Any programs to help with master system repro making?

Discussion of development of software for any "obsolete" computer or video game system. See the WSdev wiki and ObscureDev wiki for more information on certain platforms.
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Bernkastel_Kues
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Any programs to help with master system repro making?

Post by Bernkastel_Kues »

for NES I use a program that will automatically mirror and prepare multiple files (one CHR and PRG if there are two). Does such a thing exist for master system?

I ask because I have an order of 27c512 on the way and I'm wondering if the are possible to use at all with the basic master system boards or if I need to specifically get 27c256 boards. but then what do I do if the game is smaller then 32k?

I have been spoiled while making nes repros by having a program prepare the files for me, but now that I want to experiment in something that isn't heavily done by others I feel like I'll have to learn how to manually do these things.. unless of course someone can provide a program that will help with this!
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rainwarrior
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Re: Any programs to help with master system repro making?

Post by rainwarrior »

I don't know about pre-existing programs or SMS formats, but I might suggest that learning a scripting language like python would be very helpful to you, not just in this pursuit but elsewhere too. You can write yourself a utility that splits up a ROM into other files with just a few lines of code, and you could customize it however you like.
lidnariq
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Re: Any programs to help with master system repro making?

Post by lidnariq »

1- as far as I know, the overwhelming majority of SMS games used the same mapper, which allowed any 16 KiB chunk of ROM to be put anywhere in the bottom 3/4 of the SMS's Z80's memory.

2- as far as I know, there were no Master System games that are smaller than 32 KiB. ( No-Intro's database doesn't know of anything other than the 5 BIOSes below)
2b- There were only a very short list of games larger than 32 KiB and smaller than 128 KiB: (once again, using No-Intro's database)

Code: Select all

$ egrep -o 'size [0-9]+' Sega\ -\ Master\ System\ -\ Mark\ III\ \(20141028-150443_CM\).dat  | cut -c 5- | sort -n | uniq -c 
      4  8192
      1  16384
     59  32768
      3  49152
      4  65536
    148  131072
    237  262144
      1  442368
     80  524288
      1  819200
      6  1048576
3- The SMS, unlike the NES, doesn't really need to store any extra metadata, so its dumps are unheadered. There is a tiny internal bit of metadata.
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tokumaru
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Re: Any programs to help with master system repro making?

Post by tokumaru »

lidnariq wrote:There were only a very short list of games larger than 32 KiB
Eh?
lidnariq
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Re: Any programs to help with master system repro making?

Post by lidnariq »

lidnariq wrote:short list of games larger than 32 KiB and smaller than 128 KiB
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tokumaru
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Re: Any programs to help with master system repro making?

Post by tokumaru »

Ah, my bad! :oops:
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TmEE
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Re: Any programs to help with master system repro making?

Post by TmEE »

You don't need to mirror ROMs on the SMS, no game relies on mirroring and when you do need to mirror you can do it from the command line with the COPY command.
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