Hi,
Dumb question for the hardware guys, could we do the same thing like Doom with SuperFX3 for the SNES (https://www.timeextension.com/previews/hands-on-30-years-on-dooms-super-fx-3-upgrade-gives-snes-players-a-more-polished-way-to-rip-and-tear) but with an Amstrad CPC cartridge ? It is using a Raspberry Pico2 2350.
The difficulty I suppose, would the cartridge with a 2350 have enough electricity to work, without endangering a CPC (with the Plus2CPC or Play2CPC), GX4000 or CPC+ alimentation ?
Or can the cartridge have it's own alimentation maybe ?
Not related, but 15 other posts and bingo !
There are problems:
- the cartridge doesn't have a write signal
- the cartridge doesn't have access to z80 signals for I/O
therefore very limited by communications with the cart and any communication operations would need to be done by reading from various rom addresses.
It may be possible to be creative and run a pi on the board and the software runs on the pi AND this pi has a video output.
What would be possible is to attach the PI to expansion of the Amstrad with the software on the cart but then this would not work on GX4000 but would work on CPC and Plus.
If I got this correctly the CPC would mainly have the function of a PSU? ;D (+joystick)
Quote from: arnoldemu on Yesterday at 13:25There are problems:
- the cartridge doesn't have a write signal
- the cartridge doesn't have access to z80 signals for I/O
therefore very limited by communications with the cart and any communication operations would need to be done by reading from various rom addresses.
It may be possible to be creative and run a pi on the board and the software runs on the pi AND this pi has a video output.
What would be possible is to attach the PI to expansion of the Amstrad with the software on the cart but then this would not work on GX4000 but would work on CPC and Plus.
" simply " do it with expansion port ;D
Quote from: genesis8 on Yesterday at 12:15The difficulty I suppose, would the cartridge with a 2350 have enough electricity to work, without endangering a CPC (with the Plus2CPC or Play2CPC), GX4000 or CPC+ alimentation ?
the difficulty is the memory video is only in the first 64k so the maximum framerate will depend on the screen size, and will be "low" in almost all cases
The SuperFX logic afaik was also that the chip is doing everything and the frame content is then copied to the SNES' video RAM.
Pretty similar what could be done here. The GX4000s/Plus' main purpose would be to copy the screen/sound content from (pseudo) ROM to the 64K base RAM and send back the joystick signals to the Pico (using pseudo reads to special addresses). The Pico would run the game, render the video/sound in the right format in its own RAM and make that RAM available as a ROM slot which can be read by the GX4000.
So framerate will be close to the maximum speed the Z80 can copy a 12-24K (depending on resolution) memory block from A to B.
Honestly I don't think that could be called "it runs DOOM" but at the same time I would be fascinated by a solution that properly renders the screens and sound in a way that it looks and feelds good on a Plus/GX4000.