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Post by spenoza on Oct 25, 2022 20:34:05 GMT
This thought exercise is inspired by an episode of the Video Game History Hour, a podcast put on by the Video Game History Foundation. In the episode in question Frank and Kelsey interviewed David Haywood who works on MAME. One of the topics of their discussion is plug and play devices. At one point they discuss that some of the plug and play devices are essentially enhances NES clones, to the point that they are backwards compatible with the NES (with the exception of some edge cases), but also include improved capabilities, so that they can host both official and unofficial NES ROMs and enhanced games with nicer graphics and sound using the same basic hardware.
Obviously the PCE and TG-16 were not nearly so market-dominating as to become an effective standard for a plethora of plug-and-play devices. But what if some random electronics manufacturer did decide to make an enhanced plug-and-play using a PCE clone chipset as the core? What are some enhancements which wouldn't be out of place from the mid 2000s onward? What would this enhanced, "improved" chip look like? Would it look more like a SuperGrafx, a PC-FX, or something else entirely?
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Post by crisgenjin on Oct 25, 2022 20:46:06 GMT
The easiest guess would be just a graphics chip with the capabilities of the SuperGrafx, maybe even more VRAM as well (Since VT09-compatible Famiclones allow for visuals close to the Game Boy Advance)
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Post by spenoza on Oct 26, 2022 13:36:10 GMT
The easiest guess would be just a graphics chip with the capabilities of the SuperGrafx, maybe even more VRAM as well (Since VT09-compatible Famiclones allow for visuals close to the Game Boy Advance) I know these devices exist, but where can I go to read more about them, like, say, this VT09 you refer to? Edit: What would help most is if I searched for the right term, VT09 instead of, say, VT109 or V109.
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Post by dshadoff on Oct 26, 2022 16:40:36 GMT
I'm not sure what you mean by "plug and play devices"... are you talking about USB controllers ? Or clone consoles ? Or something else ?
If it's consoles, the opportunities certainly exist with FPGAs - MiSTer is a very good representation of the original hardware, and defining new pieces of hardware is not so terribly difficult.
For example, I recently added XE-1AP controller support (to allow modern USB controllers to emulate the old and rare controller), in order to enhance the 4 games which support it.
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Post by spenoza on Oct 26, 2022 18:51:26 GMT
There were a number of "TV game" style plug-and-play consoles released, starting in the 90s, with large collections of Chinese-made games on them, including some bootlegged NES games. One series of chipsets used in them were based on the NES chipset in Famiclone form. Later models added new capabilities while retaining NES compatibility. www.nesdev.org/wiki/VTxx
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Post by crisgenjin on Dec 12, 2022 20:24:51 GMT
The easiest guess would be just a graphics chip with the capabilities of the SuperGrafx, maybe even more VRAM as well (Since VT09-compatible Famiclones allow for visuals close to the Game Boy Advance) I know these devices exist, but where can I go to read more about them, like, say, this VT09 you refer to? Edit: What would help most is if I searched for the right term, VT09 instead of, say, VT109 or V109. I know I'm probably really late, but I've found these. bootleggames.fandom.com/wiki/VTxxtcrf.net/Category:VT09_games
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pokun
Gun-headed
Posts: 85
Homebrew skills: HuC6280 assembly
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Post by pokun on Dec 27, 2022 21:08:32 GMT
The question feels more like "if you were to make improvements to the PC-Engine design what would you change?" type of thread, rather than being about making a plug-and-play clone of it. Unlike the Famicom there are not a lot of things that I would like to change. It is a much more beautiful design from the start and without a bunch of notorious bugs like Nintendo's hardware had, Hudson were very good at making these chips. It is also a very good balanced machine of complexity and capability which fills the gap between other 8-bit systems like the Famicom and complex 16-bit systems like the Super Famicom. It doesn't have all that power of the SFC Super-PPU and Super-APU but it is improved enough to fix the ugliness of other 8-bit systems such as the limited choice of colors and palettes in the Famicom and Master System while keeping the 8-bit simplicity.
That said I can still think of at least 4 things I would like to change if I were to make an improved PC-Engine: 1) A very minor thing but the fact that the pattern data for BG characters and sprites uses two different formats is a bit annoying. The Character Generator patterns are interleaved while the patterns in the Sprite Generator are stored in a linear order which means there is no way for them to share the same pattern data. I don't know if there is a good technical reason to this, but if it could be changed it might as well be done. The fact that BG characters are always 8x8 pixels in size and that there are no 8x8 sprites makes this improvement less useful, which leads to the next improvement.
2) Add 8x8 dot sprite size. This would work well with the above improvement and would be nice for saving VRAM in a game with a lot of smaller objects such as lasers and bullets.
3) I would add a short-period noise mode to the noise sound channel like that of the Famicom (except in very early versions) and the Game Boy APUs both has as well as the SN76489 (the PSG in Sega Master System, Mega Drive, Neo Geo Pocket and in many arcade and home-computer systems). It makes that cool metallic/electric buzz percussion instrument found in Fireman's BGM in Rockman 1. The PC-Engine's PSG can only do regular "white noise".
4) Add a second controller port, really. I had siblings as a kid and having to wait for your turn to play could be a serious deal breaker back then. Having 2 ports would probably mean that more games would support 2 players.
I would also use some other connector than DIN for controllers.
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Post by turboxray on Dec 27, 2022 23:46:09 GMT
Add a waveform pointer position "read" ability - this was DRAMATICALLY change the whole sound system. Also, fix the channel "turn on" bug - to go along with it.
Add the line buffer fetch for sprites to 22 sprite cells a line for 7.16mhz mode. I mean it HAS the bandwidth for it in that mode (both for fetching and also compare logic).. it CAN already fetch all those sprites.
Add one more sprite size: 16x8 sprite size. It doesn't break the existing VDC (which 8x8 would) - and the VDC is already capable of doing it. Even if that means getting ride of 32x64 slot. I'll take that exchange.
That's it for PCE.
For CD addon:
Add an additional BG layer, and a very simple fixed 'top hud' layer. Add a 8bpp mode for the BG layer.
Add a 2nd ADPCM channel.
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