We need your help!

Post by **pagefault** » Tue Oct 19, 2004 9:00 pm

Hi there,

With the release of the Starfox 2 and a growing interest in providing better compatibility with less or no hacks some things are needed to provide this level of quality to our users. I really don't like the idea of asking for money but donations in this case would probably be the most helpful. Let me explain what needs to be done.

We need the following items:

1) A SuperFX 2 game (Yoshi's Island is best)
2) A SA-1 game (any is fine)
3) Flash/copier equipment that can run either or all of these chips.

The cost for all of these are in the ballpark of $100 USD. However if you are able to donate any of these items this would help reduce the cost considerably.

The hardware we had in mind was this which supposedly allows for chip passthrough, however if you know of a better product or can suggest some reason not to buy this then please post your comments in this thread.

http://www.tototek.com/pio/main1/SUBMEN ... rflash.htm

My current copier only supports DSP-1 and OBC passthrough so I am limited to what I can do with it. I also would like something without a BIOS preferably and PC link so I may run tests without any 3rd party interference.

If you would like to donate, you can paypal your donation to page_fault@sympatico.ca or visit the ZSNES SourceForge page at www.sf.net/projects/zsnes and click the donation button. All donations will have their name added to the ZSNES about box and have a chance be famous and have the gratitude of the entire ZSNES team.

If you have anything to add please discuss it here, I would like to hear your thoughts on this.

MagnetiC · Post by **MagnetiC** » Tue Oct 19, 2004 11:41 pm

Been using ZSNES for 5 years now, time for me to give something back. I don't have any of the requested stuff so I'll just donate some money. It's late now and I'm going to bed, but tomorrow I will get to it.

Lorddamien · Post by **Lorddamien** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 6:12 am

I don't have any equipment either but I've sent some money. My way of saying thank you for all the work put into zsnes since its release. Used instant transfer so you should be getting it shortly.

Post by **pagefault** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 10:35 pm

Thanks to everyone who has donated so far, we have $35 so far in the fund. I will put up a complete list of donors later on.

Murdock · Post by **Murdock** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 11:14 pm

If you can wait a couple of months I could donate $50, but If you have the whole amount by then I will probally wait till your next request.

Honestly though I simply cash my paychecks right now and forward money in my checking to various financial institutions to pay as little intrest as possible sure i could part with five or ten bucks, but I'd much rather make one good sized donation.

jdratlif · Post by **jdratlif** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 11:08 pm

pagefault wrote:Thanks to everyone who has donated so far, we have $35 so far in the fund. I will put up a complete list of donors later on.

If I donate through SF, they take 5% right? What if I use paypal to your email? Will they still get 5%?

I don't begrudge SF for this, but they have corporate sponsors and download mirrors from universities, and I don't feel I owe them any money, even a measly 5%. I'm grateful to them, I just don't feel beholden to them for cash.

If they get 5% either way, I'll just use the paypal button on the sf site, but if not, I'll look into paypal direct to your email.

ScottJC · Post by **ScottJC** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 9:02 am

And help ye shall Get, I just donated £10 to the fund. that should be about or over $18 I think.

I am in a donating mood lately, I donated to emutalk, I donated to firefox and I donated to Zsnes, Zsnes got the most though because I love it so much.

Anyway hope that helped.

Regards
Scott Cochrane.

neviksti · Post by **neviksti** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 2:34 pm

Sorry pagefault, I never look in this part of the board. (Nach brought this to my attention on the CR forums.) Posting in the dev forum would probably catch more people.

On the other forum I suggested some tricks that could allow you to do this for free with the equipment you already have. Hopefully TheDumper, Overload, or someone can verify if the idea's feasible.

Anyway, I saw that you were considering using the tototek "T-connector" to try to pass through the SFX or SA1 stuff. I have one of these, and I don't believe it will work the way you're hoping. I believe it's wired so that the flash cart can tell the connected cart when to "activate" (allowing stuff like LoROM DSP even). However, this means you can't chose to have the cartridge pass through whatever region you want, only the regions the designers already considered. The cart wasn't designed for SFX support, so it probably won't be helpful for your project. Since I don't have all the circuitry traced out yet, it's possible you could still use it for this ... but not likely.

Nightcrawler · Post by **Nightcrawler** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 5:52 pm

I tend to think the same. I was speaking to Natch about it before.

I don't think you're going to find any development hardware with support for the SA-1 or SFX unless you actually use a cartridge with the chip on it and swap out the ROM chip/s. Homebrew cartriges are probably the way to go there.

Many of the other chips that aren't between the SNES and ROM can already be used with your current equipment.

Hmm.. seems I am practially repeating what Neviksti said, so yeah.. I second that.

AntoineWG · Post by **AntoineWG** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 7:50 pm

I don't think I can bring myself to donate it, but I can lend a copy of Super Mario World 2 with the promise that I get it back in working condition.

xamenus · Post by **xamenus** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 6:23 am

There are plenty of cheap SMW 2 carts for sale on Ebay.

Post by **pagefault** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 7:44 pm

Hi, first of all I would like to thank all who have donated so far, your donation is greatly appreciated. But it seems the copier we thought was going to work won't after all and the one that will work will cost another $100 on top of what we already have. We have reached our goal of $100 but more will be needed to get what we need to continue development on ZSNES. I would have no problem paying for this myself but being a student I can't really afford it with all the expenses I have to pay each month. If you can afford to donate a bit to our cause then your donation would be greatly appreciated, if you are like me an can't afford a donation, please do not feel obligated to donate, ZSNES is free software which means just that you don't have to pay anything for it.

In the mean time I have continued to work on SuperFX and Starfox 2 and other SuperFX games are working far better than the last WIP so there should be a new WIP coming out soon with the latest updates. Also the work on the SuperFX chip has helped me with the work that needs to be done on SA-1 and other chips in regards to timing which will fix many bugs (Super Mario RPG) to name one. This also has enabled me to support C4 PAL games properly. I have also made a HDMA discovery that should eliminate the hacks we have for games that require it and increase compatibility across the board. People who play PAL games will also benefit from this continued development as the entire PAL timing code has been reworked for better support for these games.

Thats basically my status report, this is an odd spot to put it I guess but here it is.

Post by **Agozer** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 8:24 pm

Excellent work pf, you are the man.

LDAWG · Post by **LDAWG** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 10:01 pm

I just sent you a nice little chunk, pf.
Sorry I couldn't donate earlier... but thanks for the 2nd chance

Keep up the good work!

snkcube · Post by **snkcube** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 11:45 pm

Good job PF.

ieremiou · Post by **ieremiou** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:13 am

Nice, very nice

neviksti · Post by **neviksti** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 6:20 am

pagefault wrote:But it seems the copier we thought was going to work won't after all and the one that will work will cost another $100 on top of what we already have.

So what is the plan now?

If you're afraid to modify your console to allow "hot swapping" of carts like I suggested at CR forums, you could just buy another console to fiddle with. This would be significantly cheaper.

Either way, before spending money, have you had someone (that owns the copier model you want) check if your tests will indeed run on the copier?

I always feel squeemish about these "donate" things, since there never seems to be good agreement on what is actually needed to accomplish the goal. Let me know what the plan is, and I can probably cover the remainder of the money needed (through paypal).

Nightcrawler · Post by **Nightcrawler** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 2:12 pm

Agreed. If the first peice of hardware couldn't do the job, who's to say the second can? You haven't given any details out about it. And now you're askinh for even more money and you don't seem to want to contribute a single cent and want donations to cover 100% of it all. Where is this $200 going?

This post isn't to sound ungrateful, it's just well.. everyone knows how I feel about donations in the emulation/translation scene.

I think the people deserve to know what they heck they are helping you purchase and more specifically what particular areas it will help in ZSNES development. From what I gather, this is mostly for special chip development?

MagnetiC · Post by **MagnetiC** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 5:50 pm

I donated because of the work that has already been done on ZSNES. If it helps the development on ZSNES, all the better.

Anyway, thanks again for such a great emulator.

Post by **pagefault** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 6:30 pm

We had a database problem so some threads were corrupted. (Thanks mySQL).

Anyway in regards to people's questions, this is not a donation "scheme" , I simply cannot afford the hardware that is required to continue research on the special chips and SNES. The DX2 will do what I need to do for SA-1 and with some modifications to a console I should be able to do SuperFX tests.

Now the reason I need a new copier is because the current one I have (SuperUFO) while it is decent for running simple tests on is about to break down on me so I am in need of a replacement copier if I want to continue working on ZSNES. It also takes a very long time to continuously put fairly large test programs on a floppy disk and then load them again on the copier (this is a floppy only copier). I am also needing to purchase a number of carts (SA-1 with and without SRAM and a few more SuperFX carts).

As I said before this was for donations, if you don't agree with it then by all means you don't have to donate. Donations are optional but they will help the development.

joe_devore · Post by **joe_devore** » Wed Nov 03, 2004 7:01 am

Does the Zsnes team have a PayPal Account.
Just a Personal One, as anything higher, Paypal will take about
2.9%+$0.30.

I would Like to donate too, I have Paypal with some money Available.
about $7.
sorry i donot have any more, I just got Pizza fro Papa Gino's
tonight.
I should get reinbursed, friday.

I once thought about buying a copier, but when I saw the Prices I
Freaked out.

.
Do bother buying any that do not have A parallel Port connection or
better.

Some one should try and build one, with USB 2.0 and or LAN connection
for SUPER fast transfers, Floppy Disks are the Way of the DODO.
it should also have a FlashRam chip for the OS for the Copier.
That way its can be updated when ever can find time to rewrite the code.

Zorkwiz · Post by **Zorkwiz** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 7:17 am

pagefault,
I've been following ZSNES and the rest of the SNES scene for many years.. used to run a SNES site and helped Gary test snes96/97 in fact, anyway... I happen to have a Super Wild Card DX2, and if that is the DX2 you are talking about and still havn't acquired one, I'd be glad to ship it off to you to use for as long as you like. Let me know if that would help you guys out, if not I'll gladly donate some money to the cause, since I've used every release of ZSNES from the very start. Thanks for the hard work, and good luck.

-Zorkwiz

JAPPsmash · Post by **JAPPsmash** » Mon Nov 22, 2004 6:24 pm

Well, I have the Yoshi's Island ROM (smc). I don't know if you want the real game pak or the ROM. About the money... I don't have any dollar because I'm not from the US

If you want the Yoshi's Island ROM, let me know...

Post by **Agozer** » Mon Nov 22, 2004 7:03 pm

JAPPsmash wrote:Well, I have the Yoshi's Island ROM (smc). I don't know if you want the real game pak or the ROM. About the money... I don't have any dollar because I'm not from the US

If you want the Yoshi's Island ROM, let me know...

He wants (or wanted) the actual cart.
If it would be about the rom image, he would have gotten it himself by now, don't you think?

Dmog · Post by **Dmog** » Tue Nov 23, 2004 6:04 am

Agozer wrote:
JAPPsmash wrote:Well, I have the Yoshi's Island ROM (smc). I don't know if you want the real game pak or the ROM. About the money... I don't have any dollar because I'm not from the US

If you want the Yoshi's Island ROM, let me know...
He wants (or wanted) the actual cart.
If it would be about the rom image, he would have gotten it himself by now, don't you think?

Well I guess it's the thought that counts heh