Hello everyone
there appear to be some people in here who might be able to help out. I really think this is a great hardware but I'd love to see improved support for unlicensed games in the firmware - expecially for the Game Boy system. For example I own several games of Sachen's library for the GB/GBC which appear to have some timing issues when reading with the retrode.
When I first tried with the old 0.16 firmware Thunder Blast Man and Jurassic Boy II could be read (JB II only with "forced system"), but the whole dumps consisted of blocks that were duplicated twice before new data appeared. Only Beast Fighter, the only b/w game was correct the first time. Now with the newer firmware (tried 0.18 at least) both previously undumpable games can be read correctly. However I got another cart (Street Hero) that produces duplicated data again. Funny enough returning to the old 0.16 I get repeated blocks as well but those consits of the "missing" blocks so technically you could combine both reads. Still there is another problem: The header cannot be read correctly. No internal name is shown - the first 32k are incorrect because you get a lot of redundant data here again which neither firmware is able to fix. My guess is this is all more or less timing related. Is there anyone (Muzer) who feels capable of taking a look at this?
Then we have all the "4 in 1" releases by that company as well as the 31 in 1 Mighty Mix cart. For all those you can only read 32k similar to other devices of that kind. It would be awesome to see proper support for all these games in the retrode some day.
Hello,
Sorry for not replying for a while, I'm afraid I've been a little distracted.
First of all, the standard boring suggestions - have you thoroughly cleaned the contacts with a cotton bud and possibly methylated spirits, etc.?
Are these unlicensed or otherwise unusual games? The 4-in-1 games obviously are, but what about the ones in question? If so, I would expect there could be a physical reason aside from timing issues why the game won't dump correctly - it could be that there's some weird and wacky bankswitching method (mapper) in use that needs support in the Retrode firmware.
Of course, there is a strong possibility it IS timing-related, though I haven't done the calculations to work out how likely in comparison with the A2600 issues.
In general, I don't know enough about how the Game Boy works to help you further aside from these rather general and probably unhelpful statements. I'll make it a priority if I manage to fix the issues I'm currently working on to have a look for you, though. This isn't a promise I'll get things done quickly, mind you, I'm still not as active as I'd like to be with the Retrode, it's my own timing problems
Finally, my build of the firmware that was released as an alpha way back still has some weird, serious issues involving the Retrode freezing randomly when dumping certain games of which I still don't have a vague clue of the cause, though I'm getting new ideas that I'll have to speak to Matthias about in due course, when he's not as busy.
