TailChao

The puzzles seem much simpler than the original... and the mechanics a little less clear in play.
But maybe I am a little biased.

sage, on Sun Apr 22, 2012 12:03 PM, said:

Not a bad deal for you, especially that the Apple ][ source is available now

sage, on Thu Mar 22, 2012 2:47 PM, said:

Should this value be randomized on emulator start? On hardware startup it's high on a Lynx I, but low on a Lynx II.

Also, I like the idea of just repurposing the banksize low byte as a banktype byte. I don't think we will run out of configurations anytime soon.

sage, on Thu Mar 22, 2012 2:47 PM, said:

I've actually been decoding this the opposide way (So the strobe banks are twice as large when audin is used on them), but I suppose the data can just be moved around for that type of binary.

sage, on Thu Mar 22, 2012 2:47 PM, said:

Nice

sage, on Sun Mar 18, 2012 10:43 AM, said:

If EOTB is the only game to use that type of cartridge, I do not see much point in emulating it.
The binary is not even publically available and I don't think any new software would use this save setup when EEPROM is cheaper and already supported in emulators.

So yes, I think useful things are more important at this time. All commercial games basically work, so we're only worried about what might get used in future software.
But it seems lots of games are being made right now, and I'm wondering if what's being put into their cartridges. So then we can extend the LNX header for cartridge types that are actually used.

sage, on Sun Mar 18, 2012 5:43 AM, said:

Out of the commercially released stuff, yes. Nothing uses AUDIN or /CART1. (Which is probably why there is a bug in Handy 0.93 where the data strobed by /CART0 is also loaded into /CART1, who would notice?)
So it would only be for new software.

But even if there are three states possible for cartridge access, there is one whole word dedicated to banksize in the LYX header. Only the following are used right now:
$0000- Empty
$0100- 64KB
$0200- 128KB
$0400- 256KB
$0800- 512KB

So these could be extended to include things like:
Value + 1: Uses AUDIN as an additional address line for that strobe for 2x banksize.
Value + 2: Bank is actually nonvolatile FRAM with AUDIN used as a chipselect
...etc.
Which keeps compatibility with old *.LNX stuff.

So additional checks are just needed when the emulator is accessing the cart for what type of hardware is there.
But I do not know what everyone is doing with their own software, so should we make a list here and establish some standard for these new values?

sage, on Sat Mar 17, 2012 4:48 PM, said:

The banksize in the header is just some really spaced apart values like $40, $80, etc. So it could be put in there to specify whether that strobe is one flat bank, or split up by AUDIN, etc.
I've been doing 2MB builds for maybe the past year with 1MB attached on each strobe, and AUDIN used to select the 512KB segment.
I think I stuck it under banksize $C0 in the LYX header (which was free), but this was only in a private build. I don't think any other software is using AUDIN for this except Alpine Games?

So maybe just some more banksize values in the header?