The 7800 Concerto Cart is Here

[RickR]

I was lucky enough to get a pre-order in, and the cartridge arrived today.  I loaded up my own SD card with games, and it works very nicely.  Of course the first game I tried was One on One.  It came with a cart shell (I was expecting a bare board), and that was a nice surprise.  First impression is that it's awesome.  I know that many folks in the 7800 community have wanted an SD card solution for a long time, and it's so exciting that it's finally here.  Buy one if you can.

 

 

[socrates63]

Nice! Looking good, Rick. The best thing for me is that using an SD cart means I don't have to deal with the death grip of my 7800.

[RickR]

40 minutes ago, socrates63 said:

Nice! Looking good, Rick. The best thing for me is that using an SD cart means I don't have to deal with the death grip of my 7800.

That's right.  It's in a recycled Atari shell, so it won't stick if you have need to remove it.

For me, the best thing is that it saves space.  I don't have to have a bunch of cartridges out. 

[HDN]

38 minutes ago, RickR said:

For me, the best thing is that it saves space.  I don't have to have a bunch of cartridges out

I love the feeling of a bunch of 7800 cartridges myself! Still, the Concerto cart is hella cool. I assume it handles POKEY?

I see that it came with a nice new shell and label. That’s nice. Pole Position II gets to see another day.

[RickR]

I think it has a socket for a POKEY (or one of the new-fangled POKEY replacements).  And I've also heard that POKEY emulation is coming. 

[TrekMD]

I missed every time it was on sale but I did do a preorder when that was offered.  This cart is a MUST!  I have POKEY chip for it that I can send in. 

[socrates63]

1 hour ago, TrekMD said:

I missed every time it was on sale but I did do a preorder when that was offered.  This cart is a MUST!  I have POKEY chip for it that I can send in. 

Was there an option to send it in? I'll have to go back and re-read. I've had an extra Ball Blazer set aside to serve as a POKEY donor for a while.

[RickR]

Some experimentation with the Ballblazer rom:  It produces NO sound at all on an unaltered Concerto cart.  The game does play, but no sound.  And yes, I've confirmed my composite mod is wired correctly.  A real Ballblazer cart plays the sound just fine.

[TrekMD]

The firmware is still being worked on.  Hopefully, that issue with POKEY gets fixed. 

Yes, @socrates63, that is an option.  It was posted in the original thread that you can send in a Ballblazer cart to get the POKEY removed from it to get it installed in the Concerto.

[RickR]

9 hours ago, TrekMD said:

The firmware is still being worked on.  Hopefully, that issue with POKEY gets fixed. 

Yes, updated firmware is promised.  And it looks easy enough to update.

Overall, I'm giving this thing an A grade.  It works as promised.  Every 7800 game I've tried works (and only Ballblazer so far with no sound due to lack of POKEY).  2600 support is the same as the UNO cart, not the Harmony (supercharger games don't work, some homebrews don't work, but most commercial games work great).  I'm sure that will be fixed with updated firmware too.

 

[CrossBow]

On 12/19/2020 at 9:26 AM, RickR said:

Yes, updated firmware is promised.  And it looks easy enough to update.

Overall, I'm giving this thing an A grade.  It works as promised.  Every 7800 game I've tried works (and only Ballblazer so far with no sound due to lack of POKEY).  2600 support is the same as the UNO cart, not the Harmony (supercharger games don't work, some homebrews don't work, but most commercial games work great).  I'm sure that will be fixed with updated firmware too.

 

Ballblazer is the only 7800 game that ONLY uses pokey for audio. Commando, uses the TIA for sound effects and the percussion while the pokey handles all the melodies in the background music. So if you were to fire up Commando, you would hear that it too is missing something in the audio.

While I don't have it yet, I did pre-order for the Dragonfly cart and decided to go all in with a fully kitted one.

 

[Jud]

Hi, I've just heard.about this and wondering where to buy this? I am in Australia bit happy to import. I have a US 7800. Thanks!

[peteym5]

Hello, these take SD cards. Any limit on the size these can use. I am wondering if there is any online documentation about programming and take advantage of the SD extra space. Maybe make games much larger and load segments as needed. Does it load the images into RAM? 

[RickR]

2 hours ago, peteym5 said:

Hello, these take SD cards. Any limit on the size these can use. I am wondering if there is any online documentation about programming and take advantage of the SD extra space. Maybe make games much larger and load segments as needed. Does it load the images into RAM? 

You'll want to check out the AtariAge forums for these questions (specifically, search for concerto or user "batari").  I think the card must be formatted as FAT32, which means a 32GB size limit on the partition.  I don't know if there's any limitation on SD card size. 

The link to buy a Concerto:  https://erstwhile-technologies-7800.square.site/product/concerto-cartridge/5?cs=true&cst=custom

The link to the AtariAge forum:  https://forums.atariage.com/forum/4-atari-7800/