42 replies to this topic

[Wickeycolumbus]

Many people on this forum hate the mattel HyperScan, and thought homebrew would not be possible on it.  For the past few months, a guy named 'ppcasm' and I have been figuring out how the thing works, and released a few demos here an there.  I am not sure if anyone here is interested, but here is a scrolling color demo I just made for it.  Written 100% in SPG290 Assembly language.  In order to run it, you must have a real HyperScan (no emulator exists yet), and a CD-R.  All you have to do is burn the HYPER.EXE file to the CD-R and put in into an un-modded HyperScan, wait about a minute, and the screen pops up with fabulous colors  

Attached Files

•  Scrolling_Color_Demo.zip   1.46K   162 downloads

[GroovyBee]

Never heard of the Mattel HyperScan. Thanks for the enlightenment . Did it make it to the UK's shores?

[Wickeycolumbus]

GroovyBee, on Tue Apr 14, 2009 3:13 PM, said:

Never heard of the Mattel HyperScan. Thanks for the enlightenment . Did it make it to the UK's shores?

I don't think so.  They are pretty hard to come by, but you can find them new at some liquidation stores for only $9.99 (in the US)   You could probably find a cheep one on Ebay.

I predict that soon these will be worth a lot of money.

Edited by Wickeycolumbus, Tue Apr 14, 2009 2:20 PM.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Could someone make a video of that for the non-Hyperscan owners like me?

[nathanallan]

Got the zip file Wickey, I missed it in my PM back.

The Hyperscan was a failed attempt at a main stream game console by Mattel. The main reason that it failed was the games-- they were made hastily and tried to use limited hardware (which is still not bad) to do 3D stuff and the results were terrible.

That said, there is still lots of possibility in the little thing. It has a strong processor, zero copy protection and very generic parts (save for a couple that are not very prone to fail). So it's a homebrewer's dream. A console that out of the box needs no special treatment to make games for. No diskjuggler, weird settings on your burner program, nothing like that.

The language is proprietary and it has been studied by many great minds to crack it. Lot of progress has been made, lots has been determined. More and more has been found out since 2006 when it was released.

The HS's day is coming! We will see a Harry Potter vs. Star Wars game! The Force vs. Magic! Speederbikes vs. Firebolts!

Okay, maybe Pong for now But it'll still rock.

[nathanallan]

I have done a demo, here:

LINK to youtube demo

The file is in Wickey's post above. Not bad!

[Tears of Ash]

Nice!

I tried the Hello! World demo, but I never got around to doing the scrolling colours demo. (Running out of CD-Rs, must conserve!).

I like all these demos. I can't wait to see where they go from here, speaking as a Hyperscan owner.

[roland p]

I've found some specs about the system:

Quote

CPU - SCore (162 MHz Sunplus mMedia 32-bit RISC processor)
Video - Composite, 2D graphic engine, 640x480 resolution, MPEG4 codec
Audio - MP3 codec, 24 PCM sound channels
Memory - 16 MB SDRAM
ODD - 4x CD-Rom drive
IO - 1x USB 1.1 port, RFID Scanner
RFID Scanner - 13.56 MHz
RFID Storage - 110 bytes (96 bytes of user memory 8 bytes unique ID 6 bytes of one time programmable memory)

Could be nice for emulation.

@Wickey,
is the video of this machine interlaced or not?

[nathanallan]

Tears of Ash, on Thu Apr 23, 2009 1:24 AM, said:

Nice!

I tried the Hello! World demo, but I never got around to doing the scrolling colours demo. (Running out of CD-Rs, must conserve!).

I like all these demos. I can't wait to see where they go from here, speaking as a Hyperscan owner.

Same here! I don't think there's been a better homebrew platform outside the Dreamcast for this kind of stuff. More must be done! You know all about that stuff, though, been on the HS Scene since day 1 I think Welcome to Atariage.

roland p, on Thu Apr 23, 2009 1:54 AM, said:

I've found some specs about the system:

Quote

CPU - SCore (162 MHz Sunplus mMedia 32-bit RISC processor)
Video - Composite, 2D graphic engine, 640x480 resolution, MPEG4 codec
Audio - MP3 codec, 24 PCM sound channels
Memory - 16 MB SDRAM
ODD - 4x CD-Rom drive
IO - 1x USB 1.1 port, RFID Scanner
RFID Scanner - 13.56 MHz
RFID Storage - 110 bytes (96 bytes of user memory 8 bytes unique ID 6 bytes of one time programmable memory)

Could be nice for emulation.

@Wickey,
is the video of this machine interlaced or not?

Very good for emulation. These things have a lot of potential. The only gripe I have is that the CD mech is cheap and likes to go out-- I have four of them, and one died on me. It boots up, but it won't spin a disk. Well, that and the language is really weird and you have to almost take speed to understand it. I've been told it's really a weird way of doing things. Lots of workarounds, but it's coming soon. Us people working on it have to make money, so personally I can't spend as much time as I'd like to on the Project.

[roland p]

nathanallan, on Thu Apr 23, 2009 10:02 AM, said:

Well, that and the language is really weird and you have to almost take speed to understand it. I've been told it's really a weird way of doing things. Lots of workarounds, but it's coming soon. Us people working on it have to make money, so personally I can't spend as much time as I'd like to on the Project.

Weird language? You mean the manual, or the processor?

[nathanallan]

The language that the HS is programmed in. Thankfully the manual is pretty easy to understand

[selgus]

nathanallan, on Thu Apr 23, 2009 4:54 AM, said:

The language that the HS is programmed in. Thankfully the manual is pretty easy to understand

Manual as is programming manual? SoC manual? I haven't seen any kind of documentation yet on the HyperScan, so can you give a bit more information?  Thanks.
--Selgus

[roland p]

Some techie info: http://w3.sunplusmm....s/game/g290.asp

Edited by roland p, Thu Apr 23, 2009 5:07 AM.

[selgus]

roland p, on Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:06 AM, said:

Some techie info: http://w3.sunplusmm....s/game/g290.asp

I've seen that, but does anyone have any real docs on this thing?  I admit, I got one with the thought of hacking it one day, but wanted to see detailed info on the hardware besides bulletpoints.
--Selgus

[nathanallan]

So far as I know, there aren't any real docs on it. SunPlus and Mattel are very tight-lipped about it. Everything that is known has had to be determined. If you look at one of the hyper.exe files on the disk it looks like a really weird form of OS because the way it's written.

Not programming manual, that doesn't exist yet. I meant owner's manual. No official development kit is available afaik.

Selgus, are you a programmer?

Nathan

Edited by nathanallan, Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:42 AM.

[Kurt_Woloch]

OK, thanks for the video! How many colors exactly are there appearing on screen?

nathanallan, on Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:15 AM, said:

I have done a demo, here:

LINK to youtube demo

The file is in Wickey's post above. Not bad!

[selgus]

nathanallan, on Thu Apr 23, 2009 10:27 AM, said:

Selgus, are you a programmer?

Yup, and have worked on pretty much every game console produced.
--Selgus

[nathanallan]

selgus, on Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:48 AM, said:

nathanallan, on Thu Apr 23, 2009 10:27 AM, said:

Selgus, are you a programmer?

Yup, and have worked on pretty much every game console produced.
--Selgus

This gives me hope. PM sent

[Wickeycolumbus]

roland p, on Thu Apr 23, 2009 3:54 AM, said:

@Wickey,
is the video of this machine interlaced or not?

Yes, I believe there is an interlaced mode.  I am not sure why it appears to be flickering, I think I may have initialized the TV wrong.

roland p, on Thu Apr 23, 2009 4:37 AM, said:

nathanallan, on Thu Apr 23, 2009 10:02 AM, said:

Well, that and the language is really weird and you have to almost take speed to understand it. I've been told it's really a weird way of doing things. Lots of workarounds, but it's coming soon. Us people working on it have to make money, so personally I can't spend as much time as I'd like to on the Project.

Weird language? You mean the manual, or the processor?

The assembly language is somewhat obscure, it is based off of mips.  We currently only have a list of opcodes, no documentation on the video hardware at all.

Kurt_Woloch, on Thu Apr 23, 2009 10:47 AM, said:

OK, thanks for the video! How many colors exactly are there appearing on screen?

The demo is in RGB 565 mode, so 65,536 different colors (they are hard to make out though, since there is 1 pixel per color)  They are repeated a little over 4.5 times on the screen.

nathanallan, on Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:15 AM, said:

I have done a demo, here:

LINK to youtube demo

The file is in Wickey's post above. Not bad!

Thank you very much for uploading a video!

Edited by Wickeycolumbus, Thu Apr 23, 2009 12:52 PM.

[Wickeycolumbus]

I thought some of you might be interested in this picture, it is a picture of all the prototypes I had to make before I made the final version of the color demo.  HS programming is not for the impatient!  No emulator means only hardware tests, it takes forever.

nathanallan, on Thu Apr 23, 2009 9:27 AM, said:

If you look at one of the hyper.exe files on the disk it looks like a really weird form of OS because the way it's written.

   Are you talking about when you open up HYPER.EXE files up in notepad?  It looks like that because that is machine code, open up any program in notepad and you will see the same strange symbols.

[BDW]

You know, in 30 years, we're all going to be sorry we didnt get one. Since it failed so miserably it *might* be worth a lot later......

[Wickeycolumbus]

brandondwright, on Thu Apr 23, 2009 5:26 PM, said:

You know, in 30 years, we're all going to be sorry we didnt get one. Since it failed so miserably it *might* be worth a lot later......

Don't you worry, I am prepared for the situation.  I have over 12 systems (6 sealed!) and am waiting for the prices to skyrocket  

[selgus]

Wickeycolumbus, on Thu Apr 23, 2009 5:31 PM, said:

brandondwright, on Thu Apr 23, 2009 5:26 PM, said:

You know, in 30 years, we're all going to be sorry we didnt get one. Since it failed so miserably it *might* be worth a lot later......

Don't you worry, I am prepared for the situation. I have over 12 systems (6 sealed!) and am waiting for the prices to skyrocket

You're a nut!

Though I do want to learn more about this machine.  If it was such a failure because a lack of any real software, I wonder what you can do with the hardware?  I put it on my backlog to look at moving the one game I am working on, over to the HS when I know more about it.

I am assuming that the frame buffer is memory mapped into normal address space, and what people are doing now is similar to what they were doing when hacking the N64 (i.e. doing software rendering into the frame buffer and minimal hardware setup).

if it is MIPS-like, then it should be pretty easy to pick up.  Having done a lot of PSX/PS2/N64 assembly level programming, this shouldn't be that hard.  Does it have the same load/store RISC arch, 32 general purpose registers, pipeline stalls if the stage isn't ready at the time of execution, etc?

Some people must know more than they are saying out there.
--Selgus

[Wickeycolumbus]

selgus, on Thu Apr 23, 2009 5:40 PM, said:

Though I do want to learn more about this machine.  If it was such a failure because a lack of any real software, I wonder what you can do with the hardware?  I put it on my backlog to look at moving the one game I am working on, over to the HS when I know more about it.

Another HS programmer is always welcome   Right now, it is only me and ppcasm.

selgus, on Thu Apr 23, 2009 5:40 PM, said:

I am assuming that the frame buffer is memory mapped into normal address space, and what people are doing now is similar to what they were doing when hacking the N64 (i.e. doing software rendering into the frame buffer and minimal hardware setup).

Yes, so far, all graphics are through the framebuffer.

selgus, on Thu Apr 23, 2009 5:40 PM, said:

if it is MIPS-like, then it should be pretty easy to pick up.  Having done a lot of PSX/PS2/N64 assembly level programming, this shouldn't be that hard.  Does it have the same load/store RISC arch, 32 general purpose registers, pipeline stalls if the stage isn't ready at the time of execution, etc?

I do not have previous experience with MIPS based machines, so I could not tell you the answer to that.  I believe all 32 general purpose registers are present though.

selgus, on Thu Apr 23, 2009 5:40 PM, said:

Some people must know more than they are saying out there.
--Selgus

Most of the stuff we know can be found on the internet if you search hard enough  

[nathanallan]

@wickey I opened it up in a freeware compiler, and not really being a programmer I didn't know what I was looking at. I can't even remember which free compiler I used.

@Selgus Not sure about worth, I figure the whole thing will be on a single chip when it gets over and done with Rename it QuantumScan