SpritesMind.Net

There aren't that many people using these consoles anymore in any case, and probably 99.999% of the people "using" the Genesis are actually emulating it on a computer. If an add-on were in big enough demand due to some "awesome" new game using it, it could always just be added to one of the emulator...

Another type of coprocessor that would be handy without any extra lines is one like in the Virtua Racer cart - something that just computed vectors. Some type of fixed point processor for 3D would be very handy as the 68000 wouldn't be very fast with that. Why not just develop a whole new system......

can't you just interface the PSx controller to MD like its done with some Parallel Port adaptors ? MD controller ports are pretty nice... The PSX uses a 250 kbps synchronous serial interface. While the timing can vary quite a bit, it needs to be close to 250 kbps or many peripherals won't work with...

But adding features like the graphics co-processor requires extra wiring that is absent from the cartridge port, and probably no one will use it, because it's too specific... I don't mean something that gives better graphics, just a coprocessor that helps draw, much like the ASIC in the CD. It woul...

Like I said in the cart thread, if you made a USB port for the MD, you could use many different controllers with common USB adapters. That would probably be the best way to handle it. I've seen USB carts for the Atari 400/800, and that's a 1.79 MHz 6502, not a 7.7 MHz 68000. It handles keyboards, mi...

If we made the FPGA programmable from the MD (or maybe via USB), it could be updated to add things as they were developed. For example, SSF2 bank selecting could easily be added as an option to the FPGA. How much memory it gave would depend on the RAM used. So the key elements would be: FPGA - neede...

Wow, that's pretty ambitious.

Cool! Even better.

I used to do hardware (designed an entire card for the Amiga), but you have to give people a little time if you want them to help. Some of us are a little busy with other things, but can spare a little time now and then. While responding to this thread everyday is easy and quick, looking over your c...

The new site looks great - I can't wait to see how this turns out. Is there anything like a progress report for this project? If you looked through their forum, you'd find a post that if you register for the forum, there's a newsletter they email members that keeps you up to date on what's going on...

@Jorge - Try looking over the stuff at http://www.opencores.org/. You'll find everything from CPUs to DMA to USB to RAM interfaces of all types there.

I was talking about Hot-removing the SD card from its socket, not the cart itself :) But yeah that reset button to reload the boot rom seems a reasonable solution to play another one... Ah. Well, seems to me that the save ram save code would check for an SD card and bug you to insert one if there i...

I just put that way to avoid writing files to the SD card, but you can't save when you're done because the power is lost, the FPGA has to be monitoring any changes in the TIME signal and then update the save file when TIME goes inactive... Oh and that removes the Hot-Removal ability. Power is lost ...

Looks pretty good, but I don't think you need NVSRAM. Considering that you'll be loading the game and save ram from the SD-card, you'll almost certainly be saving the save ram to the SD-card when you're done playing. In that case, just make the "save ram" a block from the normal ram pointed to by a ...

I gave the lattice solution because most FPGAS are volatile, and the ones I said have flash memory to keep the configuration when it powers off... The normal ones need a bootloader/external prom... Well, that's a plus is its favor. :) I don't think the Altera FPGAs have that, but I might be mistake...