Merry New Year !
Written by cafealpha
6 comments
), hence though I should write something here in order not to deceive my countless fans.So, sorry for the lack of news recently, I was busy with Saturn things, but also in deciphering Christmas presents lists
... and now busy in tidying up lego blocks and trashing used wrapping paper 
I hope you're spending nice Christmas vacations ! I'm a little late for wishing you a merry Christmas (
), and a little early to wish you an Happy New Year (
), hence the broken title 
So what's new with my Saturn projects ? In fact, nothing worth writing an article, but here is a short (and probably incomplete) list anyway :
1. SD Memory Cart : when overwriting save on Saturn side, keep the old save file on SD card (but remove it from saves list, of course).
Basically, it automatically keeps old saves somewhere on SD card, so that it is possible to revert to a previous state. I hope Saturn RPG fans will like
2. USB dev cart mode : when USB cable is detected, allow to unlock CD-ROM and then prompt for data upload.
This feature allows to makes tests on Saturn main program using data from CD-ROM without the need of installing a modchip, and without the need of burning a CD-R on each program changes
Special thanks to Shazz for reminding me to add such a feature, antime for wiring FTDI's PWREN signal to Saturn (it was unused for 3 years, but it was useful in order to detect USB connection, and hence hiding USB dev mode for normal users not using USB), and of course CyberWarriorX and jhl for Pseudo Saturn
3. PCB changes : basically removing few debug "in case of" stuff, and also moving SD card socket in order to fit better with cartridge shell.
It is still WIP, but plan to send the updated gerber to the PCB house on next month.
4. Few changes to the sources of yabause I'm using for testing my projects.
Especially, I added position save/restore and keyboard shortcut to each debug dialogs ... long time I wanted to do this
5. In Backup Data Manager, some additions to "Import" feature : backup data dump file read and parse was done a while (4-5 months ?) ago, I just added something to select where (Internal Memory or Cartridge or Floppy) to save selected saves, and plan to port save data extract algorithm next month or so
Thanks to hitomi2500's ss-save-parser project, such "Import" feature is easy to integrate in my Backup Data Manager project
Last but not least, I also want to thank Stac user on Assembler forums
He's doing good job in beta testing, and thanks to his reactivity and good communication, project is progressing faster than I was expecting.
Beta testing is far from being a funny job, especially with me as main programmer (
), and when testing requires to play games (this requires time, and bugs on my Saturn project may lead to loose of progress in game), so once more, thank you