SimCity prototype found!

Discuss technical or other issues relating to programming the Nintendo Entertainment System, Famicom, or compatible systems. See the NESdev wiki for more information.

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lidnariq
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Re: SimCity prototype found!

Post by lidnariq »

Yeah, you could use /RAM1CE as A15, and AND(/RAM1CE,/RAM2CE) as /BiggerRAMCE, if you could get your hands on a ≥64 KiB SRAM.

But NES-ETROM is already nicely set up for this upgrade (SL15/CL15), and I'm pretty certain it'd be easier to piggy-back an extra RAM onto NES-EWROM.
FrankWDoom
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Re: SimCity prototype found!

Post by FrankWDoom »

ideally yeah. but if I ever have the option to make a cart out of this, I'd rather not sacrifice a NES ETROM cart for reasons of cost and ruining something I'd otherwise collect. so it's down to modifying a lesser board, or famicom carts.
tepples
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Re: SimCity prototype found!

Post by tepples »

rainwarrior wrote:SNES SimCity had 256k RAM inside it, for comparison, which could save two cities, so that might put an assumption for 64k WRAM being necessary into perspective.
SimCity (Super NES) battery RAM is 256 kbit, same as SXROM/EWROM. (Source: SnesCartDB)
Skrybe
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Re: SimCity prototype found!

Post by Skrybe »

lidnariq wrote:The pictures of the PCB (in the cut up gold shelled prototype) show a NES-ETROM board with two RAMs, both socketed.
I'm guessing that's an ETEPROM board, rather than an ETROM that they socketed. So, not necessarily bigger than 2x8k. That photo came from an old eBay auction for a Laser Invasion proto, btw.
lidnariq
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Re: SimCity prototype found!

Post by lidnariq »

Oh, fair enough.
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rainwarrior
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Re: SimCity prototype found!

Post by rainwarrior »

tepples wrote:SimCity (Super NES) battery RAM is 256 kbit
Thanks for the correction (and the helpful link to an SNES cartridge database).
AWJ
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Re: SimCity prototype found!

Post by AWJ »

The SNES has 128KB of onboard RAM, so the entire cartridge RAM can be dedicated to save data. On the NES it's most likely that one of the two cartridge RAMs is work RAM and the other is save data, just like all the Koei games.
FrankWDoom wrote:ideally yeah. but if I ever have the option to make a cart out of this, I'd rather not sacrifice a NES ETROM cart for reasons of cost and ruining something I'd otherwise collect. so it's down to modifying a lesser board, or famicom carts.
Out of the MMC5 PCBs that support any WRAM, ETROM is the most common. EKROM and EWROM are only used by one US game each (Gemfire and ROT3KII respectively); ETROM is used by four (Bandit Kings of Ancient China, L'Empereur, Nobunaga's Ambition II and Uncharted Waters)
lidnariq
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Re: SimCity prototype found!

Post by lidnariq »

On ELROM, you could piggy-back a 32-pin 128Ki x 8 SRAM on top of (or underneath) the existing PRG-ROM, without too many random bonus wires... but it is an awful lot of fiddly rework, including a good deal of SMT work to get to the pins on the MMC5 that aren't broken out.
tepples
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Re: SimCity prototype found!

Post by tepples »

maseter wrote:there is an open-source city-building game for the GBC:
[...]
Get this "µCity 1.0" for free here: https://github.com/AntonioND/ucity
It's telling that this is GBC exclusive for the same reason that SimCity would have been expensive to replicate: it needs a comparative ton of work RAM.
cr4zymanz0r
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Re: SimCity prototype found!

Post by cr4zymanz0r »

So do we know if anyone has tried to get in touch with the person to see about dumping the game? Other than wanting to try game myself like most everybody else here, I'd REALLY hate to see it eventually lost forever if the eproms finally give out and it was never dumped.
XtraSmiley
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Re: SimCity prototype found!

Post by XtraSmiley »

cr4zymanz0r wrote:So do we know if anyone has tried to get in touch with the person to see about dumping the game? Other than wanting to try game myself like most everybody else here, I'd REALLY hate to see it eventually lost forever if the eproms finally give out and it was never dumped.
Bump.
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rainwarrior
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Re: SimCity prototype found!

Post by rainwarrior »

It's been dumped and preserved. I believe the data is currently in the backlog of Frank Cifaldi who will eventually release it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqqz_XTLajQ
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MrNorbert1994
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Re: SimCity prototype found!

Post by MrNorbert1994 »

Let's hope that this game stores its music data in 1 fixed bank. : P
Nintendo drivers aren't hard to rip, but it takes a while to arrange them properly.
Sour
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Re: SimCity prototype found!

Post by Sour »

rainwarrior wrote:It's been dumped and preserved. I believe the data is currently in the backlog of Frank Cifaldi who will eventually release it?
FYI, Frank Cifaldi released the Simcity NES prototype earlier today.
lidnariq
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Re: SimCity prototype found!

Post by lidnariq »

.. It's just running on ordinary ET(EP)ROM, with just 16 K of memory??
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