SNES Cd-Rom FAQ!!!

As I stated in the OOOld topic I started writing a FAQ about it based on our assembler topic... You can see the result at the following link.

http://www.freewebs.com/azidahaka/faq1a.txt

please feel free to criticize, help and correct. I consider this to be a FAQ wrote more from the board than myself!

and anyway i really think we should start writing some FAQ for the people that just entered the forum and have no idea that topics as interesting as this were made, and that won't go down in the forum history 20 pages...

Please let me hear you comments!


Karsten

EDIT:
I forgot to post the link to the topic!

http://assemblergames.com./forums/showthread.php?t=2208&page=1&pp=20&highlight=snes

 

Havent got time to read your FAQ but i still dont think we have got to the bottom of things. The original guy who put these on his site hasnt asnwered and the atary guy who had the cd-rom addon on his table or at least on the same table was telling us it wasnt him even though it was so obvious it was.

 

very nice reading, are any games know that where planed for snes cd ? this would be a nice addition to the faq

 

I'm opened to all new infos

 

Well, since I wrote that comment I found out that the SNES expansion connector does provide some if not all access to the memory space. I can't find a pinout however to support this. I like your FAQ but theres one problem with it, it's all speculation, none of us know what we're talking about. I'm afraid we'll never find real content regarding the CDROM so likely more info will be needed from better sources than us.

 

i really hope that things will be uncovered in time, and maibe some other protos will emerge!

 

Afraid I've gootta pick you up on a few spelling mistakes/dodgy wording. I've ignored the quotes except for one, which i think you've just dropped a letter from
Changes in bold

- actively participated to the topic.
- All I's relating to yourself should be capital
- would feature crystalline sound
- Be consistent - sometimes its "nintendo" sometimes "ninty"
- who bought it from the trash
- Here i'm pasting (for giving more credits to the people who wrote it) some important excerpts
from the topic in which the reality of the thing was debated and that lead to even find the
name of the man that was exposing it at the classic gaming expo 2002:
- Quote RETRO

well,
- you can notice a
- don't waste time and contact me by mail

 

i don't really understand why you pasted my name in the credits since i wouldn't belive it was real and i tried to find everything i could to make people think before they say it's definitivly real rather than trying to confirm the existance and truth of a real snes cd prototype in the hands of a collector, but wel... thanks anyway!

and it's a pretty interesting read, like someone said earlier, you should add tittles of games that where planned for the add-on. if i remember right, secret of mana was one of those, and a rumor claimed ff7 was in early and/or (depending of the source) in consideration for the platform, the rumor also told the game was suposed to be set in a medieval era, but this is, imo, only speculations.

 

FF7's Yoshitaka Amano menu icons look very SFCish, I think it was planned for SFC

 

I'm currently working on a SNES hardware article for a magazine. (actually my deadline was last friday, but I still have time for images if I can get them by the end of today)

Would someone be able to provide me with a decent SNES CD dev kit or prototype photo for the article? I would of course credit whoever supplied it. preferrably without any website logos all over it.

If you don't want such an image put on the forums publically, please do email me.

Most magazines just use crappy scans from other magazines, I really think this stuff needs to get out into the public more. Information (both visual and text based) should flow freely.

So yeah, if you can confirm the authenticity of either a SNES CD dev kit, or prototype, and also provide me with just one high quality, decent screenshot without logos all over it, i would be really greatfull.

So post here, or drop me a PM. It really needs to be today or tomorow, since right now my editor and the designers are putting things together and finishing the piece off. It would make for a great eye opener.

 

good luck.... your going to need a whole world of it.

 

Why? The SNES article was completed easily.
Do you mean acquiring the screenshot?
Are people really that reluctant to part with such information?
Shame, that is a pity.

All I have is the ones in that topic, but they all have logos over them.
(what is it with people putting logos right over the middle of things? Do you realise how dificult it is for magazine writers to remove that stuff without it being noticeable? Hours on an art program removing such stuff and my brain feels like its been fried. At least put them around the outside, to make cropping easier.)

 

Well, I think you forgot the word "picture" in your original post ;-)

 

Erm... I don't mean to sound rude or like a jerk, but I'm sure I said the words image or photo several times. I hope no one thought I actually wanted the actual system.

See? Nicely edited highlighted for easy viewing.

Anyway, if not, no worries, it's no big deal.

 

Ah, right, I apparently misparsed the scope of the word "photo".

 

Mostly so no one steals credit for someone elses pic - look how quickly the PSP Dev box pic was ripped off and stamped by many other sites -_-

 

thanx i'll correct at once... you know i wrote this a night and my english is a bit rusty

 

you was inserted in the credits because of the positive attitude showed.you have actively posted trying to find something for proving that it was fake and not stated "it's fake, shut up"... costructive people allow topic and community to grow.

I didn't wrote anithing about the games because i have no info about them
the only game that videogames magazine here in italy stated for sure to be re-released for the cd add-on was f-zero, tough they could have been misleaded by the f-zero 2 for the bandai satellaview... if anyone have enough info about that, and those info are reliable, i'll soon add them to the FAQ.

I consider this FAQ as a little gift to the forum... when the faq will grow better i'll post it around, and i hope some other good people will join us here on the board!

by the way the FAQ was update with the spells corrections suggested by the_steadster and is available here:
http://www.freewebs.com/azidahaka/faq1b.txt

 

nice idea to fit all the info into one document.
however, compiling a list of assumptions made by members of this board
isnt a faq imho, im still waiting for hard facts from the guy who actually owns the unit.(although it might not happen at all)
its a fine lecture for people who are new to the topic though, i dont want to tone down your effort here.


just something you might consider changing, cause its definitively incorrect:

the snes has two main data busses, the a-bus and the b-bus:
-the a-bus has 24 adress lines (a0-a23) wich adds up to a total of 128mbits of adressable memory. this is where the cartridge rom/ram and the wram is mapped to.
-the b-bus has 8 adress lines, that means it isnt able to adress more than 256 bytes.

the cartridge slot is connected to the a-bus. it also carries the b-bus on the extra pads that are used by some games (super fx, sa1, super gameboy etc).
these games hardly touch the b-bus pins though, most just use the master clock to sync their coprocessors.(the super gameboy also uses the audio inputs but thats another story)
the ext connector just carries the b-bus amongst other things such as audio input, several clocks, reset and such.
according to several docs, the b-bus is mapped to $2100-$21ff on banks $00-$3f and $80-$bf.

to make a long story short:
theres no way in hell you can boot or run a game from the ext port alone.
you always have to have a cartridge inserted to at the very least provide reset and irq vectors and a small bootstrap routine.
to run pirated games, there must be ram mapped to the a-bus aswell.
besides, all snes units do carry the ext port, no matter if they are ntsc or pal versions.

thus, making a cdrom drive that plugs into the cartridge slot instead of the ext port seems to be slightly more convenient from a hardware designers standpoint cause you can have everything in one box instead of a bottom unit and an additional cartridge that holds the bios and some ram.

the point is:
both cartridge-slot only and cartridge+ext-port methods are perfectly possible and theres no reason to believe its a fake cause it goes into the cart slot instead of the ext port.
just wanted to elaborate on the technical background a bit.

i wouldnt call it real unless having seen it in action, though.

 

this was inserted just beacause i tought it was an interesting point of view
as interesting as yours that i'll gladly add to the next revisions
by the way the "thing" had a strange looking port on the top that could have been used for save data storage or bios, and anyway the proto could have been an early sample with just no more than cd-playing capabilities... we still don't know enough about it... I'm still waiting for infos to emerge...