What is needed to contribute to ZSNES?

Murdock · Post by **Murdock** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 12:55 am

This is a pretty noob question, but I would like to contribute to this project any way i can. What I need to know is, what do i need to learn in order to help out. I am more of an IT guy than a programer, but I would like to learn something new and if I can help you guys out then we would both benefit. Don't get me wrong I am not planning on jumping right into it, I realize I will have to learn several things and it will take a while to learn, but If I know what to study in the right order, it will make the learning process much smoother.

Nightcrawler · Post by **Nightcrawler** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 2:08 am

Study assembly language and SNES hardware documents galore.

Murdock · Post by **Murdock** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 2:56 am

Thanks for the quick response.
Alright I'll start with the snes documents. Do you know of any good sites? I'm sure I can find some articles with google, but there has to be some site that has already done the hunting.

Post by **badinsults** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 3:24 am

Murdock83 wrote:Thanks for the quick response.
Alright I'll start with the snes documents. Do you know of any good sites? I'm sure I can find some articles with google, but there has to be some site that has already done the hunting.

Good luck. Google is about as good of an answer as you are going to get. Someone tried to compile a bunch of documents a couple of years ago, but most are outdated and full of incorrect information.

Murdock · Post by **Murdock** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 4:01 am

Good luck. Google is about as good of an answer as you are going to get. Someone tried to compile a bunch of documents a couple of years ago, but most are outdated and full of incorrect information.

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That seems to be the case, perhaps I could help with documenting it.

I was wondering Some of the sites I have checked out state the SNES's CPU was a 65816 chip and i have seen others stating it was a 65836. I believe it to be a 65816, but if someone could clear this up It would make googling a little easier.

neviksti · Post by **neviksti** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 4:15 am

I wouldn't suggest googling for docs ... many old docs are just plain wrong.

Here's some okay stuff (nothing's definitive, keep this in mind. If you see discrepencies, or something that doesn't make sense, please ask questions. Sadly alot of us know the correct info, but there aren't docs to correspond to the new info.)

http://members.tripod.com/FDwR/docs.html
I don't like some of those. I'd just stick to these on that page:

-probably transcribed nintendo docs-
SNES Register Map
SPC-700 APU Manual

-main cpu info-
65c816 Processor info
More 65c816 info

There's errors in these docs as well. Seriously, read through it. And ask questions. It's the only way.

Oh, I think my SNES dev "starter-kit", has some of the errors fixed in the docs but it's basically the same thing
http://nesdev.parodius.com/SNES-starterkit.zip

EDIT: Hmm... none of the docs I mentioned there describe the graphic data formats. Qwertie's doc is included in the starter kit which has some format info. So maybe it would be good to grab that.

Murdock · Post by **Murdock** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 4:30 am

Thanks this should keep me reading for a while. I have one question before I start taking notes. I know the Super Famicom is Japan's SNES, but as far as hardware is there any differnces I should keep in mind when reading?

EDIT:

Well I checked The Western Design Center's website and they have developers kits and documentations for a W65c816s chip. Do you think this would be any help for documenting the SNES's cpu or am I just asking for trouble?
http://www.westerndesigncenter.com/wdc/ ... 5c816s.pdf

neviksti · Post by **neviksti** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 5:29 am

> Do you think this would be any help for documenting the SNES's cpu or am I just asking for trouble?

Actually, the 65816 doc is basically just a txt version of that pdf file. The pdf file looks much nicer, so feel free to use that if you wish. The txt file is just more convenient for quick lookups (well to me at least).

illegal eagle · Post by **illegal eagle** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 3:01 pm

You might find this thread on the new SNES9x board interesting. There's a list of documents at the end of the linked page.

Btw. I enjoyed browsing through the old SNES9x board, but that might be just me.

kieran_ · Post by **kieran_** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 3:42 pm

Money.

Murdock · Post by **Murdock** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 2:53 am

kilivipin wrote:Money.

I do plan on making a small donation in the future, right now thats not an option though. Besides I like to learn new things and I already know how to spend money.

Do you have any recomendations for a free win32 assembly compiler?

Malcster · Post by **Malcster** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 5:06 pm

NASM is the assembler used for building Zsnes, so best to go with that. Unless you mean something which assembles 65816 code.. not sure on that front.

Murdock · Post by **Murdock** » Sun Oct 17, 2004 3:04 am

No you understood me correctly, thanks!

And also thanks to everyone who has posted previous messages about links to snes hardware docs, your making it a lil' bit easier with your helpful links and quick responses.

Murdock · Post by **Murdock** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 2:34 pm

First let me apologize for double posting and bringing this thread back.

I am looking into assembly language right now, still hitting walls, but I'll get it eventually. Just out of curiosity how much of a monetary contribution would it take to motivate the developers to rewrite the gui into C or another language. Right now it will be a long time before I actually have money (lots of loans and visa bills) but I'm just curious.

Anyway I decided that actual work on the emulator is way above my abilities, I would love to help with rewriting the gui but first I will need to learn BOTH assembly and whatever language it is ported to.

And now the biggest noob question of them all...

Could someone post an example of the command line to get Nasm to compile a .asm file to a working program. All I can seem to get it to do is tell me what lines have errors in the code.

Post by **Nach** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 3:22 pm

Send me $2000+ and I'll gladly rewrite the GUI.

Murdock · Post by **Murdock** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 10:58 pm

Nach wrote:Send me $2000+ and I'll gladly rewrite the GUI.

lol, I was afraid of that...

If I happen to win the lottery or if I learn assembly and C I'll get back to you. I honestly don't know what will happen first. I think I'll start googling NASM cmd lines some more.

Malcster · Post by **Malcster** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 7:45 pm

Murdock83 wrote:Could someone post an example of the command line to get Nasm to compile a .asm file to a working program. All I can seem to get it to do is tell me what lines have errors in the code.

I'm no expert but from my compiler experience and a quick look at "nasm -h" you are probably missing the -o option. Use that and then a filename to specify where the assembled code should be created.

nemo · Post by **nemo** » Sat Oct 30, 2004 3:37 am

Err... Cursory knowledge of programming tells me that you're using the right command line parameters... But you have errors on certain lines of your code... Fix the errors, and it will compile.

Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted; I had to make an account again

.

xamenus · Post by **xamenus** » Sat Oct 30, 2004 10:38 pm

nemo wrote:Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted; I had to make an account again .

That's because the previous forums were deleted. This is a new forum.

cdbsi · Post by **cdbsi** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 9:52 pm

Yeah, and I lost my record post count as well.

Post by **Nach** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 10:19 pm

cdbsi wrote:Yeah, and I lost my record post count as well.

What would you like it to be?

darkbenny · Post by **darkbenny** » Wed Nov 03, 2004 12:28 am

cdbsi wrote:Yeah, and I lost my record post count as well.

Post count= fuck all

Post by **grinvader** » Wed Nov 03, 2004 2:13 pm

Nach wrote:
cdbsi wrote:Yeah, and I lost my record post count as well.
What would you like it to be?

0xdeadbeef

Noxious Ninja · Post by **Noxious Ninja** » Wed Nov 03, 2004 2:59 pm

grinvader wrote:
Nach wrote:
cdbsi wrote:Yeah, and I lost my record post count as well.
What would you like it to be?
0xdeadbeef

Not even you could get 3,735,928,559 posts.

Dolphin · Post by **Dolphin** » Sun Dec 26, 2004 8:32 pm

Anyway I decided that actual work on the emulator is way above my abilities, I would love to help with rewriting the gui but first I will need to learn BOTH assembly and whatever language it is ported to.

I thought about rewriting the GUI but its too much work. Just learn some assembly then you can write what you want to add to the GUI in C/C++ and just add it by calling those functions from ASM.

BTW: Why was the GUI done in assembly?