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Post by DarkKobold on Dec 4, 2020 23:01:50 GMT
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DutchDimension
Punkic Cyborg
Posts: 122
Homebrew skills: Pixel, 2D and 3D art
Fave PCE Shooter: Override
Fave PCE Platformer: Mizbak's Adventure
Fave PCE Game Overall: Too many to choose from
Fave PCE RPG: Ys series
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Post by DutchDimension on Dec 5, 2020 0:13:13 GMT
Okay, that's cool! Hope they can really nail the original HuCard look. If the price is right and they can be made in bulk, it will really open up the potential for commercial HuCard game releases.
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esteban
Gun-headed
GOMOLA SPEED or GO HOME.
Posts: 94
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Post by esteban on Dec 8, 2020 18:17:55 GMT
One nice thing about going M.I.A. for extended periods of time is catching up on all the developments over the past few months/years... ha!
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Post by DarkKobold on Dec 21, 2020 5:02:24 GMT
Even more good news!
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Post by DarkKobold on May 11, 2022 0:38:23 GMT
The plastics are done and back from the manufacturer. Affordable homebrew publication on high quality boards and plastics are becoming available. I don't think it's an understatement to say this is a huge day for Turbografx-16 Homebrew.
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lunoka
Gun-headed
Diving into retrodev
Posts: 55
Homebrew skills: art, music
Fave PCE Shooter: Burning angels
Fave PCE Platformer: Ninja Spirit
Fave PCE Game Overall: Valis 3
Fave PCE RPG: Neutopia
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Post by lunoka on May 11, 2022 7:00:46 GMT
Awesome news \o/ I hope to see more soon.
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Post by SignOfZeta on May 11, 2022 12:35:14 GMT
The plastics are done and back from the manufacturer. Affordable homebrew publication on high quality boards and plastics are becoming available. I don't think it's an understatement to say this is a huge day for Turbografx-16 Homebrew. By “high quality” I assume you mean these were injection molded and not scaly 3D printed crap?
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Post by DarkKobold on May 12, 2022 4:20:41 GMT
The plastics are done and back from the manufacturer. Affordable homebrew publication on high quality boards and plastics are becoming available. I don't think it's an understatement to say this is a huge day for Turbografx-16 Homebrew. By “high quality” I assume you mean these were injection molded and not scaly 3D printed crap? Yes, they're injection molded, and the back is silkscreened.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on May 13, 2022 1:57:15 GMT
I'm not sure what turbo blasters are, but I look forward to finding out.
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Post by audreyhepburn on May 14, 2022 13:37:42 GMT
I'm so excited about this. I really wanted to put my game on HuCard and not a CD. He says they will come with a 1Mb chip standard, hoping a more expansive card and mapper aren't too much more money.
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Post by dshadoff on May 14, 2022 14:09:35 GMT
There should be effectively no difference in complexity or size between 1 megabit and 4 (or possibly even 8) megabit. Mappers aren’t needed for those sizes.
Adding RAM or a ‘mapper’ (address selection mechanism to address more complex thongs) would be more circuitry taking up more space, and I’m not sure whether that will fit in the recess in the current design.
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Post by audreyhepburn on May 14, 2022 15:22:22 GMT
There should be effectively no difference in complexity or size between 1 megabit and 4 (or possibly even 8) megabit. Mappers aren’t needed for those sizes. Adding RAM or a ‘mapper’ (address selection mechanism to address more complex thongs) would be more circuitry taking up more space, and I’m not sure whether that will fit in the recess in the current design. I was going off what was said on Twitter in response to a question about ROM capacity.
"It'll ship with 1MByte standard, and a mapper version with extended ROM capacity will come later."
Not sure if it means that any version beyond 1MB will require a mapper (maybe a PCB design constraint?) or was just meaning to state that 1MB is standard but also they plan to make a ROM mapper with extra large games.
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Post by dshadoff on May 14, 2022 16:03:26 GMT
OK, I never saw that 1 Mega BYTE tweet.
But to be clear, the convention is : lowercase 'b' = bits (used for ROM capacity and size of games back in the day) uppercase 'B' = Byte (which everybody has understood even back in the day).
1Mb = 128KB 1MB = 8Mb
People these days seem to mix these up more and more, so I wanted to clarify that first. (Kind of like how capital 'M' = mega = 1,000,000 - whereas lowercase 'm' = milli = 1/1,000).
'Mapper' is a NES-centric term, and it implies two things:
a) The 'larger address space' mechanism required by the program and CPU in order to address more memory than the CPU can directly address (or signals beyond what the bus provides). You can think of this as 'conceptual, from the program's point of view' - because the program needs to use this specific framework in order to work.
b) The address-decode logic needed for the chips to understand when they are being accessed. You can think of this as 'physical/electrical, electronics between the bus and the chips' - because the chips have to be given instructions.
The PC Engine mostly didn't need mappers during its lifetime because bank-switching was incorporated into the CPU, in order to be able to address up to 2MB (16Mb) directly. This covers both of the above requirements up to 2MB, as long as the chips can directly use the address lines as all the logic they need.
From the chip's point of view, easy address selection always tries to use directly-accessible lines for chip-select in order to avoid any additional decode logic to get the right signals. Most HuCards used the most-significant address line (A20) as chip select, meaning that the chip is able to address the bottom half of memory (1MB or 8Mb) without additional decode circuitry. But if you try to use multiple chips (i.e. ROM and RAM), they need to know which is 'active' given the same signals, requiriing additional decode logic. If you feel the need to go beyond 1MB (8Mb), you will need a mapper system to cover both points a) and b) above, since the original CDROM system uses some of the top half of memory space for CDROM RAM.
Which brings us to Street Fighter II. This game implements a NES-like system to switch pages of memory in order to access 20Mb (2.5MB) of ROM. I honestly can't see anybody these days writing a game using this type of mapper system for HuCard, because the programmer has to do so much extra work and the existing tools aren't built to handle this for the developer.
So all in all, I'd see benefit to having ROM + RAM on the same card - which would require additional decode circuitry - but would not call the address decoder a 'mapper'. And I don't see a particular reason to create a card which can address enough ROM-type memory to require a mapper as SF2 does.
...After all that, I don't see that there's enough space in the recess in order to hold Flash + RAM + address decoder.
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Post by elmer on May 14, 2022 20:00:15 GMT
And I don't see a particular reason to create a card which can address enough ROM-type memory to require a mapper as SF2 does. The Turbo Everdrive v2 already supports the Street Fighter II "mapper", and has done so for the last 5+ years, and I don't see that a lot of folks have been queuing up to develop a game larger than 1MByte. Heck, the Turbo Everdrive v2 has 4MB of RAM built in, far larger than either Street Fighter II or any Arcade Card game. So all in all, I'd see benefit to having ROM + RAM on the same card - which would require additional decode circuitry - but would not call the address decoder a 'mapper'. A ROM+RAM card would be cool, and could allow for some interesting things. But if people are finding development for SuperCD "too difficult", then I'm not sure how they'd find a ROM+RAM card any easier.
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Post by dshadoff on May 14, 2022 20:55:42 GMT
My idea of ROM + RAM would be more for alternative versions of system cards and such.
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