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Second Silicon - Public case file

1990 - Nintendo

Super Nintendo Entertainment System

greendocumented
Evidence status

Documented, not bench-verified

The source trail, toolchain, and proposed milestones are documented. No ROM build, emulator run, or physical SNES bench result is claimed.

Documented means the research path and planned work are public. It does not mean firmware compiled, a simulation ran, or physical hardware passed at the bench.

Documented entry point

16-bit icon with a co-processor story built into the cart.

The SNES offloaded compute to the cartridge itself. SA-1, Super FX, DSP-1, and CX4 co-processors lived on the game board, not the motherboard. Fabien Sanglard's clock and cartridge teardowns plus the FullSNES register reference give the clearest modern entry. Homebrew routes through PVSnesLib (C) and WLA-DX with bsnes for cycle-accurate debug.

Planned work

What the case file proposes next

  • Clock discipline
  • Cartridge co-processors
  • Emulator archaeology
Toolchain under review

PVSnesLib (C) / WLA-DX / bsnes / Mesen2

Claims on this page follow the portfolio's public evidence standard. Read the public evidence standard