Game Saves Backup Cartridge?

[Der Luchs]

Hi Folks,

first things first, I know NOTHING about this technical Stuff, thats why I'm asking.

Is it possible to make a Game Saves Backup Cartridge for the Lynx?

To Save Games at any point of the game and Reload it at Save Point?

Something like this for the Snes:

That would be awesome!

[Der Luchs]

no one knows?

[matashen]

iam not sure, but i think - Not possible. You need a software that makes a RAM-Dump, but you cant easy load one program in RAM bevore the Maingame is startet. There is no unused RAM usually that can by used for such a "troyan horse".

 

Regards

Matthias

[Der Luchs]

too bad :-(

[GadgetUK]

Yes I agree pretty near impossible to achieve. You would need to effectively load some trojan code somewhere without it interefering with each cart - that is near impossible probably. Possibly use an interrupt to swap some RAM to and from some storage on the cart (interrupt based) but then the interrupt would likely clash with games. And from what I understand the Lynx is limited on how it can write to cart, so technically very difficult if not impossible in a standard cart.

 

Even then, how do you take a snapshot of CPU registers, stack, Suzi registers etc etc, it would be pretty difficult to get right.

 

The simplest solution would require the cart to have access to RAM on the Lynx - this is often how they work, you can then dump RAM contents to some storage or vice versa, for the most part that might work but accessing RAM from cart is not possible.

[Der Luchs]

So we would need a mod...

[GadgetUK]

Yes, it would be nice to mod the Lynx one day anyway. I was wondering about putting some bank switched RAM in there. Like 3 more DRAM chips controlled by a write to specific address, then you could have 4 x the current RAM or even more, but obviously software would need to be written for it, and a switch to turn it off.

[Der Luchs]

I understand the the meaning of the words...

Let's see, Mr. Ignoramus would translate it this way:

We need someone who put more RAM in it, that the Lynx can write a Save slot by itself... or by using a switch

is this what you're trying to say?

[matashen]

Maybe if you can hack each existing Game to see where the startsettings are in the code, you can detect the game and manipulate the selected ROM-sequence. But its to much work to do...

[Der Luchs]

erm... hack? I can hack wood, that's all ^^

Someone else? Any Rom/Game-Hackers here?

[Horst]

Been a while since I've used the Handy emulator but doesn't it support save states?

[Der Luchs]

It's about real Hardware