Sega32X emulation

LoGiE

Have just come across an excellent site with all the 32X roms on it
along with there emulator AGES just wondering what you folks make of the 32X and game emulation cause like i say they've got all the roms but I'm not downloadin them all!
Anyone remember a game called T-Mek? well it's on the 32x along with virtual fighter .....Excellent:D

bugs

Quite liked a couple of the games i played a good while ago, virtua racing deluxe, some sort of daytona game.....
It was a blatant attempt to yoink more money off ppl tho, sega's add-ons for the megadrive weren't exactly fantastic, the 32x and the mega-cd, both had the odd good game.
Nice to be able to play them tho, i remember staring at the prices when they first came out and laughing.
Arcade emu of virtua racing is what i want, and maybe daytona as well.

DiscoStu

as i mentioned before 32x emulation is being held back because of the 2 sh2 chips which sega were so fond of in the mid 90s. those bad boys have to be totally in sync or they dont work at all. look at saturn emulators(the saturn also had 2 sh2s in it) on an athlon xp 1700 system it can only manage 25 fps average. emulating them takes a lot, a hell of a lot of cpu cycles to do. i think that we will not see full speed 32x emulation for another year or so. usless trivia time: the orignal 32x system was known for interfering with cordless telephone systems because the sh2 chips operated at the same frequency as the aformentioned phones.

LoGiE

Just realised that maybe some folks looking at this forum may not have a clue what where on about in this thread
so....

The 32x debuted in 1994. It was an add-on for the GenesisMegadrive in ireland. It connects to the Genesis by plugging-in the unit into the Genesis's cartage port. It is said that the 32x increase the speed of the unit by 19x! This increase in performance is possible thanks to its 2 RISC based processors.
The 32X

The Sega 32X added better color (finally), faster performance, and 3D graphics to the Genesis and Sega CD. The whole idea is sort of strange considering that when you get the Genesis and attach a Sega CD and the 32X you now have a huge chunk of hardware worth well over $400 with massive parallel processing power that still pales in comparison to say a Saturn. Still, the whole thing wasn't too bad with some great translations like Virtua Racing Deluxe and Virtua Fighter. The system had a few notable titles released before it's quick demise at the release of the Saturn and Playstation.
The idea of emulating every aspect of the 32X is quite a challenge. You'd have to emulate both the Genesis and the Sega CD first, and then write up your SH-2 core and God knows how the 32X sound processor works. The 32X is another case of someone reverse-engineering the hardware to gain the knowledge to emulate the machine. Even though the 32X, (for the most part) takes over the Genesis unit, it still allows you to play Genesis games by passing through the data from the 32x to the Genesis unit.

Here is the hardware spec also detailing the 2 sh2 chips DiscoStu is talking about

http://www.geocities.com/rabidsmily/Hardware/Sega_32X/Sega32X.html

And finally that rather excellent site i was talking about, which I've also passed on to Ronan|Raven to put in the sticky

http://www.angelfire.com/nm2/dd/index2.html

on an athlon xp 1700 system it can only manage 25 fps average

Says in the readme 32X emulation should be tolerable (though definitely not fullspeed) on an
Intel PIII 500 MHz (frameskip has little effect) and you can play with the SH2 speeds in AGES.INI but then again he does say it would vary from system to system. Anyone with a beast of a machine willing to grab a screenshot with the fps on?

DiscoStu

when i mentioned 25 fps i was talking about Satourne a saturn emulator. i havent had much luck with 32x emulation anyway. i dont like ages anyway its very unstable. my sister has a an athlon xp 1300 so i might dl some the roms off that site(for testing purposes of course) and see what happens.

LoGiE

when i mentioned 25 fps i was talking about Satourne a saturn emulator.

In that case my apologies:) What fps do you get??

i havent had much luck with 32x emulation anyway.

I found using the latest version of AGES crashed constanly so switched back to using 0.27a instead which while doesn't have all the features is stable enough to do while i wait for an upgrade:D

my sister has a an athlon xp 1300 so i might dl some the roms off that site(for testing purposes of course) and see what happens.

Definitly give it a go! and as for testing the roms I've no doubt you'll delete them when your 24hrs is up

It's also interesting to note that this emulator plays megadrive and segaCD games at full speed as well as Sega32X

DiscoStu

not much joy on her system. some things run full speed and others well dont. the sega logo on the start of star wars arcade is a good example. it is a polygon sega logo but the texture is a scrolling mat of smaller sega images. well the ploygon crawls along and the texture map runs fine. very odd.

Firefox

I got hold of a very good 32X Emu called Retrodrive, the framerate is pritty good on my 1.8Ghz System. Viruta Racing Deluxe runs fine but the sound is a bit dodgey.

LoGiE

Firefox I've tried out Retrodrive and proformance was worse then in AGES so i'd say you'd fair a little better if you tried it out over retrodrive. Ages runs more games to;)