Why do we settle for EMS? (Page 2 of 3)

Hmm, does Nanoloop actually crash in data-destroying ways? It shouldn't be as susceptible as the SRAM used by LSDj. That has nothing to do with the battery, but the fact that the CPU has to execute a series of commands in order to access the EEPROM.

becasue the software has to be written to use that
and lsdj isnt

[Edit: I assume you mean you'd have to manually save through LSDJ, not have the cart auto-save when you hit the power switch.]

Personally, I wouldn't have a huge issue with that - it's how every other piece of electronics works. You always have to save the files you're editing on your computer before you turn it off, or the song you're working on in DS10, or any game you're playing... I was really surprised when I first picked up LSDJ and found out I could just turn my gameboy off and not lose all my data. Now, I'm a real n00b when it comes to chipmusic, and I can see how a change would bother people who are more used to the current behaviour than it would bother me, but it does seem like saving before closing is the 'normal' way to do things. If it took a long time to save, it would be a pain I guess - I don't really know how these things work though, so I'm not clear on whether that would be the case.

Of course, not having to save is nicer, but it doesn't seem like a big enough drawback to avoid a design, if it would mean a more reliable cartridge. Although, there are other drawbacks to the EEPROM design as well -- shifting all these saves around sounds fairly kluge-y, and to my uneducated self, seems like a recipe for corrupting your files if anything goes wrong, as well as just taking up more space on the cart (since you need more memory chips). It also doesn't seem clear how changing to this design would make backing up any simpler, but again, I don't know what I'm talking about.

Anyhow, just my $0.02.

Last edited by nick (Dec 12, 2011 10:36 pm)

Seems like the mountain should move to me.

EDIT: I'm being a dick, and plus the analogy doesn't really hold. But the point is that software being developed for existing, non-custom hardware is entirely reasonable.

Last edited by Bit Shifter (Dec 13, 2011 12:10 am)

Well, LSDJ is written for a specific cartridge - that is, it's written for any gameboy cartridge with a battery (which is most of them).

Of course there could be LSDJ-specific cartridges or cartridge-specific LSDJs, but that presents three problems. First, it could mean that LSDJ would have to be rewritten, which would be a huge pain in the neck. Second, it would mean that the new version of LSDJ wouldn't run on the EMS/BleepBloop/SmartBoy carts that everyone already has. Third, it would mean that you couldn't run anything other than LSDJ on the cartridge (unless it was also specifically designed for it), which would be disappointing for anyone who wanted to run Carillon/Tetris/Pokemon or anything else. It would basically make LSDJ more nanoloop-ish in design, and I think that the more 'open' seeming separation between hardware and software that LSDJ has is one of the reasons a lot of people prefer it.

justinthursday: Should've used LittleFM... Can store save data in flash, but only on bleepbloops.

Frostbyte: Tell me the more. I might be able to help.