5200 emulation: a few ROMs launch, most don't...

mediamogul

That is odd. I have a full 5200 library and I've only ever noticed the occasional game that wouldn't launch. I haven't played anything in over a month, so later this evening I'll fire up a few titles and see how it's performing currently on my end.

LS650

Since a few ROMs do run, I would think it's an issue with corrupted files, but the same files launch just fine with my Windows emulator... :-? Seems very odd.

mediamogul

@LS650 said in 5200 emulation: a few ROMs launch, most don't...:

but the same files launch just fine with my Windows emulator.

It being a different emulator could mean that it's just more tolerant of bad ROMs. Atari800 is admittedly one of the most finicky emulators I've seen.

mediamogul

@LS650

One other important thing I forgot to ask is if you've installed the 5200 BIOS file where it needs to be.

LS650

@mediamogul Yes, and I've tested the BIOS file with the Win 10 emulator. And a few games do run, showing the rainbow fuji copyright page, which I don't think would work if the BIOS file were faulty.

mediamogul

@LS650

I'm on RetroPie 4.1.12 and every game I tried loaded successfully. Before the night is through, I'll update to 4.1.14 and see if anything changes there.

edmaul69

Same as @mediamogul here. The emulator sucks, but as far as loading games i have a very high success rate. Some can load the logo and what not then crash with an error but a lot of times its by choosing the wrong bios.

mediamogul

Just updated to 4.1.14 and all is well on my end. It's a long shot given your particular symptoms, but it's possible that the config file has become corrupt. Deleting it and letting the software create a fresh one on start may help. It's located at /opt/retropie/configs/atari800/atari800.cfg.

LS650

Well, I figured it out, sort of.

Because some ROMs do launch, I figured that the emulator must be set up more-or-less correctly, and the issue lies with the ROMs.
I tried ROMs from two different sites both with my Retropie and with my Win10 setup. The ROMs launched just fine on the Windows machine.

I tried a few ROMs from yet a third site. These ROMs do launch on both platforms. Clearly there is something in the ROM files from the first two sites that the Retropie doesn't like, yet KAT5200 on Windows doesn't care.

Nothing obviously different about the files, so I guess it's just a matter of trying different ROMs until you find files that work.

mediamogul

@LS650

Glad to see it's up and operational.

LS650

Yes, thanks for the advice. There are more advanced systems to emulate, but I played with a 5200 as a teen back in the 80s.
Some of the games may look a bit chunky, but it is one of my personal favorite systems.

mediamogul

@LS650 said in 5200 emulation: a few ROMs launch, most don't...:

Some of the games may look a bit chunky, but it is one of my personal favorite systems.

It was a really impressive system for the time. It had without a doubt the definitive home version of 'Berzerk'. I believe it was able to handle all that speech synthesis with just the on-board components.

edmaul69

@LS650 its nice to see more and more atariage users showing up on here. Im pimpaul69 on atariage.