MEKA 0.

64c - Documentation
============================
Multi machine emulator for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
(c) in 1998-2003 by Omar Cornut / Bock (Zoop) (omar @ cornut.fr),
Original sound engine by Hiromitsu Shioya / Hiro-shi.
Implement code based on Marat Faizullin, Maxim Gready, Ulrich Cordes work.
Implement Emu2413 from Mitsutaka Okazaki.
==========================================================================
This documentation is best viewed with a fixed width font.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Level 0 : I am a speedy guy
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If you are looking for how to register, press Up, Down, Right, Left and
start directly at Level 7. However I strongly recommend reading that whole
documentation, if only to make me think I haven't wrote it for nothing.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Level 1 : Introduction
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MEKA is a Sega 8-bit emulator, made by the following people:

> Omar Cornut / Bock (Zoop) (omar @ cornut.fr)

Machine emulation (drivers), tools, graphical user interface, sound,
and the rest (support files, etc...).

> Hiromitsu Shioya / Hiro-shi (shica @ cool.ne.jp)

Original sound engine, Yamaha 2413 OPL emulator.

> Marat Fayzullin / Rst38h

Z80 CPU Core (publicly released a while ago).
Implemented with modifications in MEKA.

Also with contributions from:

> Mitsutaka Okazaki

Software Yamaha 2413 emulator (EMU2413).
Implemented without modifications in MEKA, and optionnally available.

> Maxim Gready

Software PSG emulator.
Implemented with modifications in MEKA.

> Ulrich Cordes

FDC765 (floppy disk controller) for SF-7000.
Implemented with heavy modifications in MEKA.

MEKA in its original flavor, is for MS-DOS.

MEKAW is the codename for the MS-Windows version of MEKA.

Before anything else, please do NOT e-mail Hiromitsu about MEKA, as

he does not speak english fluently and has currently ceased his work
on MEKA. If you do speak Japanese however, feel free to send him a
mail thanking him for his past work, I'm sure he will appreciate.

Generally speaking, people mentionned above are not directly involved

in MEKA and should not be contacted for a MEKA comment.

MEKA officially emulates the following systems:

- Sega Game 1000 / SG-1000 / Japan, Oceania

- Sega Computer 3000 / SC-3000 / Japan, Oceania, Europe
- Super Control Station / SF-7000 / Japan, Oceania, Europe
- Sega Mark III / MK3 / Japan
+ FM Unit Extension / MK3+FM / Japan
- Sega Master System / SMS / World Wide
- Sega Game Gear / GG / World Wide
- Coleco Vision / COLECO / America, Europe
- Othello Multi Vision / OMV / Japan

You can play other systems on it only if you are smart enough to figure how.
And if you are, I doubt you will want to play Nintendo games. So forget it.

Now let me tell you more about these cool systems:

-- on the Sega side --

The SG-1000, for "Sega Game 1000", was released in Japan in July 1983.
Heavily based on the MSX hardware, it is the first known Sega home console
system. It was later distributed by Grandstand in New Zealand.

The SC-3000, for "Sega Computer 3000", is a variation of the SG-1000 (still
compatible with it) with a keyboard, and some optional peripherals such as
a printer (SP-400), a tape recorder (SR-1000), or that big extension called
the Super Control Station (SF-7000), providing a 3" floppy disk drive, a
Centronics printer port, and more available memory. The SC-3000 was released
in November 1983 in Japan, and then was sold in certain countries around the
world (Oceania and Europe), usually shipped with a BASIC programming cart.

Later, Sega released some updates to these systems, including, but not
limited to the SC-3000h (a re-release of the SC-3000 with a hard keyboard),
and the SG-1000-II (also called Mark II). The SK-1100, for "Sega Keyboard"
was an upgrade to the SG-1000 and SG-1000-II to be able to use keyboard
software such as the BASIC or the Music Editor.

The Mark III, released in 1985 is the first Master System compatible system,
and still have the necessary ports to plug the keyboard. A FM extension was
made available later, providing with a much better sound hardware. FM musics
are supported by most games released in Japan between 1986 and 1988, Out Run
being the game that first brought FM.

The Mark III is backward compatible with SG-1000/SC-3000 games, although it

has a darker, slighty incorrect palette (compared to an original SG-1000 or
SC-3000).

In 1986 came the Sega Master System, two years after Nintendo released their
crappy gray box. It was sold just about everywhere, but the Japanese version
had the FM extension embedded and profited from it because of better musics.
Other differences with the Mark 3 are the 3-D Glasses mini jack port and the
embedded rapid fire unit, none of them being available on non-Japanese units.
The Master System is also backward compatible with the older systems, with
the same palette problem as the Mark III.

The Master System had an interesting success in Brasil, where Tec Toy, the
official distributor, released plenty of ports from Game Gear, and sometimes
 even original games, up to 1997. Tec Toy released a Master System 3 for the
Brasilian market, although it is in fact just a renamed Master System 2.
They then later released the Master System Super Compact, and a pink colored
version called the Master System Girl.

Last but not least, in early December 2002, a new and surprising package was
released in Brasil, called the "Master System 3 Collection". It contains
about fifty games emddedded in a while colored, SMS 2 shaped console.

The Sega Game Gear was released in 1991. It is nothing but a portable
Master System with a smaller screen, a communication port (for dual player
gaming) and a bigger palette (4096 colors available instead of 64 on the
Master System). The old SG-1000/SC-3000 video modes are still supported
but the default palette was removed so most SG-1000/SC-3000 software have
wrong colors on a Game Gear as they do not setup the colors manually.

-- on the other side --

There was a machine called the Othello Multi Vision, released in Japan,
which is in fact a SG-1000 with a new shape (pretty small, and embed an
incomplete keyboard) and an Othello game in ROM. Eight cartridges games
were specifically released for it. They are fully compatible with SG-1000.

(following text by Tincho DJ)

In 1982, Coleco (COnnecticut LEather COmpany) released the Coleco Vision.

In those years, Atari led the home video games market with Atari 2600, a
4-bit console released in 1978. Coleco wanted to release Coleco Vision with
Donkey Kong, the Nintendo's arcade smash hit. But it wasn't possible; Mattel
(the Intellivision manufacturer) and Atari released this game first. Anyway,
Coleco could release Donkey Kong four months later, acquiring KING KONG's
rights from Universal Studios (Nintendo had been demanded by Universal, due
to suspicious similarities between Donkey Kong and King Kong. Some months
later, Nintendo won). This wasn't the last controversy in which Coleco was
involved. In 1983, a cartridge adaptor was released by Coleco. This adaptor
would let you use Atari 2600 cartridge on the Coleco Vision. Of course, Atari
demanded Coleco; but Coleco won.

Later, Coleco released Adam, a computer based on Colecovision hardware. It

wasn't very successful. Colecovision's time was running out, and production
was stopped in 1984.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Level 2 : Features
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Graphics
--------
Unlike some other emulators, MEKA doesn't feature thousands of different
graphic engines, but only one, and a working one. Therefore most games
should be working, as it uses a true line-per-line refresh, and supports
raster effects (including palette effects).

Consequently, MEKA is quite slow compared to old emulators. This is the

price to pay for accuracy. A CPU running at around 300 Mhz is recommended
to enjoy MEKA correctly.
(If your computer is slower, you may want to try using Massage or BrSMS.
BrSMS runs very fast on games not relying on many hardware tricks.)
Sound
-----
MEKA emulates both sound hardware featured in the supported systems:

- SN-76496 Programmable Sound Generator (PSG) by Texas Instrument

- YM-2413 FM Generator (FM) by Yamaha

Although technically better, the FM hardware is only supported by certain

Master System games, mostly released between between 86 and 89. As told
earlier, this hardware only exists as an add-on for the Mark 3, or in the
Japanese Master System. So for most of you FM musics will sound unusual.

FM emulation is disabled by default but it would like to open your ears

on a different kind of sound you didn't have the chance to get, back in
the past, you can freely enable it back in the SOUND menu of the emulator.

The four channels of the Programmable Sound Generator should be emulated

pretty accurately. Waves are realtime synthetized, and data gathered from
various study (especially thanks to Maxim) allows perfection to go as far
as generating the same sequence of pseudo random numbers as a real PSG!

The Yamaha YM-2413 chipset features nine channels, fifteen pre-defined

instruments, and one user definable. Three channels can be used for
percussions, and the chipset provides hardware vibrato and amplitude
modulation.

Two different YM-2413 emulators are provided in MEKA:

- One using the OPL chipset present on most soundcards, including those
from Creative. Some newer soundcard may not works well with it, so you
can throw your SoundPCILivePNP256 away!
It is fast, and sounds very cool. However, it does only works under
DOS and Windows 95/98/ME due to technical reasons.
This emulator was written by Hiromitsu Shioya, specifically for MEKA.

- One synthetizing emulator.

It is much slower, but sounds more faithful than the OPL emulator.
It works on all systems.
This emulator was written by Mitsutaka Okazaki.

Regarding emulation through the OPL chipset, Supreme1 sent me a tips

regarding SB128 sound cards. Quoting him: "in the Creative Configurator,
just enable 2 MB Waveset ver. 3 (maybe 4 MB ver. 4 works as well, haven't
tried it) that should fix it".

If for some tragic reasons you have to use Windows NT or Windows 2000, you
may want to get such program in order to enable sound in MEKA for DOS:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/vdmsound/
Sound should work natively with MEKAW throught DirectX.

Peripherals
-----------
MEKA supports/emulates the following peripherals:

- Standard, two buttons joypads:

[all systems]
Control with keyboard or joypads plugged into your computer.

- Light Phasers:
 [Master System]
Control with mouse. First mouse button (by default) is the trigger.
Although you can use two Light Phasers on the same time (for Gangster
Town), it is not very practical with a single mouse.

- Paddle Controls (Rolling Controllers, ala Steering Wheel):

[Mark 3 / Master System]
Control with mouse. First button has the usual behavior, and the second
button recenter the controller in the middle. Although you can use two
Paddle on the same time (for Galactic Protector), it is not very
practical with a single mouse.

- Sport Pads:
[Mark 3 / Master System]
This heavy trackball is supported by a few sports games.
Control with mouse. First and second buttons has the usual behavior.
Same comments as above, as for using two Sport Pads on the same time.

- Keyboard:
[Sega Computer 3000]
Used in all Sega Computer 3000 specific programs such as the BASIC.
Control with your PC keyboard. See key assignements somewhere below.

- 3-D Glasses:
[Mark 3 / Master System]
MEKA let you play 3-D games with three differents methods. The first
method, entirely software, is that MEKA can show up on the screen only
graphics of one eye, thus you can play but with a reduced framerate.

More interesting methods are by using real 3-D glasses.

If you tell MEKA to keep 3-D rendering as is, you will be able to
enjoy the effect by using a video card such as the ASUS AGP-V6600
which is said to uses the same technology. I didn't try it myself
so I cannot confirm, but you should be able to play 3-D Games with
MEKA using such card and its dedicated 3-D glasses pair.

An even more interesting method is to use real Sega 3-D glasses!

Check out the TECH.TXT file about how to build an adaptor to plug
such glasses on your computer. If following the schematic correctly
MEKA will supports your glasses and let you enjoy the ultimate 3-D
experience :-)

- Terebi Oekaki (TV Draw) Graphic Board:

[Sega Game 1000 / Sega Computer 3000 / Mark 3 / Master System]
This is a graphic board and pen set which was available in Japan only,
and directly connected to a drawing cartridge taking advantage of it.
Control with mouse. First button simulates a pen press, and second
button simulates the pen being away from the graphic board, so you
can control the cursor with a joypad as the software supports it.

Interface
---------
A feature that most emulators lack is a graphical user interface (GUI).
MEKA has one, which does not require particulars skill to use. Just use your
mouse to point and click. Experienced users that are sick of using mice are
also able to use keyboard shortcuts to activate certain functions. However
to give you some fun, they aren't all working or even documented, due to me
being a lazy bastard.
The graphical user interface is a bit slow, and a fast machine (Pentium) is
recommended to use it in optimal conditions (without having to skip frames).
Of course, it doesn't affect the emulation speed while in fullscreen mode.

Other things
------------
A lot of work has been done on certain other things that most people won't
notice (specifically because they have been worked on), including, but not
limited to:

- Compressed file support: you can keep your roms compressed in the ZIP
file format to save space, MEKA does know how to handle them.

- Patching system: this allows you to hack ROMs without having to modify
the original file. Check the file called "MEKA.PAT" if you are curious.

- Smart Configuration File technology: MEKA will never bother you because
of a corrupted configuration file, or some bad options in it. The file
itself is rewritten and recommented everytime you quit the program.

- Definable video modes with some nice fullscreen effects available such
as TV scanline simulation or Eagle graphic destroyer. Eagle is actually
very nice with a few games, R-Type coming to mind.

- Save states. You can load and save ingame, using F5 and F7 keys, with
up to a hundred slots for storing a game state (change with 0-9, F6, F8).
In addition, it is possible to load old Massage states by renaming them
to the MEKA naming convention. MEKA will automatically convert them.

- BIOS inclusion. You can play the snail game in MEKA, provided you know
how to access to it (alright, if you forgot, try pressing UP+1+2).
Originally, MEKA was supposed to use my own reprogrammed BIOS. Then I
found that someone already dumped them so I stopped working on mine and
included the original one instead. MEKA even includes the Japanese BIOS,
which you can check by setting the machine to Japanese and booting it
without any game loaded. It shows a little demo with a scrolling ground
and plays the Space Harrier music theme using the FM Chipset.

- A very precise compatibility list. MEKA was heavily tested, unlike some
other emulators that you doubt they were even ran by their author before
being released. Also thanks goes to Mxs, Jossa and Tincho DJ for their
past help with the Game Gear and Coleco Vision lists.

- A game database, with full name, proprietary checksum, product number

when available, and comments in some cases. A lot of time was spent
making and updating this unique database.

- Logging of sound output to WAV and VGM formats. VGM (for Video Game
Music) is a logging format developed on S8-Dev. You can check out
http://www.smspower.org/music for more informations, and an archive.

- Debugging features: the different tools such as VRAM or Palette viewer,

as well as a simple debugger and dumping features makes MEKA useful for
various programming/debugging purposes (run with /DEBUG parameter).

- A Graphical User Interface: I hope you did notice there was one.
 - Easter eggs / secret features: edit everything, click everywhere,
try all keys combinaisons.. and you may get lucky several times.
Or unlucky playing Mario.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Level 3 : "Does it work ?"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I tried to make MEKA as compatible I could make it.

Unfortunatly, not every single game is working perfectly with it. If you
want to know which, be sure to check the compatibility list provided in
the COMPAT.TXT file. If it happens that would find some kind of bug not
mentionned in the compatibility list, a report of it would be welcome.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Level 4 : "I just checked it.. Heh ! where did you got all these roms ?!"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Monitor this site: SMS Power - http://www.smspower.org

New roms are appearing regularly here, and then the day everything will
be available on the internet, the site will slowly transform into a Sega
8-bit web museum with hundred of pages that will make you drop tears and
consider building a time machine.

Please take the time to search on the internet if you want something,
before asking to every single person on the planet. :)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Level 5 : Usability
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can run MEKA from the command line. Simply type "MEKA" (or "MEKAW",
depending on the version you are using) followed by the filename of the
ROM you want to run. You can also pass the "/?" parameter to the program
to get in return a crap command line help, describing the usual hidden
features, of course.

Inside the emulator, the default keyboard mapping is:

Common to all systems

---------------------
D-Pad ...................... Arrow Keys
Button 1 ................... Left Control
Button 2 ................... Left Alternate

Master System / SG-1000

-----------------------
Soft Pause ................. Space
This is the same pause as if you pressed the button on a real machine.
It can be used only if the game supports it at the moment you press it.
On some game, pressing pause will get you a menu, etc..
Hard Pause ................. Alt-P or F12
This "special" pause with simply freeze the game, without changing
anything. It is usable everytime, everywhere.
Soft Reset ................. Backspace
This is the same reset as if you pressed the button on a real machine.
It can be used only if the game supports it at the moment you press it.
On some emulated systems that does not support software reset, like the
Game Gear, pressing this key will actually produces an hard reset.
 Hard Reset ................. Alt+Backspace
This "special" reset with completly reset the emulated system.
It is usable everytime, everywhere.

Game Gear
---------
Start ...................... Space
Hard Reset ................. Backspace

SC-3000/SF-7000 (anytime using the SK-1100, in fact)

----------------------------------------------------
Soft Reset ................. Break

Other keys are mapped at the same place as the Sega Keyboard (SK-1100).
So be sure to look at the provided picture carefully. For example:

Control .................... Caps Lock

Graph ...................... Left Control

The "Pi" key, also used to type the "Ro" character in Japanese, has
unfortunately no equivalent on today's PC keyboard in many country.
Because of this, you can also either use the backslash key on the
bottom left of your keyboard, OR the slash key on the keypad, to
replace the missing "Pi" key.

Coleco Vision
-------------
Numeric Pad ................ Keys 0 to 9, Minus and Equal

Miscellaneous keys
------------------
Switch to next fullscreen blitter ........................ F1
Switch between automatic and standard frameskipping ...... F2
Decrease speed (automatic) or frameskip (standard) ....... F3
Increase speed (automatic) or frameskip (standard) ....... F4

Save Game .................. F5

Load Game .................. F7
Previous/Next Game Slot .... F6/F8
Set slot (0 to 9) .......... 0 -> 9

Show FPS counter ........... Alt+F

Change control device ...... F9

Enable/Disable keyboard .... Alt+F9

Enable/Disable sprites ..... F11

Enable/Disable background .. Alt+F11

Quit emulator .............. F10

Save screen ................ PrintScreen
NOTE: to use PrintScreen under a Windows environnement, you have to
tell the system to stop intercepting the event, in the DOS box
configuration panel.

Notes
-----
To use a mouse (for the graphical user interface, and Light Phaser / Paddle
emulation), be sure to have an appropriate driver loaded in DOS mode. Some
 drivers or system are known to cause problems. This another driver in this
case, such as "Cute Mouse Driver", and be sure to report if you are having
such problem.

If you are experiencing problems using a joypad/joystick, edit the MEKA.INP

file with a standard text editor and use your brain and goodwill.
I am getting billions of e-mails asking how it does work, so please do not
e-mail me before having actually tried by yourself and made research.
I think you can understand I have time constraints which prevent me to do
custom answering for everybody, especially when the answer is findable :(

And if you have a SideWinder or any Joypad with analog input to donate
to me, that would be a nice gift (that should be better than my keyboard).
I am interested in implementing analog support for certain peripherals.

How to use SC-3000 and SF-7000 Softwares

----------------------------------------
Original SC-3000 games were the same as for SG-1000, being provided as
cartridge and thus loading the ROM is the only thing you need to do to
make them run. However, since the SC-3000 provided a BASIC cartridge,
and more over, the SF-7000 an easy way to store programs (on floppy),
homemade programs may prove being trickier to load.

SF-7000 disks are rarely self-bootable (this is of course the case of

the Disk Basic), and for most of them they need to be run from inside
of the Disk Basic. Once it is loaded and running, load the floppy disk
(.SF7 extension) you want to use, and type the FILES command to be given
a list of files on the disk.

To load a specified program, use LOAD "program name" where the program
name is usually ending with the .BAS extension. You can move your cursor
to the line the FILES listing gave you, add the LOAD command and press
enter, that'll do it. Afterward, the RUN command will start the program.

The cassette drive (CLOAD command on Disk Basic, and LOAD on original)
is not yet emulated and thus you will not be able to use it now :-(
I am always looking for tapes if you have some you can send them, they
might prove being useful in the future.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Level 6 : "It is slooooooooow !!"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

MEKA was mostly programmed by me, in C language, with few parts in

x86 assembly. It is being hand optimized since a long time, but some
things still aren't very fast.

One of the reasons for that is that it emulates the system properly.
MEKA provides a real line-per-line graphic engine, dynamic palette
emulation, and many of those nice technical words that make the emulator
compatible with practically everything. Some of these features are missing
in other emulators or sometimes disabled, making them faster. Thus, if you
have a slow system, I suggest choosing another emulator.

You can also try running MEKA in pure DOS mode.

You can also try upgrading your DirectX driver and run MEKAW.
Close all boxes in the interface. The tiles viewer slows things down with
some kind of games.
 Disable YM-2413 emulation for games that supports it.
The digital YM-2413 emulator slows down emulation dramatically.

Or disable whole sound emulation.

Or erase MEKA.

Another reason is that in MEKA, everything is buffered, to avoid flickers.

If you want to give a speed boost to the interface, edit the configuration
file and change the entry "gui_access_mode" from "buffered" to "direct".
Maybe I'll work on finding a way to make the interface usable in this mode,
as it is much faster.

The last thing you can do is to configure MEKA to use right video modes.
For DOS, it would be VESA modes, for Windows, DirectX modes are likely to
be the best. Edit MEKA.CFG, MEKAW.CFG and/or MEKA.BLT and configure the
video driver entries.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Level 7 : "Man, I still like MEKA !" - How to register
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks. In this case, if you want to help further development and support
the author, you are welcome to register MEKA.

To do so, you will simply have to help the SMS Power cause. This can be
done by several ways. The first is to donate Sega 8-bit cartridges to us.
We would love that. Donating hardware is even more welcome. If you plan
to donate anything, be sure to e-mail me beforehand. And remember it is
not because a game or a system is common that I have it. I am actually
missing a billion of common game I would love to get.

If you cannot find any cartridges then you can send money. Money helps
SMS Power in buying cartridges to dump and/or for the museum, as well as
getting weird pieces of related hardware. Due to me trusting the cool
people who are happy to help a great cause, there is no more minimal
amount to send to get registered. So basically even if you send 1$ you
will get registered. Of course the more the better. I honnestly tend to
get depressed when someone send 1$ for a four-years work.

If you don't have an idea on how much you must send, then you are not on
the right track. What matter is that you are helping a cause, and for that
reason the more is always the better. Don't stop feeding your children or
plan to sell your house to donate the money to our cause, though. Just
think about how much *you* would pay for that software if it was commercial.

I like to have fun writing documentations, so here is a formula to

calculate a good price:
P = (S / (k * 5)) + (M / k)

Where:
P is the price a nice guy would pay.
S is the speed of your CPU.
M is the amount of memory in your video card.
k is defined as 3 * Pi for year 2002, and will increase with time.
(approximately 9.42)

For my own computer:

P = (350 / (3 * Pi * 5)) + (8 / (3 * Pi)) = 8.25$ (pretty cheap)
 A faster computer:
P = (1600 / (3 * Pi * 5)) + (32 / (3 * Pi)) = 37.34$ (ouch)

With in-between prices for average computers, obviously.

Isn't that a great idea to accomodate programs prices to the speed of
your computer ? The rich pay more than the poor. :)

Of course if you end with something like 19.50 or 22.25 don't bother
sending coins, you can round it up. And of course you can still round
it up without any specific reason, it you feel it is too much or too
low to pay. In fact, you are the one who decide.

Please do not send checks, since they are expensive to cash (for me).
Please do not send money orders, since they are expensive to send (for you).
In both cases, it is not worth wasting a lot of money on a small donation.
Cash in your country currency is usually a good thing.
Please e-mail be beforehand if you are unsure about anything.

My address is: Omar Cornut

45 rue Rebeval
75019 Paris
France

Please note this is my new address. I moved house on the 1st of July, 2001.
And I can also receive money with PayPal (very practical), under the
following address: cornut @ noos.fr.

Finally, if your main pretext for not registering is lazyness, then you
know yourself it is not a valid pretext :)

If you do not agree these terms, then you can delete this software now, as
it will destroy your computer after a certain amount of time using a non
registered version. Also, if you have dogs living in your house, MEKA will
autodetect them and kill them by sending ultra sonic waves through the PC
speakers. Just don't say I made it for the money, please.

Registered users will receive information and new version before others.
They will also get access to roms on SMS Power, other things I may
show off, and more importantly: a clean conscience.

Enjoy!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Level 8 : Reasons to use MEKA instead of those other emulators
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

There is no reason why you should use it instead of another emulator.

USE IT IF YOU LIKE IT.

I first made MEKA for my own use, to play my own cartridges on my own
computer. So competing with any other emulator is not my primary goal.

When starting it, I planned to do only quality releases, instead of

releasing a new (buggy) version every week. That is why there is not
a new version every week of the day. Testing if a long time process.

MEKA is meant to be used to play and enjoy games.

Please enjoy games with it.
 MEKA should be kept updated, in respect for registered users. If I ever
have to drop MEKA on my side, finding someone to continue the project
wouldn't be hard. Or releasing the sources, maybe.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Level 9 : I am a freak, tell me everything !
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

MEKA was made the open way, in the sense that many of its features
are user accessible to let everyone do modifications. Here is a quick
description of the ressource files that comes with MEKA:

--MEKA.CFG-- or --MEKAW.CFG--
This is the configuration file where MEKA stores most of the options
and user definable parameters. Some are accessible from the interface,
but some, more complex ones, are only available by manually editing this
file. It should be self explanatory, but here are some comments:

Sound rate usual values are 11025, 22050 and 44100, the highest being the
best quality but also the slowest.

Screenshots and musics dump filename templates are configurable for those
who have websites and likely would like to avoid renaming a hundred of file,
or generally if you want to share the produced files. Templates use LibC's
PrintF formatting rules, which am I going to explain quickly, and for use
in that context. PrintF gurus will pardon me.

The syntax of the string used by MEKA must be in that form:

...%[.name_max_length]s...%[0number_padding]d.file_format
Where things inside brackets are optional and '...' is anything you want.
When I say "anything you want", you can truly put anything you want.
However if you want to use spaces, replace them with asterix (*)
characters. Here are some examples to hopefully make things clear:

screenshots_filename_template =

%.5s_%02d.pcx (default setting)

Limit game name to 5 characters and pad capture number to 2 characters.
Save file with PCX format and extension.
Playing "Psycho Fox.SMS" will get you capture filenames such as
"Psych_01.pcx" or "Psych_42.pcx".

%s-%02d.pcx
Does not limit game name, pad capture number to 2 characters.
Save file with PCX format and extension.
Playing "Psycho Fox.SMS" will get you capture filenames such as
"Psycho Fox-01.pcx" or "Psycho Fox-42.pcx".

%s*(%d).pcx
Does not limit game name, and let capture number as it is.
Save file with PCX format and extension.
Playing "Psycho Fox.SMS" will get you capture filenames such as
"Psycho Fox (1).pcx" or "Psycho Fox (42).pcx".

Available file format for screenshots are PCX, BMP and TGA.
Incorrect use of this feature can leads MEKA to crash in a horrible and
painful way. You were warned.

--MEKA.BLT--
 This file contains the configuration for fullscreen video modes.
It is self documented. I strongly suggest giving it a look to enable
VESA video modes on your system and so get a speed boost. Maxim's
Meka Configurator allows you to edit this file easyly.

--MEKA.INP--
This file contains inputs configuration. It is automatically rewritten by
MEKA when quitting, and most of the functionnaly are available from the
interface. However experienced users may want to tweak with it and try some
of the possibilities it offers.

--MEKA.MSG--
This file contains text messages used in MEKA and allows you to create
translation in new languages or dialect using latin letters (ABC..).

--MEKA.NAM--
This file contains the name, product numbers and comments database that
are used by MEKA. If you are curious you can edit it. And if ever you have
comments to add about any games in it, send them to me for future inclusion
in the distribution version.

--MEKA.PAT--
This file allows you to tells MEKA to apply simple patches on ROM when
loading them, on the fly. Nothing extraordinary but programmers and hackers
will find such feature useful maybe. The file is self documented, in case
you were looking for help.

--MEKA.THM--
This file contains themes available from the user interface. If the current
GUI colors are boring you, this is the place to check. The file is self
documented also. To make thing easier you may want to use an external tool
called "Wonder Theme" which is a graphical theme editor, by Lilac. It is
available from MEKA homepage. You can also get pictures for uses with some
of the default themes at http://www.smspower.org/meka/themes.

--MEKA.DAT--
This file contains data used by the emulator and its interface. Editing
it will shows you a bunch of garbage so it is not a really good idea.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Level 10 : Cool things to do when playing games is not enough
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Connect to an Efnet IRC server and join #meka to meet happy and strange
people. Be sure to kick Aprentice from there as much as you can.

Check out http://www.smspower.org and participate to the healthy debates

on the forum. Also check out the developer section and see some great
homemade programs and projects in the work.

Check out http://www.smspower.org/music for a great Sega 8-bit music

archive, informations, tools and a forum.

If you are a musician, use your skills to make us some great remixes of
Sega Master System musics.

Register the programs you like and that deserve it.

Common, I know ACDSee is on your hard drive.
 Play Wonderboy 3: the Dragon's Trap over and over until you figure out
you cannot get bored with it.

If you are unsure about other games to play on the Master System assuming
you are not familiar with it, I can suggest you:
Alex Kidd in Miracle World
Cyborg Hunter (Borgman)
Double Dragon
Fantasy Zone 2
Golden Axe Warrior
Kung Fu Kid (Makai Retsuden)
Phantasy Star
Power Strike (Aleste)
Power Strike 2
Psycho Fox
R-Type
Wonderboy in Monster Land (Monsterworld)
Wonderboy 3: the Dragon's Trap (Monsterworld 2)
Zillion
And I could name a hundred of other ^_^
A full list of all existing Master System games is available there:
http://www.smspower.org/museum/lists/

Enjoy!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Level 11 : MEKA was made using..
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
DJGPP (GNU C Compilator) by a bunch of people.
Allegro (video and inputs library) by Shawn Hargreaves and contributors.
Seal (sound library) by Carlos Hassan.
UPX (reduce the executable size) by Markus Oberhumer and Laszlo Molnar.
All the above great programs are free and are great replacements to
the expensive Microsoft offers (Visual C, Direct Draw, Direct Sound).
MS-Dos and Windows to handle these softwares.
My poor working computer to handle these operating systems.
Myself to take care of the computer.
My dear love to take care of me.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Level 12 : Last Boss
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

To defeat the Vampire Dragon, stay at the bottom middle of the screen
and wait for him to come level with you. When he comes close, jump and
hit his cape. When he goes down, below the screen, fly up so he won't
come up and hit you! Repeat this procedure until he is destroyed. You
will get the SALAMANDER CROSS and be able to change into Hu-Man.

(Written by Clint Dyer, for Sega of America)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Level 13 : End Credits
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I would like to thank the following persons:

Hiromitsu Shioya (Hiro-Shi):

for having done the basic work on sound/music emulation in MEKA. Without
 him, you may be still using the emulator with crap and buggy sound!

Mitsutaka Okazaki:
he wrote a software YM-2413 emulator that he available in MEKA.
http://www.angel.ne.jp/~okazaki/ym2413/

Phillip Smith:
for being a cool guy, having shared a lot of things together and being
one of the brain behind SMS Power :)

Mike Gordon:
another nice guy who like toying with hardware stuff. He also brought
some very interesting things to the growing Sega 8-bit emulation scene.
and generally has been very helpful to me.

Casiopea, Masato, RedS, Sankichi, Skyhigh, Toshi, Yakmo, Yoneda, Yujiro:

doumo arigatou to my all Japanese friends,
for being friendly, shared lot of informations, brought help, support,
dumps, and helping to improve my collection ^_^
http://bto8.smspower.org (Casiopea)
http://www.loose-logic.com (Masato)
http://members.xoom.com/_XMCM/sega2001 (Toshi)
http://village.infoweb.ne.jp/~fwik0826/ (Yoneda Mitsunori)
http://www.geocities.co.jp/Playtown-Denei/8588/ (Yujiro)

Amaury, Arnaud, Douglas, Joseph, Karim, Michael, Miki, Najib, Philippe

and others I forgot, for their support, vannes et autres trucs dans le
genre - merci. Je vous prend tous en m�me temps au jeu que vous voulez.

Maxim Gready (Maxim):

for general support, various work, and being a nice guy.
Maxim is the author of various programs related to MEKA, the first and
probably always best VGM player, as well as other tools related to VGM.
He's also the first to come out when there's something related to sound
to work on. The only drawback with Maxim is that he once collaborated
with the evil enemy, but after all, he is a great person. :)
http://www.smspower.org/maxim

Nicolas Warren (Heliophobe):

for general support, various work, and being a nice guy.
Nicolas is the author of SMEG, the great SMS emulator for Dreamcast, and
as made various contributions to the SMS development scenes, with homemade
programs (such as the world famous Tetracycline game, and Damiana).
http://www.kenseiden.com
http://www.kenseiden.com/smeg

David Michel (Rony):

for Magic Engine, support, advice, help and being my second hard drive,
all back in good old days. Bonk power!
http://www.magicengine.com

Nicolas Hamel (Gouky):

for the invaluable help at the very beginning. A while ago.
http://www.multimania.fr/gouky

James McKay:
for Massage, and because when you ask him a simple technical question,
he answers in ten pages. He tooks the time to kindly answer all the crap
questions I asked when I was starting. And he is very nice guy.
 http://www.enterspace.org/world/massage.htm

Charles Mac Donald:

for SMSPlus, sharing lot of things together - nice chats, and being one
of the most productive hardware tester and hacker. Impressive person.
http://cgfm2.emuviews.com

Marc Le Douarain:
for help with SF-7000 emulation and dumps of his old disks.

Ulrich Cordes:
for providing the base source code of the FDC-765 (floppy disk controller),
as used for SF-7000 emulation. It was actually rewritten but the original
technical work is from him.

Mr Lee, Billy Jr:

for being impressive hardware hackers and doing a lot for the "scene".
private message: hurry up, Lee! :)
http://www.billyjr.com

Marat Fayzullin:
for Master Gear, for being the one all users and authors should respect,
for having released the sources of most of his emulators and CPU cores,
and contined, despite people who early profited from his work without
respecting some elementary rules. Also because he wrote a technical
document about the Master System. Now if you are the kind of person who
hate him for no other reasons that the Windows ports of his emulators are
not free, remember he is one of the father of console emulation, and that
without him, many emulators wouldn't exist.
http://fms.komkon.org

Ricardo Bittencourt:
for BrSMS and BrMSX (great emulators).
http://www.lsi.usp.br/~ricardo/brsms.htm

Jon (the unknown one):

this guy is the one who wrote the (old) document with all the knowledge
on which the first emulators were based. I am also pretty sure the first
dumps came from him. Although I doubt he's still on the internet, I would
love to be in contact with him. Jon, if you're reading, e-mail me ;-)

Super Majik Spiral Crew (the):

for having written a technical documentation about the SMS.

Richard Talbot Watkins:

for having written a technical documentation about the SMS, although I
found it recently and it didn't helped me much. He is also the author of
Miracle, a SMS emulator for Acorn machines.
http://www.willothewisp.demon.co.uk/SMS/

Richard Bush (Antiriad):

for Raine, support, advice and help. Also for his patches to Allegro.
http://www.rainemu.com

Sean Young:
for writing great technical documentation about the TMS9918a and Z80.
http://www.msxnet.org

Andrew Lindsay:
 for having dumped tons of roms, and for SMSCheck. If you don't know him
and his site, then I'm afraid you missed the golden age of emulation.
http://members.aol.com/smsstuff (do not even try, it was closed in 1997)

Leonard Silva de Oliveira and Flavio Morsoletto:

for their help with hardware hacking and precious reports:
"It eats +5 and GND (duh!). One line reports trigger activity. The last
line goes (theoretically) low when the phototransistor is lit."

Eric Quinn:
for being there a long time ago already, dumping a few roms, and managing
an excellent SMS site (The Sega Notebook). Eric is also an active member
of the S8-Dev community, author of a development-oriented emulator (MesaDX),
and produced some interesting SMS code such as the PFR test.
http://shell0.elnet.com/~gm-quinn/sms/

Dump Masters (ViperZ and Omega):

for having dumped a few roms (including those crappy Brazilian hacks ;)
http://www.emucamp.com/dump_masters

Charles Doty:
this guy contributed a lot to the console development scene. He also wrote
an old text demo for Game Gear, which is from where I started learning Z80.
http://www.pcisys.net/~cdoty/console

Lasse Reinikainen (of Image/Helsinki/Finland):

for beta testing and tons of ROM dumps, including the old and original
Master System BIOS. Before getting it, me and Martin Skog spent a lot of
time recreating it from stratch. Then a few days before the release, Lasse
sent me the ROM. Believe it or not, there was only one different pixel
between the original Sega logo and the one I drew :)
Keep faith, you will get your Dracula one day.

Dirk Stevens:
for having released the sources of his Eagle graphic filter, supported
in MEKA if you enable the corresponding blitter.

Leonardo Pires (s0rcerer):

for great support, advice and help in various things.
http://emucity.unae.com

Nicolas Lannier (Archeide):

for SNEmul, support, advice and help.
http://www.epita.fr/~lannie_n/english.html

Richard Mitton (Nodrog):

for TNZS-Emu, RAZE, support, advice and help.
http://www.emucamp.com/tnzs

Mxs:
for having done the old GG compatibility list and some smart beta testing.

Christopher Coleman
he is such a coolman - even if for some reasons he dared saying
Castelo R� Tim Bum graphics were nice.

Sam Pettus:
for your Sega 8-bit Compatibility Chart, others amazing documents,
and being the most strangest, paranoid and serious guy I ever met on
 the internet. Take it easy :)

Chris White:
4 ur great hlp , support& terreeble whay of typinng mails ;-)
Yogi Bear power !

Martin Skog (MoonTrip):

for the Wonder Boy 3 music he made (dadada dada dadada) and the very good
work on the Sega sound reproduction (the one that was about to be used
in the reprogrammed boot ROM, before Lasse sent the original one).

Jonathan Griffith (Lilac):

alright, I had to put you somewhere :)
for all his suggestions, and WonderTheme (a MEKA theme editor)
http://www.emucamp.com

Larry M (Ellum):
for the Wonder Boy 3 music he made. This game definitively rocks !
http://sega-zone.com/sega_haven

Olivier Aichelbaum and the_unknown_contributor_who_send_it_to_ACBM:

for my first owned SC-3000h, the BASIC cartridge and the documentations.
http://www.acbm.com

An unknown guy:
for the rendered Master System picture used on the interface.
no one knows who you are but you are getting famous. I love you.

Puyolin:
for the "Ocean" and "Emucamp" color themes (used in the interface), and
for correcting(corrected) mistake/s? in/on? (the?) first documentation/s?
~~~ ~~~~ xx ~~~
Westone (including Shinichi Sakamoto and Ryuichi Nishizawa):
for making Wonderboy 3, the best game ever.. ten years ago :~)
http://www.westone.co.jp

*All people* who bothered registering MEKA and supporting SMS Power.
You know who you are and your support is greatly and always appreciated.
Everyday MEKA lives, it is thanks to you.

And of course thanks to SEGA, for such a cool system and great games !

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Goodnight Monster-land. � � � � �
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