Is really necessary the DSP-1 in the mario kart cartridge?

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Señor Ventura
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Is really necessary the DSP-1 in the mario kart cartridge?

Post by Señor Ventura »

Good day (xD).

Sometimes i do myself the same type of questions, but really i don't know so much about that kind of "extra cpu's", so i'm frequently getting lost myself when i see games as demanding of "raw power" as the mario kart (street racer at 2 or 4 players), and i see that it doesn't bring any additional chip inside it.

What are exactly the function of the microcodes of all of the DSP's?, Really the DSP-1a of the mario kart needed help proccessing mode 7 routines?, or is it used for another kind of task.


Tank you!.
tepples
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Re: Is really necessary the DSP-1 in the mario kart cartridg

Post by tepples »

See DSP-1 operations, at both the low level (DSP instructions) and high level (operations in firmware).

I seem to remember that the DSP-1 in Super Mario Kart is used for building mode 7 lookup tables in work RAM, possibly as a form of copy protection.
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Fisher
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Re: Is really necessary the DSP-1 in the mario kart cartridg

Post by Fisher »

I'm not sure if it was effective as copy protection, since there's at least one pirate version of it.
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Señor Ventura
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Re: Is really necessary the DSP-1 in the mario kart cartridg

Post by Señor Ventura »

Thank you for the answers...

So, if i read well, that pirate mario kart doesn't have any DSP in the cartridge, and there are no backgrounds for the circuits, right?.

Then, it takes sense when we speak about the DSP transforming bitmaps into tiles... or not?.
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Fisher
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Re: Is really necessary the DSP-1 in the mario kart cartridg

Post by Fisher »

Señor Ventura wrote: pirate mario kart doesn't have any DSP in the cartridge
No, it definitelly has a chip that works as the standard DSP, it's marked as 3904 on the left of the second picture.
It even worked with the unmodified MarioKart game I flashed on the memory and had put it on the board.
The weird thing is that it needs to have pins 14 and 28 disconnected to work fine. :roll:
It lacked the SRAM memory for the saves, wich I added with the help of Lidnariq.

I'm in the process of making a txt file with the info I gained in this hack.
Maybe it can help someone else in the future... More or less like I've done with the N64 GSPro here.
The difference is that MarioKart should be fairy more complete than the GameShark.
My only obstacle is the lazynes, since I already started it here.
The text is in portuguese, since it's my primary language.

Edit: Some pictures of the Mario Kart's board here.
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