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Re: 10 years

PostPosted: Fri Apr 02, 2021 3:59 am
by Ian
Bart wrote:
Ian wrote:Pro-1000 emulation would be very cool. I did give it a shot but only got so far. Not far enough for games/demos to run. I think it would be easy to do. If you had access to a real device I'd just write a dummy aspi.dll that would just capture the traffic between the device and host. Trouble is I've not even seen pics of a working device. Maybe none are left in the wild.


I've been meaning to write the guy who supplied me with the SDK but I don't think any devices exist anymore else he'd have mentioned it. Unfortunately, it is apparently standard operating procedure for equipment used as part of defense contracts to be destroyed when no longer needed. There were some civilian entities that used the Pro-1000. I was told by someone that they recall selling one to the City of Philadelphia's planning department.

I bet we can emulate it without the real hardware. I just need to figure out how built the DLL that intercepts the SCSI commands. If we emulate the Pro-1000 itself (using the firmware that comes with the SDK), I have a feeling it will all come together quickly.


Did you ever try my emulation attempt? It gets pretty far, basically starts writing to the 'device'. Just it gets stuck in a loop there and keeps sending the same data. The win32 program expects some sort of ACK packet back from the device just I could never figure out exactly what it needed.

Re: 10 years

PostPosted: Fri Apr 02, 2021 8:14 pm
by Bart
Haven't tried yet. How do I build it and use it? Is there anything special that has to be done for the program to pick it up?

I've officially put an entry in my loosely-followed personal project planning spreadsheet to try adding support for the Pro-1000 firmware to Supermodel :) I should have time in a week when I return to California for a couple weekends and will leave my VR gear at home. The firmware will certainly try responding to any incoming data.

Is it possible to add in special hooks for Supermodel to use in that DLL to establish a shared memory space?

Re: 10 years

PostPosted: Sat Apr 03, 2021 1:36 am
by Ian
Well the windows demos all link to a file called aspi32.dll. Maybe the name isn't 100% don't have the project in front of me. Aspi32 was a 3rd party wrapper for scsi from adaptec if I recall. Adaptec being cdrw manufacturers. At the time window 95 and Windows nt 4.0 had totally different apis to talk to scsi hardware so this wrapper if I understand made it easy to support both with one api.

Anyway the short version is the project builds a dummy aspi32.dll and the programs think they are communicating with a real pro-1000 device. To get it to work just build the project (assuming you have a copy?, I can upload one somewhere). Then just copy the dll into the same folder as any of the exe files for the demos. The demos get as far as correctly recognising the device then start to send data.

Re: 10 years

PostPosted: Sat Apr 03, 2021 2:33 pm
by rad_killer
Already 10 years of Supermodel? Wow, hard to believe... I am 10 years older, but I am still waiting with same excitement for 0.3 version :D :D :D

Re: 10 years

PostPosted: Sat Apr 03, 2021 3:23 pm
by Bart
Ian wrote:Well the windows demos all link to a file called aspi32.dll. Maybe the name isn't 100% don't have the project in front of me. Aspi32 was a 3rd party wrapper for scsi from adaptec if I recall. Adaptec being cdrw manufacturers. At the time window 95 and Windows nt 4.0 had totally different apis to talk to scsi hardware so this wrapper if I understand made it easy to support both with one api.

Anyway the short version is the project builds a dummy aspi32.dll and the programs think they are communicating with a real pro-1000 device. To get it to work just build the project (assuming you have a copy?, I can upload one somewhere). Then just copy the dll into the same folder as any of the exe files for the demos. The demos get as far as correctly recognising the device then start to send data.


I think I have it somewhere but if not, I'll ask you in a week or so for a copy. I bet it won't be hard to get the firmware up and running (famous last words, though ;))

Re: 10 years

PostPosted: Wed Apr 07, 2021 6:37 pm
by Conversus W. Vans
I'm late to the party here but Happy 10th to the release of Supermodel! During Christmas the same year, I got my first desktop computer that could do Model 2 and Demul full speed, but it took a good month for Supermodel to run optimally with those dynarec improvements. Sadly after summer the motherboard on it got fried and I was without the Internet for several months.
The day Nik was able to fix the geometry with the AM1-developed Model 3 titles including LA Riders was a night I'll never forget. Then seeing my brother and his friend LOL at me playing as the cat in Scud Race Plus beginner course.
I spent 4+ months figuring out some inaccuracies within the SCSP emulation as I was really sick of the poor envelope scaling and slow tempo on some games. Still some improvements to be done to that, but I think Virtua Fighter 3 sounds a lot better than it did in the old builds.

Bart, Nik, Ian, Spindizzi, gm_matthew, R. Belmont and ElSemi are Gods for contributing.

Re: 10 years

PostPosted: Thu Apr 08, 2021 2:19 pm
by VirtuaHunter
Already 10 years?
I still remember the day Supermodel was announced, luckly it wasn't an April fools lol.
The day when the dream of Scud Race, Daytona 2 or Virtua Fighter 3 arcade, playable at home became reality.

Happy birthday Supemodel, i know one day you'll be powering the official Sega Model 3 emulators :D

Re: 10 years

PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2021 12:48 am
by SegaLover2020
I still remember when I first saw Daytona 2 running and thought "oh well, they'll never make this work" but I was OH SO WRONG...much respect and congrats to anyone that made this possible (and still free) over the years.

Re: 10 years

PostPosted: Sat May 15, 2021 8:41 am
by CCCP1982
Congratulations on the past 10 years
8-) 8-)

Re: 10 years

PostPosted: Tue May 25, 2021 2:33 pm
by Abelardator2
Hi,
I found several test builds that Bart gave me in 2011 :D

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w7auIR-FnEr5ZdP9_0SD1TuLmwoJP_3Y/view?usp=sharing