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View topic - So how much RAM does the SG-1000 have?

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  • Joined: 18 Jan 2017
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So how much RAM does the SG-1000 have?
Post Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2017 4:32 am
I've seen a lot of discrepancy on this topic, and I'd like a final answer.

The old SG-1000 document on this site says 8kb at $a000 and mirrored at $c000, Meka emulates 4kb at $c000 mirrored at $d000 with nothing at $a000-$bfff, Sega Retro says 1kb, and most of the commercial games set the stack pointer either $c3ff or $c400, suggesting only 1kb of RAM is really there.
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  • Joined: 31 Oct 2007
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Post Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2017 7:00 am
SC-3000 has most definitely 2KBytes.
SG-1000 and SG-1000 II both have TMM2009 chips which are 1KByte.
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Post Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2017 4:56 pm
I recall years ago, someone made a test ROM to verify that (by doing a simple mirroring test).
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Post Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2017 1:05 am
OK thanks for the info.

Would it be appreciated if I tried to write a more up-to-date document on the SG-1000? There's not a lot I've found on the internet.
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Post Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2017 9:26 am
All the useful knowledge has been migrating to the wiki so by all mean feel free to add stuff there.

We should make it even clearer that the Documents page, apart from Charles' docs is pretty much outdated stuff.
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Post Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2021 2:21 pm
I would like to be sure about the WRAM in SG-1000. Is the WRAM TMM2009P-A chip a 1KB or 2KB chip? According to information he is:

TMM2009P-A ("16,384 bits high speed and low power static random access memory organized as 2,048 words by 8 bits and operates from a single 5V supply")

How is it? Is it a 2KB chip but the SG-1000 only uses 1KB, or is it some corrupted 2KB versions running as 1KB?

I also have a question about the VRAM 2KB map in the SG-1000 because the information is unclear.

It is also not clear whether VRAM has 2KB or 16KB? There are 8 pieces of MB8118 memory, but they are single-bit, so 8-bit is 2KB - right? https://sega.jp/fb/segahard/sg1000/data.html

Tilemap is divided into three 32x8 tiles size parts - one part should be 256 bytes, e.g:

- $0000-$00FF
- $0800-$08FF
- $1000-$10FF
- $1800-????? (sprite pattern table?)

Exactly at what address each part of the tilemap begins and ends, and what is the pattern table (I understand there are separate pattern tables for each of the three parts?)
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Post Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2021 8:01 pm
Enri has a schematic: http://www43.tok2.com/home/cmpslv/Sg1000/EnrSG.htm

The pin that would have been A10 is marked by Enri as being an extra +CE, and is tied to +5V. Perhaps earlier models used a 8 kibibit SRAM instead. Or maybe the TMM2009 actually means 8 kibibit.

MAME's source comments:
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TMM2009. This RAM is completely undocumented (even in Toshiba Databooks of the era) but the schematic shows it has a pinout that matches TMM2016/6116 2k x8-bit SRAM


Video DRAM has 7 address pins - 14 address signals - so there's 2^14 = 16384 addresses with memory. Eight chips = 16384 bytes

(To be fair: not all DRAMs use all address bits on both /RAS and /CAS - for example, N's FDS uses 4 DRAMs each with 4-bit data buses, and use 8 and then 6 address lines on the RAS and CAS)
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Post Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2021 10:17 pm
Thanks. I've already read a lot about it and there's 1KB WRAM and 16KB VRAM. But it was uncertain.

What does the exact VRAM map of the SG-1000 look like?

Sprite attribute table: 128 bytes (4 bytes per sprite, 32 sprites)
Sprite tiles: 2048 bytes (256 tiles, 8 bytes per tile)
Background tiles: 6144 bytes (768 tiles, 32×24 tiles, 256×192 pixels, 8 bytes per tile)

$0000-$07FF - Tiles graphics for the top part (2048)
$0800-$0FFF - Tiles graphics for the middle part (2048)
$1000-$17FF - Tiles graphics for the bottom part (2048)
$1800-$1FFF - Used for sprites tiles graphics (2048)
$2000- ?

That's all the information I found.
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Post Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2021 11:03 pm
It can be whatever you want - the TMS9918 provides a lot of configurability. The options depend on what video mode you're using (Text? Graphics 1? 2?)
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Post Posted: Sat Dec 11, 2021 10:45 am
Mode 1/2: 256x192 resolution, tilemap, 2 colors per tile, 8 bytes per tile

Can Tilemap also be anywhere in VRAM?
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Post Posted: Sat Dec 11, 2021 7:16 pm
Yes.
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