Oh, one additional bit of info. There's apparently two firmware versions of the NSS board itself. You apparently need the newer one to play the later released games. I don't know which chip in particular, saw it on a video about the hardware.
> Okay, but now, that is TOO obscure.
I dunno, I thought it was really cool. I understand it's a pain to do so, but I generate the GUI based on the XML when you first load the cart, so you can set how you want it to play.
For ActRaiser more than any other game, it's really nice. The real ActRaiser requires you to beat the game before you can play a limited "arcade" mode that's every -other- level.
The NSS game lets you skip story mode, play -every- level, and the DIP settings give you lots of skill settings. To me, the DIP settings are much more interesting than the insert coin and game selection overlays. I am still happy you are researching the latter of course. Everything that can be preserved should be.
> Yup, Act Raiser is doing a 16bit read there (but uses only the lower some bits)... I would guess that 4201h..42FFh are just mirrors of 4200h.
I got that impression when AR only used 6-bits. It would be great to confirm whether 4201-42FF are open bus or mirrors of 4200. I just let you control both bytes just in case, until we verify all games' DIP settings.
> on the other hand that's making it difficult to create own games or bootlegs
Unfortunately there are two bootlegs on eBay now =(
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nintendo-super- ... 231f14d0f5
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nintendo-super- ... 231f14f657
This page lists Super Copa on the display, which AFAIK was not an NSS game. It's also an insanely rare commercial cart from Mexico/Brazil only:
http://distritofederal.quebarato.com.mx ... 731AC.html
Hopefully the real ones come on mask ROMs, so you can easily spot fakes before dumping. The non-standard connector won't make dumping easy, either. Nor will the scarcity.
EDIT: they are apparently all EEPROMs, shit :(
That makes absolute verification from one board impossible.
> In practice, the DIPs seem to be installed only on Type C boards.
Ah, neat. So there were 14 games total.
Do we know the type of each of the 14 games?
Or even better, do we have PCB scans of all 14 somewhere?
Knowing a game were type A or B to skip testing for DIP settings would be nice.
Heh, here I thought the DIPs were software-based, and accessible in the arcade operator's menu. I sure hope there's at least a manual or something for arcade operators to know how the DIPs work.
> 4016h.W.Bit2 is just a normally unused joypad output.
Oh, are you saying "Bit1-Bit8", or "Bit0-Bit7"? If the former, that's a fairly obvious choice to use controller Data2 line. If the latter, then that's pretty darn neat since the stock SNES doesn't use the third bit at all.
FWIW, I always start from zero when indexing bits with bytes.
> I haven't got that far yet to see what happens exactly.
Ah, so untested for now. Okay then, I won't support it for now. I look forward to more research :D