nesdev.org

if a trade secret is like a formula (percentage of ingredients proportional to each other), or a process (add this, then that, remove that, etc), manufacturing technique (some sort of sequence again), computer algorithm (sequence of instructions that produces a desired result), or survey method or &...

The reason the Chrono Trigger fan game got shut down was because it was named Chrono Trigger. If Square at the time didn't demand a cease and desist, they literally can lose control of the trademark. Trademarks are worth big money. Or for a more general concept, don't name your sidescrolling platfor...

Did I read this correctly, or did they say that they added bogus slowdown to Castlevania on X68000, just to impress X68030 users? First of all, you're talking about this article, right? http://shmuplations.com/akumajox68000/ Also, Akumajou Dracula x68000 is intended to not slow down much on a 10MHz...

Another thing people need to remember is that game consoles earlier than say 2000 cheated on their video timing a little bit. They don't run at exactly at the 29.97 NTSC rate, and definitely not 60 FPS. it's like, what do you want, a smooth scrolling picture that over time doesn't match the real sys...

Alright,

But we're back to: Is it theoretically possible to write a sound program that, in order to function correctly, requires the IPL ROM data to be bit perfect and immune to writes?

The point of storing the IPL rom was in case anything referenced it accidentally or from cleverness. I can't be 100% sure because I've never done audio programming, but it might be necessary because of the (poorly named) concept of SPC Rape, sometimes called Square Rape. Executing data as code, or c...

Sounds good. Tried it from a SD2SNES.
Wasn't able to crash it.

What is love? (Baby don't hurt me)...

If you're really making a multicart, it can't really be called bank switching. Basically a menu loader would latch on a write to the rom area for the upper address lines beyond say A23 and then do nothing more with that latch, jumping to the start point, and having the running program not even aware...

yes. the pullup is enough. that's actually how it's correctly done. 1K is a little bit low... going to make some assumptions on this calculation... that silicon diode drops is 0.6 V... and that a logic gate generating a low /CS is trying to pull down the otherwise pulled up pin to exactly 0V... 5V-0...

C isn't much at all like hand-optimized assembly language on the older 1 MHz 8 bit processors. Stack setup and tear-down is horrifically expensive in terms of clock ticks on them. In my opinion, C has to assume a lot about variable access and making sure their value can be read later, even if it nev...

Nintendo likes to switch the /CE and /OE signals on their ROMs for some reason. if a rom data output is active when both /CE and /OE are asserted, what difference was it to the person designing the circuit board? Then it just comes down to what has less vias. You used to pay by the number of vias b...

The SNES 5A22 CPU itself definitely does not tristate its address lines on reset. That was a real bummer for me. Do you have something simple like a logic probe to put on an address line while holding it in reset? If you don't have that, since we're talking push-pull logic (push to 5V, pull down to ...

No real speed limit, but depends on how good the chip select logic is. Since the address lines won't all change at the same time, if CS bounces up and down a few times before settling low, that SRAM chip is reactive enough to get more than a few writes to semi-random places. There's really no advant...

Long winded historical answer: Because on a video signal generation chip, Background Plane 0 would be the video input signal. any backgrounds, sprites, or border generated by the chip are overlaid on top. Oh really? you say... Let's start with the TMS9918 single chip video signal generator series: C...

If you're just talking about scaling (not rotation) then it's pretty basic. Lets say we have one horizontal line of an object of 8 pixel coordinates... 01234567 well, what would doubling twice as wide look like? 0011223344556677 what would half as wide look like? 0246 what would 1.5x as wide look li...