The time has finally come to start sharing details on what I've been working on for the Atomiswave! Earlier I posted about the project to read AW carts, it was this project that really spurred my interest in the Atomiswave. Being a long time Dreamcast fan, discovering an entire new set of games on loved hardware was great.
But when I started to learn about prototype games like Sushi Bar, myself and many other people were dying to have a physical copy to play on real hardware. Of course they can be converted to play on Naomi, but we all know its not the same
As many of you know, there are bootleg versions of AW games that used to be available from China. Long story short on that front, the carts produced were a one time deal with limited inventory left now.
One of the major hurdles is that these prototype games use expanded hardware including a large fpga compared to retail cartridges. @ShouTime has been an essential motivator of this effort and donated a prototype cartridge for research and development! @MetalliC has been invaluable in helping me through this project, exploring how the Atomiswave works and helping me stay sane!
Okay, let's introduce 'Romeo'
This chip is found on the Atomiswave motherboard, tied directly into the HOLLY chipset G1 bus. All implementations of emulation for the Atomiswave ignore that this chip exists. It is not fully known all the roles this chip plays, but it does initialize cartridges and manage file system requests to the game cartridge.
Here is our 'Juliet', based on the CPLD stamped with 'JULIE_DEV'
These are the programmable logic chips implemented on the prototype game cartridges designed for 'SystemX'. Without solving how these chips interact with each other, we will never be able to play these games properly.
It is a very serious undertaking to solve the logic implemented in programmable logic parts.
For the better part of the past year, I have spent hundreds of hours working to solve how Romeo and Juliet work together. This has by far been one of the most complex things I have reverse engineered.
The good news is that I am posting today to share that I have been successful in solving how to make reproduction Atomiswave cartridges for the prototype games
But when I started to learn about prototype games like Sushi Bar, myself and many other people were dying to have a physical copy to play on real hardware. Of course they can be converted to play on Naomi, but we all know its not the same
As many of you know, there are bootleg versions of AW games that used to be available from China. Long story short on that front, the carts produced were a one time deal with limited inventory left now.
One of the major hurdles is that these prototype games use expanded hardware including a large fpga compared to retail cartridges. @ShouTime has been an essential motivator of this effort and donated a prototype cartridge for research and development! @MetalliC has been invaluable in helping me through this project, exploring how the Atomiswave works and helping me stay sane!
Okay, let's introduce 'Romeo'
This chip is found on the Atomiswave motherboard, tied directly into the HOLLY chipset G1 bus. All implementations of emulation for the Atomiswave ignore that this chip exists. It is not fully known all the roles this chip plays, but it does initialize cartridges and manage file system requests to the game cartridge.
Here is our 'Juliet', based on the CPLD stamped with 'JULIE_DEV'
These are the programmable logic chips implemented on the prototype game cartridges designed for 'SystemX'. Without solving how these chips interact with each other, we will never be able to play these games properly.
It is a very serious undertaking to solve the logic implemented in programmable logic parts.
For the better part of the past year, I have spent hundreds of hours working to solve how Romeo and Juliet work together. This has by far been one of the most complex things I have reverse engineered.
The good news is that I am posting today to share that I have been successful in solving how to make reproduction Atomiswave cartridges for the prototype games
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