A breakthrough in Saturn homebrew development

D

dhau

Our very own ExCyber released a revolutionary product for Saturn gamers and homebrew developers:

EMS / Datel Pro Action Replay repair CD image

- For users, this will allow you to repair your favourite cheat cartritge, if you tried to upgrade firmware and somehow didn't succed.

- For homebrew coders, it's an invaluable tool to restore PAR cartridge after trying various experimental firmware modifications or brand new firmware replacement.

For years Saturn development scene was in dormant condition, mostly due to lack of a quality firmware replacement that PSX scene enjoyed for years (Caetla). Now the chances for a good firmware replacement are greater then ever!

Thank you, ExCyber!
 
Crap, to think I could've salvaged my PAR instead of throwing it away after the headaches it caused. :damn:
 
that's sweet excyber, now I might actually mess around w/ my PAR a lil more cuz I wont have the fear of jacking it completely. That's ExCyber 🙂
 
sorry, I think this is a cool new thing but I find it a bit exaggerated to laud it as if it were the 2nd Coming.... sure, it can be handy but you could always flash your cart via the port aight? Sure, only if you have a comms-card but most developers do already.
 
I'm quite sur this won't change anything in home dev. Every game developper on SX here uses PC/Emulator/ISO burning and testing. It might change the game hacking/translation though... It's a very still activity since Ninpen ManMaru Beta from AlexKidd (who disappeared since 🙁 ) and the Langrisser 3 game patch from CyberWarriorX.
 
Originally posted by AntiPasta@Dec 10, 2003 @ 06:24 AM

sorry, I think this is a cool new thing but I find it a bit exaggerated to laud it as if it were the 2nd Coming.... sure, it can be handy but you could always flash your cart via the port aight? Sure, only if you have a comms-card but most developers do already.
Click to expand...

Dude, say what you want, but emu/iso development is as rewarding as kicking a 10 days dead goat without a gas mask.

You can't flash PAR if you don't have working firmware in it. Thus if your experimental firmware replacement isn't as good as you was hoping it will be, well, you can go ahead and buy more carts from Jandaman.

I am planing to use IDA to get the logic from PAR firmware, see what can be improved, and actually improve it. Making a good firmware replacement is a slow and painfull process, but once complete, it's damn rewarding for development.

Do you know that native firmware doesn't do any data checks / corrections? That with regular 6 feet long DB25 male to DB25 female cable your chances of uploading anything bigger then 100K are close to zero?

I guess not... You never felt the pain and frustration. Good for you. Now go play some Mario 🙂
 
Dude, say what you want, but emu/iso development is as rewarding as kicking a 10 days dead goat without a gas mask.
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'Scuse me? I do my devving (well... used to, too busy now) using the best way possible (imo): uploading my programs via a comms card to my 4-in-1 4M+. Never hard problems.

You can't flash PAR if you don't have working firmware in it. Thus if your experimental firmware replacement isn't as good as you was hoping it will be, well, you can go ahead and buy more carts from Jandaman.
Click to expand...

Of course, I said this CD could come in handy, but I fail to believe why it's gonna be such a boost to Saturn homedev just yet... until someone actually develops some good AR firmware 🙂

Do you know that native firmware doesn't do any data checks / corrections? That with regular 6 feet long DB25 male to DB25 female cable your chances of uploading anything bigger then 100K are close to zero?

I guess not... You never felt the pain and frustration. Good for you. Now go play some Mario
Click to expand...

Well, then get another cable instead of acting so elevated... the cable I got with my comms-card worked perfectly from day 1 and still does. The only problems I had were I/O-port related. I cant stand how the people on this board who (used to) complain about how hard it was testing using an emulator and that they had no other way... well GET A COMMS CARD! I paid approx. $22 for it and it was money well spent, I can assure you. If someone here can't get one easily, I will sell you my extra one for exactly that amount, as it's just lying here in a drawer.

And ExCyber, dont take this as a depreciation of your work. It might just as well be the start of a big thing. And I still owe you one after you helped me out with the VDP2 on Direct Connect :cheers
 
Originally posted by AntiPasta@Dec 10, 2003 @ 12:53 PM

Well, then get another cable instead of acting so elevated... the cable I got with my comms-card worked perfectly from day 1 and still does. The only problems I had were I/O-port related. I cant stand how the people on this board who (used to) complain about how hard it was testing using an emulator and that they had no other way... well GET A COMMS CARD! I paid approx. $22 for it and it was money well spent, I can assure you. If someone here can't get one easily, I will sell you my extra one for exactly that amount, as it's just lying here in a drawer.
Click to expand...

Hey, sell me a comms link for 22$! I have one, but wouldn't mind a spare just in case if I'll fry the main one. As for the cables, beleive it or not, I have three, and all three have problems. Same cables work great with PSX/Caetla, because this firmware supports data validation and correction.

I do plan to give my best shot at hacking PAR firmware to add:

- reliable data transfer

- host based file system

- mmm... debugger stub for GDB?

- tetris!!!
 
Ah, now I see where you're coming from, I apologize in case my reaction was a bit too agressive. And your ideas about the firmware sound great!

Oh, and are you sure you wanna buy the commslink? I believe there are places online that sell em for less, and I dont wanna be ripping someone off 🙂

Mind you, I live in The Netherlands (Europe) so I'm not really sure what S&H costs will be.
 
I cant stand how the people on this board who (used to) complain about how hard it was testing using an emulator and that they had no other way... well GET A COMMS CARD!
Click to expand...

For me at least, and I suspect some others as well, the problem is not needing to obtain a comms card so much as it is needing to keep a whole system hooked up just to have the ISA slot to plug it into. I intend to build a Free Wing comms adapter sometime soon, but until then I'm stuck wasting CD-Rs to test on hardware...

And ExCyber, dont take this as a depreciation of your work. It might just as well be the start of a big thing.
Click to expand...

Oh, I don't. The initial research was quite along the lines of doing a replacement firmware as dhau is suggesting, and I think his ideas for improvements are valid. Still, I think you're right that this isn't some kind of second coming as the Datel/EMS firmware already has all the vital functions in terms of being able to load programs, perform RAM dumps, and so on; TyRaNiD even wrote a debugger that works within those limitations, so I think replacement AR firmware will be a bigger boon to users than to developers if it is well-designed. What I'd like to see is stuff like:

- Code Breaker style dual-pane UI

- Game autodetection (just storing a hash of the title/version/date portion of the header with each game entry should probably work)

- Hardware test

- Highlevel comms protocol (i.e. something with compression and validation)

- Journaling filesystem with wear-leveling and compression support (e.g. something modeled after JFFS2)
 
hey, now you got the PAR flashing through software thing figured out, isnt that more or less the same thing as writing savegames to the PAR? (via the built-in menu). It would be great if homebrew programs had a way to save directly to the PAR save memory 😎
 
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