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Finishing up for second proto run

A project log for Atari2600 Cartridge Reader

Extract game roms and play them on an emulator

koen-van-vlietKoen van Vliet 09/17/2018 at 17:150 Comments

Bootloader and Firmware

The "Blue Pill" STM32 board I am using ships with a UART bootloader. I want to make the device firmware user-upgradable over USB, so I will put a USB bootloader on it instead. Currently the firmware only supports reading functions, but I can add writing support in the near future.

Housing

I designed the bottom half of the enclosure. It features a cutout for the usb connector and some hidden cutouts that are covered by two layers, which can be opened up with a knife to reveal debug headers, reset switch and status leds. Right now I am making these with my home printer, but I might have these made with a fancy SLA printer.

PCB

The PCBs I have received are usable, but I would like to do a second revision to fix some things e.g. add silkscreen on both sides, make the trough holes slightly larger.

Software

Some games contain extra hardware that allows for larger games. The game ROM is split up in banks of 4KB (or less), which can be selected by accessing specific memory addresses. The software only supports regular 4KB games and some 8KB games published by Atari. I will add support for some other bankswitching schemes, but I cannot test all of them with physical cartridges. Kevin "Kevtris" Horton made a list of atari games and which bankswitching schemes they use. See Kevtris List of Atari2600 games. (This is really impressive)


Edit: Here are some pictures of the printed housing.

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