Interface Supermodel with original SEGA hardware

[bigpanik]

For M2Emu, I have written a little program able to pick up into the M2emu memory the FFB command byte. This byte is then send to an arduino connected to the SEGA drive board.

I had already read this Andy's story of drive boards swapping. Super GT/Daytona USA 2 drive board commands aren't compatible with Daytona/SEGA Rally ones. This can not worked. Perhaps he tried with SR2 Roms or Indy 500 hardware?

[RetroRepair]

I saw the video, that's some great progress

I'd love to try it out, are you going to make it available?

Yeah I tried with all sorts of roms and it didn't work. Think he must have remembered wrong.

[ReneRens]

I have been working on interfacing my Daytona 2 Deluxe to the model3 emulator.

So I have an arduino mega that should interface with the Daytona 2 driveboard but I am having some problems, I send the bigpaniks init sequence and I always get Er 22 on my driveboard.
I attached 3x 5k pots connected to the arduino and I can steer, accelerate and brake with these on the emulator (I adjusted the (Model3.cpp) source to receive that data from the arduino).

Also I adjusted the source (Model3.cpp) to send the view lights and leader light data to the arduino and the leds light up accordingly.

I adjusted the force feedback code (DriveBoard.cpp) on the emulator to send the correct left and right force and vibration codes to the driveboard and when i look at the leds the data is correct.

I think when I can successfully send data to the driveboard I can play it without the Daytona 2 PCBs and use the original hardware with working lights and force feedback just with this one arduino mega 2560 board

[Bart]

Wow! That is seriously cool stuff! I wish I could help but Nik was the one who wrote the driveboard emulation. I've never actually looked at it much. If you figure out your remaining problems and would be willing to write up a document and some schematics (plus the Arduino source code), I would be happy to host it on the Supermodel page and also incorporate your changes into the Supermodel source code.

[bigpanik]

Hello,

Here a scheme of a stand alone circuit used by example to auto center model 3 wheel.



Don't forget to connected +5V CN1 pin and GND CN2 pin (common with the arduino).

BP

[ReneRens]

Hey Bigpanik,

I decided to finally continue with this project and while checking the current status I still have that Er 22 on the drive board.
Even when there is nothing connected to the drive board it will go to this error, although when I connect a model 3 pcb it works fine...

Can you share your Arduino sketch? It seems you also read from the drive board is this needed? I only write to it from the supermodel emu that sends it to the Arduino.

Thanks!

[ReneRens]

So its fixed now I had a missing +5v on the steering pot.

I was able to play Scud race on my Daytona 2 cab.

Now I need to optimize the code some more as now I am sending 3 bytes from the emulator for lamps and FF stuff the one-byte approach from Bigpanik seems much better so looking into that, best way would be to have it detected as a FFB wheel and convert the FFB codes into sega alternatives, although it seems possible it's not very easy.

[njz3]

Hi,
I don't really know where to put information about steering wheel force feedback stuff for supermodel, so I put it here because BigPanik was very helpful by giving me Eproms of the different model 3 games.
I started to investigate how the real driveboards manage force effects when receiving the command codes that the different games set.
Playing with the real hardware, an arduino Mega and different Eproms and driveboards, I was able to send command codes manually and see what happens on the steering wheel.
Depending on the driveboard Eprom's, effects are definitly not handled the same way.
If you compare to what supermodel does today, there is space for improvement to get closer to the real hardware.
The summary is here:
https://github.com/njz3/vJoyIOFeederWit ... VEBOARD.md


Since the work has been started by BigPanik and SailorSat, all credits belongs to them.
Best
Benjamin

[Bart]

Hey Benjamin,

This is super cool! Any chance you or anyone else would like to port these findings into Supermodel? One of the things Nik had wanted to do was add a "simulation mode" that didn't require drive board EPROMs. But he never quite got it working and you will notice that this mode is always set to false in DriveBoard.cpp. I unfortunately am not able to contribute to Supermodel for the time being and I'm not sure who else would like to take this on.

Thanks,

Bart

[njz3]

Hi Bart,
In the current supermodel code, there is already support for emulating the force feedback effects using a kind of hook that reads the value that is transmitted to the driveboard. I do not really understand why it was needed to have the driveboard z80 emulated (with the using the eprom), as this is really hardware specific. I did not dig into the simulation mode, maybe I can give a look.
Regarding integrating the protocol, best would be first to migrate to the SDL2 force feedback API instead of the DirectX (which is limited to Windows users), then see how I can manage force effects that requires a state machine or a separated thread to be played correctly (like the power-slide sequence for scud race or daytona 2).
This is a long work and my time is very limited too.
Benjamin