Turbo ED V2?

[Kaminari]

Nice to see that the USB port won't get in the way of the SuperGrafx switch :b

There are interesting features in the V2 (especially the save states), although I'm sure the BRAM support could be implemented in V1 through a new firmware -- Mooz has been making some progress on that part by the way.

You won't find any Arcade Card ROM dump because there is no Arcade Card "BIOS" per se. Which means it's up to the Everdrive to implement an option to boot either in Super CD mode or Arcade CD mode when loading a System Card 3.

As for native CD support, maybe the Everdrive V2 can load ISO files, but for that it needs embedded RAM, WAV playback and more importantly ADPCM. How is V2 going to emulate the Oki MSM5205 on a simple CoreGrafx? With an FPGA?

Cheers.

[SamIAm]

Set aside the Arcade Card for a moment. If this could be used to expand the memory of the system, it would have huge implications for translations, particularly of Super System Card 3.0 games. Being able to just deposit the whole English script and all new code in a separate memory space makes the hacking side of game translation fantastically easier.

I really hope such a thing is possible.

[elmer]

I also really hope that the cartridge RAM-instead-of-Flash is CPU writable too ... especially if we get the whole 8MB that the Street Fighter mapper allows ... it would enable a whole bunch of developer tricks.

Although it would be a lot of work, I'd like to also request Arcade Card functionality if possible ... I'm guessing that you'd just map the Arcade Card's reads and writes into the high area of the RAM.

The TurboED is getting really close to the point where we can put a hacked system card on it and just boot directly from the SD card instead of CD, making it unnecessary to keep on fixing the old CD drives! 

And also ... thanks for moving the USB location so that it will be possible to do SuperGrafx development on the TurboED. I'll be first in line to buy one when they're available.

[SmokeMonster]

The TurboED is getting really close to the point where we can put a hacked system card on it and just boot directly from the SD card instead of CD, making it unnecessary to keep on fixing the old CD drives! 

Oh god, now that would be awesome. It's probably not possible though.

[Greg2600]

The TurboED is getting really close to the point where we can put a hacked system card on it and just boot directly from the SD card instead of CD, making it unnecessary to keep on fixing the old CD drives! 

Oh god, now that would be awesome. It's probably not possible though.

I'm sure the RAM can be utilized on a TED-type device to substitute for the CD standard, Super System, and Arcade RAM up through 2MB.  The problem is how do you get CD audio without the ADPCM chip?  Krikzz would have to add it on the TED somehow.  If somehow he could get that all to work, I'd be first in line to upgrade at higher cost my TED v1.  Otherwise, there's little reason for me to at this time.

[elmer]

I'm sure the RAM can be utilized on a TED-type device to substitute for the CD standard, Super System, and Arcade RAM up through 2MB.  The problem is how do you get CD audio without the ADPCM chip?

You copy it into from the SD card into the extra RAM on the TED, and then copy it from RAM to the existing CD subsystem for playback.

I'm afraid that I wasn't clear ... I'm thinking of a hack for homebrew development. The extra CPU addressable RAM could be massively useful for the translation crews, too, if they want to use it.

It would be much, much, much harder to actually hack an existing game to use that method instead of the CD. It would probably totally screw up the game's timing. You may need to wait for someone to do a full expansion-port-based add-on if you want to totally replace the CD system for playing the existing games.

[owlnonymous]

Great news! I have a V1, but I'm in for 1 or 2 of V2. Thanks!

[wilykat]

It won't be easy to emulate CD-ROM for running games.  The cart connector isn't the best place for it.  For TG-16 with CD base or PCE/CG with interface unit, it may be possible to emulate the separate CD drive by reading and feeding signal to mimic CD loading.  It won't work on any of the Duo system and Duo would need to be modded to have the device installed like the one for 3DO system.

It's too bad the CD-ROM mechansim are very early design, the original one predates CD-R technology by a few years and generally can't read CD-R very well.  Duo can read CD-R a bit better but still a bit hard on the system and spare part are expensive and hard to find.

[RetroRepair]

I think arcade/system card support would be killer! Especially since some CD games need different versions.

[elmer]

Hi Krikzz, thanks for the photographs of the prototype boards in your earlier post.

If I read the chip numbers correctly, that means that you're using ...


2 x ALVC16424S 16bit 3.3V-5V transceiver
1 x 50MHz oscillator
1 x Lattice/SiliconBlue iCE40HX1K FPGA (1280 logic cells, 64Kbit embedded RAM).
1 x FTDI FT245RL USB2 to parallel FIFO (up to 1MB/sec).
1 x Micron CellularRAM PSRAM MT45W?MW16
 either ... MT45W4MW16BGX 4MBx16 (8MB)
 or ....... MT45W2MW16BGX 2MBx16 (4MB)
 or ....... MT45W1MW16BGX 1MBx16 (2MB)


Since I can't see a CPU in there, I'm going to assume that you're controlling the whole thing with the PCE's CPU ... which would mean that the cart memory is CPU-writable so that you can load it up from the SD-card in your menu system.

If that is the case ... could you please give us the option to keep that memory CPU-writable once the ROM starts running?

There are a lot of developers and translators that would like some extra RAM on the PCE ... for running a custom System Card 3.0 with 512KB of RAM (or more).

If the whole RAM (4MB or 8MB I'm guessing) were available through a mapper (I'm going to guess that you've implemented the Street Fighter mapper) ... then that would be stunning ... it would allow a whole new generation of PCE homebrew!

Another request would be to allow people/developers to store an "autoboot.pce" ROM image on the SD card so that we can boot straight into a ROM without going through your menu system.

I do hope that you'll consider these requests, and let us know what you're planning ... thanks!

[pckid]

Nice to see that the USB port won't get in the way of the SuperGrafx switch :b

There are interesting features in the V2 (especially the save states), although I'm sure the BRAM support could be implemented in V1 through a new firmware -- Mooz has been making some progress on that part by the way.

You won't find any Arcade Card ROM dump because there is no Arcade Card "BIOS" per se. Which means it's up to the Everdrive to implement an option to boot either in Super CD mode or Arcade CD mode when loading a System Card 3.

As for native CD support, maybe the Everdrive V2 can load ISO files, but for that it needs embedded RAM, WAV playback and more importantly ADPCM. How is V2 going to emulate the Oki MSM5205 on a simple CoreGrafx? With an FPGA?

Cheers.

Kaminari, you get so strong power with your words. I hope to get a everdrive like your describe :  iso file, and arcard card play run.

i think shubi ll be happy and all necstazy communuty if the messiah krikzz come to bring us this feature !

cheers

[manorock850]

Ill be buying them too I just hope the Gameboy Advance have a Dr will support some kind of cheat codes that might be doable vs the new turbo graphics supporting CDs

[SmokeMonster]

Are there any developments on the V2? 

[nuu]

I have plans to release turbo-v2. It will be ram based cart with instant loading and populous support. May be i will implement some ram backup and arcade cards features, but i not sure. Features like wav playback or save states definatelly will not be implemented

As long as it's possible to write to SD, it should be possible to copy to and from the internal BRAM on a Turbo Everdrive v1 as well. It could be implemented in a future OS update. The BRAM isn't only used by CD games, it's used by HuCard games as well.

But if you are going to support the Populous HuCard in v2 you might as well go ahead and support Tennokoe Bank HuCard too. The mentioned system card features would be nice too. I would definitely buy v2.

[Kaminari]

The TED V2 could really break some new ground by supporting the MCGenjin hardware mapper, which has been around and documented for a few years now (it's even supported by Mednafen).