Legible SNES Schematics

Discussion of hardware and software development for Super NES and Super Famicom. See the SNESdev wiki for more information.

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TmEE
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Re: Legible SNES Schematics

Post by TmEE »

I like the mulitcolor buses !
nocash
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Re: Legible SNES Schematics

Post by nocash »

I'll prefer the monochrome version, but for the colored version colored busses are looking very nice to me.
Btw. concerning scrolling/viewing, the .png files are MUCH easier to deal with than the .pdf version.
Wished you could save the whole schematic in .png or .gif format!
qwertymodo
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Re: Legible SNES Schematics

Post by qwertymodo »

I say colors are good. They make it easier to read at a glance and aren't annoying.
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blargg
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Re: Legible SNES Schematics

Post by blargg »

Maybe I missed something but aren't there plenty of tools to convert pdf/vector images to pixel images, and color to black and white?
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jwdonal
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Re: Legible SNES Schematics

Post by jwdonal »

blargg wrote:Maybe I missed something but aren't there plenty of tools to convert pdf/vector images to pixel images, and color to black and white?
The couple PDF apps that I have will convert to JPG/PNG but the image has very low resolution and you can't make anything out. My schematic capture tool has no way to directly write out a JPG/PNG. I've been googling for a solution but I will probably just leave it up to whoever wants it to figure out how to convert the PDF to an image on their own. :)

I'm still having a hard time understand why some people want an image over a PDF. I don't see what the difference will be...the schematic is way too large to ever fit on a single screen all at once and still be able to see anything. So whether you have a PDF/Image will make no difference. You will still either have to zoom in and scroll X/Y or click and drag the image around with the mouse. Not sure what I'm missing here...
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koitsu
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Re: Legible SNES Schematics

Post by koitsu »

You're not really missing anything; some people just want format X, while others want format Y. Stick with PDF and make the people who want non-vector formats deal with the conversion themselves.
lidnariq
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Re: Legible SNES Schematics

Post by lidnariq »

There was some piece of software—I don't know what—that makes very tidy looking schematics in 1bpp bitmaps. Enri used it when he made schematics of the famicom and peripherals: http://atariusa.com/Famicom_Schematics/
They usually provide a much more dense image than a standard schematic, and resultantly are smaller and so use less memory and so work better on less capable computers.

That said, I can't think of a non-awful way to convert an existing schematic in this way. Maybe some trick with the PDF to force it to use a nice bitmap font as part of the export process.
qwertymodo
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Re: Legible SNES Schematics

Post by qwertymodo »

GIMP can import vector files, including PDF. Import at a high resolution, then you can export in whatever color format you want.
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jwdonal
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Re: Legible SNES Schematics

Post by jwdonal »

koitsu wrote:You're not really missing anything; some people just want format X, while others want format Y. Stick with PDF and make the people who want non-vector formats deal with the conversion themselves.
I agree with you...however...qwertymodo's GIMP suggestion actually worked really well and it's easy to do. So I'll go ahead and provide PNGs along with the PDFs. But only because it's easy. ;)
lidnariq wrote:There was some piece of software—I don't know what—that makes very tidy looking schematics in 1bpp bitmaps. Enri used it when he made schematics of the famicom and peripherals: http://atariusa.com/Famicom_Schematics/
Those schematics are actually really awesome. I like how they have a "retro" look to them. :) If you ever figure out the app name that created them I would really like to know.

--

P.S. The volunteers have provided awesome feedback so far. I'm just waiting for one more person and then I will post a first release. Also, I did end up adding the multi-color busses since people seemed to like the idea. It looks really cool (at least I think so). And if you don't like it, just use the monochrome schematic. Lol.
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whicker
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Re: Legible SNES Schematics

Post by whicker »

One really super-important feature of PDF is that you can search for text.
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jwdonal
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Re: Legible SNES Schematics

Post by jwdonal »

Hello all. I would like to present the first official public release of my SNES schematics. Special thanks to the volunteers who helped me rid the schematic of the most obvious errors prior to this release.

I have included both color and monochrome schematics for you in case you prefer one over the other. I have also included the schematics in both PDF and PNG format. I would highly recommend using the PDF as opposed to the PNG since the PDF is fully text searchable and much better quality.

The ZIP file not only includes the schematic but also the pinouts and pin definitions for each of the major IC components.

I will post these to wiki.superfamicom.org sometime later today as well.

I very much welcome feedback in the form of general errors, annoyances, mispellings, formatting suggestions, etc..

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/362 ... latest.zip

--

Some notes about this release:

If someone could tell me how to properly setup the PNG export in GIMP so that the quality of the PNG is better that would be great. Right now I just tell it to target 600 pix/in output so that the height/width of the PNG is about the same as original non-legible schematic. If there is some way to properly calculate the pix/in or output resolution so that it looks nice and crisp please let me know so I can fix it. :)

A case-insensitive search for "unknown" in any of the pinout PDFs will quickly locate any pins with unknown purposes. There were quite a few signals which have unknown direction (i.e. in/out/inout) as well. I think the most important unknown signals are those on the PPUs (e.g. FIELD, /VCLD, /HCLD, /OVER, etc, etc, etc). There are a lot.

On that same note, I wouldn't bother filling in information for any signals that are unconnected since they're don't-cares anyway. But if you really want to for completeness then feel free to tell me and I will add the info.
tepples
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Re: Legible SNES Schematics

Post by tepples »

What sort of grid is your schematic drawn on? Knowing this would help us describe how to render it to a crisp bitmap.
nocash
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Re: Legible SNES Schematics

Post by nocash »

Looks great! Congrats on getting that done, and many thanks for releasing it to everybody!

The EXPAND signal is just a general purpose connection between cartridge and expansion port (it doesn't have an direction assigned, and isn't assigned to be active low). In the Satellaview it is used to forward SYSCK from console - via 100 ohm in the cartridge - to the EXT port (but one might be allowed to use it differently in other hardware setups).

And /IRQ on Expansion Port... I would assume that it was intended to have direction from Expansion to CPU. So both cartridge and expansion could trigger IRQs. Of course, theoretically the other way work, too, for forwarding /IRQ from cart to expansion, but I would guess that nintendo didn't intended it that way.

And /RESET on the Cartridge slot, normally it's output to the cartridge... but, as far as I know, the official japanese "Nintendo Power" flashcarts do actually use it the other way around (to reset the console after game-selection from the flashcart menu).

Oh, and, I think, "Work RAM" would sound more common than "Working RAM".

PS. EDIT: hmmmm, "snes_schematic_release_latest.zip"? Then... what will the next release be called, latest_v1.1? :-)
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whicker
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Re: Legible SNES Schematics

Post by whicker »

I can't say for certain about how dropbox works, but theoretically if anyone links to that exact URL, then it would always be the latest version? Right now it's 1.0... It's not important in this case to keep record of earlier versions.
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jwdonal
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Re: Legible SNES Schematics

Post by jwdonal »

tepples wrote:What sort of grid is your schematic drawn on? Knowing this would help us describe how to render it to a crisp bitmap.
The snap grid is set to 10mil. Is that what you're looking for?
nocash wrote:Looks great! Congrats on getting that done, and many thanks for releasing it to everybody!
You're welcome! :)
nocash wrote:The EXPAND signal is just a general purpose connection between cartridge and expansion port (it doesn't have an direction assigned, and isn't assigned to be active low).
Interesting. I guess I'll just remove the direction then. The reason I made it active-low was because of the 10k pull-up on that line. The pull-up will pull the line high when nothing is connected to it at the expansion port. So that leads me to believe that it is meant to be active-low. But I can change it back since it doesn't match the original schematic.
nocash wrote:And /IRQ on Expansion Port... I would assume that it was intended to have direction from Expansion to CPU. So both cartridge and expansion could trigger IRQs.
Fixed.
nocash wrote:Oh, and, I think, "Work RAM" would sound more common than "Working RAM".
Agreed. Done.
whicker wrote:
nocash wrote:PS. EDIT: hmmmm, "snes_schematic_release_latest.zip"? Then... what will the next release be called, latest_v1.1? :-)
I can't say for certain about how dropbox works, but theoretically if anyone links to that exact URL, then it would always be the latest version? Right now it's 1.0... It's not important in this case to keep record of earlier versions.
You got it. But I think I'm just going to remove the _release_latest suffix altogether since, like you said, previous revisions don't matter anyway.

Update: SNES Schematic v1.1 is available here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/362 ... ematic.zip
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