First of all you need to correctly initialize your cartridge and put all BIOSes where they belong. See the documentation on how to initialize a newly-built cartridge. There's no point to diagnose further when you didn't succeed in the first steps.
The Carnivore usage/problems thread is here: https://www.msx.org/forum/msx-talk/hardware/carnivore2-first...
Alexis
I understand where you are coming from, but I did follow the steps to initialize the cartdrige:
using c2man I did install the 3 BIOSes, and all were copied succesfully
As I said, I suspect something is not soldered properly, so will try with a new board
Thanks
Ok. You can send me 2 high resolution pictures of the board (from both sides) and I will check whether everything is soldered correctly.
Alexei
Thanks for the offer
I had to fix a couple of broken tracks, and I'm sure this is the problem - it is very difficult to test with the multimeter as the tracks are very very small , and my microscope only covers 1 side, but not the other side of the tracks.
In any case , as I said, I'm building another board, so not too worried about this one!
I have noticed that if I power up the computer , then Escape from the Carnivore2 menu I don't get the Nextor OS page, but if I do a reset ( with reset button), I DO see the Nextor OS page, in fact I CAN run "call fdisk" and it runs, but it does not detect any Cards ( tried different ones) , also tried running "call music", but it hangs and I need to reboot
Once I have the new board built - probably next week, depending when I receive the PCB, I will provide more feedback
Now I know how it works, is easier...
I think I may have fixed the board
I found a number of pins on the Altera chip that looked good, but were not properly soldered
I also found 2 pins on the Compact Flash joined together under the plastic ( so impossible to see)
Now I can load ROMs and play with the settings
Just 1 question:
You can only add ROMs to the Carnivore2 menu through the C2MAN tool?
Thanks
Yes to load ROMs into the flash you use C2MAN and then they appear in the boot menu. You can also use SofaRun (installed on the CF card), with it you can run the ROMs from CF. They will be loaded into C2 shadow RAM (very similar to how MegaRAM carts work). The game is then started from RAM (which is write protected just before so any copy protection won’t trigger). That is a much more versatile way to play games imho because the flash can only hold a few games.
Hi sdsnatcher73
Thanks for your comments
I read about using sofarun, but I haven't figured out how to do it with carnivore2
Also found that if I install a rom into carnivore rom, more often than not, the settings ( mapper, etc) are not correct, while sofarun usually gets them right ( not always, though).
So I tried running sofarun, then taking notes on what sofarun settings were and using those notes to load the rom using c2man. This is tedious , and some times doesn't work, either!
Can you show me how to use sofarun in the way you describe?
Also , another question: I got an older MSX1 computer, and Carnivore2 works well, but some games are completey out-of-sync ( unwatchable), so I suspect screen refresh (50/60hz) is not correct. is it possible to change the refresh rate, eitehr on sofarun or carnivore2? I noticed on the carnivore2 configuration, there is an option to change it, bu in my menu it is protected ( you can only see "--")
It seems to me that the games are configured to 50 or 60 hz, and you can't change it. Am I correct?
Thanks
is it possible to change the refresh rate, eitehr on sofarun or carnivore2?
on MSX1 it is technically impossible, as VDP doesn't have means for changing it (it is only possible with 9938 and up)
Why use C2MAN at all, if you can just run the games with SofaRun from the CF card?
Can you give some examples which games are not working for you?
With SofaRun you just hit 'space' on the game you want to run and it runs with default settings. Sometimes you need to tweak the settings a bit, e.g. when the mapper type is not correctly detected. These settings are saved automatically, so next time it will run with the modified settings automatically.
Which games are 'out of sync' as you said? Note that on MSX1 the refresh rate cannot be changed, that's an MSX2 and up feature.
Hi javiermi, the easiest way is to unpack all of SofaRun into the SR folder on your CF. Then add A:\SR into the PATH (you can do that in AUTOEXEC.BAT). The statement may be there already, you use SET PATH=A:\;A:\SR and add anything else you would like (separate them with semicolon).
Then when you boot into Nextor just type SR followed by pressing enter. Then navigate to the folder where the game is you want to start and press enter to run it. Works the same way for ROM and DSK games (with games on multiple disks you have to concatenate the images into a single file).
On MSX1 machines you cannot switch the frequency. This feature of Carnivore2 (it also exists in SofaRun) only works on MSX2 computers and up.