A Moogle  🏳️‍🌈 💻 🎮 🎶 🇸🇪

It might also explain why the first time it tries to invoke halt mode, R12 has the wrong value, so it ends up trying to STRB into the firmware ROM area instead.

nah, that one also happens in melonDS, that's a bug in Nintendo's code.

Well, darn. In that case I have even less of an idea. I'm not sure how you feel about other devs using melonDS code as reference, so if it's not too much, do you know offhand (or can you confirm) whether or not the BIOS tries to initiate KEY1 mode, even with no game card?

I'm fine with melonDS code being used as a reference; infact that's also what the code is for! I don't recall details of cart comm but I don't think it should go further than trying to retrieve the cart header if there's no cart present.

In that case, thank you for your work, and I'll go digging to see what I'm missing! E-high-five!

good luck!

Thanks! I've already noticed that the primary SPI control/data registers aren't hooked up in MAME, meaning that the BIOS will just read zeroes for any particular byte it asks for. Which is, uh, not good?

yeah, that would be bad, I couldn't imagine that emulation going very far