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How was it economically viable to, iiuc, basically include computational power comparable to that of a full console, inside every single game cartridge? That so
by seeekr 10y ago
How was it economically viable to, iiuc, basically include computational power comparable to that of a full console, inside every single game cartridge? That sounds ludicrous! (Starfox on SNES was an excellent game, enjoyed it very much!)
- gambiting 10y agoWell, the CPU they added was probably far less than $1/each when bought in bulk, so if you were making a PCB with chips on it already, you might as well add an extra processing unit.
- tinus_hn 10y agoFor one thing, it's the ultimate form of copy protection.
- planteen 10y agoBut most cartridges used the same design. So if you had one SuperFX cartridge, you could put it in your copiers cartridge slot and then play all the others.
- b409ba0801cd21 10y agoThat was true of the DSP-1, but not true of the SuperFX or SA1. The DSP-1 was a preprogrammed microcontroller that preformed certain calculations that would have been inefficient to preform on the SNES CPU. The inputs were written to a memory mapped location, and the outputs read back. An interposed copier could simply redirect these reads and writes. The SuperFX and SA1 used the cartridge's ROM and RAM for program and data, and therefore these enhancement chips are placed between the SNES bus and the cartridge memory. The cartridge memory is unavailable to the SNES bus while the enhancement chip is executing, as in the SuperFX, or the the enhancement chip enters wait states while the CPU is accessing the cartridge memory, as in the SA1.
- planteen 10y agoAh gotcha. My memory is getting hazy. I had a floppy disk copier many years ago and remember using Mario Kart to play other games. I thought it was SuperFX but I was wrong.