Sega System 32

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System32.jpg
Sega System 32
Manufacturer: Sega
Variants: Sega System Multi 32
Release Date RRP Code

Sega System 32 is the name of an arcade platform released by Sega that debuted in 1990. It was a successor to the Sega System 16, Sega System 24 and Sega Y Boards, and contains a 32-bit RISC processor at 16 MHz, hence its name.

It was the last board to be released under the "Sega System" naming scheme, and was the last of the Sega System and Super Scaler series of arcade hardware – the "Sega Model" series would begin in 1992 with the Sega Model 1. Whereas Model 1 hardware was designed specifically with 3D polygon games in mind, System 32 primarily catered for sprite-based games, including 2D games and 3D sprite-scaling games. Like the Sega X Board and Sega Y Board, it is capable of scaling and rotating many sprites/textures in real-time, resulting in graphics ranging from a "pseudo-3D" look to a 3D texture-mapped look.

A variant of this hardware, System Multi 32, was created for use with twin cabinets, specifically for games where more than one player could play on separate screens. The Multi 32 variant was released in 1992. The System 32 series was supported along with the Model 1, due to the latter's lack of hardware texture mapping. They were succeeded by the Sega Model 2, which combined 3D polygons with texture mapping, making both the Model 1 and the System 32 series obsolete. The Sega Saturn console, released in 1994, combined hardware features of the System 32 series with that of the Sega Model series.

Unlike other Sega arcade hardware from this period, few System 32 games have ever been ported to home consoles. A re-imagining of Air Rescue hit European Sega Master Systems in 1992 (which although shares the same name, is almost completely different in design to the arcade version), OutRunners saw a vastly reduced port to the Sega Mega Drive by Data East and Rad Mobile was heavily tweaked and turned into Gale Racer for the Sega Saturn. Everything else seems to have been deemed "too good" for the Mega Drive and "not good enough" for the Saturn.

Hardware

It succeeded the Y Board and System 24, combining features from both. It used a NEC V60 processor at 16.10795 MHz, supporting 32-bit fixed-point instructions as well as 32-bit and 64-bit floating-point instructions. It used a new custom Sega graphics chipset combining the Y Board's three-dimensional Super Scaler capabilities with the System 24's sprite rendering system.

There was another version of the System 32 hardware, called System Multi 32 or System 32 Multi, released in 1992. This was similar to the original, but had a dual-monitor display, a new NEC V70 processor at 20 MHz, a new Sega MultiPCM sound chip, more RAM, and other improvements. This was the last of Sega's Super Scaler series of three-dimensional arcade system boards.

Technical specifications

System 32 specifications

  • Sound CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 8.053975 MHz (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 1.168 MIPS)
  • Sound chips:
  • GPU: Sega 317-5964 chipset @ 50 MHz (315-5242 video DAC/color encoder, 315-5385 system controller/timer, 315-5386/315-5386A tilemap generator, 315-5387 sprite generator, 315-5388 video mixer/color blender)[3][4]
  • Fixed-point arithmetic capabilities: Z-buffering, depth map[5]
  • Memory: Up to 26.57825 MB (2152 KB main, 21.1564 MB video, 3400 KB sound)
    • RAM: 1840.125 KB (103 KB SRAM, 768 KB DP VRAM, 64 KB PSRAM)[6]
      • Main RAM: 584 KB (64 KB work, 8 KB shared, 512 KB random number generator)
      • Video RAM: 1184.125 KB (96 KB SRAM, 768 KB DP VRAM)
        • V60: 320.125 KB (128 KB video, 128 KB sprite attributes, 64 KB palette, 128 bytes mixer)
        • GPU: 864 KB (64 KB 315-5385 controller/timer SRAM, 32 KB 315-5388 mixer/color SRAM,[7] 128 KB 315-5386 tilemap DP VRAM, 128 KB 315-5387 sprite DP VRAM,[8] 512 KB framebuffer DP VRAM)[9]
      • Sound RAM: 72 KB (8 KB SRAM, 64 KB PSRAM)
        • Z80: 12 KB (4 KB RF5c68, 8 KB shared), including 8 KB SRAM[7]
        • RF5c68: 64 KB PSRAM[10]
    • ROM: Up to 24.78125 MB (1568 KB main EPROM, 20 MB video ROM, 3.25 MB sound ROM)[11]
  • Video resolution: 320×224 (display), 416×262 (overscan), progressive scan[6]
  • Graphical capabilities: Color rotations, different levels of luminosity, 7 levels of global RGB color brightness control, fading & lighting, shadow & highlight, 8 levels of alpha blending, tile flipping, line & row scrolling, palette indirection, dynamic priorities, per-color priority, per-component color control[14][15][3]
  • Color palette lookup table: 2,097,152 (4096 palette banks with 512 colors each) to 16,777,216 (with shadow & highlight and 7 levels of RGB brightness control)
    • Colors on screen: 49,152 (16,384 with shadow & highlight), to 71,680 (320×224) with luminosity and alpha blending
  • Graphical planes:[15][3]
    • 4 tilemap background planes: Hardware scaling, line-scrolling, line selection, line zoom, alpha blending, window clipping
    • 1 tilemap text layer
    • 1 bitmap layer
    • 1 background layer
    • 2 sprite layers
  • Sprite/texture capabilities: Linked lists of sprites, double buffering, double-buffered framebuffer, technically infinite sprites of arbitrary size, hardware sprite-scaling, sprite rotation, jumping & clipping capabilities, advanced hot-spot positioning, System 24 sprite rendering system[3][15][16][4]
    • Sprite/texture size: 8 to 1024 or 2048 (11-bit) pixels in width/height
    • Colors per sprite/texture: 16 to 512
    • Sprites/textures per frame: 8192 (128 KB sprite attribute RAM, 16 bytes per sprite)
    • Sprites/textures per second: 491,520
  • Sprite/Texture framebuffer fillrate: 50 MPixels/s
    • Video clock rate: 50 MHz
    • Maximum sprite/texture texels per scanline: 3200
    • Maximum sprites/textures per scanline: 400

System Multi 32 specifications

Sega System Multi 32 featured the following upgrades in 1992:

  • Main CPU: NEC V70 @ 20 MHz
    • Fixed-point arithmetic: 32-bit RISC instructions @ 15 MIPS[2]
    • Floating-point unit: 32-bit and 64-bit operations
  • Sound CPU: 2× Zilog Z80 @ 8.053975 MHz (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 2.336 MIPS)
  • Sound chips:
    • FM synthesis chip: Yamaha YM3438 @ 8.053975 MHz (6 FM channels)
    • PCM sampling chip: Sega MultiPCM (315-5560) @ 8 MHz[14][4] (28 PCM channels)
  • GPU: Sega 171-6253C chipset @ 50 MHz (2× 315-5242 video DAC/color encoder, 315-5385 system controller/timer, 315-5386A tilemap generator, 315-5387 sprite generator, 2× 315-5388 video mixer/color blender)[4]
  • Memory: Up to 28.56 MB (2220.19 KB main, 21.813 MB video, 4688 KB sound)
    • RAM: 2588.4375 KB (200 KB SRAM, 1280 KB DP VRAM, 64 KB PSRAM)[6]
      • Main RAM: 652.1875 KB (128 KB work, 8 KB shared, 512 KB random number generator, 4 KB comm, 192 bytes I/O)
      • Video RAM:1856.25 KB (192 KB SRAM, 1280 KB DP VRAM)
        • V70: 384.25 KB (128 KB video, 128 KB sprite attributes, 128 KB palette, 256 bytes mixer)
        • GPU: 1472 KB (32 KB 315-5242 video DAC/color encoder SRAM,[7] 32 KB 315-5385 controller/timer SRAM, 128 KB 315-5386A tilemap DP VRAM, 128 KB 315-5387 sprite DP VRAM,[9] 128 KB 315-5388 mixer/color SRAM,[17] 1024 KB framebuffer DP VRAM)[9]
      • Sound RAM: 80 KB (8 KB SRAM, 64 KB PSRAM)
        • Z80: 16 KB (8 KB MultiPCM, 8 KB shared), including 8 KB SRAM
        • MultiPCM: 64 KB PSRAM
      • Access time: 25 nanoseconds[18]
    • ROM: Up to 26.03125 MB (1568 KB main, 20 MB video, 4.5 MB sound)[19]
      • Access time: 45 nanoseconds
  • Video resolution: Dual monitor, 640×224 (display), 832×262 (overscan), progressive scan
  • Color palette lookup tables: 4,194,304 (2,097,152 per screen) to 16,777,216 (with shadow & highlight and RGB brightness control)
    • Colors on screen: 98,304 (49,152 per screen) to 143,360 (71,680 per screen)
  • Graphical planes: 4 sprite layers[3]

List of games

System 32

System Multi 32

Magazine articles

Main article: Sega System 32/Magazine articles.

Photo gallery

System 32

  • Main board

  • Main board 2

  • ROM board

  • COMM board

System Multi 32

  • Main board

  • Main board 2

  • ROM board

  • ROM board 2

External links

References

  1. ↑ http://multimedia.cx/NEC_V60pgmRef.pdf
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 http://www.sega-arcade.de/hardware.htm
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Sega 16‑Bit Common Hardware, MAME
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/drivers/segas32.cpp
  5. ↑ Lou's Pseudo 3D Page
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 https://github.com/mamedev/mame/tree/master/src/mame/drivers/segas32.cpp
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 http://www.datasheetarchive.com/MB8464-15L-datasheet.html
  8. ↑ http://www.datasheetarchive.com/dlmain/Datasheets-22/DSA-431594.pdf
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 http://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/view/122826/HITACHI/HM53461ZP-12.html
  10. ↑ File:HM65256B datasheet.pdf
  11. ↑ http://mamedb.com/game/jpark
  12. ↑ File:M27C4002 datasheet.pdf
  13. ↑ File:AT27C010L datasheet.pdf
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 http://www.quarterarcade.com/tech/MAME/src/system32.c.html.aspx
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 htt (Wayback Machine: 2013-01-04 20:22)
  16. ↑ Sega System 24 Hardware Notes (2013-06-16)
  17. ↑ http://www.datasheets360.com/part/detail/m5m5278p-25-i/6860881632730384868/
  18. ↑ http://www.datasheets360.com/pdf/6860881632730384868
  19. ↑ http://mamedb.com/game/orunners


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