News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Sega Master System Architecture: A Practical Analysis by lostgame on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @11:37AM (#24777808)
Sega Genesis / Mega Drive was the first console I learned to program for, maybe when I was about 11-12 or so and was getting a start at ASM when I found hex editing too limiting in the ROM hacking scene.

The Genesis/MD uses a Z80 processor as its sound processor alone - so it is amazing to me to consider running everything off that on a Sega Master System!

I'm a little obsessed with Sega Saturn homebrew at the moment, or I'd try some SMS homebrew - but the article was fascinating!

Re:Sega Master System Architecture: A Practical Analysis by Grazester on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @12:17PM (#24778311)
Sega Saturn homebrew? I though that was an oxymoron. I love my Saturn like there is no tomorrow but it seemed like to me the homebrew sense was dead due to the whole system architecture. The only thing I hear about is the Z engine which is insane in its capabilities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPYEiDwZbRc

Re:Sega Master System Architecture: A Practical Analysis by mark_mcs on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @03:29PM (#24780532)
It's a shame the scene is so quiet as the Saturn is a fascinating machine. If you use something like Jo Engine then it's not too difficult to get up and running. If you want to roll your own and still have something that performs it gets messy. Stuff like dealing with bus contention between the SH2s, the VDP access timing/slot system, that funky little DSP. You can see why it took so long to get decent libraries for it. It's still fun to see how far you can push the hardware.
Re:Sega Master System Architecture: A Practical Analysis by lostgame on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @02:17PM (#24779745)
https://jo-engine.org

Is a fantastic open-source homebrew platform for the Saturn that the Z-treme engine is based off of.

I recall watching all the phases of the Z-treme's engine's development on the jo-engine forums as XL2 was creating it. So cool to watch. :)