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Homebrew Games and Tools If you've created a trainer, texture editor, or a full-blown fangame we'd like to see it here. Show off your mad programming skills.

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  #1  
Old 31st March 2015, 06:33 AM
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spoondiddly spoondiddly is offline
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64DD Support on the 64Drive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHR1y4OJ4lE

This is a preview of 64drive firmware 3.00, adding 64DD support. The FPGA simulates the ASIC registers, based in large part on Happy's work in MESS.

There isn't enough on-board memory to keep the IPL and disk image loaded at the same time, and trying to load the disk info using SD/CF LBAs was fraught with errors. Instead, disk images are placed in cart space and the IPL is read-only, accessed much like save files, for games using the sound and font data.

My contribution is a custom bootstrap replacing IPL 2 and 3 in the boot sequence. Just like a cart bootstrap it initializes the system, but also applies disk initialization found only in the DD bootloader. The disk is loaded directly without any IPL code executing.

There are some kinks. Writes are not flushed back to SD/CF but are written to cart space, so just like with the Dezaemon DD cart mod you can upload them to PC using USB. Expansion disks can't be run with a cart base, and disk swapping isn't really supported. You can upload a new image via USB, but the eject and disk change flags are not set by the FPGA yet. That would require active monitoring or possibly a trigger, but should be the easiest problem to solve.
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Old 1st April 2015, 03:27 AM
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After the last major firmware update (v2.00) to the 64Drive, my microSD stopped working, so I haven't touched my 64Drive in awhile. I still haven't bothered myself to get a new, compatible one, but I probably will now. I've kept up on the topic over on assembler with LuigiBlood and you, and it's great to see how far 64DD progress has gone.

Keep up the good work on this stuff!
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Old 5th April 2015, 04:20 PM
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http://nesworld.com/?fn_mode=comments&fn_id=203

so....
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Old 4th May 2015, 04:34 PM
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spoondiddly spoondiddly is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2004
May Day! May Day!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAh-u2iwEm0

64DD cart conversions are now being released into the wild. Each one is being released as it is complete and bug tested.

So no, there wasn't a magically "hardware revision 3". They do use a specialized bootstrap though, implementing the system initialization and disk initialization usually performed by the IPL. It's a much higher-level hack than Dezaemon is, making no attempts to simulate register behavior. Read/write requests are converted directly into EPI requests.

All confirmed working on a 64drive. Use menu 1.12d or later. I happen to know they will also function on a v64jr though am not testing each one that way. Everdrive64 will not load them as of yet and full functionality can be somebody else's project. Emulators are hit-and-miss; even when the CIC is handled correctly Talent Studio has an unimplemented video microcode and Polygon Editor has core issues with all PJ64-derived emulators. MESS, Nemu64, and Cen64 have had the most success so far. That said, unless cartrom is rewritable no saving or loading will work and the most important feature of these titles is interoperability and storage.

Obvious features not implemented:
  1. Can't use a modem or video capture cart with these. Would require additional reverse-engineering and hacking to provide similar functions via USB.
  2. RTC reports the time of the disk pressing. The RTC differs in its storage format and access method from Animal Forest significantly. In all cases, games using the clock only load the time once, usually before actual gameplay, and time continues to tick forward based on the system clock. This is the same way Animal Forest functions and why it is fully playable even without the RTC present. As far as I know this only sets the timestamp for saved data, and so far the only one being problematic about it is Doshin 1. It expects the time of day to match or exceed that of the current clock time due to some lazy testing, and if it's less the day ends shortly after starting. Resetting its save so the time always matches works fine though, just like setting the RTC to match or exceed the time. SM64's library doesn't even support the clock.

As per forum rules I can't directly link the ROMs but can indirectly direct you to them via the video.

As of this post all the Doshins are released as well as Japan Pro Golf Tour. As you can see in the video the Artist titles are all converted but require a degree of bugtesting to confirm interoperability. I'm also waiting on a GB camera to test international camera support.

Last edited by spoondiddly; 4th May 2015 at 04:37 PM.
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