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What does the SuperUFO Pro 8 work with?

 
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Videogamer555



Joined: 01 May 2009
Posts: 102

PostPosted: Sun Mar 11, 2012 5:52 am    Post subject: What does the SuperUFO Pro 8 work with? Reply with quote

I know it has the general shape of the SFC cartridge, not the SNES cartridge. But is the part the fits in the slot specially shaped to fit both the SFC and SNES slots? Or will it just fit the SFC (requiring an adapter to make it fit the SNES)?


Also how does it play games into the SNES/SFC? Does it send the rom data to the game console and the game console thinks the game to be played is a real cartridge? Or is it a "virtual machine" type system where the game actually being played to the console is the cartridge's SNES/SFC emulator, and the game rom is played within this emulated system?

The latter of these would improve game compatability, such as allowing it to use functions that are unique to emulators like allowing SFX-chip (among other addons) based games to be played without a real SFX-chip, (or BSX-bios, or the Satellaview satellite modem), but would downgrade performance drastically because you'd have a game running within a game running on a relatively slow CPU (even a relatively fast CPU like a Pentium II has trouble playing SNES emulators on the computer).

The former of these would have the same performance as a real cartridge game on the SNES/SFC, and the advantage of playing games for which you didn't have the real cartridge, but would also have compatibility problems for games that required special addon chips (like Starfox that requires SFX 3d-graphics coprocessor, or BS-Zelda which requires the BSX-Bios to run unless you have a hacked version of BS-Zelda that doesn't contain programming that references the BSX-Bios). Also it wouldn't work with games that required specific Japan-only hardware addons (like the Satellaview satelite modem, as most games using this as part of the loading process check the expansion port to see if the device is plugged in, and won't load otherwise, unless a hack has been made to stop them from checking the hardware).
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MottZilla



Joined: 08 Sep 2004
Posts: 765

PostPosted: Sun Mar 11, 2012 7:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The cartridge is shaped like a SFC cartridge to go into both a SFC or US SNES slot but it also has the cut outs on the bottom to allow it to go down into a US SNES slot and be used with no adapter. It's a universal cartridge mold.

It is a cartridge emulator just like all the other copiers and flash carts. It works by running the Menu program allowing you to pick a game from storage (SD Card in this case) and it will load it into RAM inside the device and then configure hardware inside of it to mimic or emulate the original game cartridge and then the console resets and the game runs as if you had the real cartridge inserted if the game is supported.

There is no "emulation" used other than you could say it is emulating a cartridge which is plugged into your actual SNES console.

All this bit about Super FX and BS-X, no. The answer is no. This device does not support any enhancement chips or add-ons in any particular way. All this is, is an update of a Copier that has been around for over a decade.

I assume you are the same person from the BS-Zelda boards. You might be interested to look into no$sns which has some interesting BS-X support. Also SD2SNES, a new flash cart, has some support for the BS-X I think.
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amptor



Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 207

PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 9:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Super UFO 8 supports some of the chips passthru. I don't have one to test out but I can tell you that it probably does this:

Runs all DSP-1 with mario kart or other DSP-1 chip game plugged in (not pilotwings).

The only Super FX game that is going to run is the Star Fox ROM if you have Star Fox plugged in (assuming that it has the complete edge connector on the input and output of the UFO cart).

Capcom CX4 chip games will run. If you plug Megaman X2 in, the Megaman X2 ROM will work and likewise if you plug in Megaman X3, the Megaman X3 ROM will work but you can't change these combinations, the ROM won't run if you do.

S-DD1, SA-1, OBC-1, etc aren't going to work at all.

As far as the sd2snes, it does have a software that you put on your SD card to fully emulate BS-X so that is true. The UFO Pro 8 will not do this at all. You will however be able to use hacked BS-X ROMs as you can on any other copier or emulator.

Still, I am fascinated with this UFO Pro 8 device and I feel it is worthy to add to a copier collection although the documentation is very misleading about "special chip" support. It can lead to more sales and usually people don't return this type of item even if it is about to get tossed into a shoe box for several years.

sd2snes isn't going to support all special chips either but at least it is going to do Super FX and it will be the only device that has ever existed available to the general public that does. It is quite an accomplishment.

I'm more excited though about the MSU-1 custom feature/chip they put inside because it allows homebrew developers to create very large games that you will never be able to run on anything that is currently out besides bsnes (but I'm not counting PC emulators here anyway, they are good but I'm more fond of the actual SNES itself). Still, emulators are a quick easy way to test homebrew code and other things so they are pretty useful. It would be tedious to use a SNES deck to debug all your code I would imagine but sometimes it probably is very necessary anyway.

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amptor



Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 207

PostPosted: Fri Mar 16, 2012 11:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Come to think of this thread and my reply, I found that RetroZone was very straight forward and had a list of incompatible games unlike UFO and NeoFlash. This cart should have the same compatibility as the RetroZone SNES Power Pak.

The NeoFlash SNES Myth Cart's Actel Logic core has insufficient space to allow it to ever run any other special chip games. I think it was only 32k.

It would be interesting to know what the specs of the Actel Logic chip on the UFO Pro 8 is though.

I think the sd2snes uses an Actel Logic chip as well but this chip apparantly has a lot more memory internally than any other device seen on the market so far. At least, that is what would make sense anyway unless they somehow diverted the memory feature for the SuperFX and CX4 chips away from the Actel core to some memory and then back in to process the data somehow.

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MottZilla



Joined: 08 Sep 2004
Posts: 765

PostPosted: Sat Mar 17, 2012 8:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Memory like ram isn't the issue generally. The FPGA in the SD2SNES is far more advanced than whatever is used in the Super UFO 8 SD or the NeoFlash. And you pay for that in cost too. You need a FPGA with alot of cells or cell memory to do more circuitry. Usually these types of projects don't have a whole lot of cells for too much complex logic to implement coprocessors.

Don't ever expect anything other than the SD2SNES to ever support any special chips unless a new project comes along. Well there is the one Russian cartridge that supports Cx4. But other than that, it's usually DSP1 support through an actual DSP1 chip and that's it.
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