Sega Tech Docs archive

Ask anything your want about Megadrive/Genesis programming.

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Nemesis
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Sega Tech Docs archive

Post by Nemesis » Tue Aug 27, 2019 12:53 pm

Hi guys, I've been working away at something for the last couple of weeks. I have a lot of documentation, tools, images, and other bits and bobs archived for all kinds of Sega systems. Like, a lot, over 15 years worth. I've been trawling through it lately, trying to organise things better, catalogue it all, clean it up, etc, so I can put it all online in an accessible form. This isn't a simple document dump, it takes a long time to make sure things are properly named, described, and in a clean form. I just did a big update and pushed the first stage of content for the Mega Drive and Saturn. If you're interested in development or emulation for these systems, you might want to check it out. I guarantee you'll find something you haven't seen before.

http://techdocs.exodusemulator.com - Main site
http://techdocs.exodusemulator.com/Cons ... MegaDrive/ - Mega Drive landing page

As a fun bonus, the Saturn docs section contains the contents of the Japanese "Developer’s Documentation Volume 1" CD, which as far as I can tell nobody has actually released publicly online yet (which I didn't realize until today), so if you have an interest in the Saturn there's a few hundred pages of brand new documentation there covering just about everything to do with the system, so enjoy. Most of the other PDF documentation has also been re-packed by me to perform OCR, split/combine/reorder where appropriate, or remove PDF restrictions in the case of most of the Saturn docs (so you can actually copy paste now!), so even if you have most of these files already, you might want to check if there's a better version provided here.

There's a lot more to go after this update. I've really only added the official docs up for these systems so far, along with some official tools/software and some hardware info for the Mega Drive. There's a ton of more content to add for the 32x and Saturn, not to mention a lot of hardware pics and hardware version comparison info, then there's other consoles like the Dreamcast, and I've got the entire arcade space I'm biting off too, and that's before I even talk about community research and tools, or my own notes.

I'll be adding to this site on an ongoing basis, probably in bursts off and on for the next few years. It's all a bit raw right now, but there's some good stuff up at this point worth checking out, so I'm putting it out there a bit more. Please let me know what you think.

Stef
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Re: Sega Tech Docs archive

Post by Stef » Tue Aug 27, 2019 1:10 pm

Wow :shock: That is really really nice to have all these centralized in one place ! Thanks for having spent the time to archive and organize all that, i hope you will be able to complete it with time. That will be the definitely place to visit for sega tech docs !

TmEE co.(TM)
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Re: Sega Tech Docs archive

Post by TmEE co.(TM) » Tue Aug 27, 2019 3:32 pm

This is really nice, it is really nice to have everything in one nice place ~
You're free to grab any new things I have gathered up also : http://www.tmeeco.eu/SMD/ http://www.tmeeco.eu/SMS/
Mida sa loed ? Nagunii aru ei saa ;)
http://www.tmeeco.eu
Files of all broken links and images of mine are found here : http://www.tmeeco.eu/FileDen

cero
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Re: Sega Tech Docs archive

Post by cero » Tue Aug 27, 2019 5:36 pm

Are the japanese disc docs in japanese?

djcouchycouch
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Re: Sega Tech Docs archive

Post by djcouchycouch » Tue Aug 27, 2019 7:21 pm

Amazing!

Nemesis
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Re: Sega Tech Docs archive

Post by Nemesis » Wed Aug 28, 2019 12:15 am

cero wrote:
Tue Aug 27, 2019 5:36 pm
Are the japanese disc docs in japanese?
Yep, fully Japanese, but I'm working on a translated version now. In the interim, the built-in translation tools in Google Chrome make it fairly usable.

Nemesis
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Re: Sega Tech Docs archive

Post by Nemesis » Wed Aug 28, 2019 1:17 am

TmEE co.(TM) wrote:
Tue Aug 27, 2019 3:32 pm
This is really nice, it is really nice to have everything in one nice place ~
You're free to grab any new things I have gathered up also : http://www.tmeeco.eu/SMD/ http://www.tmeeco.eu/SMS/
Thanks, I've already mined your webspace though. ;)

One nice thing about the way I've got this setup right now is that it literally costs me nothing to host. I'm using gitlab pages for the site (which is free), and backing the filestore with free google drive storage, where I extract direct links for each file through their API. If I blow the 15GB limit for a free google drive, I just spin up a second account, or a third, and so on. And if Google shut me down, plan B is to upload everything to a space on archive.org and direct link it. Google drive is really handy though, as I upload new files just by dropping them in a synced folder on my PC, and I update the website just by pushing to a git repo, which triggers Gitlab to rebuild the website in about 30 seconds. Really simple to manage.

Asagoth
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Re: Sega Tech Docs archive

Post by Asagoth » Wed Aug 28, 2019 7:57 am

Nemesis wrote:
Tue Aug 27, 2019 12:53 pm
Hi guys, I've been working away at something for the last couple of weeks. I have a lot of documentation, tools, images, and other bits and bobs archived for all kinds of Sega systems. Like, a lot, over 15 years worth. I've been trawling through it lately, trying to organise things better, catalogue it all, clean it up, etc, so I can put it all online in an accessible form. This isn't a simple document dump, it takes a long time to make sure things are properly named, described, and in a clean form. I just did a big update and pushed the first stage of content for the Mega Drive and Saturn. If you're interested in development or emulation for these systems, you might want to check it out. I guarantee you'll find something you haven't seen before.

http://techdocs.exodusemulator.com - Main site
http://techdocs.exodusemulator.com/Cons ... MegaDrive/ - Mega Drive landing page

As a fun bonus, the Saturn docs section contains the contents of the Japanese "Developer’s Documentation Volume 1" CD, which as far as I can tell nobody has actually released publicly online yet (which I didn't realize until today), so if you have an interest in the Saturn there's a few hundred pages of brand new documentation there covering just about everything to do with the system, so enjoy. Most of the other PDF documentation has also been re-packed by me to perform OCR, split/combine/reorder where appropriate, or remove PDF restrictions in the case of most of the Saturn docs (so you can actually copy paste now!), so even if you have most of these files already, you might want to check if there's a better version provided here.

There's a lot more to go after this update. I've really only added the official docs up for these systems so far, along with some official tools/software and some hardware info for the Mega Drive. There's a ton of more content to add for the 32x and Saturn, not to mention a lot of hardware pics and hardware version comparison info, then there's other consoles like the Dreamcast, and I've got the entire arcade space I'm biting off too, and that's before I even talk about community research and tools, or my own notes.

I'll be adding to this site on an ongoing basis, probably in bursts off and on for the next few years. It's all a bit raw right now, but there's some good stuff up at this point worth checking out, so I'm putting it out there a bit more. Please let me know what you think.
I've sent you a PM...

BigEvilCorporation
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Re: Sega Tech Docs archive

Post by BigEvilCorporation » Wed Aug 28, 2019 1:21 pm

Fantastic stuff! I'm just going through all my stuff to see if I can add to the pile.

I have the Elliot Gay copy of those 32X manuals, there's a big chunk missing (that seems to have been replaced with random SH2 docs) but I've scanned pages 64 and 65 so your copy is complete at least. Page 65 is an interesting one to go missing, juicy juicy info.

My tech bulletins only go up to #30, unfortunately.

I've got these to add:

- ZAX ERX318 User's Manual
- ZAX ERX318 Command Manual
- SNASM68K.EXE User's Manual
- SNASM68K Console and Z80 Notes
- SNASM2 68000 Development System User's Manual
- SNASM2 Genesis Brochure
- SNASM2 Price List May 95 (UK)
- SNASM2 Price List May 95 (US)
- Corvus Systems ASM68k Manual
- 32X Hardware Manual Supplement 2 Revision 2
- 32X Hardware Manual Attachment 3
- 32X Map Editor User's Manual
- SEGA DTS Newsletter 0197
- Hitachi SH2 Programming Manual

I'll get the rest scanned in the upcoming days, unless you already have some of these elsewhere.
A blog of my Megadrive programming adventures: http://www.bigevilcorporation.co.uk

BigEvilCorporation
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Re: Sega Tech Docs archive

Post by BigEvilCorporation » Wed Aug 28, 2019 1:27 pm

Haha I've just noticed you have a "partial" scan of the Elliot Gay 32X manual, pages 35-48, in your Google Drive. That's precisely the chunk missing from mine!

Do you have the physical copy?
A blog of my Megadrive programming adventures: http://www.bigevilcorporation.co.uk

tryphon
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Re: Sega Tech Docs archive

Post by tryphon » Wed Aug 28, 2019 1:28 pm

Huge move. Thank you all for gathering this...

Nemesis
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Re: Sega Tech Docs archive

Post by Nemesis » Wed Aug 28, 2019 2:05 pm

BigEvilCorporation wrote:
Wed Aug 28, 2019 1:27 pm
Haha I've just noticed you have a "partial" scan of the Elliot Gay 32X manual, pages 35-48, in your Google Drive. That's precisely the chunk missing from mine!

Do you have the physical copy?
Today's your lucky day!
Image
If you've got the rest of the manual though, can I beg a favour from you? The Rex Sabio scans suck, and the 32x hardware manual we have is actually missing content, as I note on the site (pages 64 and 65). If you have 32x docs, could you get high quality scans taken of everything you have, so we can get better copies online? If you'll do that, the pages are yours for free!

An interesting note, the Rex Sabio scans are actually from "pre-release" versions of the manual too. Rex Sabio was a programmer at Sega, and he was given early copies, which he did some hand-edits on to make corrections, which were then fixed in the final versions that went out to third parties. At some point in the mid to late 90's, Sega put digital copies of the Mega Drive/MegaCD/32x manuals online on the DTS website or BBS, and they did that by taking Rex Sabio's manuals, and running them through a document scanner. That's where those versions come from. They were pre-release docs though, with scans done on a 90's scanner, and saved as optimized gif images, so yeah, not the best quality. If you can scan your 32x docs, that'd be great! Can you give an inventory of what you have?

Nemesis
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Re: Sega Tech Docs archive

Post by Nemesis » Wed Aug 28, 2019 2:08 pm

Ahh, too many replies at once, missed you bigger post above. Kudos for the missing pages (lol at 65 being blank!). If you can do full scans of what you have to share at some point though, that'd be great. A few of the things you listed are up elsewhere (IE, the ZAX ERX318 manuals are with the system under the development hardware section), but anything you've got that you haven't seen please let me know. I've also got other content to add that's not up yet, mainly just did the official system docs so far.

BigEvilCorporation
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Re: Sega Tech Docs archive

Post by BigEvilCorporation » Wed Aug 28, 2019 8:29 pm

Yes no problem, I'll get high res scans, and a full inventory, when I'm back at the office tomorrow.
A blog of my Megadrive programming adventures: http://www.bigevilcorporation.co.uk

Hpman
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Re: Sega Tech Docs archive

Post by Hpman » Thu Aug 29, 2019 12:01 pm

Microtec manuals for assembler and C compiler:

https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/ ... -librarian
https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/ ... konstanzde

Mirrored the PDF files if you don't feel like registering: https://www.dropbox.com/s/p6bu5gczw06s6 ... c.zip?dl=0

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