Game Doctor SF3: what can and can't it play?

[pcman]

I've been thinking for a while about getting a Game Doctor SF3. I saw a few on robwebb's site for a reasonable price and was considering it. Maybe I should instead get an SF6 or SF7, but I don't know. I know the SF3 has support for DSP1 games and Super FX chip, but can it play games with other special chips? If not, what are the games it can't play? I can't find a complete list that tells me this. I know that I can play games at a max of 32mbits and that's all of the memory. Also, can the memory be upgraded or can I mod the system to accept secure digital cards for more storage? Can someone please help me? Thanks.

[neviksti]

It would be better to discuss such things on the "Cherry Roms" forums.


You wrote:
I know the SF3 has support for DSP1 games and Super FX chip, but can it play games with other special chips?

It doesn't inherently have support for the DSP1. You need to buy an adapter for that. Also, no commercially available copier supports the SuperFX chip, SA1, SDD1, etc (other coprocessor chips).

What is different about the DSP1 chip that allows it to be used?
It is completely separate from the ROM and other items on the cartridge. It runs separately, so it can be included separately.
The SuperFX, SDD1, etc are between the ROM and the main bus. It accesses the ROM directly, and therefore the entire copier structure would have to be changed to allow some kind of "addon" for this.

NOTE: DSP2, DSP4 are also "separatable" chips ... but they are only used in one game each, so there is no point in having an adapter for them.


You wrote:
Also, can the memory be upgraded or can I mod the system to accept secure digital cards for more storage?

If you have hardware skills, please discuss this at the "Cherry Roms" forum.
But it short ... no, unless you do custom work on it yourself.
Also, a secure digital card could feasibly be used for a storage device (ie transfering the game to the unit's internal memory ... just like you can with a floppy disk), but it can't be used to hold the data while the game is running (the memory is too slow) unlike what you seem to be hoping/suggesting.


Good luck with your purchase.

[pcman]

Thanks neviksti. Your words have confirmed a lot on the Game Doctor SF3. I appreciate it.

[Zuzma]

Also, a secure digital card could feasibly be used for a storage device (ie transfering the game to the unit's internal memory ... just like you can with a floppy disk), but it can't be used to hold the data while the game is running (the memory is too slow) unlike what you seem to be hoping/suggesting.

What about using a Memory stick duo? I think they have a faster transfer speed then those SD cards. Well I can save while playing doom off of my modified sony psp anyway. I wouldn't know about any other kinds of flash memory though.

[pcman]

Thanks cyan. I'll look into that.

[pcman]

I ordered a Game Doctor SF7 from Tototek and it should be here in about two weeks. Do I need the blue DSP passthrough adapter to plug it into the SNES? I noticed that the cartridge slot in the pictures was a little short so I was wondering about that. Thanks.

[Nightcrawler]

I'm not sure on the SF7, but most copiers allow you to use an SNES cartridge with the DSP chip in it as the DSP passthrough. I have the Super Mario Cart cartridge loadedi n my copier and I can play Pilotwings through that.

Off the top of my head, a few games you won' be able to play.

Super Mario RPG
Tales of Phantasia
Star Ocean
Daikaijyuu Monogatari 2(Dai Kai 2)
Super Street Fighter 2
Street Fighter 2 Alpha
Star Fox
Dirt Trax FX
Yoshi's Island(And any others that use the Super FX chip)
MegaMan X3

Correct me if I'm wrong guys. My memory is a bit hazy on the playability of some of those games.

[Nach]

Daikaijyuu Monogatari 2(Dai Kai 2)
Super Street Fighter 2

I see no problems with these two, although you won't have time info with the former.

Tales of Phantasia
Star Ocean

No problem with these as long as you have enough RAM, although the latter needs neviksti's patch.

[neviksti]

I ordered a Game Doctor SF7 from Tototek and it should be here in about two weeks. Do I need the blue DSP passthrough adapter to plug it into the SNES?

Yes, like the Game Doctor SF3 you need the adapter.
Some copiers allow the use of an actual cartridge plugged into the cartridge slot for this. The Game Doctor hardware would allow this too, except that the decoding delays are too long and the DSP can't respond in time. (If you look at the datasheet its amazing that the DSP ever responds in time.)

You might be able to get around this by replacing the slow logic chips usually used for address decoding in cartridges with something faster. Like maybe from the 74AC family. The 74F is a faster family still, and may be worth a try (although it has caused me some compatibility issues in the past ... reading the documentation and finally resorting to calling TI didn't help. So it may have some 5V CMOS or TTL compatibility issues.)

I have not tried chip swapping so I can not tell you if this would really fix the problem or not, but it is worth looking into.

EDIT: As an example, I looked up the '138 decoder.
74AC (and 74ACT), 11 ns max delay
74F 9 ns max delay

Usually used family
74LS 41 ns max delay
I couldn't find a datasheet for the old TTL family for this chip (ie just a 74138)
But it would roughly be 40 ns as well.

As a note, the SF3 (since it is slightly less complex) seems to have a slightly less delay on the cartridge connector as compared to the SF7. I've done all kinds of fun stuff with the SF7 (even hacking the XBand with its modem) and delays on the external cartridge connector have only been a problem with the DSP for me. So don't worry about it too much.

[Nightcrawler]

Daikaijyuu Monogatari 2(Dai Kai 2)
Super Street Fighter 2

I see no problems with these two, although you won't have time info with the former.

Wasn't Super Street Fighter 2 48mb? I'm sure it was definitely 32mb+. He mentioned the 32mb limitation, so I assume that's how much memory he was getting in his copier.

Tales of Phantasia
Star Ocean

No problem with these as long as you have enough RAM, although the latter needs neviksti's patch.

Right.. he mentioned 32mb limit, so that means no Tales of Phantasia.

I think playing in English with neviksti's Star Ocean patch is over 64mb which hardly anything supports.

[Clements]

Super Street Fighter 2 is 32Mbit (the Megadrive version was 40Mbit though).

[Nach]

I think playing in English with neviksti's Star Ocean patch is over 64mb which hardly anything supports.

You put more ram in your Doctor, you can play it, just ask neviksti.

[pcman]

Is the Game Genie for SNES compatible with the SF7? Also, can the Pro Action Replay be used? I'm asking this because apparently, the Gold Finger cheat system isn't that great. I looked for codes that are supported and there is hardly any. I would prefer Pro Action Replay because it has the most codes, but Game Genie is my second choice. Thanks.

[pcman]

My SF7 came with a default 32mbit of storage. I am going to upgrade it with a 64mbit ram stick from Tototek once I get the money. The more memory the better I say.

[Nightcrawler]

I think playing in English with neviksti's Star Ocean patch is over 64mb which hardly anything supports.

You put more ram in your Doctor, you can play it, just ask neviksti.

Yes, but that's about it. Nothing else supports it to my knowledge.

[neviksti]

You need 96Mbits to play the StarOcean hack. Only the SF7 has this capability. You need more than the 96Mbits if you want to use the "real time save" feature of the copier. (Along with a "saver code" that I don't remember off the top of my head. I figured out the code and I'm sure it's buried in the Cherry Roms forums somewhere.)

I haven't played the game myself yet. The hack was more of just an "academic" thing to see if it was possible to remove any need for the SDD1 chip. So if you play it, let me know how it goes.

64Mbits may be possible (and therefore many other copiers could play it), but it would require much more work. Considering this was "just" an "academic" hack, I am not interested in pursuing this any further. Sorry.


Nightcrawler wrote:
I think playing in English with neviksti's Star Ocean patch is over 64mb which hardly anything supports.

While Nightcrawler and others here obviously already know, I would like to point out that my hack removes the need for the SDD1 chip. DeJap was the group that put in the tremendous amount of work to translate the game.

I'm starting to regret releasing the game in prepatched form, but due to the nature of the hack it seemed appropriate at the time. I do not mean to offend DeJap, as I admire their work. So I try to point this out from time to time to make sure there is no confusion with new comers .

[SquareHead]

You need 96Mbits to play the StarOcean hack. Only the SF7 has this capability. You need more than the 96Mbits if you want to use the "real time save" feature of the copier. (Along with a "saver code" that I don't remember off the top of my head. I figured out the code and I'm sure it's buried in the Cherry Roms forums somewhere.)

Is real time save the SF7 equivalent of a savestate? If you get an SF7 and upgrade it to 96mbit, do you still need more memory for the battery backed ram?

Edit: Damn! An SF7 32mbit and a 64mbit expansion with their fastest shipping is only $108. I'm tempted to jump on this. Has anyone dealt with tototek before?

[neviksti]

SquareHead wrote:
Is real time save the SF7 equivalent of a savestate? If you get an SF7 and upgrade it to 96mbit, do you still need more memory for the battery backed ram?

Yes, the real time save is the hardware/software equivalent of an emulator savestate. I have even written a ZST -> SF7 save converter.

Warning: For those not familiar with the SNES architecture, there is no way to get a complete "state" of the hardware due to how the APU is setup (heck the engineering trick necessary to getting the PPU state is interesting in its own right). So never expect the savestate to be of "emulator quality". That being said, I have used it for a few annoying games (that I own actually) that I've never seen the end to, and it worked fine. Well, the games were fun, but trying to actually beat them was "annoying" ... eh whatever, I'm drifting off topic, besides, you know what I mean.

The battery backed RAM is really badly named here as it is not actually battery backed in the Game Doctor systems. It's just called that because it represents what was battery backed ram on the cartridge

Anyway, that is separate memory and is 256kbits on the SF3 and SF7 (and most other copiers as well). So you can play all but the "crazy amounts of memory" games like Dezaemon, etc.


SquareHead wrote:
Edit: Damn! An SF7 32mbit and a 64mbit expansion with their fastest shipping is only $108. I'm tempted to jump on this. Has anyone dealt with tototek before?

I have talked to the owner multiple times and have ordered from them at least 3 times (maybe 4? sad that I can't remember). I completely trust them with my money.

The most common complaint about the company is that it is really hard to get any response via email (because it is basically just one person as far as I know). But rest assured, it is an honest business and just be patient it you need to actually contact a human for some reason.

[Nightcrawler]

My Super UFO copier also has a real-time save 'savestate'. I am familiar with exactly what neviksti is talking about. The saves are usually a bit glitchy, mainly with the audio, but occasionally the are some graphical glitches as well. That's due to the technical difficulty of actually getting the state of all the hardware on the SNES and restoring it as neviksti said.

It's still pretty much usable though. It really varies depending on game. I've played several games where the save was just about pefect while others hae resulted in no audio/messed up audio and portions of screen messed up. That's the nature of the beast though.
Super UFO support PAR codes(Does the SF7?) so that's a second alternative to get past those nasty spots! hehe

[neviksti]

I've never used the cheat codes myself, so it's best to double check on this, but I think the SF7 only handles goldfinger codes.

Actually, how do the PAR codes that modify RAM work hardware/software wise?
Does the cheat device cause an IRQ, run some code, then return the system to running the "cartridge"? Or maybe, similarly, insert its code into the NMI routine or something? Does this cause problems with some games?

I never really looked into that before, but I'm curious now.

[Nightcrawler]

I've always been a bit curious of this myself. I'm not sure exactly how those kinds of things are done.

Some copier BIOS's have been dumped to ROM format. You might be able to poke around at the code and learn some things. Although since it won't actually run another ROM.. might be hard to do.

[grinvader]

I know that PAR codes affect data returned on read and not on write...

[orwannon]

You need 96Mbits to play the StarOcean hack. (...)

Nightcrawler wrote:
I think playing in English with neviksti's Star Ocean patch is over 64mb which hardly anything supports.

While Nightcrawler and others here obviously already know, I would like to point out that my hack removes the need for the SDD1 chip.

Sorry for digging out this ancient thread, but if anybody knows where to get that hack of neviksti's, please contact me.

Thanks!

orwannon

[The Dumper]

I dug out a saved post from Neviksti on CR (RIP) and found his original link to the Star Ocean Game Doctor SF7 version.

You can get the goodness here:

http://home.cwru.edu/~kam17/SF96soe.rar

I think if you want the untranslated version it is http://home.cwru.edu/~kam17/SF96son.rar

[orwannon]

Thanks man! You're brilliant!

orwannon