65816 Chip & Super Nintendo

[Ferris]

The Super Nintendo / Super Famicom ran the 65816 chip and put out some pretty serious graphics for 1990/1991. Does anybody know if theres a more modern chip out there that could incorporate pretty much everything that was within the Super NES, including the FX chip that was used in games like StarFox and (i think) Donkey Kong Country? (I heard rumors to the effect that the FX chip was basically a Blitter chip but havent been able to confirm that.) What about the possibilities of a "Super Nintendo on a chip" ....is there anything out there, even theoretically, that could run it without having to emulate?

 

Thanks!

[Curt Vendel]

There is a SNES pirate cheap out in China, but the company wont release it as there are 2-3 patents still active from Nintendo that the chip would fall under, apparently now there is a N64 chipcommissioned by Nintendo for an all in one plug n play controller called iQue, only available out in Japan I believe.

 

 

Curt

[djmips]

If I recall correctly, the FX chip as an Argonaut designed RISC display list coprocessor that had special commands to accelerate 3D calcs and rendering. It was programmable like a modern GPU but the programs were more fixed like the PS1 GTE (but more limited). I don't remember the details but if you are interested you can check out the source code for an emulator that supports the Super FX like ZNES http://sourceforge.net/projects/zsnes

 

I speculate that you could recreate the SNES including the Super FX by using an emulator such as ZSNES to guide you in an FPGA design. I would even guess that you could put it (for the most part) into one chip.

[Vigo]

A SNES in a FPGA would be a VERY hard task to accomplish, since the SNES is a very complex system (2 PPU´s, 65816 CPU, SPC700).