Super FX chips, info?

[Vertigo]

Does anyone have any info on the Super FX chips? What the actual specs and capabilities are or are thought to be, programming how tos, what sort of things you can throw at it. A leaked official manual would be wicked, but anything's welcome.
Cheers.

[NFG]

You're better off asking in emulation forums, they've already cracked the things forwards and backwards.

[Vertigo]

Will do, I'll head over to ZSNES forum and see what's up.
Would be nice to see a bit of homebrew on the SFX chip, just a shame there's no way to currently run them on proper hardware, though perhaps it would be possible with a bit of buggering around inside a copier and the sacrifice of a $2 Starfox cartridge.

[Hojo_Norem]

Will do, I'll head over to ZSNES forum and see what's up.
Would be nice to see a bit of homebrew on the SFX chip, just a shame there's no way to currently run them on proper hardware, though perhaps it would be possible with a bit of buggering around inside a copier and the sacrifice of a $2 Starfox cartridge.

You are along the right lines with that, take a look at this faq I found a while ago and see if it helps.

[Vertigo]

Wow, I've just had a quick glance at it but that looks really useful.
I have 2 back-up units for my SNES, one of which is an old 16MBit ProFighterX that has a dead save circuit, so I'm thinking of using that to mess about inside and see what I can make it do, this seems to be the perfect opportunity, especially for something as worthy as Starfox 2

[CZroe]

Would be nice to see a bit of homebrew on the SFX chip, just a shame there's no way to currently run them on proper hardware

That is so NOT TRUE!

[Vertigo]

That is so NOT TRUE!

To quote myself in the post you quoted: "though perhaps it would be possible with ... the sacrifice of a $2 Starfox cartridge."

Which is exactly what that site entails. So yes, what I said so IS TRUE.

And I don't really need some guy to tell me that I can replace the ROM in the correct type of cartridge with another ROM image to get it to work, that's plainly obvious. And by the way, there are much neater ways of doing that, with or without a back-up unit.

[CZroe]

Looks like we're both out of context

Anyway, Nintendo Power claimed that it was an Super FX2 chip title. Both guides above say to use an FX1 cart like Starfox. Huh?!

[benzaldehyde]

That is so NOT TRUE!

Cool. Vertgo, I'd be interested in these "neater methods." Any links you could share?

[Vertigo]

Cool. Vertgo, I'd be interested in these "neater methods." Any links you could share?

I mean neater ways of connecting the mask ROM to the cartridge than the travesty of solder and wires that fellow's done. For example, attacking a socket so that you can change the game more regularly/easily, especially on the more common standard cartridges that work with many SNES games. Of course it may, in the long run and if you're into that sort of thing and want to play the majority of common non-special-chip games, be cheaper and less hassle to source and purchase a back-up unit. I was considering finding a way to switch the DSP chip in my copier that has the dead save circuit with a Super FX and seeing if it would work as it's essentially a project unit now until I can reconstruct the save circuit. Considering it only has 2MB of RAM and I have another superior unit (Super Wilcard DX2) it's probably not worth fixing to sell.

[CZroe]

Umm, Nintendo's mask ROMs have a different pin-out so a socket would still require the mess of wires. That guy is sealing them inside replica cartridges, with multiple 8m EPROMs so the larger cartridges he builds look really bad inside. SF2 is only an 8m game so it's not a problem.