
Exciting news for ColecoVision fans, as Opcode Games' in-development expansion module for the classic platform, which, among several other things, will provide much needed RAM to the 1K console, has been officially blessed by Coleco Holdings, and will leverage the name of Coleco's original advertised - but never released - Super Game Module, a device with which it shares some similarities. Read about it here for the announcement and here for the details on the module. For those interested, one of the first games out of the gate that will make use of the low cost module is Donkey Kong Arcade...
Sadly, it looks like no official Adam support, according to Opcode:
About ADAM compatibility, the answer is no, and here is why...
First memory, the ADAM already has RAM memory mapped to the same range as the SGM. In other to avoid bus contention I would need to include a way to disable the SGM memory, since I cannot do that with the ADAM. I would do that thru a jumper (and risk having the user messing up with it), or do that by software. By software the SGM RAM would come disabled and every game should be responsible for checking if RAM is already present and enabling the SGM RAM if none is found. Complicated but possible, however...
The SGM also requires some I/O addresses. I checked with the ADAM user group and for my surprise mostly all I/O addresses are already taken by some ADAM device, Coleco made or 3rd party. In this case the only way to avoid contention would be to request the user to remove the conflicting devices.
You see, too much trouble.
I find it funny that Coleco made the ColecoVision so flexible and expandable just to close most “doors” with the ADAM. I suspect they were created by different groups.
This is particularly disappointing for those of us with Adams because of the clean video signal you get versus an unmodded ColecoVision.
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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
There's a slim chance there might be an internal card for one of the Adam's expansion slots.
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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.