... If this means what I think it does, this is huge. Do you know how difficult it's been for people to try to poke around in the Saturn because of its esoteric architecture? Saturn emulators are notoriously difficult to develop, because how are you supposed to start emulating a system that has two CPU sockets and uses quadrilaterals for its 3D primitives (in defiance of everything else using triangles) with zero dev docs?
Unfortunately, there does not seem to be much in the way of Saturn docs here. I see some stuff for the CD drive and file system, a boot rom, and a doc on the CPUs (which, while hard to emulate due to there being two of them, use a standard instruction set that's well-documented), but nothing on the video processors. So it probably isn't as huge as it could be.
Though there is a "Super Mega Drive Manual", and I can't figure out exactly what it's talking about. I'm pretty sure it's some sort of hardware revision to the Mega Drive, but maybe it's a super-early Saturn thing?
Could be the 32X, 'cuz I was thinking was kinda weird to have this info-dump on the the SEGA CD as well as the base Genesis and Saturn but not have the other Genesis add-on in there. I also believe the 32X had a codename involving "Super" at one point, unless I'm misremembering.
The codename for the 32X was 'Mars' but it was sold in Japan as the Super 32X. Chances are that's what it is.
I've had access to plenty of Saturn manuals for years. Saturn documentation, libs & stuff
Oh and the Saturn has 8 processors, not 2.
Eight overall processors, but two CPUs. This was also way before multi-core machines were a common thing and the two were in separate "sockets" (yes, I realize they were hard-wired to the motherboard; you know what I mean).
From a layman's perspective I remember that the Saturn has the same dual SH-2 processors as the 32X, but then SoJ added a really bad 3D coprocessor as a kneejerk when they saw the PlayStation.
Before the PSX came on the scene, the Saturn was supposed to be the best 32-bit sprite processing machine out there, and this shows very well in Saturn sprite-based games. I know it's a completely different idea in a modern engine for modern machines, but I like to think of Sonic Mania as the perfect idea of what a Saturn game could've been (and that was one of Mania's design goals iirc). Of course the Saturn still has some 3D in it before the kneejerk, but it probably wasn't much more than what the launch titles showed.
In short, as soon as Sony dropped the PlayStation, the Saturn's sprite-heavy design was already handicapped.
From what I remember it was an over engineered mess even before the 3d. The custom sound chip you programmed through a 32bit version of the CPU in the mac portable and the CDROM you dealt with through yet another Hitachi CPU. You can only pin the second SH-2 and the funky VDP on the playstation.
From what I've read it always had the second SH2 because the 32X had it too. The 32X was made by Sega of Japan to be as close to the Saturn as possible so that developers could be good at programming it by the time the Saturn dropped.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
