chipmusic.org is an online community in respect and relation to chip music, art and its parallels.
You are not logged in. Please login or register.
Hey there!
Just wondering if anybody knows of any good ROMs that I can burn onto the second page of my 64mb carts. As Both pages share memory, I need a ROM that doesn't save sram (and won't overwrite my lsdj files!)
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
-Jansaw
http://www.jansaw.tumblr.com
would using the thing nitro2k01 made (i forgot the name) help?
if i am not mistaken it reprograms the flash cart when you save a song rather than saving it to sram so you won't have to worry about overwriting the sram
would using the thing nitro2k01 made (i forgot the name) help?
if i am not mistaken it reprograms the flash cart when you save a song rather than saving it to sram so you won't have to worry about overwriting the sram
I'm pretty sure he's stated that LittleFM won't work with 64M carts due to [programmery mumbo jumbo I don't understand].
Hold on there! I do have plans. LittleFM's "killer feature" is the ability to save songs into flash. However, it can also load songs from a file - just like LSDj's own manager - but faster and more safely. The goal is to make it a full drop-in replacement for LSDj's file manager, so it can also save and delete songs. This is something that can be done with an EMS cart, or any other cart, even if the save-to-flash functionality is missing.
But, there's more. The EMS cart, just like most others, has 128 kB of RAM, while most games use only 32 kB. Nothing (except for laziness) would stop me from saving a game save as a file, much like a LSDj song. There would be some complications, like the need to patch game ROMs with a little piece of code, but in principle it's still possible.
But wait, there's even more! Order within ten minutes - I sad ten minutes...! Just kidding. But a well hidden secret (I suppose?) is that all EMS cartridges (both old blue and USB ones) have multi-ROM support. This is separate from the "two pages" thing. This means that you could basically fill up the whole ROM area (2*32M) with programs, provided that
1) There's a program to take care of the special bank switching needed.
2) RAM sharing is taken care of where applicable.
Point 1 is the big problem. There used to be a menu ROM for the old blue cartridges, which worked fine, except that it worked particularly badly with LSDj, which made it fall into obscurity. A main candidate feature for LittleFM, even if it will take some effort, is to implement multi-ROM support for EMS cartridges, that is compatible with LSDj. That way, LFM could offer something unique to EMS users. Additionally, I could very well add extra features, such as the ability to get back to a menu with a choice of games/programs by pressing sel+start+B+A, basically a soft reset feature.
Now, convince to actually sit down and do it. 
BTW, I should add, if someone is willing to donate an EMS USB cart, it's more likely that I will add features specific to EMS carts to LittleFM. Even a cartridge that is stuck on one page or similar would be interesting. I do have a couple blue EMS carts and a parallel port transferer, but the transferer has gotten pretty shaky the last few years.
Wow, that sounds like a lot of work, nitro!
I wish you well in your endeavours, good sir!
Thanks for the suggestions, everyone, and I look forward to hearing more from LittleFM
BTW, I should add, if someone is willing to donate an EMS USB cart, it's more likely that I will add features specific to EMS carts to LittleFM.
I'm very tempted.
Here's an idea: who would be willing to pitch in a few bucks to buy nitro a cart so he can code for it?
If 10 people are interested, that's $4 each to support development.
I've got a spare EMS 64 cart that's not being used. I don't really play with it at all, and I don't think I'd miss it much. If you want an EMS cart for a pittance please PM me nitro.
Matt (Kitsch) has already offered to send me one. But thanks anyway. I'll still send you a PM, though.
Hope you get it done, nitro!
I like playing Hatris, muddygb, megamen, tetris, Super mario land, killer instinct, I don't really like playing kirby's dream land 1 because you can't suck up anyone's abilities.