Atari 7800 RGB & Save States :o (GameDrive Testing & Review)

[@GadgetUK164]

Retro HQ - www.retrohq.co.uk/ Check out my new second channel for more repairs and upgrades - www.youtube.com/@GadgetUKExtra

[@anthonyaviles8665]

I ordered my self a 7800 gd and the mega 7800 can’t wait to get it

[@StRoRo]

Great device. Love that hardware that couldn't have been imagined back then is being used to keep these only console accessable

[@markcalhoun9480]

I love mine. I got it when it first came out.

[@RetroHQ]

Nice! Looks like you had some fun with it! It’s always really gratifying for me seeing people having a play through new homebrew on real hardware, which is really only possible on the 7800GD. The ROM header issues and wrong region notifications are down to incorrectly setup ROM headers. Although I don’t think anyone has really gone through and setup the multi-region flags, yet! That’s something I added to the header standard. But as you’ve seen, the vast majority of homebrew does actually work on PAL or NTSC. In terms of the video generation on the cart, it should be exactly the same as the console. I am literally snooping the bus to see what Maria is reading and using that to generate the image, so I can’t make it any more compatible than the actual console itself. The question on save states from emulators - yes is should be quite possible to either load from an emulator or vice versa! But it’s not something I’ve tried to implement. The video blending feature was mostly added for Tower Toppler, by the way! When doing dithered graphics with RGB out the picture is so sharp it actually makes Tower Toppler unplayable! This feature gives you a blended colour from the two closest pixels, so it works quite well for games which did this to get more apparent colours. And you’re right with the cheats, you need to grab the latest cheat database from Atari Age. It’s an ASCII format, so it’s quite possible to even add your own. And the big chip on the PCB is the FPGA, a Trion T20. There isn’t any ‘emulation’ as such, I use verilog cores to support the extra chips. So they should all be super accurate. The whole thing, RISCV softcore and all, runs on the T20.

[@GadgetUK164]

Thanks again James =D Cheers for clarifiying a few things there too! I dont know where I got the MCU idea from, even whilst editing I was looking at that IC with the insane number of IO pins thinking to myself - there's no way that's an MCU... Will re-test tower toppler - I thought I had tried that and hadn't noticed a problem!?! It's a very cool flash cart!!!

[@RetroHQ]

@@GadgetUK164 there is actually a bit which can be set in the header to enable the filtering, so it may actually be set for Tower Toppler! :)

[@BertrandLeRoy]

That port on the side looks more like a JST debug port. You’ve sold that device. Ordered mine from AtariAge.

[@mryon314159]

Wait, what? You scrolled past it at about 13.55, I had no idea someone had done a "KC Munchkin" port to the 7800! I'm off to get a copy right now.

[@mryon314159]

RE: 2600 Space Invaders, if you flip the difficulty switch your ship width will be halved.

[@Plan-C]

Nice! I think there is an R-TYPE remake for the 7800 now?

[@SuperHamsterGaming]

I'm actually more likely to buy a rom than a physical cart. I use flash carts for almost everything. I hate to say it because I'd gladly pay for them, but I'm also more likely to go searching for a rom on a rom site if it's not available for sale. Steam and flash carts have spoiled me a bit for picking a game on a menu and having it just start.

[@andrewlittleboy8532]

RF has always been terrible on LCD TV’s, I bet it would look much better on a crt.