SpritesMind.Net

As you already know there is NesDev community. They make a tons of stuff for a NES and FC. And what more important, they do lot of development and testing stuff. There is a bunch of tests with known state after run on actual hardware in order to accuracy emulator test. But these tests perfectly fits for hardware testing, most of them was expanded with hardware only items.

So, I ask the community: is there such tests for Genesis/MD? To run on actual hardware, to distinguish difference between models and their clones. To make some test of different part of Genesis/MD (RAM, VRAM, VDP, IO, Z80, Z80 RAM etc...). Or maybe it is time for make some of them?

As you already know, I build hardware testing dev board and will be very thankful for all kind of hardware test, that run on actual hardware.

I've seen somewhere bunch of Genesis Emulator test ROMs, but I don't remember where it was.
I thought that it was in genplus-gx repo, but I don't see it there.
I'll try to google stuff. But, probably it's not what you looking for.

Edit: it was indeed in genplus-gx repo.
https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comm ... ng_result/
But it's not there anymore. Also there is other links.

During past years, I've made some human-possible checks:
1) BCD opcodes test ROM: does check m68k BCD arithmetic of emulator.
2) Some of vdp tests: plenty of them, I made them to understand better and verify strange (for me) things.
3) Teamplayer reading ROM: just shows buttons pressed.
4) Joypad response time measurement ROM: just shows how fast Genesis can read your joypad that is plugged to your Genesis during ROM is running.
But all of this test ROMs useful only when human is watching screen.

So far, none of them had interest. Ok... actually very small interest was, but it was so low, so I had to ask personaly one guy to check most of them.

Thank you for your reply! I'll glad any available test ROM. Indeed, in most cases user must keep an eye by tests. And this is correct. And I hope we make some complex test for it, include some crazy thing like 512 color screen by Oerg866.

Look for Nemesis' post in the VDP threads, there's one post with a really big VDP test ROM, there's FIFO in the filename IIRC.

This one? Thank you, I'll try it. But maybe it is time to make some kind set for hardware testing? Maybe we should collect already available ones and make some new one? And place it in special part of Nemesis's site, where anyone can find them.

His Sprite Masking test ROM is handy too. You can find it this thread.

Thank you!

Have you found that two packs? Or, I have to track it down?
Ok, one of them here: https://bitbucket.org/eke/genesis-plus- ... d_test.zip
Oh, and VDP_TEST.zip is inside.
There is also on smspower I guess, some test ROMs.

my fellow Arzeno recently found and dumped interesting looking MD cart -

MD Soft Checker Version 0.30
**Prg. by papi**
(C)SEGA 1993.MAR

link
looks like a PITA for emulators - on most of it stuck at failed "Z80 RUN" test, GenPlusGX works fine. but if press left+right or up+down during input test "this port is no requested" will be shown, perhaps because of normally impossible unexpected case

Well, I just tried it on BlastEm (at least the current build I have) and it works just fine there too. Mouse included =D

And yeah, up+down and left+right are actually used sometimes to detect non-controller peripherals, so that could make it think that nothing valid is connected when it polls further and realizes the data is not what it expected.

Sik wrote:Well, I just tried it on BlastEm (at least the current build I have) and it works just fine there too. Mouse included =D

For what it's worth, that's only because I recently made an effort to fix this test ROM in it. One of the tests involves reading and writing to the IO registers used for serial mode. Previously, I had not implemented these at all. Serial mode is still not implemented, but the registers are there now and that is all that is needed to pass that part.