Efforts to come

Former Xbanders on SNES or Genesis can get in touch with each other here. Also for people who wish to help with the Xband revival project.
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Warp2063
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Post by Warp2063 »

thoudx wrote:Hey guys, any help needed on this project still? It's been a crazy 3 years, but I'm back around if anyone needs me.

I still have my original SNES xband modem, but I'm so afraid that the battery is going to die any time now. :(
Eee, you're going to want to either find a way to back up your cartridge's SRAM (find someone with a cartridge dumper) or you'll have to replace the battery. I'm fairly sure the memory will hold if you replace the battery while the cartridge is running in a powered system, but that's really not an optimal solution...
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Post by Scooter »

If anyone is looking for an SNES Xband modem a local used game store has one available.
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Post by Warp2063 »

Scooter wrote:If anyone is looking for an SNES Xband modem a local used game store has one available.
How much are they asking?
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Post by Scooter »

Warp2063 wrote:
Scooter wrote:If anyone is looking for an SNES Xband modem a local used game store has one available.
How much are they asking?
I honestly don't recall but I'll be in the store again soon and I'll check the price and post back.
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Post by Xband411 »

Warp2063 wrote:
thoudx wrote:Hey guys, any help needed on this project still? It's been a crazy 3 years, but I'm back around if anyone needs me.

I still have my original SNES xband modem, but I'm so afraid that the battery is going to die any time now. :(
Eee, you're going to want to either find a way to back up your cartridge's SRAM (find someone with a cartridge dumper) or you'll have to replace the battery. I'm fairly sure the memory will hold if you replace the battery while the cartridge is running in a powered system, but that's really not an optimal solution...
LOL. I already sent mine to Nevitski back in 2006. I have mine in emulator form, but I am just said to think about it dying. And I'm not sure how easy it would be the replace the battery while in a powered system. Guess I'll have to strongly consider it though.
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Post by Warp2063 »

Well, if you sent it to him back then and he backed it up, and he didn't delete the files from it, you could replace the battery outside of the system and just have him rewrite the information onto it. I figure that should probably work.
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Post by Scooter »

Warp2063 wrote:
Scooter wrote:If anyone is looking for an SNES Xband modem a local used game store has one available.
How much are they asking?
It can be had for a whopping 95 cents!
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Post by Warp2063 »

Scooter wrote:
Warp2063 wrote:
Scooter wrote:If anyone is looking for an SNES Xband modem a local used game store has one available.
How much are they asking?
It can be had for a whopping 95 cents!
I want it!

... How much does it cost to ship it to Rochester, New York? :?
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Post by Scooter »

I dunno, probably around $6.00 or so.

I'll be back there Saturday, I'll grab it then. In the mean time, PM me your address or for now at least your Zip code so I can get an actual price on shipping. But I'm warning you, I may have to charge you twice what I pay for it. (Just kidding)
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Post by Warp2063 »

Sweet! Thanks!
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Post by Xband411 »

Hey guys, I finally found an old VHS tape with some actual in-game footage from the SNES Xband

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2p_LDSqbGQ
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Post by Warp2063 »

That's pretty cool. I'm hoping I'll be able to watch that happen on my own TV soon. :D
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Post by dbdrummer88 »

I would like to help if i can, i am bidding on an xband modem for the genesis that is still in shrink wrap :) :)
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Post by Warp2063 »

dbdrummer88 wrote:I would like to help if i can, i am bidding on an xband modem for the genesis that is still in shrink wrap :) :)
Heh, I've been seeing those going up for sale recently. If I hadn't bought one a month or two ago, I'd definitely be buying one of these shrink wrapped ones. :D
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Post by neviksti »

Does anyone have genesis programming experience and a flash cart (or some kind of copier with an external cartridge slot)?

We need a way to dump the XBand SRAM, but attempts so far haven't worked for some reason. If we had our own program doing it, we would know exactly what it is doing (for the SNES, certain XBand registers needed to be written before it would work as well).

I realize that we have no XBands with good batteries anymore to get saved data from when the service was working, but a "blank" SRAM dump would still be very helpful in the long run. The XBand code relies heavily on data in the SRAM, and it is difficult to follow its "initialization procedure". It would be much more trustworthy to get a real dump of the SRAM after it has been initialized.

Maybe all we need is to just put in a new battery, and try dumping it again via normal means?
Looking at some code, and the current dump attempts, I'm fairly certain of where the SRAM is mapped on powerup. But since I'm a newbie when it comes to genesis hardware, I'd be grateful for other advice.
-------------

EDIT:
Also, for the people mentioning they are willing to help in some way, if you scroll back a page or so I listed how anyone (no assembly programming experience needed) can help. Scrounging up ADSP details and summarizing them for us would be helpful.

http://saturnleague.com/board/viewtopic.php?p=2733#2733
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