Sega System C

From Sega Retro

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The Sega System C is an arcade board used by Sega between 1989 and 1994 (though it was later used by Atlus for their Print Club series). A slight update called the Sega System C2 was introduced in 1990. The Columns manual claims the hardware was called Sega System 14.

Hardware

The System C hardware is built on top of the Sega Mega Drive with a few differences that make them incompatible:

  • The 68000 is clocked at 9Mhz. The Z80 was removed; the faster 68000 allows it to handle sound without slowdown in games.
  • The VDP no longer uses its internal CRAM for palettes. Instead, it relies on external hardware to provide color information. The hardware is capable of producing 4096 possible colors which can be fed to the VDP in a variety of ways.
  • The YM2612 was replaced with its CMOS equivalent, the YM3438.

The System C2 adds a NEC µPD7759 ADPCM sample playback chip and a sample ROM which can be banked (as the chip can only access 128KB of samples at a time). This serves as a replacement for using the YM2612's DAC for samples, and has the extra advantage of not needing to constantly provide sample data to the chip — it merely sets the sample ROM bank and writes a sample number to play. However, the chip can only play one sample at a time.

List of System C Games

List of System C2 Games


Sega arcade boards
Originating in arcades









Console-based hardware








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PC-based hardware








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