Calling out Sega Teradrive owners

[Nemesis1207]

Hi there. I've just purchased a Sega Teradrive model 3, which is currently in transit from overseas. I'm not just interested in this system for collectors value however. I want to document the precise level of interaction possible between the PC and the Mega Drive hardware. The most detailed information that is currently available is that they are "to some extent aware of each other".

Depending on the level and method of interaction, the Teradrive has the potential to act as a hardware debugger. This could help to improve emulation for the Mega Drive. More accurate timing information could be sampled for the VDP graphics chipset for example, and it could help to make emulation for Virtua Racing a reality by providing the ability to probe/snoop on the SVP.

I've spent years reverse-enginnering games for the Mega Drive, and I'm currently writing my own Mega Drive emulator, so I'm quite familiar with the Mega Drive platform. The PC side is a bit of a wildcard however. There's no way of knowing how difficult it will be to document the interface until I can run some tests on the system itself. If the interface proves to be less than obvious, disassembling and studying software written for the system will be the key to reverse-engineering the interface.

To the point, the system I am being sent has some software loaded on it, but I won't know precisely what software is included or what it does until the system arrives. I do know however that none of the installation disks will be included. The more software I have access to, the easier this project will be, so in the interests of documenting the capabilities of this extremely enigmatic system, I'm asking for other Teradrive owners out there to share any software you have for the system. In particular, I would be extremely interested in any driver disks, and the game "Puzzle Construction". If you have access to a Teradrive with a HDD, or any installation disks for software written for the Teradrive, I'd very much like to hear from you.

You can use a program called Winimage to easily take images of any installation disks. Winimage can also be used to take images of hard drives, although this does require physically removing the HDD from your Teradrive and attaching it to your computer. I'll be doing this myself to the HDD in my Teradrive when it arrives, so I'll be more than happy to provide step-by-step instructions for anyone who wants to do this. Even if you're not interested in sharing the data, you should take a backup of the HDD in your Teradrive at some point, because the drive won't last forever, and some software for this system will be a lot rarer than the hardware itself by this point.

If you have Teradrive software or HDD images but you don't want to post them publically, please email me at nemesis1207@hotmail.com and we can discuss it in private. Thanks.

(Apologies to the mods if this breaches forum rules)

[tom]

Yes, I am a Teradrive owner, see here, scroll down (I think I'm the only Teradrive owner here):

http://videogamecollectors.com/gallery/album122

mine's a model-3 as well, which is a 286 made by IBM.

Purchased it from a computer shop in Oxford, who just had aquired it from Sega HQ London.
Yes, the PC and Megadrive can talk to each other, although I have no system software or installation disks with the machine (The seller said most paperwork/software got dumped when Sega closed down the office in London, all HDDs were wiped as well or destroyed). Which is a shame, at least it would have been in English, or at least in Japanese with English translations. I wish I had some sort of a handbook or even some software (any Teradrive related software), those things must be out there somewhere. So although I'd gladly share some data, sorry, I have none.

Upon booting the PC from cold (with front lever set to the right), you get a nice blue Sega setup screen, which lets you do the usual...setting time, copy disk, got DOS...etc.

Anyway, mine's a nice machine, gorgeous monitor, cool keyboard with Japanese keys (as well as US layout), and a mouse. Plus two step up PSUs (from 110 - 220).
Just recently powered it up to play some SSI gold box games, actually.

[machine.slave]

Yep, I'm a Teradrive owner as well.. sadly though, no keyboard or mouse. Just the monitor, controller and base. I'd be interested in getting my hands on the disk images as well.