Home Page Forums MAME MAME TRS-80 Color Computer - Cartridge Dumping?

Guys,

We've had a post over at TOSEC regarding a user 'SixOThree' who has a TRS-80 Color Computer cart they are offering to have dumped. The cart in question is 'Color Robot Battle' and there is further info about the game here: http://www.retroprogramming.com/2011/02/celebrating-30-years-of-color-robot.html

I know none of the current TOSEC members have the equipment or expertise to dump a CC cart, so I thought I'd give you guys a heads up... maybe you have someone in the team with the know-how and interest?

Link here: http://www.tosecdev.org/forum/general-di...in-the-archive/

If you don't want to open the cartridge, the best way would be to use some tape to block the autostart pin of the cartridge, insert it on the machine, and save the cartridge memory area as binary file as wav file (connecting the audio out to the line in of a PC, for example).

From there, I could easily extract the rom content. I've done it several times for Dragon cartridges and they should be the same.

Good luck!

If all SixOThree has is a Coco, the only practical method for moving the cart ROM to a PC for posting on the Web is by creating a .wav file. As robcfg indicated, the cart must be taped to prevent an auto-start.

Cart auto-start happens when a signal goes from edge connector 7 to edge connector 8. All the odd edge connectors are on one side of the board with even on the other. Connector 9 is a short trace, easily spotted and identifies the odd side. Put tape over edge connector 8.

Now that the cart will not auto-start, the Coco can send an audio sequence to the PC to be saved as a .wav file. This is done with a modified cable normally used to connect the Coco to a tape recorder. Coco cassette out pin 5 is signal and pin 2 is ground.

A simple Basic program can be used to send the audio signal to the PC.
8K cart
CSAVEM"ROM",&HC000,&HDFFF,0

4K cart
CSAVEM"ROM",&HC000,&HCFFF,0

The above lines will copy all the data in the cart ROM. The .wav file can be loaded into appropriate emulation software and saved in proper binary format for use as a .rom or .ccc file for use with MESS and other emulators.

One final point, the above will work with a Coco1 or Coco2. A Coco3 must be put into RAM/ROM mode or the cart can't be accessed. POKE&HFFDE,0

It appears this has already been dumped.

Color Computer Archive, link to Color Robot Battle >www.colorcomputerarchive.com/coco/Cartridges

It ran fine under MESS too…