Welcome!

You shouldn't feel that way. To be honest that was the only time in the history of Neosource I think I have ever moderated a thread. and FYI, I deleted the one user who wanted to be deleted and my old account so I no longer have admin rights as I was clearly pissing people off.

However, my intention wasn't to piss anyone off, it was just to keep that thread to the topic, which I intended to be about what the situation is with Koch Media and what happens to FB Alpha going forward, and not have everyone argue about things that were not specifically that topic in just that one thread.

To save myself getting too stressed out, I have decided that I shouldn't care who is doing what to FB Alpha, and just carry on as I was. I hope that situation gets resolved, but my heart is telling me that it won't. Hopefully you see this post and change your mind, the other admins are more experienced at that kind of thing and probably take a more balanced hand.

Unfortunately, like so many of you over the last couple of days, this will be my last post. I can't stand being on a forum where one group of people's opinion is held above another's. I especially don't like people deleting posts that are A) directly related to the the title of the topic, or B) a direct reply to someone who quoted me and then disingenuously claim it to be "off-topic". To be honest, I don't really appreciate censorship of any kind. And this forum has that particular issue in spades. So many times over the last few days have I seen posts from users asking "why is it that one group of people can say whatever they want, and another is silenced?", only to come back later to find that post deleted. Personally, I don't think I was on either side of the issue, and had my own opinion, but because it didn't line up with the admin here, I, apparently, have no right to post. If you're going to have a karma system, why delete things at all? It makes no sense.

They keep saying "the issue is a shit show" like it excuses censorship. Look around, you'll see it over and over again, like it's some pearl of wisdom. Everyone knows the issue is a shit show, that's why they're talking about it. People have the wrong idea about certain issues, and quite frankly I'm probably one of them. But I'd prefer to be told, and then, if need be, I'd like to discuss those ideas. Isn't that the whole point of a forum? Deleting posts and crying virtue helps no one, except those who wish to see other people's ideas vanish. It's lazy and spineless.

It seems like kev suicide-bombed the thread in question. Took a a bunch of you out, and himself in the process (well done mate). Here's a quote from a PM he sent me:

"Sorry you feel that way, I believe I wasn't censoring anything, only trying to keep the thread on topic. Doing that from a phone sometimes stuff gets deleted by accident, but I try and out those back where I can. Sometimes I can't due to laziness, etc."

I'm surprised he could even muster the energy to reply, you know, due to laziness, etc. Don't worry though, it wasn't censorship, just incompetence. I tried replying, but it seems he's deleted his account. That one sentence says everything you need to know about the admin here: not only do they misinterpret  the meaning of the word "censorship", they don't care what gets deleted and what doesn't.

This place is dead, and I don't think anyone should be deleting anything.. not many people post as is. dink, you have a great attitude and a tremendously high work ethic, which I absolutely respect, but dude, you need tell admin to stop being such giant pussies. People can debate ideas without the need for others to dictate the entire conversation. It's unnecessary. Especially when they're clearly doing it with absolute disregard to the conversation at hand (you know, due to laziness, etc).

Oh, and Haze.. 99.9% of people that use emulation also use pirated games. Hardly any of them can code, and they all think gaming is better than coding. And the reason is, people like you have made it so easy for them. To say otherwise is being completely dishonest and paints the situation in an entirely different colour. I'm glad you like pink, but the world is blue. Yes, their are crazy-smart and talented people working on emulation. And I love them for it. But the law is the law. You can call it "using Capcom's IP in (your) spare time" all you want.. you're a pirate. Like the rest of us. I've never once said that FB Alpha coders deserve to to have their hard work taken away from them. Or that they owe these game companies anything. They don't. But to paint the whole emulation community in that wonderful pink light of yours is wrong. I don't appreciate you putting words in my mouth. It's a logical fallacy, and a terrible way to debate an idea. And for someone to delete my response multiple times is spineless. You're not as virtuous as you think. Capcom are bummed out that people have pirated their games for 2 decades due to emulation. Then along comes Barry, from the emulation community, to sell them an illegitimate licence. Go ahead and cry capitalism all day long, but Capcom are being betrayed just as much as the FB Alpha contributors. If not more.

I'm out.

Vague Rant,
nBIOS is the position of the bios in the bios list.  Different bios's require that the system return a different value here.   
f.ex the U.S. 6-slot and some Japan models need 0xff00 and all others need 0xff01

best regards,
- dink

I'm pretty incompetent and don't really know what I'm doing, so I was hoping somebody wouldn't mind explaining what's going on with the nBIOS variable in the Neo Geo driver. I'm really not a coder, so I'm only understanding the bare minimum of what's going on here: an external variable (nBIOS) is being read and different hex values are being returned based on the value of nBIOS.

For example, in d_neogeo.cpp, we have the following code snippet:

// This is actually set by a jumper on the PCB
UINT16 __fastcall KogReadWord(UINT32)
{
   extern INT32 nBIOS;
   if (nBIOS == 5 || nBIOS == 8 || nBIOS == 9 || nBIOS == 10 || nBIOS == 13 || nBIOS == 15) {
      return 0xff00;
   } else {
      return 0xff01;
   }
}

I have no idea what this is doing. My best guess: it's checking which BIOS is currently in use and returning one of two values based on ... the PCB jumper layout associated with that BIOS version? But I'm not sure where those values come from. My primary question is, what does the nBIOS value represent and where can I find that information in the code? Secondarily, how much does this affect emulation, if at all? What would go wrong if I got these numbers wrong?

Thanks so much for any help!

(as a side note) If my moderating is too extremist for anyone posting in this thread    either:

1) post your unrelated (but legal) stuff in a different thread, in the correct forum

2) ask myself or another admin to delete your account (if that's what you want)

3) just ignore it! It's nothing personal, I just want to keep this thread on topic.