Re:SNES Cartridges and Enhancement Chips
by monocasa on Friday September 27, 2019 @05:28PM
(#21096452)
The N64 didn't use any chips like this AFAIK. I've seen maker prototypes using this scheme on a GameBoy, and wouldn't be surprised to see a GameBoy Advance cart that used them but don't know of any off the top of my head except as a built in peripheral (so RTC, tilt sensor, some communication mechanism, etc.)
And it'd be a real pain to add chips like this to any later systems. The architecture is a little different, and the cartridges aren't actually mapped into the system's main address space anymore. They are relatively slow buses that look more like mass storage to the rest of the system. They can't DMA directly and that hop to hit the rest of the system obviates a lot of the benefit of having a co processor on there.
And it'd be a real pain to add chips like this to any later systems. The architecture is a little different, and the cartridges aren't actually mapped into the system's main address space anymore. They are relatively slow buses that look more like mass storage to the rest of the system. They can't DMA directly and that hop to hit the rest of the system obviates a lot of the benefit of having a co processor on there.