SpritesMind.Net

Hi,

I thought it would be a wise idea to post this here, since this is.. y'know... the focal point of discussion on SpritesMind.

The Mega Drive Wiki hosted by Tristanseifert on his wesbite (squee.co), aims to provide as much complete and correct information on the Mega Drive, Mega CD and 32X as well as details on other associated hardware as possible, in one centralised place. All articles are conveniently grouped into categories for easy retrieval later.

It would be nice if we could get a project going where the real knowledgeable people (like many people here are) to slowly work together to create and polish a perfectly good Mega Drive (and maybe even 32x/CD) documentation, and ultimately help catapult developments around the system forward as fast as it went with the SNES.

Please check it out: http://md.squee.co/wiki

All the best,
Eric

Quick note, due to the amount of spam and such, there's no way to register your own account, so if any of y'all need one, PM me and I'll figure something out.

So yeah, hopefully we can all compile a bunch of info on the MD, MCD and 32X, so we can have a correct and accurate reference that's not balls quality scans that have been faxed a billion times.

(Psst, http://md.squee.co/wiki/VDP is my favourite article. =P)

tristanseifert wrote:Quick note, due to the amount of spam and such, there's no way to register your own account, so if any of y'all need one, PM me and I'll figure something out.

I run a fairly big Mediawiki site, and setting up QuestyCaptcha really helped block out bot registrations. It only works if you have a decent number of questions for it to cycle though, the more you have the harder it is to predict the answers. But it's very effective, since a lot of bots can register through image-based Captchas now.

Looks promising though. Some of the articles seem a bit oddly written, like written as an advertisement (see: the YM2612 article introduction). Try using neutral wording instead, so it's more 'informative' than trying to sell features of the chip. Think about what audience you're targeting, the people looking at the wiki probably already know what the parts are and want more info. You don't want it to be 'fan propaganda' but good, useful information.

Another thing, the articles could use a lot more 'meat' than just register listings. Taking the YM2612 article as an example, you could set it up like:

*Intro body ('OPN2 is the primary sound generation chip', etc.)
*TOC
*Details that preceed details section, but doesn't include the same info (development history and concept, implementation in devices)
*Main functional units (basic FM generation theory and the respective functional units on-chip, how the EG and PG works, the LFO, the output section, PCM replacing Ch6's FM, maybe include labelled chip die scan). Register listings in 'Registers' subpage (YM2612/Registers).
*Instrument patch information (All the different values and how they affect the sound, algorithms, Op1 self-feedback, LFO settings, etc.)
*Song programming information (song composition/programming, sound drivers and using them, etc.)
*Other sections I might not've thought about
*Available software/utilities, external links

Kind of a big response, but I hope this helps. =]

You mean we shouldn't make an article about Blast Processing?

Kidding aside, I guess you're right. It's not a priority as of now, as the current stage is still filling the wiki with information.

tristanseifert wrote:Quick note, due to the amount of spam and such, there's no way to register your own account, so if any of y'all need one, PM me and I'll figure something out.

So yeah, hopefully we can all compile a bunch of info on the MD, MCD and 32X, so we can have a correct and accurate reference that's not balls quality scans that have been faxed a billion times.

(Psst, http://md.squee.co/wiki/VDP is my favourite article. =P)

On the topic of the VDP, does anyone here own a MD1 with a non-ceramic VDP chip? Like on this image:

the pictured mega drive is a prototype, before the Sega-branded chips went into mass production. The VDP there is still labelled by its yamaha part number, YM7101.

So I'm afraid not....

Doubt anyone would have one of those, since that "goldium" chip is indicative of it being part of a prototype run.

(Also, chips are usually plastic on the MD. =P)

EDIT: Bah, Oerg beat me to it...

How would this be different than Eidolon's Inn?

This is meant to replace the official hardware docs for use in development (Genesis Software manual, "sega2f", etc.). This is really about technical information for all parts of the MD/32x/CD hardware.

But I suppose if you had actually clicked the link you'd have found out yourself.

Oerg866 wrote:the pictured mega drive is a prototype, before the Sega-branded chips went into mass production. The VDP there is still labelled by its yamaha part number, YM7101.

So I'm afraid not....

Not necessarily: Sega re-used prototype chips whenever they were working, in retail units. Many early Mega CDs and Saturns were found with EPROM bios chips for example, and the Saturn Sophia devkits have engineering sample chips in them.

Well good luck finding a japanese VA0 model 1 MD somewhere... I'd say they're about as rare as a friggin Voodoo 5 6000 :/

No need to get snarky. I think determining the purpose of the wiki was a valid question.

Eidolon's Inn at one time had technical documentation on it, though a lot of links seem to be broken there now and pieces missing. That seems to be quite the problem with resource for Genesis development. A site pops up, lots of useful info is put in place and then eventually the maintainer of that site loses interest and the links start to break. (Half the link on genny4ever.net for example)

I really do like the idea of a more centralized repository of development information related to the Sega Genesis. Searching forums isn't always the most efficient method.

I know that SGDK at code.google.com has some useful wiki entries. I don't have to worry that these would go away if one person decides to stop paying for hosting. Is there a blogger of wikis?

kubilus1 wrote:No need to get snarky. I think determining the purpose of the wiki was a valid question.

Eidolon's Inn at one time had technical documentation on it, though a lot of links seem to be broken there now and pieces missing. That seems to be quite the problem with resource for Genesis development. A site pops up, lots of useful info is put in place and then eventually the maintainer of that site loses interest and the links start to break. (Half the link on genny4ever.net for example)

I really do like the idea of a more centralized repository of development information related to the Sega Genesis. Searching forums isn't always the most efficient method.

I know that SGDK at code.google.com has some useful wiki entries. I don't have to worry that these would go away if one person decides to stop paying for hosting. Is there a blogger of wikis?

A friend of mine is dealing with the hosting for this, and he has no intentions of getting rid of the server. I make pretty frequent backups of the site to my computer, so if anything were to happen, I can get it back up and running quickly — So I don't think the wiki ceasing to exist is going to be a problem.

Broken links within the wiki itself should not be a problem due to the way the wiki works, but I can't control if or when external sites go down, so it's best to just mirror their information on the wiki.

Oerg866 wrote:Well good luck finding a japanese VA0 model 1 MD somewhere... I'd say they're about as rare as a friggin Voodoo 5 6000 :/

I already have one. They go up on ebay all the time. Sadly it doesn't have any unusual parts, but then the serial number of it is in the high 50 thousand or so.

Hello tristanseifert,

As you know I have a wiki too about md dev.
I've seen that you've decided to do like me and provide chip pinouts.
Problem is you probably copied some info from my wiki cause you have an error that I've made on the 315-5309 diagram.
I've corrected mine so feel free to update yours.