MagicEngine

[Sprout]

Ok,

I've dug around on the forums here, checked the FAQ, checked the ReadMe, and I can't find squat that talks about the format that ROM files need to be in so that they are properly recognized...

My situation - I've just recently dug out all of my old T16 stuff. I reviewed games for a couple of magazines, and so therefore have a couple of proto "cartridges" that held EPROMS. Since I had to return most of the stuff I reviewed, I backed up all of the EPROMS to floppy, and have several floppies containing various games in various alpha/beta/final conditions...

It appears that the ROM files on the net are all one .PCE file inside a zip archive. I've used "copy /b" via the command line to copy my multiple ROM files into a single .PCE file, but of the three games I've done this with so far, one didn't work at all (Camp California), one somewhat worked, but with incorrect graphics (Cadash), and one seemed to work fine (Silent Debuggers).

First - am I missing anything in combining these files, or do I need to strip any type of header off of the original EPROM files? Or, am I doing this correctly, and probably just hit some ROM sets that the emulator doesn't like? I'm going to experiment with all of the other ROM sets I have on floppy, but want to make sure I'm on the right track. I'm also going to burn the Camp California one back to EPROM just to make sure it still works when plugged into a real TG16...

Any advice/assistance appreciated!

[Tru]

Last I knew Camp California was a CD Game...

Thus you would need to use the image of the game as a CD... wether burned onto a disc or used in a Virtual CD Drive...

My 2 cents worth there...........


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There are only 2 races on this planet... the Intelligent and the Stupid...

[Sprout]

Yep; after digging around last night, I'd normally say you'd be right.

In this case however, the version I have is a proto; after experimenting with some jumper configurations and re-burning the EPROMS a few times, I was able to get the Camp California proto ROMS to work in my T16 - given that, ME either can't handle the game, or the ROM's aren't being merged into a file/format that it's happy with.

Since a couple of my other proto ROM sets *are* recognized, but several others aren't, and I'm combining them all in the same fashion, I'm assumnig that ME just doesn't like them for some reason..

[dmichel]

What are the size of the ROMs? If the proto board has two EPROMs (256+128KB) a special header is required to make them work in MagicEngine.
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David Michel

[Sprout]

ROM's are all the same size; I have four 1 megabit EPROMS that I've always used - the games I've had have used either 2, 3 or 4 of those EPROMS. So, to answer your question, they're all 128KB files/EPROMS. I've so far had issues with:

Camp California (proto) (doesn't come up at all - works fine w/ EPROMS - uses three 128KB EPROMS)
Cadash (proto) (has music, corrupted graphics, often just a full screen of a single color that transitions to another full screen, different color - uses four 128KB EPROMS - going to re-burn to EPROM this afternoon and verify I don't have a bit-rot issue) .

I've gotten Dead Moon, Davis Cup Tennis, Silent Debuggers, and Ghost Manor to work, some of which are definitely proto as well...


FWIW, the other emulators I've tried so far do no better (worse, actually).

Thanks!

[Sprout]

FYI - Cadash works fine when burned to EPROM, although I did have to mess with the jumper configuration of the board a bit (defines addresses for addressing each individual ROM).

I believe it works as:

rom1: 0 - 1ffff
rom2: 2000 - 3ffff
rom3: 4000-5ffff
rom4: a0000 - bffff

I otherwise believe the Camp California proto loaded the three in order - 0 through 5ffff.

[dmichel]

[Sprout]

David,

Thanks for the suggestions. I've pulled down a freeware hex editor (HHD Hex Editor), but I'll admit I've not had to do editing like this in some time I've inserted an empty 512 byte header into the beginning of the combined file (IE all ROM's combined into a single file), but am not sure I'm doing this correctly;it appears that hex 0x30 comes up as "48" decimal, and 0x01 as "01" decimal, which I've entered as the first bytes at the top of that header - is this correct? When I do this, ME states that the file is "corrupted", and won't attempt to load it; any other values I've dropped in there will still allow me to at least load the file, although it doesn't come up correctly. Am I missing anything, or misunderstanding the editing?

When I add "4801" decimal at the top of that header I create, Cadash does work a *bit* better; I don't get background graphics properly, but some of the foreground graphics (characters and such) DO come up correctly, so I think I'm on the right track..

Thanks!

[dmichel]

That's the right values, but may be there's a problem with the file size, it should be 393728 bytes, else I see no reason why MagicEngine would see it as a corrupted ROM.
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David Michel