antime
Saturn Player
Joined: February 2013
Posts: 86
Location:
|
Post by antime on May 7, 2014 19:55:13 GMT
Anyone know what this is? I don't think the seller really knows. It's a development tool that lets you transfer data to and from a development PC, and can function as a debugger interface. That's an opensource device, originally designed by me. It can perform some of the functionality of the CartDev, but lacks the extra RAM or interrupt functionality. On the upside, you can build it yourself for less than fifty bucks and works on modern computers.
|
|
antime
Saturn Player
Joined: February 2013
Posts: 86
Location:
|
Post by antime on May 7, 2014 19:43:10 GMT
For anyone crazy enough the old Nvidia NV-1 graphics cards were based on the Saturn (use quads) have Saturn controller ports, and failed miserably. Most of the Sega PC ports of its time support it... The NV1 hardware was not based on the Saturn, and used a completely different technology. The NV1 used quadratic patches (think Bézier patches), while the Saturn used flat (not even 3D) quadrilaterals.
|
|
antime
Saturn Player
Joined: February 2013
Posts: 86
Location:
|
Post by antime on Dec 24, 2013 0:19:29 GMT
I think his problem is not being able to find a pre-made iso. I found one once and used it to save one of my dead ARs but I've no idea where I got the image from (and I may manually added later AR firmwares to it). It's included in The Rockin'-B All Stars. There should be a law that people use the same nick everywhere.
|
|
antime
Saturn Player
Joined: February 2013
Posts: 86
Location:
|
Post by antime on Dec 23, 2013 20:53:14 GMT
but how does it work? I understand nothing from what's on that site I've never used that particular app, but based on the description you select a firmware image from the disc, open the menu and select "flash Action Replay". This launches a secondary tool that does the actual flashing. Speaking of that app, can it read video cd cards? I don't think so, the MPEG card firmware is not directly visible in the memory map. CyberWarriorX wrote a tool for dumping the firmware over CommLink a long time ago, search for "mpgromdump.zip".
|
|
antime
Saturn Player
Joined: February 2013
Posts: 86
Location:
|
Post by antime on Dec 21, 2013 12:22:25 GMT
The arflash tool that's used certainly works, as long as it recognizes the model flash chips used.
|
|
antime
Saturn Player
Joined: February 2013
Posts: 86
Location:
|
Post by antime on Jul 27, 2013 14:01:23 GMT
Am I correct in assuming that a decent Saturn game would require assembler programming? No, at least not very much. GCC works for both the SH2s and the 68000. The same compilers were used back in the day. Of course newer versions produce better code, but even back then really only the performance-critical parts would have been written in assembly. Just found this if it is of interest to anyone... linkWell done indeed (that is my website, the link is in my post signature). You might also be interested in libyaul, and for actually running code on real hardware without the boondoggle of wasting money on useless old dev consoles there's another project of mine. And of course there's about a decade worth of useful posts on the SegaXtreme Saturn Dev forum.
|
|
antime
Saturn Player
Joined: February 2013
Posts: 86
Location:
|
Post by antime on Jun 26, 2013 20:00:08 GMT
IIRC he posted on SegaXtreme that he had successfully loaded from an emulated CD. It was not by any means complete, but showed that it could be done.
|
|
antime
Saturn Player
Joined: February 2013
Posts: 86
Location:
|
Post by antime on Jun 26, 2013 16:11:02 GMT
One day, we'll have to reverse engineer that VCD port, and make it stock PC compatible. The CD interface has already been reverse-engineered and a proof-of-concept CD emulator demonstrated. Of course if you want to program for the machine there are far simpler methods.
|
|
antime
Saturn Player
Joined: February 2013
Posts: 86
Location:
|
Post by antime on Mar 8, 2013 18:39:55 GMT
The Target Box expanded memory was essentially a RAM cartridge, but could be from 8MB to 32MB. Making a cartridge with similar capacity wouldn't be too difficult.
It may be possible to replace the workram-H SDRAM chips with higher-capacity ones, but it would require cutting traces and soldering in additional address lines.
|
|
antime
Saturn Player
Joined: February 2013
Posts: 86
Location:
|
Post by antime on Feb 10, 2013 15:46:29 GMT
You know that most Saturn mainboards have an unpopulated footprint for a 50/60Hz switch right next to the backup battery? Even if you don't want to or can't use it, there are far easier locations to solder.
|
|
antime
Saturn Player
Joined: February 2013
Posts: 86
Location:
|
Post by antime on Feb 1, 2013 16:15:41 GMT
It's interesting to compare these VA0 schematics to the later, more highly-integrated VA13. Instead of trying to rescan and edit these though I think a lot of it we could recreate manually be rewriting it all into a new document if the quality is an issue for a lot of people. The quality is fine, and frankly I don't know if I'd trust a transcribed version.
|
|