0.136u1 [David Haywood]
NOTE:
- PCB video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rlAQZDOIMU
WIP:
- 0.154: Roberto Fresca fixed Vega text layer. Tafoid added GAME_NOT_WORKING and GAME_IMPERFECT_GRAPHICS flags.
- 0.148u1: Added notes to Vega [hap]. Hardware seems like an evolution of Olympia's Monza GP.
- 0.146u5: Updated Vega driver. Still NOT WORKING, but some progress has been made [Tomasz Slanina]. Changed I8035 CPU1 clock speed to 4MHz. Added AY-3-8910A (1500000 Hz) sound and mono Speaker. Changed visible area to 240x281. Added Player 1, 8-way Joystick, 3x buttons and 2x coin slots. Added dipswitches '2x Coin A', 'Speed', 'Ext Play at', 'Bomb Speed', '1-3', '1-4', '1-5', '1-6' and '1-7'.
- 0.146u4: Fill in known information for Vega [Brian Troha].
- 2nd January 2012: Tomasz Slanina - I have recently got Vega PCB (Olympia 1982). Special thanks to Mark Frisbee for help. Unfortunately board has few faults ( no sound, gfx glitches ) and inverted colors (like early Nintendo boards). Theres a couple solutions for the latter problem. I have decided to mod the PCB a bit and invert the digital signals before the DAC (made of resistors). Here's a video from attract mode (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rlAQZDOIMU&feature=player_embedded).
- 12th March 2010: Tomasz Slanina - It's full of stars! - Vega, part3: I was wrong - there's no "type 3" sprite. It's just a background layer made of 16 different 32x32 pixel tiles. Tilemap (128x8 cells (4096x256 pixels), animated (flashing stars and texts) ) is hardcoded inside one of EPROMs used as a lookup. Here's a screenshot from game - shows only the most boring part of bg - stars. Game is not playable yet so i can't see other levels/backgrounds. These images are ripped directly from the tilemap (wrong colros, as usually). There's also an interesting hw feature - background can be stretched horizontally (in fact - vertically (div scanline clock by 2), because screen is rotated by 90 deg). It's probably used only (?) to display the planet surface.
- 10th March 2010: Tomasz Slanina - 25 light-years away from home - Vega, part 2: The good news, i have got scans of vega schematics (big thanks to Kold666). The bad news, hardware is quite old (early 80s .. possibly 1982 or 1983) (read: unique and complicated) and schematics are buggy as hell. The biggest problem so far, no reference images/screenshots/flyer pics. Nothing. I have no idea about the real game. So any info will be greatly appreciated. Schematics are as mysterious as the PCB pics i got, no info about the major ICs. But looking at pinout i have identifed all of them as: I8035 (MCU), AY 3-8910 (Sound), PPI 8255 (I/O), INS 8154 (I/O + RAM) and DP 8350 (CRT controller). AY is used only for generating sfx. Afaik there's no music. Sound chip is connected in unusual way, AY data lines are tied to address bus and AY address/data write selection is connected to MCU R/W line. So, writing any data to address NNN within range mapped to AY, results in setting AY address register to value NNN. Reading from address MMM store MMM in AY data register. Weird, isn't? So far, the most complicated to emulate was the type 2 player sprite. It's auto-animated (based on vblank counter). There's also a 256x4 PROM used as a lookup table , connected in a bit weird way. I'm using a test/temporary formula (XML) to draw the sprite. And now few fresh screenshots. Sprite positions (type1 and type2 (last pic)) and colors may be wrong.
- 18th February 2010: Corrado Tomaselli provided schematics for Vega.
- 16th February 2010: Tomasz Slanina - This time the workshop VEGA (Italian production - Olympia). The beginnings are promising, for now works only text layer (probably on the controller crt DP8350). A whole is controlled by CPU Intel 8035. The rest of the hardware known. One of the few photos available of PCBs most important IC is worn signs.
- 0.136u1: David Haywood added Vega (Olympia? 19??).
Recommended Games (Star Force):
Zero Hour
Red Clash
Space Cruiser
Catacomb
Rougien
Vega
Espial
Night Star (DECO Cassette)
Nova 2001
Star Jacker
Stunt Air
Zodiack
Star Force
Alpha Mission / ASO
Alpha Mission II / ASO II
Astro Warrior (Mega-Tech)
Flower
Halley's Comet
Mission 660
Rafflesia
S.R.D. Mission
Sky Fox
Truxton / Tatsujin
Tatsujin (Tourvision PCE bootleg)
Truxton II / Tatsujin Oh
Blast Off
Blazing Lazers
GunHed (Tourvision PCE bootleg)
The Next Space
Omega Fighter
Star Fighter
Super Star Soldier (Tourvision PCE bootleg)
Lethal Thunder
Pollux
Strike Gunner S.T.G
Vimana
Explosive Breaker
Final Star Force
Galmedes
Gunlock
GunNail
Nebulas Ray
Super-X
Gekirindan
Viper Phase 1
Fever SOS
Mars Matrix: Hyper Solid Shooting
