likely to crash the system, so it may be better, but it doesn't eliminate the electrical risks.

[Syntaxerror999]

batari, on Tue Jul 19, 2011 5:08 PM, said:

A pause switch might make it less likely to crash the system, so it may be better, but it doesn't eliminate the electrical risks.

Hmmm... it wouldnt take too much to make an adapter you plug between the carts that cuts the ground to the cart so you can safely swap. Take a dead cart, pull the chip, and solder a cartrage slot into the lines with a switch at ground. Then all you gotta do is hit your pause switch, hit your ground switch, make the swap, turn ground back on then unpause the console.

If you wanna make somethign marketable, you could make a cart with a cart slot and an onboard program that automaticly injects the dumping code, and flips the carts automaticly (the guy that programed star castle 2600 has LED's that can be triggered via software)

Edited by Syntaxerror999, Sun Jul 31, 2011 3:05 PM.

[Syntaxerror999]

supercat, on Mon Jan 23, 2006 7:50 PM, said:

Moondoggie1968, on Mon Jan 23, 2006 7:59 PM, said:

would it be possible to make a card adapter for my eprom burner and read it in there?

Dumping 4K carts that way is pretty straightforward. As for other ones...

You need to be able to read out memory non-sequentially. In particular, for a typical 8K cart, the sequence is: Read $1FF8. Read $1000-$1FFF **skipping $1FF8-$1FF9**. That's the first 4K (address $FF9 in the first 4K isn't readable so put whatever you like there). Then read $1FF9. Then read $1000-$1FFF **skipping $1FF8-$1FF9**. That's the second 4K (address $FF8 in the second 4K isn't readable either).

Batari's dumper is designed for 8K or 16K games using either F8 bankswitching (described above) or F6 bankswitching: read $1FF6, then $1000-$1FFF skipping $1FF6-$1FF9. That's the first 4K. Then read $1FF7, then the second 4K, then $1FF8 and the third 4K, then $1FF9 and the last 4K.

I can tell you in advance: Parker Brothers games use a different bank-switching method so you'll need a different sequence for them.

Question about the unreadable addresses in the RAM. How come they are unreadable? Can they be written to and can the atari itself read them? I ask because it would be a great way to copy protect carts by writting a pass key in these adresses that the program needs in order to play the game and anyone who dumps that game you worked so hard on would have an non working bootleg.

EDIT : Hmmm.. I think I see it... the skipped adresses have something to do with the ability to bankswitch (Im not a programer, so if I sound like I don't know what Im talking about...).2 skipped adresses for two 4k sections, and 4 for 4....each one pretaining to a given 4k bank which has to be dumped not only with its corasponding 4k, but at the begining of the data. What is the reason for this?

Edited by Syntaxerror999, Sun Jul 31, 2011 3:24 PM.

[dwane413]

Syntaxerror999, on Sun Jul 31, 2011 3:11 PM, said:

Question about the unreadable addresses in the RAM. How come they are unreadable? Can they be written to and can the atari itself read them? I ask because it would be a great way to copy protect carts by writting a pass key in these adresses that the program needs in order to play the game and anyone who dumps that game you worked so hard on would have an non working bootleg.

EDIT : Hmmm.. I think I see it... the skipped adresses have something to do with the ability to bankswitch (Im not a programer, so if I sound like I don't know what Im talking about...).2 skipped adresses for two 4k sections, and 4 for 4....each one pretaining to a given 4k bank which has to be dumped not only with its corasponding 4k, but at the begining of the data. What is the reason for this?

Your question made me think of Microvision Cartridge Dumping. Sorry this is off topic, but thought it might interest you.

[Legend]

just curious if anyone has dumped the flashback 2+? What is the difference in the games from the fb2 besides the sports games?