Forums

Sega Master System / Mark III / Game Gear
SG-1000 / SC-3000 / SF-7000 / OMV
Home - Forums - Games - Scans - Maps - Cheats - Credits
Music - Videos - Development - Hacks - Translations - Homebrew

View topic - Alternative sound hardware

Reply to topic
Author Message
  • Joined: 06 Aug 2021
  • Posts: 49
Reply with quote
Alternative sound hardware
Post Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2022 2:39 pm
This is just a hypothetical and not an "I want to do this" post.

I know of a couple of games on the NES (Mr. Gimmick in particular) that added another chip to the cartridge to give the system another sound channel to work with, and it gives the entire soundtrack a really unique and different feel from the rest of that system's library.

My question is: Are there any games on SMS that do this, and more specifically, how was it done? And secondly, would it be something that someone would be able to do today? My guess at this point as to how it would be done is that there would be some kind of I/O pin on the cartridge that could send sound data to the CPU. Is that far off?
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Site Admin
  • Joined: 19 Oct 1999
  • Posts: 14687
  • Location: London
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2022 3:26 pm
Last edited by Maxim on Tue Jan 25, 2022 3:27 pm; edited 1 time in total
There is nothing like this on SMS because it doesn’t have a way to accept audio from the cartridge into the signal it emits. The Game Gear does have an audio in pin, I don’t remember if it works in game mode (it’s there for the TV tuner).

To do it today, you would have to include a pass through connector on the cartridge to inject the audio, similar to how the 32X worked. If using the AV connector, this would be easy(ish); if using RF it would be extremely difficult.

Technically you could try to digitise the audio on the cartridge and feed it to the PSG as a sample by bus stealing. This would steal a lot of CPU time and have terrible quality.
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
  • Joined: 25 Feb 2006
  • Posts: 863
  • Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2022 3:27 pm
bofner wrote
This is just a hypothetical and not an "I want to do this" post.

I know of a couple of games on the NES (Mr. Gimmick in particular) that added another chip to the cartridge to give the system another sound channel to work with, and it gives the entire soundtrack a really unique and different feel from the rest of that system's library.

My question is: Are there any games on SMS that do this, and more specifically, how was it done? And secondly, would it be something that someone would be able to do today? My guess at this point as to how it would be done is that there would be some kind of I/O pin on the cartridge that could send sound data to the CPU. Is that far off?


Unfortunately, the SMS cartridge port does not include pins for external audio; the Sega Genesis, on the other hand, does support audio from the cartridge, but that feature went unused.
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
  • Site Admin
  • Joined: 19 Oct 1999
  • Posts: 14687
  • Location: London
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2022 3:28 pm
Alternative non-serious option: put a loudspeaker in the cartridge.
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
  • Joined: 29 Mar 2012
  • Posts: 879
  • Location: Spain
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2022 3:37 pm
Alternative non-serious but also doable option: Put an audio-out jack in the cartridge :-)
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 14 Oct 2008
  • Posts: 508
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2022 3:39 pm
haroldoop wrote

Unfortunately, the SMS cartridge port does not include pins for external audio; the Sega Genesis, on the other hand, does support audio from the cartridge, but that feature went unused.


I do know the homebrew/aftermarket game Pier Solar said it uniquely was a cartridge game able to optionally utilize the Sega CD audio.
(and reportedly Paprium can hijack the Sega CD's CPU to utilize it as a coprocessor for the AI co-op mode)
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 30 Jun 2016
  • Posts: 194
  • Location: Melbourne, Australia
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2022 4:10 pm
Does the FM Sound Unit count?
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
  • Joined: 06 Aug 2021
  • Posts: 49
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2022 4:31 pm
Maxim wrote
Alternative non-serious option: put a loudspeaker in the cartridge.


I love this idea! Reminds me of the wii remote's speaker
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 06 Aug 2021
  • Posts: 49
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2022 4:36 pm
kusfo wrote
Alternative non-serious but also doable option: Put an audio-out jack in the cartridge :-)


If you were using the HD-retrovision component cables, this could actually work I think, though I'm pretty sure you'd only be able to use the audio from the cartridge, and not the PSG audio.
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 05 Sep 2013
  • Posts: 3762
  • Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2022 5:14 pm
alternative alternative non-serious but also doable option: put a BT transmitter in the cartridge, stream to your soundbar ;)
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
  • Site Admin
  • Joined: 19 Oct 1999
  • Posts: 14687
  • Location: London
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2022 9:18 pm
Too much audio latency :)
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
Reply to topic



Back to the top of this page

Back to SMS Power!