More Sega Channel prototypes dumped.

Oh, I thought they were referring to the code to extract the .sa files. So the disc image itself hasn't been released then? I'm also curious as to whether there's any way to extract the .GI files now that the .SA format has been cracked. I went back through the .SA files from the old Sega Channel dev disk and didn't find anything new there though.

 

Very cool! ... as @Pirate Dragon said it may have a different bios so a bios dump would probably be useful... at least to see if there's any difference compared to others...

 

Correct. It was divided into the US, Canada, PAL, and SA versions. The SA bios may contain some German

 

What of the other places we have listed on the wiki, like Thailand, and the "rumours" for Singapore and Australia? I was reluctant to put them on the Asian page because it seemed like the US service was more widely used as a base. Although granted, it assumes something actually happened in those countries.

I'm not against splitting the PAL and South American versions off to their own page(s) if we're confident the broadcasts were shared though.


And was the Canadian service actually distinct, or just the US version with extra French? I saw that bit about having Canadian software quotas but FIFA was available both sides of the border - does the US service secretly meet the requirements?

 

Yeah, Canada was distinct. We even have the December 1995 menu in the dev stuff (and others, but they need compiling). The US Thanksgiving Turkey from November becomes the Canadian Christmas Turkey for December. There is also a Canadian SCHEDULE.DAT for CAN0112B.IMG (the US one we recently got was DOM0816.IMG). DOM = Domestic (US), CAN = Canada, and I guess the European one would've been PAL going by some of the prototype menus which also need compiling.

Australia should go with the European service. I guess it should technically be PAL as it also included New Zealand and Israel, but as it never released in those countries it's kind of a moot point. Those were under TCI-International.

I'd put Singapore and Thailand with Asia, they would've probably been supplied by Sega Digital Communications in Japan, they weren't covered by TCI-International. I think it was probably only released in Japan and Taiwan though, and we don't know if Taiwan got it's own service or just the Japanese one. It was common for Taiwan to get Japanese versions of games as they were the same region code as Japan, so it could have gone either way.

 

I'm willing to dump it, but I really have no knowledge on how to do it. I know how to dump regular carts, would it be the same, or do we have to desolder the BIOS chipset and dump that by itself?

 

Sorry ... I don't know how to do it either because I don't have any technical knowledge about these things... but I'm sure there are people here who know how to do it... so I'd advise you to wait before you try anything, not least so that you don't damage the adapter or anything like that...

Edit: Can someone here help our friend @ashthedragon with this?... Sega/Sonic Retro will be eternally grateful...

 

After a bit of digging it seems that it did get delayed again, to July 18th (also confirmed for some of the other test markets in newspaper searches). That guy posted the first month's line-up, which matches the planned June schedule. He also posted some of the month 2 games in the first link. Here he posts some Test Drives from month 3, which he said started "9/17 or so", so the test market months ran from the 18th or 17th (perhaps they started the first one a day ahead of launch for testing?). Here he says that the 4th month was just a repeat of the 1st month, confirming what rganders said.

Reading the cable and satellite enthusiast usenet groups the test markets just used the local version with their own discs, the satellite broadcasts aren't seen until December, when the full launch occurred.

I guess we should change the dates for the first 3 months, and maybe delete or redirect the repeated months to the original broadcast month.

 

I found this article from the September 1994 issue of Popular Science that shows off an early Classics section menu from "a recent cable TV convention." (August or September?)

The lineup shown is:
Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle
Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf
Sonic 1
Golden Axe 1
Super Monaco GP

Also claims there were 51 games in total.

 

Unfortunately that's just a screenshot from the demo cartridge, not the service, so it's not indicative of a schedule that aired.

Spoiler: Sega channel demo screenshot (56k warning)

 

Screenshots from that cart were published in a lot of mags. There was an April launch date planned at some point, so I wonder if the contents of that demo cart might have been the same as the planned April schedule.

 

I'm sure I'm doing something dumb here (I'm not a dev), maybe with "Add C:\SIERRA\BIN to your PATH". I can get it to compile SCMENU.BIN, but it does nothing when appended to a demo rom bios (the bios just keeps looping). Looking at it in a hex editor there is no readable text unlike the examples you posted.

1,2;



3,4,5,6;



7;



Any help would be appreciated!

 

Oh Christ, I missed this
https://segaretro.org/File:LiverpoolEcho_UK_1994-09-27_30.png
The deadly combination of "skim reading" and "a non-colour scan" meant I didn't spot the "launch party" bit when this was uploaded in 2020. Local radio competitions are pretty much a non-starter, but the location? We might find something there:



Forgotten social history: once upon a time there was a theme park called Camelot. It closed in 2012 and has since been demolished, but in 1996 it existed:


(there's no scans for 96, so here's 95)

The event, on 5th October 1996, coincided with the "Red Rose Rock FM roadshow". That means

a) Sega Channel event
b) Radio event
c) it's a theme park

I refuse to believe there isn't photographic evidence.

But I refuse even more to believe there isn't video evidence, because who owned Camelot Theme Park in 1996? Granada! Because who else do you expect to run three theme parks?

And yes, Sooty & Co. was produced by Granada, and yes they went to Camelot. Watch Sweep eat too many chips and be sick at the side of the road. That's real television.

 

Talking of TV coverage;

There is some coverage on Youtube of an episode from August 1994. I don't think this one has been uploaded, but Google has made Youtube search useless, so who knows?

Edit: The Youtube episode is 1992, not 1994 ...

Edit2: Here's a 1994 segment about pinball, I used to play that Star Trek one quite a lot back then.

 

I love that there's an "NBC Archives" wiki (even if it is hosted on fandom)

https://nbcarchives.fandom.com/wiki/September_1994

they have September 18th (Sunday) but not the 17th, which I'm guessing is the one we're looking for.

I think this TV guide says 9AM. Although it says a lot of things, mostly "buy cigarettes and drugs" and a "solution" to static electricity.

 

It looks like you're doing everything right. What file are you trying to compile? Were you able to get any of the ones I built to work?

 

They're all the same size (~538kb), some don't have the sldr warning, but the outcome is the same. Yours on the left, mine on the right;

 

How'd you manage to get the broadcast image extracted? Unless this is from the Sega Channel dev disk.

Meant to reply to this, though I'm guessing it is from the dev disk rather than the broadcast image. Dang.

 

Yeah, I was talking about files from the dev disc. ndiddy already extracted the files from DOM0816.IMG and explained how they did it here.

 

Only things I can think of:
1. Make sure you have "Fake Hardware" and "Segadev Off" checked in the dump menu in Menumakr.
2. Try looking at the file contents inside the VM to rule out the file getting corrupted by transferring it out of the VM.

Besides that I have no idea what's going wrong, sorry.