Worship the Woodgrain problems

[up2knowgood]

So, I recently got Worship the Woodgrain, and it seems to be in compatible with the Cuttlefish Cart, as the 4K games play fine, but the ones that require the modification of the Supercharger work for a time, then crash.

 

Any idea what the problem could be?

[bohoki]

yea they are junk that collection is horrible i wish i could give you a link to all the wavs and mp3s ive tested but its on another hard drive search for nukey shays hacks he modded just about all the ones that have issues

[Nukey Shay]

The Supercharger uses it's own bankswitching scheme which swaps 2k of a game's memory with an alternate 2k, and also allows a program to "self-modify" it's own instructions (possible, since the entire program is residing in RAM memory instead of the usual cartridge ROM). The Supercharger accomplishes this (basically) by monitoring 2 specific memory addresses mapped to the ROM area. ANY access to those addresses either triggers the bankswitch or rewrites a program. Since a 2600's program memory layout is entirely at the programmer's discretion, there are many games which used those 2 specific memory addresses for program code or data. The addresses are near the end of the cartridge memory space ($1FF8 and $1FF9), which is why it's common that so many original 2k and 4k games execute fine on the Supercharger. Those that don't require modification...either to the programs, or a hardware switch added to the Supercharger unit itself which prevents program modification when engaged.

[up2knowgood]

The Supercharger uses it's own bankswitching scheme which swaps 2k of a game's memory with an alternate 2k, and also allows a program to "self-modify" it's own instructions (possible, since the entire program is residing in RAM memory instead of the usual cartridge ROM). The Supercharger accomplishes this (basically) by monitoring 2 specific memory addresses mapped to the ROM area. ANY access to those addresses either triggers the bankswitch or rewrites a program. Since a 2600's program memory layout is entirely at the programmer's discretion, there are many games which used those 2 specific memory addresses for program code or data. The addresses are near the end of the cartridge memory space ($1FF8 and $1FF9), which is why it's common that so many original 2k and 4k games execute fine on the Supercharger. Those that don't require modification...either to the programs, or a hardware switch added to the Supercharger unit itself which prevents program modification when engaged.

...duh, what?

 

Did I mention I am not a programmer? All I know is that none of the games marked as over 4K on the manual work on the Cuttle Cart, and I don't know why.

[alex_79]

All I know is that none of the games marked as over 4K on the manual work on the Cuttle Cart, and I don't know why.

Because the audio tracks in those CD were generated using the Supercharger audio format, and they will be loaded by the Cuttle Cart in Supercharger mode, and thus they will crash just like on an original unmodded supercharger for the reasons mentioned by Nukey Shay

 

All games in the "Worship the Woodgrain" CDs are either 2k or 4k in size. Those marked with an asterisk are those that crashes on a Supercharger unless it has been modified.

 

So WtW isn't of much use for a Cuttle Cart, (or an unmodified Supercharger). Moreover, Nukey hacked most (all?) of the incompatible games to run on an unmodified Supercharger, so the hardware mod isn't really needed anymore nowadays.

The Cuttle Cart can run all the games in those CDs (and much more, as it support several bankswitching schemes with or without additional ram up to 64K in size) , but you need to generate audio files specifically for it, using the Playbin or makewav utilities.

[up2knowgood]

Because the audio tracks in those CD were generated using the Supercharger audio format, and they will be loaded by the Cuttle Cart in Supercharger mode, and thus they will crash just like on an original unmodded supercharger for the reasons mentioned by Nukey Shay

 

All games in the "Worship the Woodgrain" CDs are either 2k or 4k in size. Those marked with an asterisk are those that crashes on a Supercharger unless it has been modified.

 

So WtW isn't of much use for a Cuttle Cart, (or an unmodified Supercharger). Moreover, Nukey hacked most (all?) of the incompatible games to run on an unmodified Supercharger, so the hardware mod isn't really needed anymore nowadays.

The Cuttle Cart can run all the games in those CDs (and much more, as it support several bankswitching schemes with or without additional ram up to 64K in size) , but you need to generate audio files specifically for it, using the Playbin or makewav utilities.

Ah! Got it. Sorry Nukey Shay, no offense, but I needed someone to dumb it down for me. Looking forward to trying out your hacks though.

 

Yeah, I have a separate posting about the utilities to use with the Cuttle Cart, as Google wasn't helpful. Makewav isn't compatible with my computer, but Playbin works fine. Really looking forward to trying out all the hacks and super rare games I wouldn't get to play otherwise.

[+save2600]

Think this stuff is confusing? Try to load some images into the various SD/CF 'flashcarts' for the TI-99/4A.

[alex_79]

[...] Makewav isn't compatible with my computer [...]

Maybe it needs to be recompiled for modern 64bit Windows. The source is available, so maybe someone here might provide an updated binary.

[Nukey Shay]

The gist of what I was getting at is that the Supercharger was designed for using their own games...thus, being able to take advantage of the hardwares advanced features. Being able to use most of the existing 2k and 4k library of titles from other companies was just a fortunate (for us consumers) side-effect. Hacking problem games to leave the specified bankswitch hotspot addresses untouched made the rest playable for unmodded Superchargers.