Cartridge Tester By Ken Lill Directions, October 26, 2011 By Ken Lill and Adam Trionfo ---------------------------- This cartridge tester is used to test newly-created Bally/Astrocade cartridges. These instructions are skeletal at best. It is presumed that the user has plenty of knowledge on the use of extended memory as well as the traditional cartridge-swapping technique. This an in-house program written by Ken Lill to test the creation of the homebrew "Crazy Climber" cartridges. It compares a program in extended memory with an 8K program in cartridge area ($2000-$3FFF). Here are the brief instructions from the assembly file: ; Tester (Final) ; By Ken Lill ; June 21, 2011 ; Version 1.0 ; ; Assembled by hand by Ken Lill. ; ; Compares cart using Bally/Astrocade and RAM expansion unit. ; ; Version 1.0 - June 21, 2011 - Ken Lill ; - Programmed by Ken Lill, and disassembled from original ; ROM file using DZ80 2.0 and Richard Degler's BallyHVG.LUA ; script by Adam Trionfo. ; - Put into ZMac assembler format from disassembled file with ; lots of hand disassembly. ; - Comments added by Adam Trionfo based on information relayed ; via telephone to Adam. ; - This program assembles into the EXACT bytes that were in the ; original file. However, the binary file must be edited by ; hand to get all of the bytes in the correct order and to remove ; the extra zeros that are created from $2000-$6000. ; ; This code can be assembled into a usable binary using the ZMac ; assembler. Here is a sample of the command line required: ; ; zmac -i -m -o tester2.bin -x tester2.lst tester2.asm Here is the initial email that Ken sent along with version one of the program (which was only a binary file). Subject: Special Tester From: kenn lill Sent: Tue 6/21/11 10:36 AM To: Adam Trionfo I have finally finished the cart tester. To use this tester, first burn a chip. any size will do, as there are only $121 bytes total! Next, take the utility (LWR - either one) and put a known good database into $8000 of the Lil' WHITE RAM (or blue ram). Then just insert the new cart. the screen will tell you what to do. This is the best way to test a cart thoroughly. It will tell you if it's good or not. If it is bad, mark down the data on the screen and tape it to the cart. Return it to me for a new one. The whole process takes less than a second to test each cart. I hope this will make double checking much easier on your end. This program is expecting an 8K cart. Any more and it won't be able to test it. Any less, and the 1st address after the end will show up bad. This program copies cartridge tester program into extended memory and then runs. Cartridges are switched in and out with the power on as needed. If you have trouble (as I do) switching cartridges while your Astrocade is on, then this program will NOT work for you. Adam