Sega Saturn Core in Development

[Waifu4Life]

srg320 made a minor update to some of the github docs about a week ago, so still alive!

Really, where? It's not on the Saturn page that's for sure: https://github.com/srg320/Saturn_MiSTer

[FPGA64]

srg320 made a minor update to some of the github docs about a week ago, so still alive!

Rather poor taste to make a still alive post about someone in an active warzone.

[djsquare]

srg320 made a minor update to some of the github docs about a week ago, so still alive!

Rather poor taste to make a still alive post about someone in an active warzone.

ah come on. I don't think they meant to be morbid about it

[dmckean]

Yes, it's literal. We're all worried about Sergey and hope that he's still alive.

[Mr. Encyclopedia]

srg320 made a minor update to some of the github docs about a week ago, so still alive!

Really, where? It's not on the Saturn page that's for sure: https://github.com/srg320/Saturn_MiSTer

This isn't the point, but it looks like he's been working on I/O logs for various Saturn chips, most recently the SCP a few days ago. Github has a nifty contributions graph on his main page that shows his activity, which is about as steady as you could hope for from someone working in a war zone with limited internet access.

[Waifu4Life]

This isn't the point, but it looks like he's been working on I/O logs for various Saturn chips, most recently the SCP a few days ago. Github has a nifty contributions graph on his main page that shows his activity, which is about as steady as you could hope for from someone working in a war zone with limited internet access.

I only had his Saturn Github page bookmarked, so didn't know he had another one.

[Xbytez]

Awesome news to see Sergey is safe and has been able to post a development update on the Saturn core!

[Waifu4Life]

Not only on Patreon, but on Twitter as well, happy he's doing well. Let's hope this stupid war ends before the end of the year

[crandal]

Anyone have any success with the latest saturn core? I can't run any games on it. I had to comment out some connections whose declarations were conditionally defined with a debug macro, but the assignments weren't. Don't know if some problems arose from that. I don't have time to dig deep for about a week but I'm interested to hear if anyone was able to run some games with it. Getting the daytona rom to run would make my day.

[mapf]

Some debug options were wrongly enabled by default. See https://github.com/srg320/Saturn/commit ... b1a35dac62

[C-R-T]

New update! Core works a lot better now. Single SDRAM version included in this post.

[Neocaron]

Awesome to see!

[jurkevicz]

Anybody has the Dual Ram Version?

[FPGA64]

From the Discord. Dual Ram

[Atohmdiy]

I try the core but couldn't boot anything. I rename the right bios boot.rom, but i have nothing, is suspect direct video is not working yet, only VGA ?

[deimos256]

Which BIOS are you trying?

[gomadosnitro]

It Seems single ram is working in some modules, i have 2 Mister with two 128Mb different modules of ram but is working in one of them.
The not working module has 4 memory chips.

[FPGA64]

From what I remember 4 chip is not the standard design and has timing issues. Best to stick to the official 2 Chip design

[C-R-T]

I try the core but couldn't boot anything. I rename the right bios boot.rom, but i have nothing, is suspect direct video is not working yet, only VGA ?

Direct video doesn’t work well. It kinda worked for me with one adapter and absolutely not with another (though both work with other all other cores except PS1). I have not tried the latest core with either adapter, I admitted defeat and reverted to analog out.

[Hobbesgoblin]

It Seems single ram is working in some modules, i have 2 Mister with two 128Mb different modules of ram but is working in one of them.
The not working module has 4 memory chips.

The Core uses same very special tricks to makle the RAM work, like direct page adressing.

This only works for two chip ram, wich is the standard per the hardware description of MiSTer, because the memory adresses are simply different for 4 module RAM.

[wookeekee]

i think there's a problem with the repo. During the build process, there are some relative paths to seem to leave the project folder. For example:

Yes. You need to grab the 'Saturn' repo and the 'SH' repo.

Saturn: https://github.com/srg320/Saturn
SH: https://github.com/srg320/SH

Put them in the folder above the Saturn-mister, and start your build.

Do I need to do the same thing? I'm asking because Quartus Prime lite edition 17.1 gave me an error... Missing .qip file.

[MadDog]

Do I need to do the same thing? I'm asking because Quartus Prime lite edition 17.1 gave me an error... Missing .qip file.

Just grab the latest Test Build RBF. Follow the ReadMe instructions here:
https://github.com/srg320/Saturn_MiSTer#test-builds

[pva]

Just grab the latest Test Build RBF. Follow the ReadMe instructions here:
https://github.com/srg320/Saturn_MiSTer#test-builds

This is an unexpected, yet welcome development! Thanks for making it happen, Boogerman!

[Beeble]

I mean if you want to do the work and make sure you coordinate with Kuba who is building and sharing the cores on Discord I don't see any reason why not. It's probably more work than is necessary since the Saturn isn't going to get the rapid update cadence that the PSX got, but on the other hand I don't like the way communities hide their knowledge and updates on non-public facing places like Discord servers. There's probably more than a few MiSTer users who aren't on the discord and have no easy way to get access to these files and a script could certainly help them.

Yeah thats a problem, I dont use discord and he's not a member on this board.

Would be amazing if some solution could be found. Like the psx update script a lot!

[Akuma]

I mean if you want to do the work and make sure you coordinate with Kuba who is building and sharing the cores on Discord I don't see any reason why not. It's probably more work than is necessary since the Saturn isn't going to get the rapid update cadence that the PSX got, but on the other hand I don't like the way communities hide their knowledge and updates on non-public facing places like Discord servers. There's probably more than a few MiSTer users who aren't on the discord and have no easy way to get access to these files and a script could certainly help them.

Yeah thats a problem, I dont use discord and he's not a member on this board.

Would be amazing if some solution could be found. Like the psx update script a lot!

If Kuba can make the compiled cores available on github , I can make an updater script for it.

[pva]

If Kuba can make the compiled cores available on github , I can make an updater script for it.

The test build artefacts are already available on GH, could your script use them?

[Akuma]

If Kuba can make the compiled cores available on github , I can make an updater script for it.

The test build artefacts are already available on GH, could your script use them?

There seem to be no download links attached to the artifacts.

[FPGA64]

If Kuba can make the compiled cores available on github , I can make an updater script for it.

The test build artefacts are already available on GH, could your script use them?

There seem to be no download links attached to the artifacts.

You have to be logged into github

[Akuma]

The test build artefacts are already available on GH, could your script use them?

There seem to be no download links attached to the artifacts.

You have to be logged into github

Then so must the end-user running this script, and that wont work.

[pva]

There seem to be no download links attached to the artifacts.

You have to be logged into github

Then so must the end-user running this script, and that wont work.

You could require the user to supply a personal access token in an .ini file, but I suppose that would leave less tech-savvy users high and dry.