Not a lot of info about this GB floppy copier. Made by CCL in 1998-99ish. As I had said, when writing games to floppy, it just clobbers over existing formats with its own 16-sector/track format (standard 1.44 FDs use 18 sectors/track). Old SNES copiers can read the disk, but modern Win PCs HATE it!

A white unicorn has appeared! The "GB Smart Development Kit" was a standalone GameBoy cartridge copier that saved dumped games to FDD, and could load them onto a rumble SmartCard. Really primitive FAT functions that formats as it writes the ROM to 16-sector-per-track High Density FDD only.

Here's something wild: I thought I found a bug in my FAT12 LFN (long filename) code, but it turns out that the checksums for the files "GREEN.SMC" and "SUPERF~1.BMP" both add up to 0x48, causing a bit of an identity crisis. How did OSes like Windows handle these cases?

Other miscellany in my storage back home: a sticker album with tons of mid-80s scratch-and-sniff stickers; my childhood origami book; a Canadian variant of Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog

My old binder also had tons of design patents for the NES/SNES/Gameboy systems, the Game Genie, etc. These were easily searchable from the US Patent Office's webpage in the late '90s. Are they still easily searchable?

In my storage, I found the large binder I kept for NES & 6502 programming, from the late 1990s. I printed out tons of pages of documents and this was a valuable reference. I decided to donate this binder to my best friend's game-loving programmer son.

I've come back from a family vacation to my hometown, Vancouver, Canada. I had a little time to sort through some old bins in storage. Found the old boxed games! (Well, some of them.) The Dr.PCJr. box didn't contain the system, since I had taken it with me to Japan...

Also, if someone wants to donate a Super UFO Pro SD to me, I can start working on getting at least LFN display working on it... 😁

Been busy but have found some time to keep modifying & enhancing the Super UFO 8 floppy SFC copier. I made a help screen for all the added controls, plus I've converted the built-in Action Replay cheat codes to an .asm include file, in order to trim/add more codes.

The UFO 7.2 J なにわ "Naniwa" version is in Japanese only. And the name なにわ refers to the area in Osaka; as such, messages in this copier are written in the Kansai dialect: Game save? おまへん(Ain't here!); How's the checksum? あかん(No way!); Disk in drive? いれてんか？ディスクガナイデ！(D'jya put one in? Ain't seein' it!)

A Super UFO 7 SFC copier just fell into my lap this week, and it's a kinda rare Japanese 7.2 なにわ "Naniwa" version. This one came with a protective hologram over one screwhole, so: pics! The BIOS is on a 32KB EPROM, whereas the 7.3 version adds built-in X-T cheat codes and is on a 64KB EPROM. Neat!

Shrinkflation captured in realtime リアルタイムで捉えたシュリンクフレーション

The "Pro Fighter X" series of SNES copiers has kinda stupid disk handling code: it doesn't filter out FAT entries on floppy disk that should never be displayed, like the Volume name ("CHRIS"), directories, and long filename chunks. This causes errors during display & loading. So I RE'd and fixed it.

I did what the UFO guys never bothered to do: about a week ago, I read up on how Long File Names (LFN) work on FAT12 floppy storage, and programmed in a display routine for LFNs on my Super UFO8 FDD copier. Much more useful now!

The UFO 8 (FDD) Super Famicom copier has a realtime savestate feature which also lets you examine PPU backgrounds and sprites from the savestate. You also can view the Mode7 BG, but only *view*. I've added my own routines in the UFO BIOS to let you scroll, scale, and rotate around the Mode7 BG.

The BIOSes for the "UFO Super Drive Pro-6 Hyper Version" come in a 27256 EPROM, but only have the upper 16KB used. In addition, the copier uses an 8K bankswitching method, so these will probably never run in an emulator. So, using the 1bpp CHR graphics in the BIOS, I've made digital reconstructions.

I found a UFO Pro6 SFC copier for cheap recently. The UFO line of copiers is great, and this one is a... primitive step along the way. While the UFO 7 & 8 had built-in cheat codes for games, the 6 didn't, so it let you store AR and Goldfinger codes directly in the 512-byte copier header of each game

I had a look at early SFC aging tests. The earliest 1.00 version is interesting. It has different sprites & BG examples from the 1.02 version, and also had a bug: when the 1.00 version goes from its mosaic test to the 512-pixel test, they forget to turn off mosaic (fine for 256-mode but not 512)!

I had a couple extra days off this week, and I continued apace on fixing up/hacking/improving the Super UFO (SFC floppy copier) 8.3j BIOS. Highres interlaced modes work and I've added in a mosaic screen transition during logo fade-in/out

I moved my hacks of the UFO Pro 8 (old floppy disk SFC copier) from hex editing to the 64tass assembler. So now I'm working on the BMP display of 240p images, and full highres interlaced (512x478) pixels in the VRAM viewer feature of the UFO. Also, no music, English and no floppy autoload...

Has anyone ever noticed this? If you return to the SPECIAL zone in Super Mario World by pausing and exiting a stage (particularly 2nd from bottom-left), the bass guitar sample is much louder than entering the zone via the star or by completing a level...

European NES Mega Man and Mega Man II original art pieces at the Capcom exhibition, Tokyo.

Street Fighter II & Turbo original artwork at the Capcom exhibition, Tokyo.

Forgotten Worlds and Sidearms original artwork at the Capcom exhibition, Tokyo.

Rockman 2 / Megaman 2 original art at the Capcom Exhibition in Tokyo. This was especially difficult to try to photograph without reflections, since it had at least 2 layers of animation cels on top of the background art board.

Rockman / Megaman original art at the Capcom Exhibition. Painted animation cels on art board (hard to capture!)

More original artwork from the Capcom exhibition in Tokyo. Ghosts 'n Goblins (魔界村) art. 2nd pic... um, Prin-Prin needed a second going-over, I think...

SFII planning document for E. Honda's stage. This has many interesting tidbits, including: the character being named "E. Suzuki" and "Japan: Sumo" on the reverse of the paper. Also, several areas labeled 「すじ流れ範囲　ビョーン」indicating line scrolling areas that get warped, "sproing! zoom!" [sic] etc .

Planning document for SFII from the Capcom exhibition in Tokyo: Ryu's stage. Nothing special here, but the artwork is quite nice.

Finally, for now, another close-up look at the texture of the acrylic on illustration board original artwork for Black Tiger/Black Dragon, at the Capcom expo/museum in Tokyo. Loving that glowing red brick work!

SFII character Chun-Li stage planning doc at Capcom exhibition: Lots of activity meant to be going on in the background in this stage. And the location seems to be "Da'an Road" (大安路 Dà'ān lù) as per the sign bottom-right... is that a real place in Beijing/Shanghai, or Hong Kong etc?

SFII @ Capcom exhibition: Character design for Zhi Li (智麗; not Chun-Li yet), where she still resembles Tong Pooh from arcade Strider

More SFII planning sheets from the Capcom exhibition in Tokyo. Dhalsim's stage has nothing unusual or incriminating -- the stage name just says "India". There are some cute sketches/stamps, though.

SFII character Guile stage planning doc at Capcom exhibition: On the reverse (and in large on the left!) was an initial name for Guile: Jinjin (じんじん), reportedly based on Jean Pierre from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure comic books. Both "Jean" and "Jojo" have too many 'J's to be a coincidence...

I went to the Capcom exhibition today; they had a number of original planning docs for SFII, Final Fight and Rockman. The SFII stages looked like they were stored 'gatefolded' since there was some writing visible in the back, eg. Bison/Balrog's stage had written "USA: Tyson"...🤯

Pic 1: Spatters. Pic 2: Ladd Spencer? Pic 3: No, it is Strider Hiryu. He will never leave Eurasia alive! Fantastic original painted works at the Capcom exhibition, Tokyo

I found the locations on the SFC Dragonfly in-development maps where some magazine screenshots were taken, so how about some Mode 7 pixel mockups?

Back on the topic of Pilotwings, even without looking into the code, we can see how the regular vehicles and the "bonus" characters likely reuse code w/ similar/identical controls, propulsion, viewpoints, etc. (Bonus stages can also be accessed by hacking the Debug mode back into the game.)

I feel ppl don't give SNES Pilotwings much thought, but it's one of my most-played games. I would love to transform the game into what it once was, the unreleased Dragonfly. We can get a taste in the heli stage (108048) using Action Replay code 7E0CAB02- you get zippy dragonfly controls and missiles

I've updated my secret page (www.chrismcovell.com/secret.html) with two dozen new images of the 1988, 1989 prototype Super Famicom and its demonstration of Dragonfly and SMB4, and more! Thank you to Gaming Alexandria for their scanning a Sept 1989 Famimaga! bsky.app/profile/gami...

This was a cute fixer-upper at a HardOff whose 2nd floor has a really good junk section (unlike the recently emasculated one in Hachioji): a National/Panasonic RX-C20 really low-profile cassette boombox, with all the features you'd want. (See hand for height comparison)

Some other fun finds at HardOff: A bog-standard old word processor but whose disks were cute and colourful. Original owner seemed handy with a calligraphy pen. Also, some mini-keychains of a Casio Reversi/calculator and Sound Burger. The most surprising: What's a Tragically Hip 🇨🇦 CD doing in Japan?

Screenshot Saturday: How about a TOMY Scramble VFD game I picked up at a HardOff? It has a wild Fresnel lens that doesn't magnify but creates that warspeed blurring effect you see. Removing the lens makes the game much clearer. It has a column of "stuck" elements but probably impossible to repair...

My being a cheapskate has finally paid off as I assembled JP21 M-M cables and an old crusty RGB switchbox found for cheap on Yahoo JP. Now I can switch through my RGB systems (and MiSTer in both 15khz and VGA modes) into my XRGB2 scan converter. Works flawlessly.🙂

Over the new year's holiday, I had a little fun investigating and hacking the BIOS of the Pro Fighter X Turbo SNES copier. Namely, remove its nag screen and change the flag graphics in the background to something custom. I succeeded after a bit of disassembly and head-scratching. 👍

I just don't get you guys...

The data in the SRAM of the second Mario Paint cartridge is a little more artistic. The cart's former owner was likely someone named Koyama/Oyama (小山)

I hope everyone is enjoying the final days of 2025. I had a good day doing 2 HardOff trips, selling some of my stuff, desoldering a chip, and then dumping the SRAM inside of used Mario Paint cartridges. The first one is a mess of custom stamps with similarly nonsensical music...

Journey to Silius ([new thread] 7/13): OK, I don't see how this unused mech-brain boss of Stage 3 fit into the Terminator concept, but it's really interesting. Tile arrangements are just my guess as to how it fit together.

Sunsoft's Journey to Silius (0/13) I posted this on other social media a long time ago, so I think it's time for a refresh: SSS: The title used in the time between The Terminator and Journey to Silius