Did you think the people who run 50-year-old Atari computers would let down Atari hardware like The!Cart just because it's 13 years old? The!Cart was designed to evolve - a bit like the famous Voyager spacecraft.
We have evolved the software a lot over the past 13 years, but the hardware and the hardware logic (CPLD) were stable when it went into production. It had to be, because there's no easy way to update it for the users. Hias did an awesome job of encoding all the ROM types into the limited CPLD space then. No way to get anything more into that. Keep in mind that all this predates the FPGA era, when such things became standard.
But the Street Fighter II release somehow triggered him so much that he went back to revisit the logic and rearrange it to free some gates after all this time. Seriously, that is one of the most unlikely things that has ever happened to me.
Then it took 4 people 3 days with soldering, 20-year-old Windows XP machines with Xilinx ISE 10 and Fujnet to validate the CPLD gate updates hias crammed the into The!Cart logic. Thanks to Dr. Z for hosting the Midwinter Meeting again, and to him, Beetle, and Insane for their outstanding support.
Cartridges with the updated logic now also support 4 MB and can run the excellent Street Fighter II conversion by Vega and his team. And despite the phone's poor quality in capturing the CRT, it was worth the effort. And it's great to have this game on the Atari 8-bit now.
We plan to prepare a Windows XP machine with the right software and hardware so we can take it to meetings/conventions.
So people who do not have the hardware to update the CPLD can bring their The!Cart, and we upgrade it.
The new version of "The!Cart Studio" is published here. The documentation has been updated accordingly.
- Added "Flash MegaCart 4 MB" (cartridge type 63) as supported The!Cart mode 37. This mode is required to run cartridges like Street Fighter II. To use it, you also need to have the latest CPLD logic update.
- Updated the sections for the CPLD logic updates and the troubleshooting.
- Fixed the start-bank computation for cartridges with 16k bank size.
- Updated the "The!Cart" flasher software to version 2026-03-22, which supports the new The!Cart mode 37 and has the latest high-speed SIO and MyPicoDos.
For questions, join the AtariAge Thread.