Sega Megadrive Portable

elan · Post by **elan** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 12:11 pm

What is this??? (SPECS)
Where can I buy it??? (EU)
Is there any development flash-cart for homebrew games??? (Megadrive)

evildragon · Post by **evildragon** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 12:17 pm

Why the hell does that thing have Mario on it?

FrozenDelight · Post by **FrozenDelight** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 10:53 pm

These kinds of consoles are usually shite.

Probably the best handheld for Megadrive is the GP2X.

There's also a handheld called OneStation, which aparently has MD games on it. It would be good if it was hacked to play roms though, because it's extremely cheap. Though the hardware is actually in the cartridges, the machine is basically a screen with some buttons.

TmEE co.(TM) · Post by **TmEE co.(TM)** » Fri Aug 17, 2007 7:07 am

I have GP32... not enough for full speed MD emulation... My friend told that GP2X is not well designed though... low budget Korean stuff...

FrozenDelight · Post by **FrozenDelight** » Fri Aug 17, 2007 10:44 am

I had a GP2X. Actually it's really well made, seriously! The first model had some problems but that was ages ago. It's a lovely peace of kit and quite powerful, if anyone gets the chance to try one, I'd recommend it, you won't be disappointed.

That's funny, I thought the GP32 was powerful enough to fun MD games. I remember seeing Doom running on it very well.

TmEE co.(TM) · Post by **TmEE co.(TM)** » Fri Aug 17, 2007 11:15 am

Without sound, MD games run near full speed always, but with sound you'll get lot less, I have to use 11KHz sound to get something between 20 and 30FPS... batteries die too fast... hardcore rechargeables run only 6hours...

Fonzie · Post by **Fonzie** » Fri Aug 17, 2007 12:04 pm

hardcore rechargeables run only 6hours...

Ha? Nomad run 6 hours with 6x1.2v 1900mah batts... With 2400mah, should be quite fine

Sega! What are you waiting for!

Chilly Willy · Post by **Chilly Willy** » Fri Aug 17, 2007 9:39 pm

The PSP running DGen 1.70 is probably the best portable Genesis you'll find. It's full speed on most games, even with 44KHz audio and no frame skipping. Some will require you to bump the CPU speed to 333MHz, but DGen for the PSP allows you to set the CPU speed. You can also bump the speed down for games that don't need the speed, and get longer battery life as a result.

Note that this requires you to either use a homebrew enabler on a supported official Sony firmware, or install a custom firmware. Stock PSPs won't play homebrew out of the box... which is too bad as the PSP is probably the best handheld for homebrew out.

Stef · Post by **Stef** » Sat Aug 18, 2007 10:07 am

Dgen ? I hope there is a port of Genesis Plus, DGen is a poor genesis emulator imo. 333 Mhz is more than enough to handle genesis emulation.

Chilly Willy · Post by **Chilly Willy** » Sat Aug 18, 2007 7:26 pm

Stef wrote:Dgen ? I hope there is a port of Genesis Plus, DGen is a poor genesis emulator imo. 333 Mhz is more than enough to handle genesis emulation.

Yes, I know. Unfortunately, Gens+ has too much x86 assembly. I've started looking into how you do assembly on the PSP. I figure if I have to translate a bunch of x86 assembly to MIPS, maybe I should just do the whole thing in assembly. I used to do 100% assembly programs on the Amiga. That was fun. The x86 is NOT fun. But MIPS looks like fun.

In any case, DGen does at least run Genesis games quite well on the PSP, which was the point of this thread - talking about a "portable" Genesis.

elan · Post by **elan** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 2:32 pm

Well I found this:

16 bit portable game console:

a) Compatible with all SEGA systems /???/
b) Can be the plate for all the MD system /???/
c) With lower power consumption, 100mAh (4pcs of AA butteries can ast
6-10 hours), if use our portable power supply, you can enjoy more than 36 hours)
d) With AV output and can be connected to the TV
e) In-built with loudspeaker and earphone (3.5mm) output
f) With outer power supply input jack and with circuit protect function, the inside circuit will be cut off automatically if the outer power supply connect when the batteries are inside)
g) Color: silver (OEM service is available) /???/
h) TFT, LCD true color with 16M colors
i) Display proportion: 50.9 x 38.16mm
j) Number of dots: 960 x 240

That is dream maschine

Chilly Willy · Post by **Chilly Willy** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 9:58 pm

elan wrote: j) Number of dots: 960 x 240

"Dots"... gotta love those marketing scumbags. Saying a color display has a resolution of 320x240 doesn't sound as good, so count each color pixel separately. 960 sounds MUCH better than 320.

Shiru · Post by **Shiru** » Mon Aug 20, 2007 3:45 am

I'm already told about this device somethere on this forum.

elan wrote:What is this??? (SPECS)

This is .. um.. MegaDrive Portable (MDP), it's named so, and it is so. I.e., specs same as usual SMD, except specs of portable feature itself. Most important of portable specs is battery life. Like said above, it's 6-10 hours.

Note that because portability, this device uses special cartridges. They electrically all same like original (and uses flash memory, although it's currently unknowns if Write signal goes to connector or not), but has smaller size and connector is differs too.

elan wrote:Where can I buy it??? (EU)

MDP solds anywere in Russia, but it produced by DongGuan DeWei Electronics CO.,LTD, China. So it possibly solds somethere else (maybe in China itself?). In Russia it costs about $45-50. Cartriges costs about $6. Games on cartridges is hacked (sometimes title of games changed to title of popular movie or something like that) and translated to russian versions of famous SMD games. There is some games which originally had save supports, but MPD cartridges has no save hardware, so saves just don't work.

elan wrote:Is there any development flash-cart for homebrew games??? (Megadrive)

Some russian people works for it. Some goes by way of passive adapter, which allow to connect standart SMD cartrigde to MDP; others goes by way of research, how to reuse flash memory in cartridges. That's all surely doable, but I don't know if anybody did any progress currently.

Other info. This device produced poorly, early versions has problems with LCD (loud sounds can affect to picture). But that's very cheap device, so what you want for this price..

About MDP vs. SMD emulation on other portable devices. First, MDP is not emulator. It always works on 50fps, it has real sound (altough somewhat noisy, by some reports), it has 6-10 hours of battery life. It even has TV-out (do you know many handhelds with built-in TV-out?). Emulation requires much expensive hardwave (compare prices of PSP or suitable PDA with MDP's $45), and emulation quality far from ideal. Maybe hardware allow to make good emulation, but emulators which currently exists, has not very quality emulation - sometimes slow, or without sound, or some games just does not work, etc. So MDP definitely has some advantages.

Stef wrote:333 Mhz is more than enough to handle genesis emulation.

Unfortunately, seems that emulators authors don't know about that. I never seen fullspeed SMD emulation with sound on my 400MHz PocketPC.

Chilly Willy · Post by **Chilly Willy** » Mon Aug 20, 2007 5:27 am

Shiru wrote: About MDP vs. SMD emulation on other portable devices. First, MDP is not emulator. It always works on 50fps, it has real sound (altough somewhat noisy, by some reports), it has 6-10 hours of battery life. It even has TV-out (do you know many handhelds with built-in TV-out?). Emulation requires much expensive hardwave (compare prices of PSP or suitable PDA with MDP's $45), and emulation quality far from ideal. Maybe hardware allow to make good emulation, but emulators which currently exists, has not very quality emulation - sometimes slow, or without sound, or some games just does not work, etc. So MDP definitely has some advantages.

Yes, no doubt about that. Real hardware normally beats emulation.

Stef wrote:333 Mhz is more than enough to handle genesis emulation.
Unfortunately, seems that emulators authors don't know about that. I never seen fullspeed SMD emulation with sound on my 400MHz PocketPC.

That's sad. Some of the original PC-DOS Genesis emulators (done in 95%+ assembly) would work well with 120 MHz Pentiums. When SEGACD support started to appear, they bumped the requirements to a 500 MHz Celeron for full speed. That was the beginning of the "throw more speed at it" solution people were starting to take for emulations. It seems most emulators today are really poor C++. Gens+ at least has certain routines done in assembly to help bring the speed requirements down.

Shiru · Post by **Shiru** » Mon Aug 20, 2007 6:23 am

In case of small devices like today's PDA's, smartphones, and current-gen handhelds, assembler is not solution. These devices often has relatively fast RISC CPU's (like ARM) with really slow memory. So, it's comes very hard to make hand-written code works faster than today's optimizing C compilers generate. They still generate bunch of crap, but that crap can works (if written specially for given architecture) as fast as your beautiful and perfect code - because in the end all limited by memory speed. Only advantage in writing for these devices in assembly - you always can write much shorter code than compiler generate.

So there is no problem with C/C++ itself, there is more problem with understanding of architecture of small devices and with optimization of algorithms and it's C/C++ code for RISC CPU's and slow memory.