[Coco] Asteroids clone, Star Blaster cartridge?

[Barry Nelson]

> On Sun Nov 12 15:16:43 EST 2017, Steve Ostrom <smostrom7 at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> I own two of those carts, but have never made a dump.  I'd be willing to 
> temporarily loan one of those carts for someone to make a dump if that has 
> not been done yet.  How is the binary different from the dump?
> 
> --- Steve ---

I could certainly dump the cartridge for you if you mail one of them to me and then I could mail it back. Contact me off list if you want to proceed that way.

There are also at least 2 ways you could dump this cartridge:

Dump to cassette.
Dump to DriveWire.

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, insert the cartridge and turn on the CoCo. The CoCo should display Extended Color BASIC. If using DriveWire, load the DriveWire software from cassette audio.

The Coco can send an audio sequence to the PC to be saved as a .wav file. This is done with a cable normally used to connect the Coco to a tape recorder.
If you are using a CoCo 3, it must be put into RAM/ROM mode or the cart can't be accessed, so type:
POKE&HFFDE,0

A simple Basic statement can be used to send the audio signal to the PC.
CSAVEM"ROM",&HC000,&HFDFF,0

A similar command can be used to save the cartridge image to a DriveWire disk
SAVEM”ROM",&HC000,&HFDFF,0

The above lines will copy all the data in a normal 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 or loaded into a flash cart or eprom for use with a physical machine.

This procedure should work on any normal 2k, 4k, 8, or 16k cartridge. Cartridges that are 32k, 64k or 128k would require special software (which I have or can write) to dump. This cartridge (and most others) should be able to be dumped using procedures above, however.