AICA firmware dump?

[pikablue]

AFAIK, when it boots up, starts in a stopped state and the SH4 has to load code into it and start it.

Aha! That would explain why I can't find anything "fixed" in the emulators.

For the boot menu, this does come from the boot ROM,

I can see that the boot rom, mapped to area0, isn't large enough on its own to just simply span the AICA memory mapped region. So I'm looking for specific instructions in the boot ROM directed at the AICA...

This is quite different to what Yamaha have done in my context, where the equivalent ARM chip definitely has its own firmware resident in flash, so maybe this isn't going to help me directly so much.

But I think at least that the large volume of AICA information that you guys have helpfully opened my eyes to will absolutely give clues to help with the investigations. Onwards and upwards!

..pika..

[mrneo240]

Manatee.drv in commercial games is the code uploaded to aica.

[pikablue]

Manatee.drv in commercial games is the code uploaded to aica.

That's perfect; and from looking this up, I can certainly see discussions in various forums regarding the contents of this file that indicate that this file would absolutely 100% meet my needs. Very very excited - thanks to you guys this is the most progress I've made in months. Now the only problem is : how to get hold of this file?

From googling, I think I've understood that the easiest source of versions of this is actually packaged DSF sound files, and I've got several, but I'm really struggling to understand what tool I need to unpack them into their component parts.

If anyone could give me any pointers, I would be very grateful !

..pika..

[mrneo240]

Would be easiest to grab some gdi dumps and look for it.
It's highly common in games

[pikablue]

Would be easiest to grab some gdi dumps and look for it.

Thanks for the tip - all sorted. Got some Manatee.drv files and am dissassembling now!

..pika..