Chilly Willy

Sounds interesting. Did you mean 6809? That was big at the end of the 8-bit era... a very nice chip indeed. Does the graphics have two layers? That's important for platformers in particular. Otherwise, the graphics sound good. The audio might need a little more thought. Given how little memory you can devote to the samples, perhaps hardware ADPCM decompression would be appropriate. One thing I can think of now that would have helped systems back then would be hardware support for tracker format music. For example, maybe you could have hardware support for playing 8 channel/31 instrument MOD format files. Think of it like display lists for the sound instead of video. Maybe not MOD format directly, but something that you could convert a MOD into easily.

Another big draw of "retro" games is the ease of playability. You can start playing without needing a three hour "tutorial" level to learn how to use the 23,000 moves the game requires to beat. Remember when all you needed to do was move, jump, and shoot? Or in some cases, just turn? Granted, some games are better with more moves, but anything more than the original Tomb Raider detracts from a game, not enhance it. Kids in particular don't want to spend hours on training levels just to play a game where you're likely to die in less than a minute unless you've spent those hours training. Hell, I'm not a kid and I don't want that either. It's my main complaint against my PS3 - I don't have that kind of free time anymore. Maybe some teen can spend 10+ hours a day getting good at playing soldier/cowboy/space marine, but I can't.

Yes, the belts are the main thing to go. I've replaced the belt on my 410 twice since buying it in '81. I got by for a week the last time I ordered a belt by using a rubber band.

The issue is that some new LCD TVs cannot handle 240p, which is what old computers and consoles output. Some will reject the signal altogether, while others try to treat it like 480i and "deinterlace" your 240p signal, making it look funny. Most forums on old computers and consoles have threads on which LCD TVs handle these old systems the best. Sometimes, the only way to make a console/computer work with a specific LCD TV is to run the signal through a converter box that changes the signal to something like 480p component video. Here's a pretty decent page looking at a bunch of converter boxes: http://retrogaming.hazard-city.de/

When you see someone bump a really old thread and they have like 1 or 2 posts, it's usually a spambot.

That was a tough one - it's really old and most of the places carrying it are gone. It was part of the BM Mega Pack, and I found one mirror for v2.2 here: http://www.consolemods.se/tmpfiles/BM_MGPK_V2.2.zip That has PS2PCE 0.7. What I've read says it has HDD support. Nothing about USB.

I'm using FAT32 on my 2GB stick. Could be a partitioning issue - some sticks come partitioned with a bunch of little partitions at the start of the stick for some odd reason. More than once, I've repartitioned the stick into one partition to get rid of all the other partitions. If the PS2 shows a directory listing from the stick, that would clearly not be the problem. And yes, the USB drivers for the PS2 can be a little squirrelly at times. They're much better now than when they first added USB support, but they can still have issues with some devices. I'm fortunate that my 2GB stick works without issue on my PS2.

I don't need a tutorial, but I voted for polished+tutorial because tutorials are always good. Instead of having to explain something yet again, you just point the person to the tutorial. By the way, that is a really nifty puzzle game. It would be a nice addition to A8 homebrew.

Are you trying to run SS directly from MCBoot? If so, maybe you could try running ULE first and running it from there. ULE has had a lot of work put into starting up programs directly... years more than MCBoot.

I suppose I can try it on my PS2 (using MC Boot as well). What version of SNES Station are you using? I've read on threads that certain "patched" versions are unstable... that might be part of your problem. EDIT: Okay, I got SNES Station 0.2.4 HDD from here: http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=33523 I ran ULE (uLaunchELF) from MCBoot, and ran SNES Station from the USB (a 2GB Kingston DataTraveler). It ran fine, so I selected Mario Kart from the USB - it worked fine. I then got back into ULE and copied SNES Station of a bunch of roms to my harddrive (don't even remember the size, much less the make). SNES Station ran fine from the HDD, and Mario Kart also ran fine from the HDD.

Not all USB drives are the same. There are some "odd balls" out there that require special handling. It sounds like your two drives fit the bill. You might try contacting the author of the proggy about the issue. I've never used SNES Station on my PS2, but I did run into a similar problem with a USB stick I had with ULE that the author managed to fix.

bios loading already works fine on everdrive Cool - I need to keep up with the Everdrive a little more closely. Last I saw in the thread at SEGA-16 was it was still being worked on. Sorry about the confusion.

QFT I can't tell you how many times I've had to tell others that very thing... in those exact words! My to-do list is too freakin' long by half. I work on what I feel like working on at that time, and it's normally something I'm interested in, not something for someone else. Now sometimes when someone suggests something it may already be on my to-do list, so I might let that prompt me into pushing it up the list a little, but other suggestions not on my list rarely make it onto the list.

The Everdrive-MD can't run a CD BIOS, and can't be used as CD Backup RAM. KRIKzz is still working on the CD BIOS part. Also, the Everdrive OS doesn't handle FAT32 or SDHC cards. I imagine it will eventually since both of those features are software. The CD support (when he gets it working) will require you to buy a ByteBlaster cable and update the firmware. Not saying it's not a great cart, because it is! This is the cart most people should be getting. However, the Neo Myth still has the edge on features, and will retain it without some kind of major update to the hardware on the Everdrive. The Myth also has 8MBytes of PSRAM on the Myth that can be used by homebrew. The current menu loads into the PSRAM when loaded from SD card, and uses the PSRAM for long filename storage as well as playing VGM music. So I'm saying that if you have the money, the Neo Myth has features some people want/need.

There is still currently no 32X emulator for the PSP (that I'm aware of). The best SEGA emulator for the PSP is still PicoDrive, which emulates the MegaDrive and MegaCD. It also emulates the SVP to run Virtua Racing, but the SVP emulation is still slow (it doesn't use dynamic recompilation yet). Your other choice is the old DGen, which only emulates the MegaDrive. I recommend PicoDrive. It's what I run on my PSP.

The Everdrive made by Krikzz/igor. $75 at kitsch-bent.com, uses an SD card, plays every SMS, Genesis, and 32x game. It's like the CC2 of Sega. Yes, there are three main choices for flash carts on the MD these days: The Everdrive-MD is both the cheapest, and the best value for your money. It can play SMS, MD, and 32X games, and comes with save ram. It reads SD cards, and burns the flash from the MD... pretty fast, too. Just dump your roms on an SD card and you no longer need the PC. Next up is the venerable MD-Pro 32/64. This was for quite a while your only choice. It has 32 or 64 Mbits of flash (you pay extra for the extra flash), and the flash is burned via a programmer that attaches to the parallel port of your PC. Note that USB to parallel adapters don't work - you need a REAL parallel port. It also has save ram. When you add the extra price of the 64 Mbits of flash and the programmer, it costs more than the Everdrive. It's only real feature these days is its compatibility - the MD-Pro is the only flash cart that works on EVERYTHING, including those crappy AtGames MD emulators. I use my MD-Pro 64 on a RetroGen handheld. Finally, the King of MD Flash Carts... the Neo Myth MD 3-in-1 flash cart. It has the most features... for a kingly sum of money. The Myth series from NeoFlash are adapters that allow you to use (NeoFlash brand) GBA flash carts on other consoles. The MD Myth comes with a 256Mbit GBA flash cart, but you can buy other (and bigger) carts, as well as ones with SD card interfaces. The flash is programmed by USB from a PC. The Myth plays SMS, MD, and 32X games. It can also be used to give a replacement CD BIOS. It has save ram, EEPROM, and can act as CD Backup RAM. When playing SMS games, it even includes the YM2413 FM chip so SMS games with FM sound their best. The MD Myth will cost about $160, and you'll want the Neo2-SD cart as well so you can run all that from SD/SDHC cards... for another $60, so you are looking at about $220 + S&H. It's expensive, but if you have the money, it's worth it.

The prototype for that was released on the net several months ago. You can play it via emulation or on real hardware via flash carts. Also posted were protos for X-Men and Virtual Hamster. Darxide can be played on US/Jap 32X by changing the region byte in the image, then playing from flash cart.

It's B and C. Yep. The SMS pad would be like the 3-button Genesis pad, returning the dpad and two buttons on the same lines as B and C in my description. The 6 button uses a packet system where you toggle the TH line and get different values. If you get cbrldu, toggle TH and get sa, then toggle TH back high, you'll get these returns for four fetches from a 6-button pad: /* - 0 s a 0 0 d u - 1 c b r l d u */ /* - 0 s a 0 0 d u - 1 c b r l d u */ /* - 0 s a 0 0 0 0 - 1 c b m x y z */ /* - 0 s a 1 1 1 1 - 1 c b r l d u */

The Atari controller port has this pinout: Up Down Left Right PotB Trigger 5V Gnd PotA The Genesis control pad has this pinout: Up Down Left Right 5V TL (can be either B or A depending on the state of TH) TH (selects which buttons to read) GND TR (can be either C or START depending on TH) As you can see, the 5V line for the Genesis pad connects to the PotB line on the Atari. However, that line is pulled high through a resistor to charge a cap to read the pot the Atari expects there. As long as the pad doesn't draw too much current, the voltage drop across the resistor in the Atari is low and the pad gets enough voltage to work anyway. The TH line on the Genesis pad is used to switch between two banks of buttons (on 3-button pads... there's a more complicated method to read the 6-button pads using this line, but we're ignoring that for now). When TH is high, we get B and C buttons on the TL and TR lines; when TH is low, we get A and START instead. Notice that TH connects to the 5V line on the Atari, so it's always high, so we always get B and C on TL and TR. TL hooks to the Trigger line on the Atari, so the B button is always the Trigger on the Atari. TR hooks to PotA, so the C button is always PotB (you can use the fast pot mode for faster reading of PotA). So as you can see, with no changes at all you can read Up, Down, Left, Right, B, and C on the Atari. If it doesn't work, your pad is probably drawing too much current as mentioned above. If you wish to use a pad no matter what, you would need to swap the 5V and TH lines on the Genesis pad. You would still be restricted to just the dpad and B and C buttons. If you wish to read ALL the buttons, you need to connect the pad TH line to a line from the Atari that can be set as an output so you can switch from high to low to get the other buttons. That means one of the direction lines as the PIA lines are the only ones you can set the direction of. If someone in interested in that much, I can explain further, but I think most folks just want the two buttons as mentioned without making any changes. The Amiga had a slight advantage here that the pot lines could be set as outputs, so swapping the 5V line and the TH line in the Genesis pad not only allowed for all pads, but allows you to then read all the buttons. I put this in a readme for my port of Doom to the Amiga detailing which lines to swap, and I included the code in the Doom source for reading 3 and 6 button Genesis pads.

I was spoiled and had Doom for PC where it was intended to be played, so everything Doom post PC pre Playstation was laughed at in my household. and, ... Chaotix is better than Sonic 4. Sonic 4 blows so hard. I was spoiled by my PSX... Doom was sooooo good on that. But 32X Doom is a fun version to play... if you don't have a PC or PSX or N64. And you is cwazy about Chaotix!! I never got into Chaotix - mainly because it's a failure as a "Sonic" game, and I couldn't get past that. I mainly played Doom, SWA, VRD, Metal Head, and Kolibri. I REALLY wanted Rayman on the 32X, but it got canceled in '95.

Good point, and a perfect example is the various Disney movies based on PD characters. Ever notice how Disney changes the story and/or characters just a little? That gives them a copyright on the new character/storyline. Want to do your own Sleeping Beauty game? Fine, just go back to the original source, and don't make changes similar to Disney's.

The student discount is your best bet for getting one at a lower price. Some of the boards are really freakin' expensive, which is why I pointed out the DE1 and DE2... they're about the only Altera boards anyone can afford, so most Cyclone-based projects (like MiniMig) tend to use one or the other. The Cyclone 1/2/3 FPGAs by themselves are fairly cheap. If you look at the prices for a single FPGA on DigiKey, they're not very expensive. It's the board and all the rest of the stuff that makes the thing as a whole more expensive. So if you wanted to play around with FPGAs and could jury rig a minimal interface on your own, perhaps you would just get the FPGA instead of one of the pre-built developer kits.

SNES DOOM is better? Well, perhaps the music, but that's it! Smaller display, no ceiling or floor textures, slower frame rate, only a few more levels, but we've got the JagDoom level hack for the 32X now giving the 32X MORE levels than the SNES version. For the time when it came out, 32X Doom was pretty good. Could it have been better? Sure. Are there better Doom versions now? Well duh! It doesn't matter, though; we're talking about the 32X. Complaining that 32X DOOM isn't as good as Doomsday with the model and texture packs is as silly as complaining that Knuckles Chaotix isn't as good as Sonic 4!

You can get Altera FPGAs from DigiKey. I suggest you start with a devkit, like the DE1 or DE2. Various Altera development boards: http://www.altera.com/education/univ/materials/boards/unv-dev-edu-boards.html All development boards: http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/kit-dev_platforms.jsp

Wow, can't believe no one has recommended Earthworm Jim 1 and 2 yet... so I will.