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Getting the Atari 5200 working


Rincewind

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Help, does anyone have this system running I've got the Atari 2600 and 7800 working in retroarch using Stella and Prosystem cores but the 5200 just won't work. The roms I'm using are .a52 files if that helps and I've tried the retroarch mess core too but no luck.
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It's been a couple of months since I set it up so I will try and remember exactly what I did. First when you launch Kat5200 you should have an ugly but functional UI. Go to "Machine" then click "Bios Files" and browse for the 5200.bin. Second click "Machine" again and under "System" make sure "Atari 5200" is checked. Under "Options" setup your controls and video options to your liking. There are some NTSC filters there if you want that look but I did not like them so I left them off. In Launchbox itself I did not have to do anything extra other than the normal stuff like setting the Kat5200.exe for the Atari 5200 platform and import games. To exit your games you will have to use your "close emulator" key (key combo) 2 times. The first time will just bring up Kat5200s UI. It's not the cleanest emulator to set up and use but from my limited 5200 emulator experience it is the easiest sine Mess is a massive pain in the ass and Altirra while it is a good emulator I had troubles with setting it up through Launchbox. The 5200 is a funky beast of a machine with awful controllers and poor game selection. Most games for it are modest upgrades from the 2600 or has better ports on the 7800 so for me personally the 5200 is just one of the sideshow novelties that is nice to have but You really won't put much times into playing it.
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Cool, glad you got it working. Lol, yeah Decathlon is a controller destroyer. I can't imaging playing it with a d-pad though, I played it way back in the day on the 2600 with the joystick and surprisingly my joysticks survived it. Omega race actually destroyed controllers for me, it came with a slip over grip addon which put more leverage on the stick and broke the connectors inside. http://www.videogameauctions.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Omega-Race-and-Booster-Grip.jpg
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That looks cool so the cable made the fire buttons work. I'm using proper joysticks as Launchbox is installed on a cabinet, makes it easier playing those type of games. Just need to sort out adding a hotkey to escape kat5200 then it's completely setup, it looks like you have to press ALT and ESC
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Yeah you plugged the Atari joystick into the end of the cable and then it all plugged into the system giving you a 2 button controller. Omega race was the only game I know of that used this. Unfortunately the Retroarch Atari 2600 core doesn't support the extra button but using Stella you can emulate it.
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I've conquered MESS!!!!!! MESS can still be compiled seperate from MAME (for the time being according to the MAME site), so that is what I chose to get. http://www.emucr.com/2016/06/mess-git-20160605.html Dropped the BIOS in the "roms" folder which I had to create. I then messed around with the -listall function and got it to display EVERY SINGLE command for every single system MESS emulates. http://pastebin.com/18W3EbD0 https://i.imgur.com/hmwJCtN.png So this week I will finally start on MESS related tutorials. I am also going to post that Pastebin link in a new thread detailing some of my adventure. I still think MESS is an utter MESS, and what sets it apart from RetroArch (because they are very very similar actually), is that RetroArch has gone a long way to improve their UX in recent months and years. Not to mention their documentation is a hell of a lot better in terms of obviousness and explination. The MESS Wiki was a huge huge help in figuring out the -listall command, but for about 45 min I had no clue and was still trying to find a compiled list of what I found in the pastebin link. I am also having, personally, having a hard time finding MESS BIOS (please no one link them) past .161. I assume because this is when it was merged with MAME and the MESS BIOS now reside in MAME. However, the MESS build I posted is of MESS .174, and the MESS BIOS for .161 seem to work. I also found a slightly newer post on Archive.org for MESS BIOS that was dated 2016, but a few seem to be missing.
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