Chameleon 2600

This is a demo of a VCS / Atari 2600 / Stella core for the Chameleon.

It is not yet finished, but many games can already be played. Some graphical glitches can be expected as the 2600 has very strict timing to generate video and there are a few edge cases not emulated yet.

There is stereo sound. The first channel is on the left and the second channel is on the right.

It supports joysticks connected to the C64 when in cartridge mode and also the first 2 slots on the docking-station. There is also support for the CDTV remote and joystick emulation on a PS/2 keyboard (use Numlock to switch between joystick 1 and 2).

The core currently only supports 4K ROMs, there is no bankswitching implemented.

Keys

F1              - Switch difficulty for player 1 to A = pro
F2              - Switch difficulty for player 1 to B = amateure
F3              - Switch difficulty for player 2 to A = pro
F4              - Switch difficulty for player 2 to B = amateure
F5              - Press Select switch (changes play mode in many games)
F6              - Toggle scan-line emulation when screen is doubled (F8)
F7              - Press Game reset (normally used to start a game)
F8              - Toggles vertical doubling of the screen
 +              - switch screen to color mode
 -              - Switch screen to black&white mode
Cursor keys     - Choose ROM
RUN/STOP or ESC - Disable CPU register view

Right button on Chameleon leaves 2600 mode and restarts the main Chameleon core.

Take note that screen doubling will not work with some PAL cartridges. The doubled screen becomes too long to fit on the VGA screen. If the game will start to flicker and run at half speed simply press F8 again to disable line doubling and the game should run normally.

Download

Make sure to pick the right core for your hardware:

• chameleon_2600.rbf for the first version of the chameleon (blue buttons, uses the breakout cable for power)
• chameleon_2600_v2.rbf for the second version of the hardware (black/white/red buttons, uses mini-USB for power)

To install the core on the chameleon you have to tick the "Flash additional ROM" box in Chaco, then click Flash .rbf/ROM.

Choose the chameleon_2600.rbf/chameleon_2600_v2.rbf file first, then the roms.bin file you created (see below).

Chameleon 2600 20190321

older releases: Chameleon 2600 20190204

creating a ROM collection

To make your own ROM collection you can concatenate up to about 100 4K ROMs into a binary file. 2K ROMs are supported, but you need to copy twice to fill it up to 4K.

You can use a .bat file like this on windows:

del roms.bin
copy /b roms\Spcinvad.Atari_2600.bin roms.bin /y
copy /b roms.bin + /b roms\Pitfall.Atari_2600.bin roms.bin /y
copy /b roms.bin + /b roms\Galaga.Atari_2600.bin roms.bin /y
...

or a shell script like this on linux:

rm -f roms.bin
cat ./roms/Spcinvad.Atari_2600.bin >> roms.bin
cat ./roms/Pitfall.Atari_2600.bin >> roms.bin
cat ./roms/Galaga.Atari_2600.bin >> roms.bin
...