ROM type signature
From MSX Game Library
This documentation is a proposed signature to help Flash tools and emulators correctly detect ROM formats and, in particular, the type of mapper used.
Note: All the strings of this page are defined without zero-terminator.
ROM type signature
| Mapper | Signature |
|---|---|
| Plan 16 KB | "ROM_PL16" |
| Plan 32 KB | "ROM_PL32" |
| Plan 48 KB | "ROM_PL48" |
| Plan 64 KB | "ROM_PL64" |
| ASCII 8 KB | "ROM_ASC8" |
| ASCII 16 KB | "ROM_AS16" |
| Konami 8 KB (K4) | "ROM_KON4" |
| Konami 8 KB with SCC (K5) | "ROM_KON5" |
| NEO 8 KB | "ROM_NEO8" |
| NEO 16 KB | "ROM_NE16" |
Appendix
Header as code
The 4 first bytes of the ROM type signature "ROM_", have been choose because the code it generates is so incoherent that it's extremely unlikely that a program would start with these instructions and therefore unintentionally contain a valid signature.
Code generated by the first 4 bytes of the signature:
ld d, d ld c, a ld c, l ld a, a
Known ROM signature
| Device | Signature | Size |
|---|---|---|
| MSX-Audio | "AUDIO" | 5 bytes |
| Internal MSX-Music (and FM-PAC clone) | "APRLOPLL" | 8 bytes |
| FM-PAC | "OPLL" | 4 bytes |