ColecoDS - Improved

[anotherthing]

My friend had the TI-99/4a

I had a TI-99/4A as a kid and I loved it. The only thing that my 3DS can't do that either me or my friends had when we were kids is the Odyssey 2. We had a friend with an Intellivision, friends with Atari 2600s, two friends with ColecoVisions. Me and my best friend had Odyssey 2s. I got the TI-99/4A in the 8th grade, my best friend got a C64 a few years later. I eventually got an Amiga 500, so I went from the TI-99/4A to the Amiga 500. The Amiga 500 was the first thing I had with a disk drive. The TI-99/4a had an old tape player from the late 1960s cabled up to it. Good times.

Now we have 1.5TB microSD cards smaller than my pinky nail.

 

[Indy13]

Thanks Dave !

Somewhere on a sd card in France

 

[djnate27]

So many fond memories playing Dragon’s Lair and Buck Rodgers on my ADAM as a teenager. (Until my curiosity with that speedy tape drive caused me to open it up, take the tape out mid game and re-insert it…basically causing the computer to overwrite game data).

I can still remember that sad day I was moving and I threw ADAM in a dumpster cuz it no longer worked and had to chuck it all because the main unit and the printer couldn’t be separated.

Thanks for this emulator. Time to go back in time.

 

[wavemotion]

Somewhere on a sd card in France

Ha! Were you sleeping between 9.4j and 9.4n?!

 

[Indy13]

Ha! Were you sleeping between 9.4j and 9.4n?!

I was there but like Lucky Luke you are too fast: Dave Wavemotion the man who coded faster than his shadow !

 

[wavemotion]

https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/ColecoDS

V9.5: 30-Mar-2024 by wavemotion-dave

• ADAMnet improvement for disk/tape handling. Improved timing, improved caching and more disk/tape games should load and run correctly.
• DSI gets a massive 2MB of Expansion RAM (32 banks of 64K). DS-Lite/Phat still has 128K (base 64K plus the standard 64K expansion RAM).
• Adam now properly handles 320K disks and three drive bays are virtually attached (two 320K disk drives and the internal Tape drive at 256K).
• Adam full keyboard now uses an LED indicator under the CAPS LOCK button to indicate status.
• Adam has improved keyboard graphic with more keys added.
• Adam no longer mirrors RAM as a Colecovision would.
• Adam optimization provided 5% improved emulation speed which should make most everything playable even on the older DS-Lite/Phat.
• Adam supports the 32K expanded ROM and running carts under Adam emulation - name your ROMs as .adm so it loads into the right place in memory.
• Tatung Einstein now has two proper standard 200K disk drives.
• Tatung Einstein full keyboard now uses LED indicators under the SHIFT/CTRL/GRAPH and ALPHA LOCK keys for a visual improvement.
• Tatung Einstein properly handles the backspace key when using the Alpha-Numeric keyboard overlay.
• 2000 individual game configurations are supported - save/load states optimized and numerous tweaks under the hood.

This one is a big update. Save states and configs are changed to allow more flexibility for me into the future. Sorry.

This release started as a cleanup of the Tatung Einstein driver but got out of hand with a desire to really get the Coleco ADAM emulation up to a much higher compatibility level. I had a breakthrough in disk/ddp handling and decided to really pour on the additions for the ADAM to bring it to a nice new plateau.

I've reworked the top row of the keyboard graphic to squeeze in another key and make it a bit more authentic looking - obviously with space constraints, I've had to take some liberties with the layout to fit on the DS screen with the goal of keeping the SmartKeys somewhat centered.

In settings you can change the speed of the AdamNet drive handling. The default is FAST - but if you want a somewhat more authentic experience, you can choose SLOW or SLOWER - neither of which is quite as slow as an original Coleco disk (or tape) drive ... but you'll get longer loading (with sound effects!) and more visible time on loading screens and maybe that's your jam. Me? I'm old enough now that I don't want to waste too much of my remaining life-force waiting for things to load

I hope you guys enjoy it! Do let me know if you use the emulator - I'm well over 500 development hours into this now and feedback is hugely appreciated.

 

[wavemotion]

https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/ColecoDS

V9.6: 08-Apr-2024 by wavemotion-dave

• Removed DrZ80 core - the high quality CZ80 core is all that remains.
• Complete overhaul of the Adam handlers to clean and refine - jettisoned conversion to FIAD in favor of simple raw sector dumps.
• Fix for games like Best of Broderbund (dsk and ddp) now load properly.

Finally getting to the point where the AdamNet and disk/ddp handling is working smoothly with some of the holdout games now loading and running properly.

I've also jettisoned the entire DrZ80 core which was faster than the CZ80 core but did not have the same high-level of compatibility. I've made enough improvements over the years to gain the speed needed that we can run everything under the new higher-accuracy Z80 core. DrZ80 served me well - but like many things in life, it's time to move on. That also freed up about 40K of precious DS resources for future expansion.

 

[wavemotion]

https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/ColecoDS

V9.7: 16-Apr-2024 by wavemotion-dave

• Fixed Colecovision RAM mirrors such that Boulderdash runs properly.
• The Heist now forces RAM to clear (all zeros) as it is known to be picky about contents of RAM on power up.
• Fix EEPROM sequential reads so Activision PCB games like Jewel Panic work correctly.
• Added the Wildcard and Print buttons on the virtual ADAM keyboard. All ADAM virtual keys should now be present.
• Added new configuration options to select the Colecovision mode to run in - you can force ADAM emulation, force PCB types, and set EEPROM sizes, etc.
• New global option to force ADAM mode, SGM can be Disabled, and BIOS auto-patch for 'Fast BIOS' to force the 15 second wait down to 3 seconds.
• Minor cleanup and optimizations to the Adam core.

Some users were operating with non-original BIOS to cut down on the 15 seconds of COLECOVISION banner time... and some of these BIOS files were a bit too drastic in their modifications and caused some compatibility problems. I strongly recommend you use the original Colecovision BIOS with a CRC32 of 3aa93ef3 - to that end, I've added a global option that will patch a single byte (in memory - leaving your original BIOS pristine) to drive the 15 seconds of banner display down to about 3 seconds. Slow enough that you get the nostalgic feels of the game loading but fast enough that you get on with your gameplay quickly.

Lastly - someone asked me recently what am I going to do when I get to the release after 9.9... of course I'll simply go to 10.0 - because, as it turns out, there are lots of numbers in the universe.

 

[wavemotion]

https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/ColecoDS

V9.8: 23-Apr-2024 by wavemotion-dave

• Cleanup of MSX BIOS handling - we now support the Panasonic CF-2700 directly. See MSX BIOS section for details.
• MSX status line now shows RAM (based on machine chosen) on the status line (was previously showing ROM size which no other machine in ColecoDS did).
• MSX Caps Lock now has LED indicator on the virtual keyboard.
• Added ROM/CAS/DSK size and CRC32 on the main screen after choosing a game.
• Numerous fixes for Save/Load states especially for the MSX and Einstein.
• Improved memory handling to free up some DS resources for future expansion.

There were a lot of changes "under the hood" on this one. Hopefully I didn't break anything

 

[xxlvrrxx]

Hi! I've been reading what you've done for the DSi and emulation and I think it's awesome. I need to try the ColecoDS!

Also, I want to ask you if, based on your experience, can see if it's viable a virtual boy emulator for the DSi. There's already one for the 3DS so the question came to my mind

 

[wavemotion]

Also, I want to ask you if, based on your experience, can see if it's viable a virtual boy emulator for the DSi. There's already one for the 3DS so the question came to my mind

The Virtual Boy is a 32-bit processor running at 20MHz so it would be a tall task for sure on the DSi or lower... the 3DS has the horsepower to pull it off.

 

[xxlvrrxx]

Oh i get it!

 

[eosia]

That's such a good looking DSi.

 

[wavemotion]

https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/ColecoDS

V9.9: 02-May-2024 by wavemotion-dave

• Added overlays for Blackjack and War Room. Improved War Games overlay.
• Added KANA lock LED indicator for Japanese MSX keyboard layouts.
• Correctly read-back the PPG Port B (needed to make the KANA lock work but is more accurate overall).
• Improvements to various Coleco PCB types for more accurate emulation.

 

[esv_83]

The MSX1 game Golvellius in Spanish works with the msx mapper ASCII 16K, in msxDS this game in Spanish does not work

 

[stansteph]

Not ready for a new build but 6.7a is checked in with support for the Hanimex Pencil II. This super-obscure Australian console gone largely unnoticed until 2019 when one of the rare games got dumped: Treasure Hunter. It's a fun game - and one that would have been right at home on the venerable Colecovision back in the day.

To play it, you will have to jump through some hoops.

First you need a Pencil II BIOS. In MAME, the pencil2.zip file contains a number of ROM chips... the one you want is mt.u4 (8k) and this must be renamed to pencil2.rom and placed in your BIOS folder.

Second, you need the game. Which, unfortunately, came on 2 ROM chips. So you have to "glue" the two ROMs together. If you can find a late MAME "Software List" from 2020 or later, you will find treasure.zip which contains two ROM files:

pen702a.bin (8k)
pen702b.bin (4k)

You need to glue these together. In windows use the command line:

copy /b pen702a.bin + pen702b.bin TreasureHunt.pen

in Linux:

cat pen702a.bin pen702b.bin > TreasureHunt.pen

This should leave you with a 12k ROM called TreasureHunt.pen which is now playable on your ColecoDS system!

I'll be shocked if anyone other than me gets this game to run... but your effort will allow you to play one of the most rare and obscure games of any retro system!

Hello everyone !

I'm looking to download these binary files of the Pencil II roms. Do you know from where it could be possible today ? Thanks

 

[wavemotion]

https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/ColecoDS

V10.0: 10-Aug-2024 by wavemotion-dave

• Adam Sound Enhancer module support to allow AY sound games to play (mostly MSX ports to the ADAM)
• Ignore files that start with a '.' or '_' (mostly to help filter out clear non-game files).
• Minor cleanup, tweaks and a bug fixes.

Small update... just polishing a few things.

 

[wavemotion]

Not ready for a full release, but thanks to nanochess over on Atariage and his recovery of the CreatiVision diagnostic ROM, we've uncovered a bug in the nearly ancient M6502 CPU driver that many emulators use (including ColecoDS). This resulted in CreatiVision games showing scores in strange HEX digits (0-9, A-F) sometimes. It also caused the recovered CV diagnostic ROM to fail. I've found the faulty instruction (ADC using decimal mode) and fixed it... 10.0a is up on github as my daily build with the fix and that will roll into an eventual 10.1 soon-ish. I also got another couple of frames from the CreatiVision emulator though it was already running quite well even on the older DS-Phat/Lite (but a bit more speed never hurts!).

 

[wavemotion]

https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/ColecoDS

V10.1: 03-Sep-2024 by wavemotion-dave

• Fix for the ADC decimal-mode instruction in the 6502 core for the CreatiVision. This fixes a number of problems including hex-digits showing on scores for some games.
• Tweaks and optimizations for the CreatiVision driver. Added most of the common/stable 'undocumented' opcodes.
• Improved emulation accuracy for the ADAM with memory now initialized to alternating 0x00 (even bytes) and 0xFF (odd bytes) per AdamEM and experiments from Shawn Merrick.