At long last: DC Set2.1 up and running!

I'm dreaming! :-D

Thanks for bring this into reality.

Hey, why not send these executables to the Chanka Team and ask them to try to emulate these demos in Chanka? This will be cool

 

Awesome

Is Scud Race playable or is it a rolling demo? Is it only the daytime track?

BTW thanks again, this is the holy grail of DC games

 

...

rolling demo of a track with no cars...

 

Damn.
I never thought I'd see the famed Scud Race demo with my own eyes. Thank you kind sir for making this a reality! :smt023

 

You are all welcome guys, I am happy that a little effort can give a moment of happiness to the forum!

Jollyroger

 

you finnaly made it possible for 'us' to see those tech demo's. first we could only dream of it, but now finnaly we can see... if now only it was possible to run it on an regular dreamcast and/or pc.

but have you thought about directfeed video and/or screenshots? that would make it even cooler. :smt023

 

I wouldn't mind grabbing some videos using a video capture card recording directly the output of the Set2.1, but unfortunately I don't have a capture card and I wouldn't have a use fot it for any other purpose... same for the screenshots.

I am open to suggestions, I wouldn't fancy having to buy otherwise useless hardware though

Jollyroger

 

well there are programs which can 'grab' all the images which are produced on screen... do the demo's run from dos? or in windows (95)?

 

there were 3 or more revisions of Katana / Dreamcast development kits

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3726EDD6.FD59EBC9@facburfdew.unimaas.nl&output=gplain

Set 2 (or 2.1) is the one that ran the Scud Racer / Super GT demo

Set 4 was a 40% speed version of the final Dreamcast

Set 5 was the final hardware

Jollyroger - ok here is my question. If the Set 4 dev-kit had 40% speed/power of the final Dreamcast (Set 5) and since Scud Race demo used Set 2 / 2.1 how much speed/power did Set 2 / 2.1 have compared to the final Dreamcast (Set 5) ?

 

Jolly: if you're interested, a friend of mine has a Bt878-based capture card for sale (Provideo PV-951) he asked me to sell, but he wants 30 euros for it.... you can probably find a better deal but I might as well try

 

if enough of us are ineterested we can chip in and get him one?

 

Wombat: unfortunately images cannot be grabbed using software, the card does not have standard drivers, and there are no sources for the most interesting demos either.

Gigadrive: the Set2 only represents a prototype of the Dreamcast graphics processor, so it is difficult to compare. The chip is called ARC1 and doesn't have many features that make the PowerVR2 inside the Dreamcast fast, for example it doesn't have the tile accelerator and it doesn't support bump mapping.
Also, when bilinear filtering is turned on there is a major slowdown, very likely due to the combination of poor drivers/microcode and early hardware.
Anyway I think all in all the graphics power of this chip could be roughly a third of the final machine.

Paulo: I need something capable of recording either a composite signal (poor quality) or a straight VGA signal (very good quality, but very expensive equipment). I am not sure I want to buy a capture card just for this, if somebody lends me one for a while...

Jollyroger

 

...

i think the TA is present jolly...it does not make sense being absent as it is the most vital part of the powervr technology(except if it is being emulated)...also on set2.1 the tiles are much more as they 32x16 and not 32x32 as in final dreamcast hardware.

A Set4 and a Saturn pad conversion box were on ebay some months ago.I also have some pics from a former member of the board,but they are very very out of focus

I would really like to know the differences between the 5.xx revisions.I know that 5.16,5.23 and 5.24(final) exist.

 

thanks very much for the info, pictures and video Jollyroger!

 

You are correct, the PowerVR2 is based around the tile accelerator, I was really paying attention...
Anyway the ARC1 tiles are 32x8 and not 32x16, just for precision...

Jollyroger

 

i think i've read that PowerVR2 for PCs (PVR250 chip, on the Neon250 card) was 32x16 tiles, while the PowerVR2 for Dreamcast (PowerVR2DC aka CLX2) was 32x32 tiles, thus the Dreamcast PowerVR2 was more powerful. but I could be mistaken.

 

I wouldn't know for sure, but the R2 SDK documentation mentions the ARC1 chip having 32x8 tiles and the CLX1 32x32 tiles...

Jollyroger

 

A bit offtopic, but DC's PVR2 can do Bump Mapping? Any game use it?
Just curious.

 

None that I can recall.
Although Phantasy Star Online does seem to use ground textures that sort of resemble something that's bump-mapped.

 

Soul Calibur and Sonic Adv 2 both have bump mapping.