koitsu wrote:
As for the manufacturing and rewriting dates not honouring the format -- not surprised. Yes it's possible whoever made them made a mistake by encoding the value as the literal 2-digit year number in BCD rather than the offset from 1925.
I got ahold of the Zelda 1 prototype. It makes the same mistake. Let me share the header info using your labels:
Code:
;this is the header of Side A
;Side B's header is identical, except for one byte
;i'll label that difference when I get to it
.db $1d, $0e , $17, $0d, $18, $24, $0c, $18, $27, $15, $1d, $0d, $26, $26, $24, $24 ;this is the Nintendo-HVC string=14 bytes
.db $2a ;the game manufacturer code = 1 byte
.dbw $ff, $ff, $ff ;this is the game name=3 bytes
.db $ff ;this is the game type
.db $ff ;the game version or revision number
.db $ff ; this is the side number
.db $00 ;this is the disk number
.db $00 ;so we seem to have a normal card, here
.db $00 ;speculative byte
.db $0f ; boot read file code
.dbw $86 $02 $03 ;!!! usually, this is where the five $FFs are suppose to be; it seems we have a date here, follow year, month, and day. Just like the 'showa' format except it is a literal year number. same as the mistake in Zelda 1 (but this date is later than the permit date; i'll give my theory at the end
.db $00 ; usually the fourth raw $FF, here
.db $01 ; usually the fifth raw $FF, here
.dbw $85 $12 $28 ;I guess this is the literal permit date (?) it's not in BCD format; here we have December 28th, 1985 as the start date of this project
.db $49 ; country code?
.db $61 ; area code?
.dbw $00, $00, $02 ;unknown
.byte $00 $f1 $ff $ff $00 ; some game specific information. Not in any format matching any of the games I listed, earlier. Also, seems the 4th and 5th byte go unused, here?
.dbw $ff, $ff, $ff ;"rewritten disk" date, according to Koitsu. I guess this is blanked out because it's a proto?
.dw $ff, $ff ; unknown
.dw $ff, $ff ; disk writer serial number
.db $ff ;unknown
.db $00 ;disk rewrite count
.db $00 ; the disk side. the only difference with the header on Side B is that this is set to $01
.db $fe ;unknown
.db $00 ; the price
Here is the raw data of both disk sides in their header:
Code:
;Side A
.byte $01, $2a, $4e, $49, $4e, $54, $45, $4e, $44, $4f, $2d, $48, $56, $43, $2a, $ff
.byte $ff, $ff, $ff, $ff, $ff, $00, $00, $00, $00, $0f, $86, $02, $03, $00, $01, $85
.byte $12, $28, $49, $61, $00, $00, $02, $00, $f1, $ff, $ff, $00, $ff, $ff, $ff, $ff
.byte $ff, $ff, $ff, $ff, $00, $00, $fe, $00
;Side B
.byte $01, $2a, $4e, $49, $4e, $54, $45, $4e, $44, $4f, $2d, $48, $56, $43, $2a, $ff
.byte $ff, $ff, $ff, $ff, $ff, $00, $00, $00, $00, $0f, $86, $02, $03, $00, $01, $85
.byte $12, $28, $49, $61, $00, $00, $02, $00, $f1, $ff, $ff, $00, $ff, $ff, $ff, $ff
.byte $ff, $ff, $ff, $ff, $00, $01, $fe, $00
Now the reason I shared this was to display Koitsu's layout and to show how the first five unknown bytes are actually used in this. In no published, licensed game are they ever used, the are always 5 bytes of $FF. This game uses where those five FFs should be as "$86 $02 $03 $00, $01". It's pretty obvious to me that since the rest of the BCD date is wrong, up to the published v1.1 of the game, that this is the date of the prototype: February 03, 1986. The permit date was in December according the bytes: December 28, 1985. But, how can I be sure of this? Well, the title screen says 1986! So maybe those 5 bytes were used only for prototype purposes, since every known published game FFs them out.
When I turned it on using Nestopia, I didn't hear any music until I started the game. Also, it looks like some sort of debug thing when I started the game, I was purple and the B button replenished my hearts. Cool finds. Here is a pic with the date as proof: