no$sns - new SNES emulator

nocash · Post by **nocash** » Fri Feb 24, 2012 12:34 pm

Hi, I've just released a new SNES emulator/debugger,
http://nocash.emubase.de/sns.htm
the thing should be quite accurate, support most coprocessors, and work with almost all games. But well, it's the first release, so I may have missed a lot of bugs...
Looking for some feedback if it does really work!
cu, Martin

mic_ · Post by **mic_** » Fri Feb 24, 2012 1:54 pm

There seems to be some bugs with the SPC initialization and/or emulation of the communication ports.
I tested some of my own stuff (like this) and only got a black screen. Looking in the debugger, the 5A22 seems to be stuck waiting for the SPC.

Same thing happens with World Cup Soccer 2 - Striker (E).

nocash · Post by **nocash** » Fri Feb 24, 2012 2:54 pm

Thanks! It's a problem with my APU Boot-ROM BIOS clone (it works when you have the original 64-byte BIOS ROM-image, file APU.BIN in BIOS folder).
The clone is breaking the original code into 5 sections: Part 1 reproduces the orignal opcodes at FFC0-FFCE, Part 2 those at FFCF-FFD5, and so on.
So, the FFC9 entrypoint value that you are using isn't working. I've read somewhere that it is "possible" to jump to that address (and was wondering if any programs are actually doing that). Well, now I know it... will be working in next update. Thanks again.
PS. I hope the sound output as such is okay.

byuu · Post by **byuu** » Sat Feb 25, 2012 12:33 am

Congratulations! I'm always excited to see new SNES emulators.

I noticed this in your documentation:

F3 Debug (receive 128Kbytes from 0000:0000..0001:FFFF, for HEX-DUMP display)
F4 Debug (receive 32Kbytes from A000:0000..A000:7FFF, for HEX-DUMP display)

With the Debug commands, it'd might exceptionally easy to dump the on-chip BIOS ROM (without needing to decap the chip), but so far nobody seems to have done/tried to do so (???)

I must have missed the F3/F4 commands when I was researching this game. This was a big help, thank you.
Since I used your research, I wanted to make sure I gave you credit for it. As my setup is capable of handling this:

Here are the extracted 128K and 32K files:

http://byuu.org/temp/st0018-20120225.tar.bz2

They appear to be valid, I see "Copyright 1994 RAHDOMHOUSE" in the 128K file.

I wasn't having much luck with A3 {32-bit addr} {read 128-bytes}; but I can also dump the full 4GB range if you can elaborate on how that command works. I'd also love to know how you obtained this info if you don't mind, as anything will be helpful to me.

I hope this will be of use to you. If we make any progress on these, I'll pass the information along.

Lastly, I am also writing an SNES emulator. You may be interested in looking at its source for further information.
You can download that here if you like: http://code.google.com/p/bsnes/downloads/list
I also have a forum with several years of research notes at http://board.byuu.org/
Please don't hesitate to reach out to me any time if you have questions or want to team up on a tough new problem, I'd be glad to help.
I'd also love to hear about any new research from your end, too!

Dwedit · Post by **Dwedit** » Sat Feb 25, 2012 1:02 am

This blows all the other SNES debuggers away!
Edit: looks like it doesn't quite have all the debugging features in there though...

Kojote · Post by **Kojote** » Sat Feb 25, 2012 2:23 pm

Two unexpected things at once

Tried to contact you years ago but you completely managed to disappear so it's nice to see you seem to be still alive and kicking

Now if only your page would be working... I could have a look at this probably new masterpiece again. But someone shouldn't be so much in a hurry

-koj

LuigiBlood · Post by **LuigiBlood** » Sat Feb 25, 2012 3:04 pm

I really want to try it out, and check the documentation, but since this is down for now...

nocash · Post by **nocash** » Sat Feb 25, 2012 3:43 pm

Yeah, I've somehow disappeared for some years (left the planet and silently worked on some obscure emulation projects, now that I am back on earth, I've planned to release 1-2 new emus, and a bunch of updates for older emus).
But if something can wrong... then it happen just at the the wrong moment, sorry. The emubase server has been offline for some hours last week, too (don't know why). I hope it'll be back online tomorrow, or else I'll upload a copy somewhere else. Thanks that you mentioned the problem!

Dwedit · Post by **Dwedit** » Sat Feb 25, 2012 8:45 pm

I know NO$GBA has a severe CPU bug in it, pushes and pops to the stack are broken if sp is one of the registers that gets pushed or popped. Really bad now that GCC is actually using that instruction a lot now.

nocash · Post by **nocash** » Sun Feb 26, 2012 11:05 am

At the moment, http://nocash.emubase.de/sns.htm is back online.
Please post something here if it happens to disappear again!

nitro2k01 · Post by **nitro2k01** » Sun Feb 26, 2012 12:07 pm

Long time no exist, I'm tempted to say. If you want (hopefully more stable) hosting, I can help you with that. I have a good hosting package and could spare some space and traffic.

The e-mail address in the spam-shielded box is incorrect. The second r is missing. (Confirmed against the hex.)

Just for fun I thought I'd as you, do you have a DOS build of no$sns? I still have a P100 and I want to see how it compares to ZSNES in speed on such an old machine.

caitsith2 · Post by **caitsith2** » Sun Feb 26, 2012 12:23 pm

I could also spare some space/traffic on my hosting as well.

nitro2k01 · Post by **nitro2k01** » Sun Feb 26, 2012 12:24 pm

Another thing. The help files that are created by no$*** are incompatible with modern versions of Windows (XP with later service packs and later.) There are third party software that can read the files to some degree, but I would suggest distributing help files as HTML files. Maybe it's anti nocash in spirit, but it would help all of us with modern computers with "hundreds of megahertz".

If you feel like it and you dare use IRC, drop by #gbdev on EFNet.

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Sun Feb 26, 2012 4:37 pm

Hi! I've posted my comments here.

nitro2k01 wrote:The help files that are created by no$*** are incompatible with modern versions of Windows (XP with later service packs and later.)

I can read them fine on XP, haven't tested on 7 yet.

nitro2k01 · Post by **nitro2k01** » Sun Feb 26, 2012 4:58 pm

creaothceann wrote:Hi! I've posted my comments here.

So have I. Now it will be interesting to see if byuu will approve my post.

creaothceann wrote:I can read them fine on XP, haven't tested on 7 yet.

Which service pack? I think support .hlp files was removed in SP3 or so for vague security reasons.