WTB: Tristar Adapter and WildCard DX2, Snes

Hey guys!
Just learned that my recent project, a region-free Snes with a tiny integrated OS has problems running the Tristar Adapter and the WildCard DX2.
I'm afraid I'm gonna have to bite the bullet and purchase these two units in order to debug the issue.

I've got a Xbox 360 with Gta4 and Hd-drive i could trade in, but we'd have to compensate for the difference in value in case you want it.

 

It's a shame there are only 50..Being in the US, I had not even heard of your project until now. And I probably would have been all over it. =/

 

Very impressive project... - does your eeprom hold a db of snes games or do you just detect region and adjust settings acordingly?

I'm modding a dx2 to just a compact flash slot instead of a floppy - it's great to have a power-up-and-go games list, just a shame I'm tied to the dx2 bios' filemanager...

Anyway, I've sent you a PM regarding a dx2.

 

Thanks! It detects region settings by reading out the header of the cartridges. A database of snes games would probably be huge, slow and inaccurate for unknown titles, not so cool.

 

this thing rocks! you should have advertised it here too!

edited: you just miss sd card slot for loading, and game genie and you have a TOTAL winner!

will you make some other of these?
how could you have it force boot in 60Hz? there isn't an hardware block on the PAL snes? ?_?

 

I know Rob Webb used to sell WCDX2s before at least... you could try to mail him, if not I would be very willing to buy one of your PCBs and try it on my WCDX2 ^_^;;

http://www.robwebb.clara.co.uk/shop/index.htm

 

To disable the cart initially are you gating /RD and /WR in addition to /ROMSEL? Some carts will manually decode /ROMSEL themselves which would present a problem. 99% sure that would fix it.

Edit: also what are you using for logic, a SPLD? If it's too slow the Ultra16's propagation time in addition to DRAM state machines in copiers could also be a problem!

 

Judging from this one guy posting on the Tototek forums, you can still get the SWC DX2 from Far Front East:

http://www.tototek.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1748&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=


Can't help with the Tri-Star.
(Though, if I had one floating around, I'd let you borrow it)

 

HOLY HELL! I want one of these.... incredibly badly! h: h: h:

EDIT: I was so quick to post that I didnt search the site thoroughly...
No more production after the 50 units which have already been sold eh?
Dang!!!!

 

First of all, thanks for your nice & friendly comments, i really appreciate it! =)
I'm so sorry I couldn't advertise it here but all units were gone incredibly fast.
This is my first "commercial" electronics project, that's why I wanted to start small and test the waters first, hence the limited production run.
I will most likely not make additional ones.

Of course I'm decoding all three(/RD,/WR,/ROMSEL), some special chips such as the Super FX or Sa-1, need that anyway to not interfere with my hardware.

I'm currently using a Cpld, 95xc72, was a tight fit. I assume the propagation time doesn't cause much of a problem. Game Doctor 7 and Pro Fighter work fine, too.

The most likely reason why Tristar and DX2 aren't working is that the Ultra16 tries to detect lots of different devices, usually by checking some registers of said devices. I guess I'm accidentally accessing some registers of the Tristar and DX2 in the process.

 

I've used XC95108 a lot and they're 10-20ns, some copiers also strobe the DRAM entirely during address setup time, others will spill over into /RD time which would be pushing it. It just depends on the oscillator, logic and whether or not they use the SNES control signals for strobing. What does the router say the max propagation for those pins are? I think 5ns would be OK and possible if you just go nRDout = nRDin OR nCartEn.

Certainly! Are you going to add a game specific hack for everything though? That seems like a bad idea, isn't there a way to force disable the device or do you mean there's a bus conflict? I think all copiers will use /RD and /WR, multicarts on the other hand probably won't.

 

I think it's more like 15ns. Haven't figured out where to display the actual maximum propagation time after fitting, but this is what the timing constraints say at least.
Yeah, that's pretty much how I'm doing it: ORing the /OE and /CE inputs with my enable signal for the cartridge and NOT ORing the same signal for the bios flash.
Doesn't get much faster, I suppose.

I don't think it's a bus conflict. Will have to wait for the real hardware to find out, though. I have yet to see a device that causes bus conflicts on Ultra16, save for "overwriting" the ntsc/pal flag of ppu register $213f in order to bypass region checks, but that's intentional, of course.
The Ultra16 bios software checks for a myriad of different devices on the a-bus, writing and reading different locations that are registers of said devices in order to find out if any of them are present.

Nope, no specific hacks so far and I'd like to keep it that way if possible.
I don't have a Tristar yet, but I know the Tristar software accesses its registers by writing to $00:FFF0-3.
I don't know if and how they`re mirrored on real hardware. If they're mapped all over the place (e.g. decoded with just a0, a1, /CART and /WR), I may have a problem.

 

See my SWC DX2 with Disk Dual and Compactflash mod here:

http://www.tototek.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1771

Mr Lui of FFE still sells the SWC DX2 64mb and Disk Duals brand new

 

d4s i can lend you my wildcard dx2... i also can sell it to you if realy necessary.
you know how to contact me

 

I`ve made contact with mister Liu, he`s asking $210 for a DX2, which is a bit too expensive for my liking. I wasn`t expecting to shell out more than $150 for a DX2.

 

iirc I paid way more than that for mine from Rob Webb (though I did get the Disk Dual too, might be why)

 

Patches?