I decided to see if normal games would actually RUN with the expansion installed, so I connected the last address line needed and wrote a special uploader for it, then modified XeO3 to use the RAM expansion instead of normal RAM, and here you go! It runs fine! No difference at all!Theres no funny read,write or timing errors - it just works! Im not sure how Graphics would work there... You would have to set the TED bit for getting data from ROM instead of RAM, and if you switched bank, it would change instantly. However, if you keep the TED data in the lower half (or possibly top 16k), then you can use most of the RAM for "data". My sprite cache for example could be huge with this!! We could have LOTS of character set data - altering it as we scrolled through the level, or have the SID/TED music loaded into there freeing up normal RAM. Lots of things you could do... Also...16K of SID music per level would be well cool...
Of course....to get SID music, I'd have to do a SID add on with the RAM!! Not impossible, particually if I just copied SOLDER's - which already works great.
2 comments:
Good ideas coming from you man! :)
Glad it works.
Do you have any estimate, how much would such ram expansion cost?
No idea currently - I'm still not sure how useful it would be, it was more of an intellectual leasson.
I think I'd prefer it with a SID addon before I can see folk paying for one - or at the very least a pass through...
Post a Comment