Re: [stella] Cartridge dumper again

Subject: Re: [stella] Cartridge dumper again
From: "Eckhard Stolberg" <Eckhard_Stolberg@xxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2003 20:23:18 +0100
> *Replacing* hundreds of dumps??? Are you kidding?
> 
> NO WAY!

There aren't that many games with extra RAM support. And all you
have to do is put the better ROMs at a prominent place like AtariAge.
Then, if someone complains that a certain game doesn't get recognized
by his emulator, you could just point him there. There is no need to
replace everyone's ROM collection immidiately. We only have to prevent
new dumps of the same game to get distributed.

BTW, z26 and the Cuttle Cart software assumes a Superchip game when
the first 256 bytes in all banks contain the same byte. So putting
$ff there would make things easier for us. But I don't think $ff is
the standard filler for unused bytes. It's only what DASM uses. Our
cartridge reader uses $00 for the unused RAM bytes.

We should probably have the same specification for the hotspot
addresses in bankswitched games. You can't easiely read these
without switching banks. So, if your cartridge reader ommits these
addresses, they should also be set to a defined value like $ff or $00.

> I still would prefer adopting the emulators. That's a quite easy task.
> They already have to *know* the type of RAM used, so the necessary
> changes are quite simple.

No, Glenn is right. You calculate the checksum over a ROM image
and compare it to your database to find out what bankswitching
type or extra RAM scheme a cart is using. If you knew these,
there would be no reason for a checksum. And there are too many
different methods with different parts of the ROM area used for
RAM. If you omitted all of them from the checksum calculation,
you wouldn't be able to identify some games anymore.


Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg


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