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Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 4:14 pm
by d4s
byuu wrote:It is an interesting piece of hardware, though. The base unit has battery-backed RAM and an RS232 interface IIRC.
A PCB-shot should be in there somewhere:
http://dforce3000.de/?p=filedump&srch=exertainment
Will send it over if you ever feel like emulating it.
Really appreciate the offer, but I really don't think I could pull it off. Wouldn't want to deprive you of something so rare. And even if I could (I can't), the hotel overlay thing looks like a lot more fun, bleh. Besides, still have Matthew's BS-X over here collecting dust >.>
I do notice there's an EPROM on that board, with the UV window covered. So it looks like we need to emulate the TL16C550AN (which has serial interface stuff in it, looks like it was meant for a modem, maybe an online firmware update mechanism or service mode?) and connect it to that EPROM's data.
http://www.alldatasheet.co.kr/datasheet ... 550AN.html
God, all sorts of controller insanity, too. SNES to RJ45 ... I am aware you can use RJ45 as a ghetto serial cable, telxons usually do that. So all in all, wow. This is an insane amount of work for something that can't even be emulated via keyboard / mouse / gamepad. Amazing.
I posted some minor software disassembly notes here:
http://board.byuu.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=477
If you want to continue work on this sometime, let me know and I'll try and help out, but I don't think I want to do all of that work alone :/
Sure!
Didn't mean to sound like you have to in any way.
Just wanted to mention that it's available for research should you ever feel like it.
I don't see an EPROM on that pcb, though. Are you refering to the 8464a-10 right next to the battery? That's an 8k SRAM.
Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 4:29 pm
by bunnyboy
d4s wrote:How about auto-loading *.srm files that have a filename equal to the ROM's that's been selected for loading?
Thats probably the eventual plan, with a folder path in the config file.
d4s wrote:-2Mbit hirom games don't work yet.
Also probably a future change. The block size is 4Mbit so anything smaller will just have to be copied multiple times when loading.
d4s wrote:you don't actually decode the full b-bus adress in hardware, just the upper two adress lines, resulting in the DMA port being accessible from $21c0-$21ff.
Yup when you said C0 I knew that was the problem. Should be an easy fix. All regs are only on when the boot rom is enabled so it doesn't affect any running games.
Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 5:47 pm
by remowilliams
The updated Powerpak is now working in my SNES jr (2/1/3). Also the 2GB Dane Elec cart which refused to work at all with the Powerpak now seems to be working correctly.
Remembering the save file is nice
Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 9:48 pm
by Mitch
My brothers 1/1/1 SNES still seems to have intermittent issues where it doesn't want to load some games at times. This is the same as what is was doing with the old mappers.
Mitch
Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 11:08 am
by Eyedunno
I am very pleased to report that this works like a charm on my Super Famicom Jr. as well. If only composite video didn't look like crap on an LCD (not that S-Video on an LCD is anything to phone home about either)...
I can't wait for autoloading (that's really a better feature to me than autosaving). If I may make a suggestion, I suggest keeping things simple when/if you implement this. Rather than having an clunky menu, it would be better I think to just have the SRM file show up by default under "Load Battery RAM", and if the user wants to load an SRM file other than the one with the same file name as the SMC file, s/he need only select "Load Battery RAM" as before.
The one weakness I see with this simple approach is in situations where someone might want to load a completely blank SRM file, but the obvious remedy is just to keep a spare blank file on the card.
EDIT: Oh, and also separate toggles in the config file (e.g. "AUTOLOAD=1") would be nice too.
Anyway, awesome update! Keep up the good work!
Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 12:25 pm
by tepples
Eyedunno wrote:If only composite video didn't look like crap on an LCD (not that S-Video on an LCD is anything to phone home about either)...
A lot of LCD TVs have something called "picture in picture", where one "sub" picture is drawn in a small window over a full-screen "main" picture. I seem to remember trying some 240p consoles like the NES and Super NES on my Vizio TV, and the composite video looked as sharp as a DS.
But now my question: Why does the "long reset" take so much longer with the SNES PowerPak than the NES one?
Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 1:58 pm
by Eyedunno
tepples wrote:A lot of LCD TVs have something called "picture in picture", where one "sub" picture is drawn in a small window over a full-screen "main" picture. I seem to remember trying some 240p consoles like the NES and Super NES on my Vizio TV, and the composite video looked as sharp as a DS.
I'm reasonably sure my cheapo Sanyo doesn't have PIP, but even if it did, I think I'm better off getting a small cheapo CRT than playing in a tiny window on a larger LCD TV. There seem especially to be issues with what I assume to be alternating scanlines (for blinking), for instance, when you target all in FFV, I tend to have the cursor either not appear at all or appear as a regular, non-blinking cursor. Chnaging the settings, I can get it to appear like a comb, which is actually better, but the same settings result in intolerable jumpiness when the screen scrolls.
tepples wrote:But now my question: Why does the "long reset" take so much longer with the SNES PowerPak than the NES one?
Interesting... Not that it's been an annoyance to me by any means - I played through FFIV from beginning to end on my PowerPak.
Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 7:36 pm
by bunnyboy
Eyedunno wrote:
EDIT: Oh, and also separate toggles in the config file (e.g. "AUTOLOAD=1") would be nice too.
You pretty much described what I was thinking
The only missing part is a line in the config file to say the path to the saves folder. Should be able to do the same thing for both NES and SNES. Just need more free time...
tepples wrote:But now my question: Why does the "long reset" take so much longer with the SNES PowerPak than the NES one?
That's just how my counter worked out
Didn't think people would be saving often enough to really notice.
Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 6:24 pm
by bunnyboy
No longer beta, available from the website. Also tweaked the exhirom mapping so hopefully DQ3en is good now. Hope it didn't break anything else!
Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2010 6:54 pm
by remowilliams
Tried the release version on Test Drive II. Not that I was expecting a fix given the error, but figured it couldn't hurt
Code: Select all
Copying Game... Game Copied 0800sectors 8Mbit Checking BRAM... No Save File MAP00 TYP40 ROM74 SRM74 RST407400 No $40FFC0 Header MAPFF TYPFF ROMFF SRMFF RSTFFFF No $FFC0 Header MAP32 TYP00 ROM0A SRM00 RST802A Header at $7FC0 0KB SRAM Added ExLoROM 8Mbit unsupported
Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2010 7:26 pm
by bunnyboy
Here is the problem with trusting headers, they aren't used by the physical cart so they can be wrong! ROM says the mapper is ExLoROM (MAP32) but it is actually just plain LoROM (30). Changing byte $7FD5 from $32 to $30 will likely make it good. Not near a system so I haven't tested this yet...
It may be a good idea to handle cases like this. Assume that anything under X Mbit isn't actually an ExLoROM game because it doesn't make sense.
Bad File Header
Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2010 8:09 pm
by tepples
bunnyboy wrote:It may be a good idea to handle cases like this. Assume that anything under X Mbit isn't actually an ExLoROM game because it doesn't make sense.
But by then, you're almost doing the equivalent of DiskDude! correction, a feature that at least one PowerPak-owning cousin has been begging for.
Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2010 11:47 pm
by remowilliams
bunnyboy wrote:Not near a system so I haven't tested this yet....
Yes, that does indeed do the trick.
Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2010 2:04 am
by orwannon
bunnyboy wrote:ROM says the mapper is ExLoROM (MAP32) but it is actually just plain LoROM (30).
This is simply because as in Contra 3, the name extends into the mapper field. It says THE DUEL: TEST DRIVE 2, which is 22 bytes instead of the 21 bytes reserved for the game title. And ASCII "2" equals $32.
Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2010 11:05 pm
by Mitch
I just had a chance to test it with my brother's 1/1/1 SNES and it still has the same problem of randomly failing to load games.
Here's the error log from Super Street Fighter 2 if that helps.
Code: Select all
Copying Game... Game Copied 2000sectors 32Mbit Checking BRAM... No Save File MAP79 TYP79 ROM79 SRM79 RST797969 No $40FFC0 Header MAP79 TYP79 ROM79 SRM79 RST7979 No $FFC0 Header MAP79 TYP79 ROM79 SRM79 RST7979 No $7FC0 header No Internal Header Found Check the unsupported games listor verify your game file is good
I have no problem on either of my personal SNES systems with the same setup and game.
Mitch