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dhaunet
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Joined: 29 Oct 2003 Posts: 40 Location: Toronto, Canada
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Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2004 8:50 pm Post subject: NES/Famicon flash cart with FPGA to emulate popular mappers! |
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See subject. It would be superawesome. But it's a tough design to come up with... Why am I so lazy and not very smart????? |
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timofonic
Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 80 Location: Europe, Spain, Malaga
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Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2004 6:20 pm Post subject: |
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Yes, could be nice, but why not support all? Could be done making an universal mapper or various universal mappers, and then adapt the rom to the un universal mapper for it. This method is used on a MSX flash cartidge... |
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Guest
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Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2004 8:25 pm Post subject: |
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timofonic wrote: | Yes, could be nice, but why not support all? Could be done making an universal mapper or various universal mappers, and then adapt the rom to the un universal mapper for it. This method is used on a MSX flash cartidge... |
Hey man, on MSX side Padial's cart is ASCII8 type, and Pazos sells two models, one in Konami8 and another in ASCII8 types. It's kind of the same as supporting MMC3 only, or MMC3 and MMC5. It's exactly what I told. |
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timofonic
Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 80 Location: Europe, Spain, Malaga
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Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2004 9:37 pm Post subject: |
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But you can convert roms for use with other mapper thanks to a program for MSX... |
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Jagasian
Joined: 08 Jun 2004 Posts: 159
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Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2004 5:18 pm Post subject: |
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A modern FPGA should easily be able to accomplish the tasks of any NES mapper. |
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Guest
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Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2004 6:28 pm Post subject: |
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Jagasian wrote: | A modern FPGA should easily be able to accomplish the tasks of any NES mapper. |
Do you have the firmware for the modern FPGA to easily accomplish the tasks? This is so naive. 99% of complexity is coming up with design. FPGA is a great technology, but it's just a way to reduce amount of discrete components. Guess what, someone have to come up with the digital design and then describe it in Verilog or VHDL.
If you can do this easily, well then you are really cool. |
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Jagasian
Joined: 08 Jun 2004 Posts: 159
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Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:50 am Post subject: |
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Anonymous wrote: | Jagasian wrote: | A modern FPGA should easily be able to accomplish the tasks of any NES mapper. |
Do you have the firmware for the modern FPGA to easily accomplish the tasks? This is so naive. 99% of complexity is coming up with design. FPGA is a great technology, but it's just a way to reduce amount of discrete components. Guess what, someone have to come up with the digital design and then describe it in Verilog or VHDL.
If you can do this easily, well then you are really cool. |
My point was that a NES flash cart need not have one fixed mapper on it with ROMs hacked to work with said mapper. |
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segabob
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Joined: 05 Mar 2004 Posts: 79 Location: USA
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Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2004 7:59 pm Post subject: Impossible |
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Quote:ROMs hacked to work with said mapper.
No one walks on water
Anyway a flash card should not need to handles mappers if all you have is the game rom in memory.
The Nes or Famicom is a lot different than what the Emulators need to handle:) |
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rbudrick
Joined: 26 Mar 2004 Posts: 373
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Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2004 3:17 pm Post subject: r |
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Just what we need...a bunch of hacked NES roms floating around the net. That would certainly confuse things...
-Rob |
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MottZilla
Joined: 08 Sep 2004 Posts: 765
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Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2004 6:35 pm Post subject: |
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The NES memory mappers are not optional. If a game requires a memory mapper (which most do) it must be present or else the game will not function properly, or more likely not function at all. Now games that did not use a memory mapper would work even if a mapper were present I believe. If you are hoping to support all the mappers which weren't used in North America that's not likely. There were so many, some not even emulated, others may be emulated but not nessisarily accurately.
If you really want a FlashCart for NES, it would make more sense to have a couple of them for each popular mapper used in North American games. That's at most 5 maybe 6 mappers? I guess people don't think that's good enough though. |
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kyuusaku
Joined: 26 Jul 2003 Posts: 941 Location: .ma.us
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Posted: Thu Oct 07, 2004 8:27 pm Post subject: |
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Sorry about my harshness but I'm very tired of people respawning this topic, I wish everyone would stop (or at least know what they're talking about.) I suggest that before you (you collectively) go theorize how it would be best to design a NES FC, you go get a BS+ degree in EECS and learn about NES archetecture because this is tireing to listen to. We've been over this many times, lets at least keep all the posts in one single thread. Let me explain things again:
0) Games without mappers cannot run with a mapper, mappers are not backwards compatible either
1) Games with mappers REQUIRE mappers! Mappers aren't an invention for emulators.
2) a NES flash cart WILL need to emulate so-called mappers with an external logic device
3) Even games without mappers are hard to implement!
4) Each game with a different mapper uses different "glue logic"
5) FPGAs are the BEST way to implement this because they can simulate the mapper AND glue logic
6) There are about 15 "essential" mappers to be implemented, not to mention each variation on the mapper, which will require ALL NEW "glue logic"
7) If you don't think this is a hard thing to pull off, ask yourself "Why hasn't this been done before?!"
If Tototek could, they would have developed a FC/NES flashcart from day one!
STOP bringing it up! |
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rbudrick
Joined: 26 Mar 2004 Posts: 373
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Posted: Thu Oct 14, 2004 7:06 pm Post subject: e |
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Word, Kyuusaku...
If someone seriously wanted to make this cart, think about how many damn mapper chips would need to be implemented on a cart like this (universal NES flash cart). It would be WAY too expensive unless someone designed a universal type of mapper chip (which is unlikely, and then you may be getting into the argument of whether you are true to the original harware, since you may be emulating the mappers that's a whole different ugly argument I'm not getting into).
But either way, such a feat would be INCREDIBLY complex and the development costs would be sky-high. It is very close to impossible to get a universal NES flash cart with the funds modern NES developers have. Not impossible, but highly improbable. Recouping those costs may be very difficult too, making ambition for such a project even more difficult to sustain.
There's just too many roadblocks.
Off the top of my head, I can't remember how many mappers there are, but if you made a flash cart for EACH ONE, that would probably work.
-Rob |
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Suppafly
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Joined: 23 Jul 2003 Posts: 191 Location: Mexico
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Posted: Thu Oct 14, 2004 7:28 pm Post subject: |
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The best option so far is playing the NEs roms on my GBA with PocketNes!!
Its really cool, try it ![Laughing](images/smiles/icon_lol.gif) _________________ MSG ME IF YOURE SELLING GENESIS GAMES! |
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kyuusaku
Joined: 26 Jul 2003 Posts: 941 Location: .ma.us
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Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2004 6:03 pm Post subject: |
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Assuming that you're not going to play pirate mappers, there should be about 10 proprietary Japanese mappers (Konami, Namco, Sunsoft, Taito etc) and about 10 Japanese/American mappers. This project is far from impossible, so all you out there shouldn't be discouraged, it is just a very time consuming project. Designing this flashcart is not hard, I could do it... the problem isn't with creating such a thing, the problem is in supporting it. Expect a FC/NES flashcart sometime in the future, its bound to come, just don't talk about it unless you're making one yourself ;) |
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