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MottZilla · Joined: 08 Sep 2004 Posts: 765

I never really did find much information on this so can anyone really elaborate? I know the deal behind it is SlowROM games are something like 200ns and 120ns is FastROM and "older copiers" have problems with FastROM games. The thing is that's very vague.

I have the GDSF3 which tends to require alot of newer games to be patched. One game I can remember off hand was MegaMan 7 which I believe its sub-screen (where you change your weapon, use e-tanks, etc) didn't work right. I patched with with ucon64 -l (slowrom fix) and it seemed to be better.

But my main question really would be, if I got a GDSF7, would I be free of SlowROM/FastROM problems? I know supposively I'd be free of SRAM protection problems (Donkey Kong Country, Super Metroid, Killer Instinct, etc).

Either way I'll probably trade up to a GDSF7 because the lack of a parallel port is rather annoying. Not needing to patch ROMs with -k or -l would be nice too.

madman · Joined: 07 Jul 2006 Posts: 598

Yea, no slowrom problems with GDSF7. The parallel port is worth it alone, who even has a floppy drive anymore Smile

MottZilla · Joined: 08 Sep 2004 Posts: 765

Thanks madman. So the GDSF3 suffer SlowROM but GDSF7 doesn't. Very good news to me. I ordered a SF7 today. =) I actually DO have a floppy drive. I transplanted an old one from a past PC into my new PC for the exact purpose of loading ROMs onto floppies for my GDSF3. While the Parallel port loading will certainly be nice, I'll still use those floppy disks I've got.

Trenton_net · Joined: 29 Jun 2006 Posts: 233

You might as well get a Floppy drive / memory card combo reader. The one I have has connections for almost every single memory card type, as well as a slot for a regular floppy drive. Works fine for copiers.

MottZilla · Joined: 08 Sep 2004 Posts: 765

Well currently I only use SD memory cards and I have a USB thing for that. plus buying new floppy drives like those with memory card inputs aren't cheap. I'd rather just use old drives from my old PCs. I really should change the one in this PC, it actually wasn't meant to be removed from the PC it was removed from as it has no face plate and lets dust in.

Anyway, have you guys used the Star Ocean 96mbit hack? I'm curious about that since eventually I'll order an expansion. Does the game pretty much run identically or is there slowdown that wasn't there before, etc?

kyuusaku · Joined: 26 Jul 2003 Posts: 941 Location: .ma.us

SFIII can certainly play FastROM games.

FastROM only means the SNES expects data within 120ns; The propagation time of all the SFIII's gates + ~80ns DRAM access time will be just under 120ns probably. If your SFIII has fallen out of spec, you may have FastROM problems. FastROM is something that can only be overcome with faster RAM and or/copier logic. When you crack a game for "SlowROM" it removes switches to high-speed, this could effectively crash the game if it has critical timing or at least lower performance.

Try playing Super Star Wars, that's a LoROM/FastROM and IIRC won't be playable on a SlowROM copier.

Also I have played Neviksti's Star Ocean and there are no noticeable differences between it and the actual cart.

MottZilla · Joined: 08 Sep 2004 Posts: 765

Well, I'm not sure what the deal is then. I remember with my GDSF3, the MegaMan 7 subscreen didn't work right till I used the slowrom fix on it. But other FastROM games never exhibited any problem. Not a big deal at the moment with it's drive out of order.

I have another question though, the GDSF3 "Run Card" where it runs the cartridge inserted in it directly. It would only play StarFox, but not Doom (GSU-2/SFX2) or Mega Man X2&X3 (C4). Can the GDSF7 run C4 and SuperFX games properly through the Card Slot on it? And what about SA-1, SDD1, etc. Basically I just want to be sure if I buy North American chip games that I can play them through the copier as I can't play them directly on the SFC.

kyuusaku · Joined: 26 Jul 2003 Posts: 941 Location: .ma.us

Better buy a converter, nearly all special chips interfere with copiers (and could cause damage in some cases.) I don't have a SF7 out right now but I just tested on a SFVI which should be similar:

-Rockman X2 and 3 will crash in-game.
-Star Fox will work but with latency issues (some corrupted graphics)
-The SFVI can't tell a SA1 game is even inserted.

Don't have SDD1 right now.

MottZilla · Joined: 08 Sep 2004 Posts: 765

That's a shame, I'll probably just buy japanese versions or take the english version and put it in a SFC shaped cartridge. Well that or find my SNES. Wink

MottZilla · Joined: 08 Sep 2004 Posts: 765

I got my GDSF7 today from Tototek. =) So far I'm very happy with it. One thing I noticed right off the bat is it's plain built better than the GDSF3. The SF3 never fit into the SFC console right, and I always had trouble positioning it so it would work. The SF7 fits in snug and doesn't move or wobble and works every time so far. It also backed up both Donkey Kong Country & Killer Instinct with no problems playing them back immediately no patching and with no glitches. I'm certainly happy with it. Hopefully the drive is in good working order and will last a long time, it's got to be the original floppy drive because all the stickers on the unit seem to be intact.

madman · Joined: 07 Jul 2006 Posts: 598

Yea, the SF7 is a great little unit. If you are looking for a DSP adapter for it, I might have an extra in my closet somewhere.

MottZilla · Joined: 08 Sep 2004 Posts: 765

If it's free i'd take it. Wink

But otherwise I'll be alright, I have Super Mario Kart which is the main DSP game I'd play. Pilot Wings would probably be the only other one. The only reason I'd want the DSP adapter would be just to have it. For completeness's sake.

Another question, are there any games that the SF7 has trouble with? Other than the obvious, SA-1, SDD1, SuperFX, DSP, etc. Forinstance I remembered my SF3 had a background glitch with Super Castlevania in stage 2, when you walk across a bridge with a cloudy sky. On the SF7, no glitch. Then I went to try out Mega Man 7, because I remembered without certain pathces or the slowrom fix the sub screen didn't work right. It was fine, though strangely I was getting enemy sprite errors, though that disappeared when I formatted my disks and rewrote the ROM (maybe the disks were partially corrupted?).

Anyway, I'm just wondering what games to look out for. Forinstance a friend of mine had told me no copiers properly supported ROM mirroring which Mega Man X uses as a form of copy protection. As I recall when you would aqquire armor pieces when you finished the level they would disappear! So I decided to test this out. I grabbed my Mega Man X cartridge, backed it up, took out the cartridge, started the game from DRAM. Well I didn't notice any ROM mirroring problem. When I started my stage after aqquiring the legs armor power-up it was still there and everything was great. So can anybody comment on this?

The only copy protections I'm aware of are SRAM, Rom Mirroring, and extra co-processor chips. So does the SF7 support SRAM protection and ROM mirroring?

madman · Joined: 07 Jul 2006 Posts: 598

The SF7 should be able to handle any SRAM protection. I'm not sure about ROM mirroring, those later games came out way after I got out of the 16bit scene so I don't remember much about them. The SF7 should be able to play over 99% of games out there, I wouldn't really worry about the few that don't work.

kyuusaku · Joined: 26 Jul 2003 Posts: 941 Location: .ma.us

The SF7 doesn't use ROM mirroring (neither do SFIII/SFVI), it dynamically maps chunks to the address space (like one-time bankswitching) so it can handle any basic ROM mapping with 4M granularity. It's ability to simulate different board types is all in the BIOS dumping routine which tries to detect the mapping/mirroring of both ROM and SRAM.

MMX's mirroring "protection" is simply a result of how the game is decoded due to it's strange ROM size. Copiers (other than SF3+) aren't flexible in mirroring because they don't support any sort of bankswitching, just a few static memory maps created using combinational/combinatorial logic, not memory mapping. Another issue is that the RAM in the units can only be selected in 8M chunks since two 4-bit DRAM chips are used to create the 8-bit bus. When there is no bankswitching and 8M is the smallest addressable unit, it must map MMX as 16M instead of 12M. I'm pretty sure MMX fully decodes the ROMs which means that if you access beyond 12M (all the way to 32M which is the lorom max) you will get open bus on the real cartridge which the SF7 can simulate. Even the Super Magicom however can play MMX though so I don't know about this protection...