Analogue x Hyperdub "Konsolation" - WAV Player Cartridge?

[nitelich]

For those who haven't seen, Analogue released a limited edition of the Mega SG in early December that included a limited edition album-on-a-cartridge as part of the package. (They have indicated that this cartridge will not be otherwise available.)

Catskull Electronics tweeted a thread about the cartridge when he got his copy (including cartridge teardown pics). It looks like the music for the album is stored on an SD card included on the cartridge.

When I got my copy, I tried dumping a ROM of the cartridge itself (via Retrode - I know it's not the best ROM dumping tool but it's what I have). It looks like there is error text in the ROM for things like communication with the co-processor, as well as the correct file count on the SD card. (And, as you'd expect, the ROM doesn't work without being able to talk to the co-processor, though since I also didn't get any error message displayed for this, I assume the Retrode dump was imperfect.)

Neither Catskull nor I have tried changing out the files on the SD card to see if the music will still be read. Regardless, IMO this is a pretty odd way to do an album-on-a-cartridge. Why not make some nice YM2612 chiptune, especially with all that work put into the FPGA emulation of the YM2612?

(Also, I don't know if Catskull is active on these forums, so my apologies if I'm stealing your thunder here.)

[roce]

Oh, that looks very similar to Memblers' NES MP3 cart. Could even be made by him. Or just a coincidence.

On not getting an error (presumably on an everdrive or emulator), it may just hang waiting for a reply.

[ironnick23]

For those who haven't seen, Analogue released a limited edition of the Mega SG in early December that included a limited edition album-on-a-cartridge as part of the package. (They have indicated that this cartridge will not be otherwise available.)

Catskull Electronics tweeted a thread about the cartridge when he got his copy (including cartridge teardown pics). It looks like the music for the album is stored on an SD card included on the cartridge.

When I got my copy, I tried dumping a ROM of the cartridge itself (via Retrode - I know it's not the best ROM dumping tool but it's what I have). It looks like there is error text in the ROM for things like communication with the co-processor, as well as the correct file count on the SD card. (And, as you'd expect, the ROM doesn't work without being able to talk to the co-processor, though since I also didn't get any error message displayed for this, I assume the Retrode dump was imperfect.)

Neither Catskull nor I have tried changing out the files on the SD card to see if the music will still be read. Regardless, IMO this is a pretty odd way to do an album-on-a-cartridge. Why not make some nice YM2612 chiptune, especially with all that work put into the FPGA emulation of the YM2612?

(Also, I don't know if Catskull is active on these forums, so my apologies if I'm stealing your thunder here.)

Have you been able to dump this rom yet? I missed the boat purchasing this bundle

[axel]

If it's really WAV played through a co processor then I don't see the point of putting it on a cart. They could just as well have burned the songs to CDDA and advertised it as Sega CD compatible.

[nitelich]

Yeah I did manage to dump it. The ROM is kind of useless on it's own, because the first thing it tries to do is talk to the co-processor that's loading the WAVs from the SD card.

IIRC, Catskull put his own WAVs on the SD card and got them to play. So that's kind of interesting, at least.

[Oerg866]

Sorry, I haven't noticed this thread before.

I wrote the code in this ROM. What do you wanna know? :P

[thesegadude]

Yes, we want to know

[Oerg866]

It was a question, what do you want to know

[chilled]

I want to know what co-processor is he talking about (on the cart itself?) and if the songs have been dumped and if not, why it isn't the case yet. I only have the Burial one and I'm very interested in at least two other songs.

also who is running the software you wrote, the 68k or that add-on chip?

[Oerg866]

There is no coprocessor (unless you count the multimedia IC that does the actual playback), the code runs on the 68k and it communicates with it giving it commands to play tracks, change volume, etc.

and if the songs have been dumped and if not, why it isn't the case yet

No clue actually. I guess the people who bought it are just that nice
But it would devalue the whole thing I think. That said, I wish "Bobby" was public so I could share it because it's legit amazing and really stands out from the others but no chance

[Sik]

I imagine they're referring to the multimedia IC indeed :​P
Though yeah, there are dedicated chips (no need to load a program into them)