Catridge to Emulator

[Cheung Tak Wah]

Hi,

are there any Emulators out there which support using original Genesis catriges connected

directly to the PC through some kind of interface and are there any shematics for this circuits out there (which only reads the part of the game which is processed at the moment not the whole thing and which is able to support writing to catridges which support savegames like Sonic 3).

Similiar but different question are there shematics for catridge dumpers out there for PC interface or do I need to wait an endless time till one appears on ebay? 🙁

Thx,

Cheung Tak Wah

 

[ExCyber]

I'm not aware of any emulators that support reading a cartridge on-the-fly. I'm not sure a modern PC really has any external connection that would have a suitable combination of latency and bandwidth (EISA might work I guess).

As for cartridge dumpers, there are a bunch of interfaces available that are basically a bunch of latches connected to a parallel port or ISA slot. See this page for some links to various designs. That page is specific to Game Boy but most of the interfaces are only limited by the number of I/O pins and the software controlling them.

 

[Mask of Destiny]

Probably the easiset way these days is just to grab one of those USB microcontrollers. You could just modify the emulator to copy it to RAM at startup. Tecnically it would be dumping the whole cartridge, but it would be transparent to the user.

You could rig up an ISA card for reading the cartridge directly, but given how slow the ISA bus is (as are Genesis carts) having the emulator work off the cartridge directly would probably result in a considerable performance hit.

 

[Kaneda]

I thought about this idea and i'm actually working to add a similar feature in my mod of Gens

the only way I know is to dump the cart then play this dump

 

[Cheung Tak Wah]

Well, how does one dump a card, means, are there any schematics around for that, because, I couldn't find some.

Would a counter 1:4 mux do the job?

 

[Kaneda]

i'm not an electronic guy but.... address selector, memory buffer...it must talk to you no? 😉

 

[fonzievoltonov]

are there any Emulators out there which support using original Genesis catriges connected

Well, i understand you, nostalgia ^^.

Sure it's far more exciting to see the emulator running directly from cart, but as other said, "dumping then emulate is faster/cleaner" .

:banana :blah :cheers