On Mon, Jan 22, 2001 at 06:08:53PM +0000, Maarten ter Huurne wrote:
> Hi!
>
> In this mail I'll list some issues that weren't mentioned yet.
>
> * Name
>
> The standard needs a name. Some suggestions:
> - Unified MSX Game Format
> - .msx (pronounced "dot em-es-iks")
> - MSX Software Format
>
> I prefer the first. Maybe we can drop the "Unified" if you don't like it, but
> I think the power of the format is that it's unified in two ways: one format
> for ROM/DSK/BASIC/COM and one format for all emulators.
Well we can call the format "unified msx game format", and the extension is
.msx -- how's that?
> Copy protection emulation was an issue I raised before, but no-one responded
> to it. I think it doesn't have priority so it shouldn't be in the first
> version. But I would like to get some opinion on whether we should include it
> in the future.
Just for a remark, someone on messdev is working on diskdumps which are "mfm
disks". It actually contains the dumps of the tracks, so it should work in
any case. This is rather difficult to implement though, as the disk controller
emulation will have to interpret the tracks into sectors if you're reading
sectors.
IIRC RuMSX has some format where apart from the .dsk file there is another
file which basically indicates which sectors are bad. IMHO .mfm disks is
much nicer as it's far more near to the real MSX.
> There was little discussion on SRAM yet. I think this is an important issue
> that should be resolved before the standard is released. It would be nice if
> a generalized SRAM implementation is possible, just like the generalized
> mapper.
For the actual SRAM data, I suggest we use a plain dump -- just the binary
data from beginning to end. We need to decided on an extension. Options:
.sram, .ram. ,.sram, .nv (non-volatile), .mem?
For FM-PAC we could save as .pac files.
Also on second thought I do agree we can better the just have a number than
some system that describes the mapper; describing the workings is not going
to complete (think of Super Load Runner) -- another funky mapper. In the
real world, implementing specific types is easier and faster than a general
one (from a description). And we're looking at probably about 20 different
ones, which isn't that bad really.
Sean
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