[stella] 2600 frying

Subject: [stella] 2600 frying
From: "Fred Quimby" <c9r@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 20:44:46 -0400
Hello,

A few days ago I started hacking the Stella emu from source to see if I 
could replicate frying.  I initially assumed that RAM, TIA and 6502 
registers were corrupted and wrote this in, and it does sometimes produce 
weird effects similar to real frying but it's far from perfect.

I seached this list and found that there has been a great deal of discussion 
about this, but I haven't seen a definative answer, only theories.  
Ironically, most often repeated is the theory of repeatability, but I don't 
really agree with this since I remember some effects that I was never able 
to repeat, so something *has* to be at least hard to predict about it, if 
not random.

I was also able to "fry" my Apple II back in the day.  But with the Apple, 
there is a ROM monitor built in so you can easily examine memory.  It's been 
a while, but I remember that sometimes RAM was largely intact but usually it 
was corrupted.  It wasn't ever completely cleared nor was all RAM ever 
completely corrupted, just bits and pieces.  But what was abundantly clear 
was the normal 6502 startup sequence was circumvented.  I know an Apple is 
not a 2600, but there might be some insight here regardless.

But I'm open to suggestions if anyone wants me to try something to see how 
it works.


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