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byuu

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  1. Unfortunately not. neviksti stated his flash cart cost about $650 for two pre-populated prototype boards, so I hope to pay that or less, but I'd entertain any offers. Yep The SNES audio system has its own CPU, so games write custom programs. They send commands to the SMP to play certain songs. So all you need to do is trace mask opcodes right before a song starts, find what CPU command was sent, block it and use the track# it was trying to play to index into 21fx's audio track list. Video is different, you have to stream data from DMA and set up an HDMA channel or IRQ to turn the screen on and off mid-frame. It's about five times as much code, but the same video player can be reused verbatim in any game.
  2. I agree. They're also a huge pain to emulate.May I direct you here? http://nesdev.parodius.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=5767 smkdan did exactly that and showed the limits of what the original hardware could do. He used Mode 7 to play back video at 64x64 resolution (yes you read that right), and it actually works pretty good. Limited to about two minutes due to storage space, of course. One of the videos is the entire cartoon intro to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Geez, I've nitpicked exactly as I've asked others not to, and didn't even realize it. My apologies. Certainly if you want. I'll be selling at-cost or at a loss, and I won't take pre-orders. But otherwise I'll let you know. You will of course need a flash cart to use it, but I'm hoping to convince some flash cart devs to include 21fx support for an all-in-one solution. Keeping it simple for now so that I can make it happen. Especially if people think outside the box of just adding PSX port video and audio. Totally redesign audio, store much higher quality sound effects on the S-SMP, add new videos hand-chosen from anime adaptations of games, add voice acting, make games like that CT: Prophet's Guile hack that is many times longer thanks to extra storage, etc. Could be really neat, we just need ROM hackers who are willing to try.And by being a passthru (think of a Game Genie), it'll work with anything, so you could combine this with a SuperFX if you were crazy enough in the head. Likewise I appreciate the interest and questions. I figured most would immediately reject the idea entirely. Not that I care, everyone's entitled to their opinions.Just don't want anyone to think this device is my magnum opus. It's not, it's a side project I am working on for entertainment. I spend 98% of my time focusing only on the hardware accuracy. It's nice to take a break and focus on making the games more enjoyable for once. ----- Lastly, in case there are any ROM hackers here. This is what it takes to add full CD-quality audio to Der Langrisser via 21fx, with full sound effects still in place. org $36822b; jml hook; nop org $408000 hook: sep #$20 cmp #$02; beq .play cmp #$04; beq .stop .unrecognized_command: //eg sound effect, etc -- let the original game handle it php; phb; phd sep #$20 jml $368230 .play: tya; sta $0021f1 lda #$01; sta $0021f0 -; lda $0021f0; bvs - lda #$01; sta $0021f1 lda #$03; sta $0021f0 rtl .stop: lda #$02; sta $0021f1 lda #$03; sta $0021f0 rtl That took about an hour to make. The CT demo took half a day. So overall, quite easy for a hacker to do, and I'll do a bunch of games myself. But we'll need the help of others to really make this a success.
  3. Re: Java sucks, just a friendly joke, I wasn't expecting people outside my forums to read that page. I could share my dislikes of Java (and they are many), but it's off-topic and I ultimately don't care whether one uses it or not. Yes and no, but that didn't stop Nintendo.Star Fox, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, DOOM, etc used a 21MHz RISC coprocessor that was placed inside the cartridge. This is effectively 8-10x more powerful than the SNES processor was, and has specialized rasterization capabilities. Super Mario RPG, Kirby's Dreamland 3, Kirby Super Star, Dragonball Z: Over 9000 Dimension, etc used a 10.5MHz version of the SNES CPU with about two dozen extended hardware capabilities inside its cartridge. Pilotwings, Super Mario Kart, etc used a DSP that performed higher-end trigonometry and calculus functions, whereas the SNES CPU core is not even capable of multiplying or dividing. Star Ocean and Far East of Eden Zero used memory mappers that let you access more ROM than a standard cartridge could hold, and also provided hardware decompression. The Super Game Boy put an entire Game Boy inside a cartridge, and the BS-X added satellite linkup and download capabilities, as well as a read-write flash cartridge connector slot. Both streamed audio quality well above that of CD music. Was the use of any of these chips considered to defeat the point of using an SNES back in their day? Did anyone complain that it wasn't the same anymore? They were selling points back then. Every* system that has carts has done this: the NES had mappers, custom sound chips, even video RAM expansion. The Genesis had the SVP to draw polygons. The Game Boy put real-time clocks inside the games. The Nintendo DS even manages to pack specialized hardware in those little tiny flash cards. It's only impossible to add custom chips to CD-based media, for reasons that should be blindingly obvious. (* don't be Captain Obvious, I don't mean literally every last one in the entire universe.) There's a huge difference between utilizing what real hardware could do and making shit up.What I have done was nothing that real hardware did not do. I have just combined part of the functionality of two devices into one: the S-DD1 mapper and BS-X audio+flash connector. I did not add 1080p output, H.264 decoding, a 3D graphics accelerator, etc that could never happen on real hardware. That would be pointless and stupid, you are right. 21fx will be a real hardware device, and it will be for sale. I am capable of making the hardware, and I will. It's just a matter of time. 21fx's software implementation is to encourage interest and try and get others to help make it happen quicker. I am taking advantage of the capabilities the SNES provided, like many popular games of the time did. Only I'm also taking advantage of the fact that storage is much cheaper now than in 1992. Cost is also important. This device will cost about $20 in parts, and will work on the real thing with no external power source. It can also be added to any emulator in about 20 minutes, as the C source implementation is less than 4 kilobytes. It also won't cause any extra CPU usage to emulate. Compare that to sticking an Intel Atom with H.264 decode that would require several megabytes of source code and make the SNES emulator ten times more resource intensive. Not true. I have the storage space for 1080p video, but the SNES' internal video circuitry is only capable of moving 2.68MB worth of data to video RAM per second, and it cannot transfer at all while drawing the screen. So cut that in half. We are limited to ~224x144@30fps on NTSC, or ~240x160@25fps on PAL. Correct. This is not revolutionary by any means. It's just a neat little thing for hobbyists to tinker with, and maybe enhance their favorite games a little if they like.Personally, I think it'd be really cool to use some of the awesome remix songs on this site in existing games and let the user swap them out as desired. Enhance the playability of a classic just a little for a slightly new experience.
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