A while ago, kyuusaku brought up the idea of a file format for dumping NES carts into, which was based on a hardware description language (HDL). Since so much effort is currently being put into creating hardware descriptions of mappers, for use with the PowerPak, I thought that I would bring up the topic again. The idea is something like the following...
The new format would consist of a single ASCII text file for each cart. Such a file would contain a specification written in a HDL that was just powerful enough to be used as a cart description language, yet simple enough to be emulated in real-time on a modern PC. A specification would describe a cart's mapper as well as describing the format of each ROM chip in the form of a hex string.
The benefit is that emulator authors would never have to worry again about adding support for additional mappers. They would only have to support emulation of the core NES system, in addition to emulation of the cart description language.
Since I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of hardware description languages or NES carts, I have no idea if it is possible to make an easily emulated "cart description language" capable of describing any reasonable NES cart. So I thought that I would pose the idea in order for a more knowledgeable person to comment on the feasibility.
The new format would consist of a single ASCII text file for each cart. Such a file would contain a specification written in a HDL that was just powerful enough to be used as a cart description language, yet simple enough to be emulated in real-time on a modern PC. A specification would describe a cart's mapper as well as describing the format of each ROM chip in the form of a hex string.
The benefit is that emulator authors would never have to worry again about adding support for additional mappers. They would only have to support emulation of the core NES system, in addition to emulation of the cart description language.
Since I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of hardware description languages or NES carts, I have no idea if it is possible to make an easily emulated "cart description language" capable of describing any reasonable NES cart. So I thought that I would pose the idea in order for a more knowledgeable person to comment on the feasibility.