Communication between NES and PC programs?
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Communication between NES and PC programs?
Are there any NES emulators for Windows that allow a running NES program to communicate with a native program running on the same machine, such as through a pipe or socket or even just mapping the SRAM file as shared memory?
None that I know of, but it sure could be useful for game development if you have complex algorithms that'd you like to prototype in a high-level language before porting them to 6502 machine code.
I suppose that functionality could be implemented in any decent open-source emulator if someone is willing to volunteer a few late nights for this cause... :)
I suppose that functionality could be implemented in any decent open-source emulator if someone is willing to volunteer a few late nights for this cause... :)
Maybe if the emulator wrote the SAV file to disk on every write? Then both programs could reload the file whenever it was updated by the other. I'm not sure exactly how that part would be done. Disk access shouldn't be a problem, since I believe it'd be in the cache (I could be wrong though).
It'd be kinda neat too if the controller port I/O could be rerouted to a virtual COM port, it'd be compatible with the hardware I've built so you could run the same thing on a real NES. It's kinda crappy for receiving bytes on the NES that way though (can't just get one randomly at any time, have to poll for it).
It'd be kinda neat too if the controller port I/O could be rerouted to a virtual COM port, it'd be compatible with the hardware I've built so you could run the same thing on a real NES. It's kinda crappy for receiving bytes on the NES that way though (can't just get one randomly at any time, have to poll for it).
That, and music/graphics/level editors that use the emulator to display the results.Bananmos wrote:None that I know of, but it sure could be useful for game development if you have complex algorithms that'd you like to prototype in a high-level language before porting them to 6502 machine code.
As for the NES-side interface, would it be hard to put a 16550 UART into a mapper, with the IRQ line hooked up properly?