*legal* Emulation Resources

[Chip]

In North America and Europe (at least), there is no legal concept of abandonware. Software copyright lasts for 70 years, even if the program is no longer for sale, or even if the company who owns the copyright no longer exists. Since it is illegal to distribute copyrighted material without the owner's permission, all links to all abandonware sites are prohibited. The law is stupid, short-sighted, and harmful to consumers and computing in general, but it is still the law.

The links Prometheus posted are a different story. These are programs whose authors have speciffically given permission for free distribution.

 

[Matthias_H]

Here's another massive *legal* emulation resource
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwq6vRM8U7k
Enjoy!

 

[valhalla]

"Good Old Games"[/URL] for some classic DOS games. They are not free (6 or 10$ depending on the game"], but the great thing about GOG is that they have NO DRM and that you can download your games as often as you like. Also, you get lots of bonuses like scanned manuals, soundtracks, artwork, etc.

Support them, so they can expand their catalog and help preserve gaming culture (and promote digital distribution without DRM)

Games using DOSBOX which might run well on Pandora...)


I've noticed that they list windows xp as a minimal requirement, and they state that they have fixed the old games to make them xp and vista compatible: how extensive are those changes? will they still be able to run under dosbox like the originals?

I've found a few interesting titles, but I don't have a windows pc to play them on, if I find out that they can't work on pandora.

 

[WizardStan]

At least some of their "fixes" are nothing more than wrapping them in DosBox. Which games exactly those are, and what they do with more modern games, I cannot say.

 

[Tom`]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwq6vRM8U7k
Enjoy!

I'd be very interested in something like this, not only for SNES but other consoles as well (if that would be practical). One thing, though: Many SNES carts have integrated coprocessors that the SNES utilized for special effects in games. Would these carts be usable? Most emulators can handle these, so I would think it would be theoretically possible, but I don't know if these carts would require software or hardware changes to the code running on the microcontroller or the device itself.

 

[Matthias_H]

One thing, though: Many SNES carts have integrated coprocessors that the SNES utilized for special effects in games. Would these carts be usable?

Sure, because these coprocessors are not part of the ROM. If the ROM contains code that calls for the use of a Super FX etc., the emulator will emulate the coprocessor.

By the way, the project got featured on hackaday.com :-D

 

[WizardStan]

are there enough lines to also connect to the SRAM? That'd be sweet, being able to load and save to the cartridge itself as well.

 

[gruso]

By the way, the project got featured on hackaday.com :-D
And now Crunchgear. Nice one!

http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/06/19/you-d...rtridge-reader/

Engadget will probably follow. Told you it deserved its own thread.

 

[Matthias_H]

are there enough lines to also connect to the SRAM? That'd be sweet, being able to load and save to the cartridge itself as well.

Technically, you can add an address decoder, giving you virtually any number of I/O lines you might ever need. Thing is, though, that your average emulator won't know how to save to battery-buffered cartridge ram. Another more realistic option would be extend the "virtual" file system some more and add writable flash memory to the reader device. In which case the save states would not be stored on the cartridge but on the reader. However, not only would this mean a considerable extra effort but I also fail to see a benefit compared to storing the states on the host.

 

[Tom`]

However, not only would this mean a considerable extra effort but I also fail to see a benefit compared to storing the states on the host.

It would be more flexible - you could have this plugged into your Pandora and then pick up where you left off on your PC or other console, without having to transfer save files. I don't know if it would be worth it, but I think it would definitely be handy.

 

[Matthias_H]

It would be more flexible - you could have this plugged into your Pandora and then pick up where you left off on your PC or other console, without having to transfer save files.

Good point. This would, however, require unified savegame handling for all emulators across all systems. Also, I don't see how I could reasonably implement the hybrid read-only / RW storage solution on a single drive. The closest I could imagine at the moment would be showing two separate partitions, one for the ROM and one for the rest. Which is essentially what you get using the cart reader plus a thumbdrive. In this situation, you would still have to teach all your emulators where to load and retrieve their states. It might happen if we only raise the USB cart reader awareness among the emulator developers ;-)

 

[neko]

I backup SNES games using my Super Wild Card, a process that involves copying the rom onto a 3.5" disks, putting the 3.5" disk into my old desktop PC, copying the files to my laptop, then using ucon64 to merge the split files. USB looks a lot more straightforward.

You can backup the SRAM using the SWC too, but most emulators require you to remove the 512-byte header that the SWC adds. Also it tends to 'overdump' the SRAM, copying the entire 32K address space, but most games only have 8K there. Usually this isn't a problem, except when copying saves from your computer back to the SNES, you have to pad the file out to 32K.

The SRAM is on the same address/data bus as the ROM, you shouldn't need any extra lines except the write signal and to select the chip.

Most of the enhancement chips (SuperFX, DSP, etc) are not a problem, with the exception of the SA-1 and S-DD1. With these chips, some of the rom is connected to the coprocessor and can not be directly accessed through the cartridge interface.

 

[Matthias_H]

are not a problem, with the exception of the SA-1 and S-DD1. With these chips, some of the rom is connected to the coprocessor and can not be directly accessed through the cartridge interface.

So what does the SWC do with these games?

 

[neko]

Most of the enhancement chips (SuperFX, DSP, etc"] are not a problem, with the exception of the SA-1 and S-DD1. With these chips, some of the rom is connected to the coprocessor and can not be directly accessed through the cartridge interface.

So what does the SWC do with these games?[/quote]Either can't read them at all, or you get an incomplete dump.

 

[WizardStan]

Thing is, though, that your average emulator won't know how to save to battery-buffered cartridge ram.
SRM files are basically just a direct dump of the SRAM, and both snes9x and zsnes can read them. I think there's some extra header information at the start of the actual SRAM that needs to be removed, but that's just a simple thing to do in software. Other than that, it should work just fine.

 

[Matthias_H]

Thing is, though, that your average emulator won't know how to save to battery-buffered cartridge ram.
SRM files are basically just a direct dump of the SRAM, and both snes9x and zsnes can read them. I think there's some extra header information at the start of the actual SRAM that needs to be removed, but that's just a simple thing to do in software. Other than that, it should work just fine.

I thought we were talking about saving states back to the cartridge. Which I don't think is possible since most emulators won't be aware there is an actual cartridge connected to them.

 

[jlepley]

I had a crazy thought. Would it be possible to write an application that can extract the ROMs from Wii Virtual Console games off an SD card?

 

[Matthias_H]

I had a crazy thought. Would it be possible to write an application that can extract the ROMs from Wii Virtual Console games off an SD card?

Sure! Just ask someone at Nintendo...

 

[Matthias_H]

Well now, I made a pretty lousy video and within 48 hours the whole thing exploded into a veritable WWW hype (the project was featured on Hackaday, Engadget, and Gizmodo. Over 13,000 views on YouTube).

For anyone who is interested, I made a project website:

http://www.snega2usb.com

Enjoy!
Matthias

 

[fischju2000]

I had a crazy thought. Would it be possible to write an application that can extract the ROMs from Wii Virtual Console games off an SD card?

The ability to rip and replace roms in VC wads already exists, but but ripping it from the SD card as a VC game and not with an app on the Wii is what would make it hard. It may be possible.

.

For anyone who is interested, I made a project website:

http://www.snega2usb.com

Enjoy!
Matthias

I did see that post on Engadget and knew the name was familiar, nice!