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Let's use a game programming analogy. Say you're trying to extract information from a game for a console that has four tiled graphics planes. Each week, the game's program is updated through the network, and the layout of the tile textures and the map on screen and in the console's graphics memory changes subtly. So you can't just scrape the info by hardcoding addresses or tile numbers in graphics memory. Even which things are placed on each of the four graphics planes changes, as the console supports arbitrary reordering of the planes' z-order, and the game changes this as a countermeasure against scraping.

Sootman:

I agree with you that its good to have a current, real-time discussion with a range of knowledgeable people. Where we differ is he could easily have searched for "SNES hardware forum" or "SNES hardware disccusion" or even "SNES hardware specifications" and found a better place to ask this question, or even found that it was asked already and answered.

I searched for "SNES hardware specifications" and the number 1 search result took me to a SNES hardware discussion forum that appears to be pretty active. The article at the top of the page says this:

Here's is a new decoument with SNES hardware specs,
http://nocash.emubase.de/fullsnes.htm
http://nocash.emubase.de/fullsnes.txt
it should be the most complete SNES specs ever released (unless I've missed something important), covering both the console (based on Anomie's docs), and all existing add-ons, controllers, coprocessors (based on my own research & info found on various webpages; including the nesdev forum)... I hope the doc will be of some use.

And there are lots of entries after that I glanced over that look like more posting of more information. Anyway, going straight to an interest group in the topic you claim to be interested in seems to me like a better way to get an answer. Just posting to Slashdot and basically saying "hey I have this hobby I want to start, can you do my research for me" reeks of helplessness or laziness to me.

Sootman:

I agree with you that its good to have a current, real-time discussion with a range of knowledgeable people. Where we differ is he could easily have searched for "SNES hardware forum" or "SNES hardware disccusion" or even "SNES hardware specifications" and found a better place to ask this question, or even found that it was asked already and answered.

I searched for "SNES hardware specifications" and the number 1 search result took me to a SNES hardware discussion forum that appears to be pretty active. The article at the top of the page says this:

Here's is a new decoument with SNES hardware specs,
http://nocash.emubase.de/fullsnes.htm
http://nocash.emubase.de/fullsnes.txt
it should be the most complete SNES specs ever released (unless I've missed something important), covering both the console (based on Anomie's docs), and all existing add-ons, controllers, coprocessors (based on my own research & info found on various webpages; including the nesdev forum)... I hope the doc will be of some use.

And there are lots of entries after that I glanced over that look like more posting of more information. Anyway, going straight to an interest group in the topic you claim to be interested in seems to me like a better way to get an answer. Just posting to Slashdot and basically saying "hey I have this hobby I want to start, can you do my research for me" reeks of helplessness or laziness to me.

AC:

Actually yeah, I did easily come across the information he was looking for, by searching for "SNES hardware specifications" and clicking on the top search result, and reading. It took me to this forum where people are actively discussing SNES hardware specifications and posting links to the information he requested. Here is an excerpt from the first post on the page google linked me to:

Here's is a new decoument with SNES hardware specs,
http://nocash.emubase.de/fullsnes.htm
http://nocash.emubase.de/fullsnes.txt
it should be the most complete SNES specs ever released (unless I've missed something important), covering both the console (based on Anomie's docs), and all existing add-ons, controllers, coprocessors (based on my own research & info found on various webpages; including the nesdev forum)... I hope the doc will be of some use.

AC:

Actually yeah, I did easily come across the information he was looking for, by searching for "SNES hardware specifications" and clicking on the top search result, and reading. It took me to this forum where people are actively discussing SNES hardware specifications and posting links to the information he requested. Here is an excerpt from the first post on the page google linked me to:

Here's is a new decoument with SNES hardware specs,
http://nocash.emubase.de/fullsnes.htm
http://nocash.emubase.de/fullsnes.txt
it should be the most complete SNES specs ever released (unless I've missed something important), covering both the console (based on Anomie's docs), and all existing add-ons, controllers, coprocessors (based on my own research & info found on various webpages; including the nesdev forum)... I hope the doc will be of some use.

They did introduce region locking on the DSi download games

DSi game cards are region-locked too.

Nintendo hasn't really ever been that hard on the homebrew scene.

Other than lawsuits against companies like Lik Sang and the companies making R4-style cards? What about system updates specifically to uninstall The Homebrew Channel on Wii? And given the phrasing in Nintendo's developer qualifications, I don't see Nintendo making anything like Microsoft's App Hub or the iPhone developer program any time soon.

In fact the guy doing the no$gb emulator has even been selling his tools for gameboy development to anyone and Nintendo hasn't bothered him. He now even supports the DS.

I tried to buy a copy of the NO$GBA debugger, but "This recipient is currently unable to receive money."

Nahhh the post your replying too was incorrect, the only thing Duck Hunt checked for was the brightness of the square thats all it did.

The screen did not go black then black with a white square, all it did was go black with a white square in the position of the sprite you where shooting at, if your gun was pointed at one of the white squares when you pulled the trigger you scored a "hit" if it was in the black area it was a "miss"

"The light detection flag gets set when sensing light emission from the display, ie. when the cathode ray beam outputs a bright color (preferably white) at the location where the gun is pointed to.
Most video controllers are latching the current cathode ray beam coordinates at the time when the light detection flag gets set - that's not supported by the NES/Famicom video controller - it could be eventually implemented by software, ie. by counting the number of clock cycles between vblank and light detection.
Otherwise, the following trick can be used: Output a black picture, with a white field at the desired target location, wait for 1-2 frames, then check the light detection flag to see if the zapper was pointed to the target area or not. The downside is that the normal picture cannot be displayed during that time, so one should check the zapper position only when necessary, ie. typically only at the moment when the trigger gets pulled."

Pulled from a site that has way more information about the NES then most mortals need to know.

http://nocash.emubase.de/everynes.htm

Any Nintendo DS emulators out there for Windows 7?

I know you were being sarcastic, but no$gba does DS games in the more recent releases. I haven't tried it for DS games, though. The author is currently MIA, though, so there haven't been any releases in 2 years.

Actually, GBA carts were direct mapped (max 32MB without bankswitching), DS carts are not. DS carts are addressed as block devices, similar to say a SD card or USB flash drive. I believe the limit on carts is actually 4096MB (due to using 32-bit addressing), but at this point the largest cart has been 256MB (probably due to cost reasons, bigger chips cost more, meaning less profit per game, since you can only charge so much per game). The nitty gritty details can be found in gbatek (extensive hardware documentation written by the author of the best GBA & NDS emulators)

I don't think we'll see a DS refresh breaking any Slot-1 flashcarts, unless they also want to break compatibility with existing DS games.

Imagine the new DS taking a checksum of the ARM7 and ARM9 binaries from the inserted Game Card. The firmware has a list of the SHA-1 values of the first 3,000 or so releases. All releases after that are digitally signed with RSA in much the same way as DS Download Play clients and DS Download Station demos. So when the new DS loads a card, it'll take the SHA-1 as if it were a DS Download Play game. If it checks out against the signature, good. If the SHA-1 is on the whitelist, good. Otherwise, put "An Option Card is inserted" at the top of the touch screen instead of booting the card. Flash cards will fail to verify in exactly this way.

The RSA key for the DS has been known for a while now

GBATEK documents that while DS Download Play clients are signed, DS Game Cards are not. They use a different algorithm based on Blowfish, and this is what flash cards emulate. Adding RSA to new releases and whitelisting legacy releases would block flash cards from booting

That's actually in some battery-backed up SRAM - remove the battery and you'll see your DS reset to defaults (a good way to clear it before selling it).

The firmware actually saves the settings in flash. The only thing that's battery-backed is the a flags byte to tell if the settings are good. From GBATEK:

Even though the battery is required only for the RTC (not for the firmware flash memory), most of the firmware user settings are reset when removing the battery. This appears to be a strange bug-or-feature of the DS bios, at least, fortunately, it still keeps the rest of the firmware intact.

Not only has the R4 been superceded by other carts, but the no$gba emulator has fairly reasonable DS support. Nintendo has basically no chance of stopping piracy on the DS.

Rob

Not personally, but Martin Korth from NO$GBA seems to be getting the raw deal from piracy. He does everything right, with a free version for casual gamers, a cheap version for non-commercial use (which I use, it's a fine piece of software), no DRM, no activation, no required CD-ROMs, only non-invasive watermarks. Yet, apparently, he suffers from large amounts of piracy, if you believe his site. He seems awfully bitter about the whole affair, and he's relying partially on donations to keep NO$GBA running.

But that's only the shallow, superficial definition of victim. It's still possible to be a victim if you're not impoverished.

(how many hobbyists could afford to pay $1750 for it?)

People who only want to play emulated ROMs can stick with one of the many free emulators and skip the $1750 debugger.

If you look at engineering and other specialties, each software house has a near-monopoly on some parts of the tool chain... in general, there rarely are more than three well-known providers for any one particular link and each link often costs (tens/hundreds of) thousands CDN$. The market for these tools is somewhat small but they are necessary for engineers to carry on with their day-to-day business of building the next CPU, HD-DVD appliance, etc. These cost way too much to be purchased for personal use and the physical processes involved in putting their output to actual use is often equally prohibitive.

On the software side, most platforms now have free development tools... instead of pirating Turbo/Boarland C like ~15 years ago, new would-be developers can now download Visual Studio Express straight off Microsoft's official site. Offering free downloads of VSE to string up new developers is M$' way of binding new talent to Windows and Visual Studio - an indirect acknowledgment that Linux and FOSS free development tools threaten its monopoly.

I personally view pirating business/development tools for private use as free publicity and training

My music discovery process: I simply download what I happen to come across when I feel curious. I rarely hunt down any specific genre, song, group or whatever. I do not crave music and I rarely bother hunting down even songs I like in any form... so, queuing up in music stores or browsing through Apple's catalog is not something I could be bothered with. When I download stuff, it is mostly only because I can and felt like it - there is not much of an a-priori intention behind it.

Isix was the company, but yeah. I was wondering how their InstaSwitch technology would have worked. I suppose for Night Trap the limit was that no more than four videos could be happening in the rooms at one time?

The NEMO was an interesting idea. Load times would have stunk, but I assume the tapes would have had data capabilities too, meaning lots and lots of graphics, limited only by whichever 1.72MHz or 3.58MHz chip ran the box. Getting third party developers would have been the greatest challenge, and with no support from Japan, I doubt it would have survived more than a year.

Just a few days ago I found some guy had made a 60MB movie of his near-perfect run of the 3DO Night Trap. I never had a SegaCD, but I find the movie hilarious. I'd like to extract the movies off the game discs, but there aren't any tools. One guy said he made one once for the SegaCD, but he hasn't returned my e-mail yet. I'm quite pleased to discover though that since just a month ago, the Gens32_Surreal emulator now has save state support for SegaCD games. This means that I can go through the 32X version of Night Trap and capture the complete videos before restoring a save state and jumping to another room to activate a trap. I'm working on getting that 32X copy.

Clear evidence that code runs from ram:

A Cartridge Header contains a load and execution address which is inside in the 02000000h Main Memory (4MB) region.
Mario Kart's program area can be loaded into ram, modified to make all tracks playable online, then be executed, loading the rest of the game off the DS card.
Far less pins on the DS slot (17) vs the GBA slot (32).

This is most likely the game I have the fondest memories of. Reviews found here (no pics) and here (German, but with pics). The last one sums it up nicely: "Absolute Kult-Flugsimulation, leider mit recht wenig Missionen [sadly with too few missions]". An absolute classic, that one, indeed.