June 11th, 2007
Skipping Ahead
Dox decided to hack around a bit with the driver, and found a way to skip some of the tests. As a result JoJo and JoJoba actually now execute some of the game code, rather than just the bios. They both hang after the Japan warning however. The code appears to be stuck in a big loop, dong not much at all.
Doing this properly is something of a pain in the backside due to the way MAME works. The games execute code from FlashROMs, however due to the way FlashROMs are accessed MAME must map them as Read/Write handlers in the driver, not blocks of RAM/ROM. MAME’s CPU cores don’t handle executing code from Read/Write handlers well, nevermind *encrypted* code (with the possibility of *decrypted* data) from such handlers. This is probably going to require some rather ugly hacking around.
Its interesting to note that JoJoba is the NCD set, while JoJobaa appears to be a standard set. They both however still check for the CD, so I’m guessing there must be something else to it too.
It’s also interesting to note that the dates these things are booting up with seem completely wrong. Maybe it’s not running the correct boot code.
Keys to the World
Andreas figured out the keys for the other games, giving us a bit more to work with. Of course, everything is stuck with error messages at the moment as I haven’t made much more progress with the CD-Controller emulation yet. I found that the amd / wd33c93 is supported in MESS (wd33c93.c), I don’t know how well it works tho, it’s only used by the Indy driver.. I guess I’m going to have to find out.
Warzard - Complains about the CD-ROM?
真不敢相信自己的眼睛
