Sorry, I"m still a newb, so these posts are going to continue for a bit. At the very least, I'm familiarizing myself with Cadaver's and SnoBro's code examples and learning more about the NES all the time.
Anyway, I stumbled across this article linked over at hackaday.com:
http://www.mycgiserver.com/~thelinuxmaniac/isa/
The example shown has 32-bit in and 32-bit out capability on an home-built ISA card. The circuitry is farily straightforward, with a few address decoders and latches to get the job done.
I figure one could run a few fat ribbons from such a custom PC card, straight to a modified cart or even down to the guts of the console itself (or copynes for that matter). The extra I/O lines could be used to emulate controllers, and possibly even the power and reset buttons.
The result would be a completely closed-loop development station w/o need of an emulator. The PC effectively *becomes* the game cartridge, leaving the good 'ol NES hardware to do the dirty work.
I guess the PC software side might be somewhat problematic. While operating out of sync with the NES' internal clock, I guess you'd have to rely on an IRQ or just poll those ports really damn fast. Also, you'd have to implement mapper emulation, but I suppose that can be harvested from most any emulator project (not to mention .nes file loading).
Any thoughts out there on this? Is this just pure fantasy, or could this actually be done?
Anyway, I stumbled across this article linked over at hackaday.com:
http://www.mycgiserver.com/~thelinuxmaniac/isa/
The example shown has 32-bit in and 32-bit out capability on an home-built ISA card. The circuitry is farily straightforward, with a few address decoders and latches to get the job done.
I figure one could run a few fat ribbons from such a custom PC card, straight to a modified cart or even down to the guts of the console itself (or copynes for that matter). The extra I/O lines could be used to emulate controllers, and possibly even the power and reset buttons.
The result would be a completely closed-loop development station w/o need of an emulator. The PC effectively *becomes* the game cartridge, leaving the good 'ol NES hardware to do the dirty work.
I guess the PC software side might be somewhat problematic. While operating out of sync with the NES' internal clock, I guess you'd have to rely on an IRQ or just poll those ports really damn fast. Also, you'd have to implement mapper emulation, but I suppose that can be harvested from most any emulator project (not to mention .nes file loading).
Any thoughts out there on this? Is this just pure fantasy, or could this actually be done?