roms and gsupload

stuntpenguin007 · Post by **stuntpenguin007** » Mon May 26, 2008 9:39 pm

I have been looking into booting roms via gsupload or whatever it's called that runs neon64 through gameshark.

I thought that dumping the ram of super mario 64 from the firsst to last byte would give me a working rom but I was wrong. It gave me a .bin file 3.99mb in size which is the same size as the n64 ram (duh) and the actual rom is 8mb in size. I tried to boot it in the same way as neon 64 but the screen went crazy and by the time it finished it said the connection had timed out. so this brought me to the conclusion of...

I would almost have to build some sort of storage device into super mario 64 and write a program in r4000 assembly to launch .z64 or .v64 from that storage device.

so any advice I can get would be good.

Post by **marshallh** » Tue May 27, 2008 12:26 am

It won't work because each game has to be programmed to use a memory layout that doesn't corrupt itself. You will only be able to use it with small homebrew ROMs that never DMA any data into memory besides the first 1M.

The boot code on all N64 roms basically initializes CIC-PIF communication (lockout) and then performs a checksum on the first 1M of memory, compared to the stored checksum. Then the first 1meg of rom (8megabits) is copied to RDRAM and the r4300's program counter is set to whatever start address is specified by the bootloader.

If you want to run anything besides Neon64 and a handful of homebrews then you'll need to build or get a full-blown cartridge emulator.

stuntpenguin007 · Post by **stuntpenguin007** » Tue May 27, 2008 10:19 am

Oh thanks. So I suppose it would be pretty much useless to learn r4000 assembly.

Post by **marshallh** » Tue May 27, 2008 11:36 am

Not useless if you intend to code N64

It would help a lot, actually. And it would probably be possible to test out your own code on the N64 by using your gameshark. I've been meaning to try that out for some time.

GoldenfrankO · Post by **GoldenfrankO** » Wed May 28, 2008 8:05 pm

I'm not sure but isn't talking about Roms against the rules here?

mothatrucka · Post by **mothatrucka** » Wed May 28, 2008 8:15 pm

No, talking about them isn't against the rules. Distributing them, linking to them, and trying to sell them is against the rules.

stuntpenguin007 · Post by **stuntpenguin007** » Fri May 30, 2008 12:25 pm

Is this against the rules!?!?!

Post by **marshallh** » Fri May 30, 2008 1:03 pm

GoldenfrankO wrote:I'm not sure but isn't talking about Roms against the rules here?

We have more than a few mods here whose jobs are to spot those kinds of things. No need to play mod.
The only way ROMs are illegal is when they contain copyrighted content or are copyrighted themselves (all commerical games.)

This doesn't apply to homebrew.

stuntpenguin007 · Post by **stuntpenguin007** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 9:30 pm

well I messed up my gameshark. I loaded the zelda keycode because I read it would make dk64 work but now no games work. any suggestions? I'll probably go get a zelda game sometime.

btw once i get my gameshark up and working again I'm going to (try) look into how a gameboy cart like pokemon yellow is loaded up to play on pokemon stadium. (not saying this will accomplish anything)