|
Post by jlf65 on Nov 14, 2014 15:49:15 GMT -5
Yeah, I could get an extension for it. Already have one I use for the Saturn USB dev cart, so it wouldn't be all that different having another for the MED.
|
|
|
Post by jlf65 on Nov 12, 2014 2:41:05 GMT -5
My MegaED is too far away from the computer to use USB, so I stick with SD. It's still damn fast for testing, especially when you compare it to something like Dreamcast homebrew where I have to write a CD to test the software.
|
|
|
Post by jlf65 on Nov 12, 2014 2:36:19 GMT -5
Is there a particular reason why you want to contact him? Maybe we can help. Anyway I wish he made Bex open source because the problem with closed source freeware is that usually authors abandon it at some point and sometimes after they get a larger userbase and the software cannot be improved by such userbase. Yeah, I'm tempted to start an open source BASIC compiler in python or something similar. Something cross platform that everyone could contribute to as they are able.
|
|
|
Post by jlf65 on Nov 8, 2014 23:04:09 GMT -5
We don't know... can you? We have no idea what your capabilities are.
|
|
|
Post by jlf65 on Oct 27, 2014 21:14:57 GMT -5
PAL 32X can be pretty damn pricey, so most of the folks I know in PAL-land get an NTSC Genesis to go with their NTSC 32X as that's far cheaper. Seems most TVs in PAL-land have been able to handle NTSC as well for quite some time.
|
|
|
Post by jlf65 on Oct 25, 2014 17:29:26 GMT -5
The Activator is just a fancy 3-button pad. Not exactly. It's a fancy 3-button pad when used with 3-button games .. but it actually has 16 distinct inputs ( 8 panels / beams capable of detecting high or low ). There aren't any games specifically made for the Activator though ( only Comix Zone, Eternal Champions and Mortal Kombat have proper support ) .. they should have packed-in a Menacer 6-Game style cartridge. Ah - I've never seen that before. I may have to get one to see about "native" support rather than just 3-button pad emulation.
|
|
|
Post by jlf65 on Oct 25, 2014 3:00:49 GMT -5
I still have my original Atari 400 bought all the way back in 1982. Still have my Amiga 500, my Amiga 4000, my Amiga 1200, my Performa 5200CD, my iMac G3 DV+, and a closet full of assorted PCs of all generations.
I put my A400 in its box to protect it and use a cheap 65XE instead for my current Atari use. I have the A500 and A4000 put away, and use the A1200. My Performa and iMac are still setup in the living room, but the only PC I use is the one I'm typing on now - an AMD A6 system.
|
|
|
Post by jlf65 on Oct 25, 2014 2:55:26 GMT -5
The Activator is just a fancy 3-button pad. I haven't used one before... not sure I'd want to. I never did get into those DDR games.
|
|
|
Post by jlf65 on Oct 22, 2014 19:13:24 GMT -5
You'd probably be better off making your own mapper with a PLD and a new PCB to go with it than to sacrifice SSF2 carts. The main reason I pointed out that flash carts support the mode is that makes it easy to test code. A "real" cart is fine as a product, but shit for testing. Sega's dev cart uses the Sega Mapper along with ram. Technically speaking, b7 of each mapper register is a write enable bit to allow devs to write to the ram in that bank.
|
|
|
Post by jlf65 on Oct 22, 2014 19:06:38 GMT -5
I added support to sgdk for the Menacer, the Justifier (blue and red guns), the Sport Pad (SMS trackball), six button pads, the Mega Mouse, the EA tap, and the Sega Team Player tap. It's all in there. Anything other than the mouse and 3/6 button pads MUST be connected directly to the MD as taps don't handle anything but the pads and mice. About the only thing left I need to add are the SMS lightgun, and the keyboard (very hard to find).
|
|
|
Post by jlf65 on Oct 22, 2014 1:59:04 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by jlf65 on Oct 22, 2014 1:54:34 GMT -5
Most flash carts emulate the SSF2 mapper. In fact, the MegaEverdrive allows the SSF2 mode for the full size of the DRAM chip - 16 or 32MBytes, depending on the cart.
How it works is pretty simple: You have the 4MBytes of cart space (0x000000 to 0x3FFFFF) split into eight banks, each 512KBytes in size. The registers at 0xA130F3 to 0xA130FF control which bank of the rom appears at the corresponding bank in the cart space.
Bank 0: cart space 0x000000 to 0x07FFFF - fixed to the first bank of the rom. That way the rom header and int vectors and such all have a fixed place in the address space.
Bank 1: cart space 0x080000 to 0x0FFFFF - set to the bank # written to 0xA130F3.
Bank 2: cart space 0x100000 to 0x17FFFF - set to the bank # written to 0xA130F5.
Bank 3: cart space 0x180000 to 0x1FFFFF - set to the bank # written to 0xA130F7.
Bank 4: cart space 0x200000 to 0x27FFFF - set to the bank # written to 0xA130F9.
Bank 5: cart space 0x280000 to 0x2FFFFF - set to the bank # written to 0xA130FB.
Bank 6: cart space 0x300000 to 0x37FFFF - set to the bank # written to 0xA130FD.
Bank 7: cart space 0x380000 to 0x3FFFFF - set to the bank # written to 0xA130FF.
Bank #s in the rom can go from 0 to 63 (limit of the Sega Mapper). That allows up to 32 MBytes of rom for a game. SSF2 only used 6MBytes of that. You can see, Sega was thinking ahead to bigger games. You can put code in those banks, but it's harder to keep track of the entry points when you do so. Think back to the old SMS days with bank selected games...
Bank 0 is fixed and 512KBytes in size - you probably don't need more for game code than that. You use the other banks for accessing more game data... more tiles for the backgrounds and sprites; more data for music and sounds; more data for cut-scenes.
|
|
|
Post by jlf65 on Oct 22, 2014 1:41:09 GMT -5
So what is the difference between the everdrive MD V3 and the mega everdrive? Next to it having an usb port? The Everdrive uses flash rom to hold the game, and only holds up to 8MBytes, part of which is reserved for the OS. So it will load up to 4MB flat games/homebrew, or 6MB SSF2/SSF2 mapped homebrew. The MegaEverdrive uses a 16 or 32MB DRAM chip and an FPGA. It DMAs the game into the ram for much faster load times, and can never wear out like flash roms can. It supports up to 8 or 10 MB flat games (like the Ultra Mortal Kombat hack) as long as the Sega CD and 32X are not attached. It supports SSF2 homebrew to the full size of the DRAM - 16 or 32MB. The FPGA is programmable, so you can (theoretically) do awesome things with it. For example, the OSv10 for the MED includes a 32x32 multiplier and divider for the 68000 so that you can do multiplies and divides as fast as you can read/write the flash cart. No more 100+ cycles for a divide. So the MegaEverdrive is highly recommended... as long as you can afford it. It's obviously more expensive than the Everdrive. If you're on a budget and don't need bells and whistles, the Everdrive is a fine flash cart.
|
|
|
Post by jlf65 on Oct 22, 2014 1:33:11 GMT -5
Most flash carts allow you to do homebrew that can use the SSF2 mapper for up to 6MB of rom. The MegaEverdrive allows SSF2 mapped homebrew to be up to 16 or even 32MB in size, depending on the DRAM on the MED cart (he mixes 16 and 32MB DRAMs when making the carts, depending on which is cheaper at the time he needs DRAMs). The MED also supports 8 or 10MB flat roms if you don't have the Sega CD or 32X attached.
Pier Solar uses a custom mapper that allows them to address 64Mbits (not MBytes!). It takes only 4MB of space, bank selecting the 8MB rom in that space.
|
|
|
Post by jlf65 on Oct 19, 2014 17:19:33 GMT -5
If you want to see how a bunch of taps/controllers/light guns work, look at the code I did for sgdk: code.google.com/p/sgdk/The code for the controllers is all mine, so if someone wants to use it with a different license, just ask. I normally make all my own code MIT or BSD (without advertising clause).
|
|