gsu (superfx) support [work in progress]

[Sarge]

redguy, once again, thank you so much for your work.  This is spectacular stuff.

For all the discussion about the SA1 chip, I have a question.  I've heard in various other places that most SA1 games barely even used the chip.  Is it possible to potentially just implement pieces of it, instead of the entire instruction set?  Just curious.  (This could obviously be completely wrong!  You never know what's true and what isn't on the web.)

EDIT:  Ah, here we go.  This might be where I got it from.  byuu seems to indicate a ton of features on the chip were never used.

https://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=15759&sid=537c84429efa1b6686ea4a7e6bc7435a&start=0

This is completely off-topic, though, so my apologies!

[AlxUnderBase]

Thank you Redguy ! will be hard for me to start on use the saving on SD using reset button ! You are a legend and Ikari too 

[Eyedunno]

Thank you Redguy ! will be hard for me to start on use the saving on SD using reset button ! You are a legend and Ikari too 

Funny, a few painful lost saves taught me to ALWAYS long reset any game with SRAM, long before the GSU beta. It's much nicer now with the Super Nt, because I can do a long reset from the couch. 

[Theta55]

I hear there is another update coming tonight or is it already released. Some of the roms in the smokemonster pack for fx don't work very good. THou smokemonster put up his patch that works better for the roms. THe patch actually lets you overclock your custom cartridge more then normal but he claims it works with this. it's on rom hacking.net.

[fille1976]

Patience,he will post it here.

[bogusrj]

Awesome!!! Thanks from Brazil!!!

[Greg2600]

EDIT:  Ah, here we go.  This might be where I got it from.  byuu seems to indicate a ton of features on the chip were never used.

https://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=15759&sid=537c84429efa1b6686ea4a7e6bc7435a&start=0

This is completely off-topic, though, so my apologies!

It may be off topic, but nonetheless quite interesting.  I'll bet most didn't know this.  That being said, I'm not sure if one could just map "some" of it and have that work on all games.  Perhaps some used different aspects?  I would think not, I mean, they probably just wanted something affordable to do some extra processing.

[SmokeMonster]

I hear there is another update coming tonight or is it already released. Some of the roms in the smokemonster pack for fx don't work very good. THou smokemonster put up his patch that works better for the roms. THe patch actually lets you overclock your custom cartridge more then normal but he claims it works with this. it's on rom hacking.net.

I think you're confusing things a little. I don't share any ROMs, but my lists are based on No-Intro for the open-source EverDrive Packs Lists GitHub project. Those SFX ROMs work extremely well, so something must be wrong on your end.

The patched ROM you're talking about is just a hack of Starfox 2 that TheRealPhoenix made for me so I could burn an EEPROM for an overclocked repro, since the original ROM crashes at any OC over 27MHz. TheRealPhoenix's ROM can be overclocked up to 52MHz. I submitted his patch to romhacking.net, but as I said in my stream, I have no idea if it will make any difference on Redguy's SFX core. It does boot and seems to play correctly on Redguy's core, but I couldn't detect any speed difference from the original.

[netbeui]

Thanks redguy and anyone else that contributed to this!

Quick question - should we disable only ingame hooks or ALL hooks?

[fandangos]

I hear there is another update coming tonight or is it already released. Some of the roms in the smokemonster pack for fx don't work very good. THou smokemonster put up his patch that works better for the roms. THe patch actually lets you overclock your custom cartridge more then normal but he claims it works with this. it's on rom hacking.net.

I think you're confusing things a little. I don't share any ROMs, but my lists are based on No-Intro for the open-source EverDrive Packs Lists GitHub project. Those SFX ROMs work extremely well, so something must be wrong on your end.

The patched ROM you're talking about is just a hack of Starfox 2 that TheRealPhoenix made for me so I could burn an EEPROM for an overclocked repro, since the original ROM crashes at any OC over 27MHz. TheRealPhoenix's ROM can be overclocked up to 52MHz. I submitted his patch to romhacking.net, but as I said in my stream, I have no idea if it will make any difference on Redguy's SFX core. It does boot and seems to play correctly on Redguy's core, but I couldn't detect any speed difference from the original.

Your post finally answered a question I had.
When you first announced that you would not keep sharing roms but actually go in the dat like mame system in RetroRGB guest section I had no idea what set you would use as a base.

Thank you for your work, SM. Your sets are very handy for flash cartridge owners.

[redguy]

On v01 you had to disable just in-game hooks.  On v02 you can leave them enabled since the firmware disables them behind the scenes for gsu games.  I have an idea why it causes a crash, but haven't had a chance to confirm and see if a fix is possible.

Thanks megari.  I fixed the associated branch by recreating the tag.

I haven't looked at sa-1 and can't comment on it.  The memory system of the gsu is where all the complication is.  The instruction set is pretty simple with a few messy instructions (plot) and concepts (branch delay slots).  But there is an execute pipe, instruction cache, store buffer, write buffers for plot, and a prefetcher that all operate in parallel and make requests to the rom and ram.  This the source of most of the bugs and performance differences between the sd2snes and original cart.

[NeoXbit]

That is just phenomenal! redguy, you're an instant legend. Can't wait to try this beta version tomorrow on my beloved SD2SNES.

[boogiemanspud]

Just wanted to add my thanks to redguy.  This is pretty amazing news. 

[GadgetUK]

Just wanted to add my thanks too - I've not tried it yet but I've seen the success on YouTube, and wow - great job!!!  I understand there are small performance differences, assumed its due to the lack of caching you mentioned in an earlier post, but wow - as is this is just 100% awesome!  I didn't think this would happen with the SD2SNES if I am honest, just because Ikari is pretty bloody genius, and the fact we hadn't heard much about this before I thought it was perhaps out of the scope for the FPGA.  Trully awesome!  Hopefully this will be merged with the official branch!  Just amazing, hats off to you sir - you really should announce a PayPal donation address or something, I will buy you some beers!

[LDigital]

Exciting times!
Um, lame question, I have downloaded the file from the first post. How do I get this working?
Is there a new sd2snes firmware to go with it? First post doesn’t say.

Thanks