Atari System 1 Ram Tester

GadgetFreak

GadgetFreak

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These 2 roms replace the mainboard roms and just keep doing ram test cycles, keeping track of faults and identifying the individual ram chips being tested and their board location. The ram I can't test is the Motion Object Line Buffers & the sound cpu ram.
Obviously if the alpha display ram is bad or the colour ram is all 0's you won't see a display. I do test the first half of the four ram chips that contain the alpha ram.
This was basically written as Bonehead had a board with a 'work' ram fault, but unfortunately for him it showed all 4 chips as bad so is probably not the ram chips but the controlling TTL.

https://www.ukvac.com/forum/data/uploads/1527/AtariSystem1RamTest.zip

AtariSystem1Test.jpg


Hurray Banana2017-10-07 16:42:18
 
GadgetFreak

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Macro said:
Class - I have a work ram error on mine, so this will hopefully help isolate the cause.
Click to expand...
It should do. Be warned though, if it reports all 4 work rams as bad it is more likely to be in the control logic for the chips rather than all 4 ram chips. Whatever your results please post back as it will be good to get independent confirmation of it working or not
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Robert

Robert

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The reason I asked is I'm trying to add it to HBMAME, but it just says NO CARTRIDGE.

I'd like to know where in the memory map your roms fit in, and what actual game is on your mainboard, in an effort to find the problem.
 
GadgetFreak

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The eproms replace the motherboard files not any cartridge eproms.
In order to check the work ram it was important for the code to only use registers and no ram. If I had programmed it as a cartridge it would have had to rely on the motherboard roms booting and passing control to the cartridge which would have used ram.
 
Robert

Robert

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Thanks, makes sense now. I added the roms as the bios, it runs, the output (all GOOD) appears in the video ram, but the screen stays stubbornly black. Any ideas? If it works on real hardware there's not a lot I can do I guess.
 
Robert

Robert

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Finally got this to work in HBMAME, will be available at version 0.199 on 27th of June.

Screen goes black while it tests the colour ram, I assume this is normal.
 
T

TheOneTrueSpLiT

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Hi

I am after the Atari System 1 mainboard ROM files for use in MAME.

The version I have obtained is missing some data, namely...

106032.103.f7.bin

I have all the other required files in a ZIP archive as required by MAME, only it says this file is missing when I try to boot up Marble Madness which was one of the games that run on the System 1.

Can anyone provide any help?

Thanks,

Guy
 
T

TheOneTrueSpLiT

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Thanks,

I have somehow managed to MM working so I am assuming I now have all the relevant ROMs for the Atari System 1.

Although I am somewhat bemused as to how I managed it - I just downloaded loads of ZIPs of various arcade ROMs and suddenly it was working.

If I were to locate the required file I still wouldn't know what to do with it! Would it need to be in a ZIP with a SPECIFIC name that MAME is expecting?

I was a Snr S/W Engineer for over 20 years at BAE SYSTEMS, as such this should be child's play to me, but I am a MAME newbie and do not quite understand (as yet) how it all works but will be delving into any documentation ASAP, hence any pointers to some good info would be appreciated.

My goal has more-or-less been achieved, as in I have working copies of all my fave childhood arcade games from dear old Pac-Man to Bubble Bobble (my all time fave) and some others I was "too old" for at the time.

Cheers again :)

Guy
 
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