Search found 972 matches

by qbradq
Wed Mar 02, 2011 10:18 am
Forum: NES Hardware and Flash Equipment
Topic: What's Your Fast-Cycle Development Setup?
Replies: 10
Views: 3965

$90 USD for a top-loader, $45 USD for a deck. Deck loaders drive me insane though :P
by qbradq
Wed Mar 02, 2011 8:46 am
Forum: NES Hardware and Flash Equipment
Topic: What's Your Fast-Cycle Development Setup?
Replies: 10
Views: 3965

So I guess it's not a fast cycle time I am really after. I just want to find the most cost-effective way of testing on real hardware. I could swing the Power Pak. Does anyone have experience with how the Power Pak's MMC1 compares to the MMC1 Dev Board that RetroZone offers? I would assume they are P...
by qbradq
Wed Mar 02, 2011 8:43 am
Forum: NES Hardware and Flash Equipment
Topic: Munchausen Flash Cartridge progress
Replies: 25
Views: 11322

What is the current status of this project? This sounds perfect for my budget and my development needs.

Can I get the schematics for the cart and USB->NES cable and code? More importantly, can anyone flash the boot loader for me? :D
by qbradq
Tue Mar 01, 2011 12:23 pm
Forum: NES Hardware and Flash Equipment
Topic: What's Your Fast-Cycle Development Setup?
Replies: 10
Views: 3965

What's Your Fast-Cycle Development Setup?

Hello! I'm finally sitting down to write that NES space shooter I've always wanted to make but am having some issues figuring out a cheap and effective way to test on real hardware. I am trying to keep my costs low so my CFO (read: Wife) doesn't fire (read: kill, mutilate and destroy) me. I have sea...
by qbradq
Tue Mar 01, 2011 11:15 am
Forum: NES Hardware and Flash Equipment
Topic: This is NOT the official ROM Laboratory forum
Replies: 9
Views: 14412

Holy cow, that site is like stepping back into 1994! Freakin' everything is an animated GIF, even the backgrounds!
by qbradq
Mon Feb 28, 2011 11:30 am
Forum: NESdev
Topic: Assembler of your choice
Replies: 38
Views: 26154

I use P65 (actually the Python rewrite Ophis) because I started 6502 development on the Commodore 64 a few years back, and at the time that was the assembler with the most support. After having a look at ASM6 source code I think I like the look of P65 better and the feature set is comparable. The on...
by qbradq
Tue Oct 21, 2008 8:25 pm
Forum: NESdev
Topic: Full-Screen Name Table Updates - What's the Best Way?
Replies: 10
Views: 5487

Honestly I had a setup where by I had two 1KB screen buffers in WRAM and then alternated which screen buffer I was updating to. Each vblank I would copy a portion of the previous screen buffer into the name table. Again I was trying to force the NES into the C64 / PC's role. Now that you mention it,...
by qbradq
Tue Oct 21, 2008 4:59 pm
Forum: NESdev
Topic: Full-Screen Name Table Updates - What's the Best Way?
Replies: 10
Views: 5487

Bah! The whole point is to make an NES program! So far I have made little demos on the Apple II and Commodore 64, but I still prefer the NES's dev scene. I am not updating the entire name table each frame. I am updating portions of it when those portions change. The screen will be laid out similar t...
by qbradq
Tue Oct 21, 2008 11:30 am
Forum: NESdev
Topic: Full-Screen Name Table Updates - What's the Best Way?
Replies: 10
Views: 5487

Breglad,

I am writing to ExRAM through $5c00 - $5fff during the frame (using the MMC5's InFrame bit of the IRQ status register to tell when it's safe). It works like a charm, and does not eat up too many in-frame cycles.
by qbradq
Tue Oct 21, 2008 11:27 am
Forum: NESdev
Topic: Full-Screen Name Table Updates - What's the Best Way?
Replies: 10
Views: 5487

Even using a fully unrolled copy loop and completely skipping the sprite DMA I can only get 192 bytes copied within the NTSC VBlank period. Having the sprite DMA occurring every frame is fairly important so I can have a decent looking OAM cycle. I do not need to update the name table every frame, bu...
by qbradq
Tue Oct 21, 2008 1:49 am
Forum: NESdev
Topic: Full-Screen Name Table Updates - What's the Best Way?
Replies: 10
Views: 5487

Bregalad, Thank you for the suggestion! That works fairly smoothly. Most of the graphics in my project are mostly black (think Ultima 4 PC here), so this actually looks fairly good. Well, I just tried this method with some motion on the screen, and even at 4 FPS the blanking is too distracting. I su...
by qbradq
Mon Oct 20, 2008 10:20 pm
Forum: NESdev
Topic: Full-Screen Name Table Updates - What's the Best Way?
Replies: 10
Views: 5487

Full-Screen Name Table Updates - What's the Best Way?

I want to update an entire name table in one pass. I have so far looked into three ways of doing it, and am wondering if there are other options I am missing. The first option was to leave the PPU rendering on and update the second name table over the course of eight vblanks, then swap name tables. ...