Bad compatibility? I've got your basic original large model SNES and was thinking of getting the PowerPak for it; won't it work?
Originally the SNES PowerPak had poor compatibility and didnt work with a number of SNES motherboard revisions, apparently this is was all fixed with later firmware updates though. Someone asked about the reasons for the problems here:- http://www.nesdev.com/bbs/viewtopic...tart=330&sid=5cc05cd9a2bc667e3419a717c5d143de I cant find the posts now that mention this specifically, but from reading the thread I got the impression the main problem was due to different brands of RAM being used on different SNES revisions, which caused timing issues (Like the problems with the original Xbox 1.6 to 1.6b motherboard revisions) <EDIT> Seems like SNES PowerPak still has some issues according to this thread:- http://www.nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?StartRow=26&catid=22&threadid=32536<EDIT> From pictures I have seen online I made this list of SNES motherboard revisions:- NTSC SHVC-CPU-01 SNS-CPU-GPM-01 SNS-CPU-GPM-02 SNS-CPU-RGB-01 SNS-CPU-RGB-02 SNS-CPU-1CHIP-01 SNN-CPU-01 (SNES Jr) PAL SNSP-CPU-01 SNSP-CPU-02 SNSP-CPU-1CHIP-01 SNSP-CPU-1CHIP-02 I dont think its really feasible to run tests on every motherboard revision? Maybe just try testing on an early/first and later/last revision if possible.
You never know, Everdrive for SNES may turn out to have no compatibility issues. KRIKzz, how much Flash ROM does SNES Everdrive have? What is the largest game you can play?
Do you have plans for a new pcb revision in the future which has a socket for the DSP chip? so the hacked Star Ocean won't work because it needs 12mbyte, am I right? Some games like Donkey Kong Country have an SRAM check, used to detect backup units which have more sram than a normal cartridge. Do we need a crack for these games or does your cart automatically fix that problem?
So no Tales of Phantasia support, and no support for games with SRAM size bigger than 32kB (about 30 games).
It probably will, but there's some voodoo regarding which CPU/PPU/SPU combination in the SNES/SFC you have. A lot of CF cards don't work either.
Why not put in a register file to allow for 3x 16M banks, 1x 8M bank and 8M for the BIOS? With 8M you could even backup save RAM to flash. I'm positive the added register/decoder space would be negligible in your CPLD XD This is practically a requirement for post-1993 games. I think the PowerPak issue has to do with it using DMA to PowerPak registers. Apparently the DMA state machine varied on different revisions. If the Everdrive doesn't use DMA there won't be issues. Wha?? Are you sure? I thought there were 2 or 3 standard carts with 1M saves.
slot for dsp? maybe... Star Ocean will not work in any case because this game use data decompressin chip. cart can configure sram size, so games like donkey kong works fine ok, maybe i will implement it. seems like we have just one game who have big rom size and don't use decompressing hardware: Tales_of_Phantasia
I think there is a Star Ocean rom which already has the data decompressed, and does not require the special chip. It is a very large rom however (96Mbit) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy4SFfoT5LY
yes a hack, I don't think the design should be changed just to cater for this rom, just giving information
Do you have a list of these games? I googled for a list showing the largest SNES save sizes but cant find one anywhere. It would be good to know what games have saves larger than 32kB (256kbit)
According to NSRT, there are many games with SRAM bigger than 256 kb (32 kB). Most of them are Japanese. Krikzzz : It is the Neviskti 96Mbit version of Star Ocean. The best thing would be to support various memory mapping, using xml files, like bsnes.
i will make a tool for rom header scaning. it will generate list of games with dsp/superfx/big sram size games, etc. so soon we will know which games will not work but cart has just 8mbyte(64mbit) of rom memory total, so only magic can help here :yatta:
I have the powerpak and it does NOT have bad compatibility for the record. As a matter of fact, it works great with everything except for some of the games with the soecialized chips (Megaman X2/X3, SuperFX titles) only because the hardware isn't there to do it. It does however have the DSP1 included so games like Super Mario Kart work just fine. I love the cart personally. Still, I will probably buy one of these Everdrive SNES carts when they become available because I collect these devices
"I have one that works so they must all work". The incompatibilities and problems that many people have had are well documented elsewhere. If it works it's a great bit of kit - but it is not 100% compatible with all SNES/SFC consoles, not by a long shot.
Notice that if you remove SA-1 games you end up with 4 by my count. Some might look at the expense of >256Kbit RAM as excessive for 4 Japan-only games. 256Kbit are widely available and cheap. 1Mbit on the other hand are not commonly stocked, are at least 3x the cost not taking into account other unknown factors. FRAM even more obscure and for 1Mbit it looks like you'd have to go straight to Ramtron.
