Sega  Victor Wonder Mega 2
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Sega Wonder Mega 2

The Victor Wonder Mega 2, or the RG-M2 was the first revision of the Victor WonderMega. The case had been completely redesigned and the controller ports were moved to the rear of the system. The front now had infrared receivers for the system's new, wireless controllers. Wired controllers could still be used using those ports on the back.

When the system was released in North America as the JVC X'Eye in 1994, the infrared receivers were omitted and instead the unit was packaged with two traditional 9-pin wired controllers, in an attempt to reduce cost. The S-Video connection on the X'eye was also removed and instead the unit came with a standard AV port, comparable to the Mega Drive II.

Both the American and the Japanese verion of the console run a version 2.00 of the system bios.

Technical Specifications

CPUs

  • Motorola 68000 CPU @ 12.5MHz
  • Motorola 68000 CPU @ 7.67MHz
  • Zilog Z80A @ 3.58 MHz

Audio Capabilities

  • Rico RF5C164 Audio Chip
  • Yamaha YM2612
  • Texas Instruments SN76489
  • Midi Output
  • Digital Signal Processor

Texas Instruments SN76489 Sound Generator

THe SN76489 Digital Complex Sound Generator (DCSG) is a TTL compatible programmable sound generator chip created by Texas Instruments. It main application was the generation of music and sound effects in home computers, arcade machines and home game consoles. Functionally the chip was similar to the General Instrument AY-3-8910.

SOund Capabilities:

  • 3 Square Wave tone generators, 16 volume levels
  • 1 White Noise Generator (white and periodic noice, 3 frequencies, 16 volumes)

The SN76489 Was originally designed to be used in the TI-99/4 computer, where it was first called the TMS9919 and later SN94624, and had a 500 kHz max clock input rate. Later, when it was sold outside of TI, it was renamed the SN76489, and a divide-by-8 was added to its clock input, increasing the max clock input rate to 4 MHz, to facilitate sharing a crystal for both NTSC colorburst and clocking the sound chip. A version of the chip without the divide-by-8 input was also sold outside of TI as the SN76494, which has a 500 kHz max clock input rate.

Motorola 68000 CPU Family

The Motorola 68000 is a 16/32-bit microprocessor that was first released in 1979. It was widely used in computers and other electronic devices during the 1980s and early 1990s. The 68000 was known for its advanced architecture, which included a 32-bit internal bus and a 24-bit address bus, allowing it to access up to 16 megabytes of memory. This made it more powerful than many other processors of its time, such as the Intel 8086 and Zilog Z80. It was also designed to be highly modular and expandable, with a large number of on-chip and off-chip peripherals.

Some of the most famous and successful computers that used the 68000 was the Commodore Amiga and the Atari ST, both of which were popular in the home and personal computer markets. Additionally, it was also used in workstations, such as the Sun 3 and Apollo DN3000, and in a wide variety of embedded systems and industrial control systems. The 68000 was also used in the Macintosh, the first model of the Macintosh was powered by a Motorola 68000 CPU. The processor was eventually succeeded by the 68020 and 68030, which offered improved performance and additional features.

The 68000 has a 32-bit instruction set, with 32-bit registers and a 16-bit internal data bus. The address bus is 24-bit and does not use memory segmentation, making it easier to address memory. There are three ALU's (Arithmetic Logic Unit), two for calculating addresses, and one for data, and the chip has a 16-bit external address bus.

The 68000 architecture was expanded with 32-bit ALUs, and caches. Here is a list with some 680x0 versions and their major improvements:

  • 68010 - Virtual memory support
  • 68020 - 32-bit ALU & Instruction Cache
  • 68030 - On-Chip MMU, 2x 256 byte cache
  • 68040 - 2x 4K Cache, 6 stage pipeline, FPU
  • 68LC040 - No Floating Point Unit (FPU)
  • 68060 - 2x 8K Cache, 10 stage pipelinet

Zilog Z80 CPU Family

The Z80 quickly became popular in the personal computer market, with many early personal computers, such as the TRS-80 and Sinclair ZX80, using the Z80 as their central processing unit (CPU). It was also widely used in home computers, such as the MSX range, SORD, and the Amstrad CPC, as well as in many arcade games. Additionally, it was also used in other applications such as industrial control systems, and embedded systems. The Z80 was widely used until the mid-1980s, when it was gradually replaced by newer microprocessors such as the Intel 80286 and the Motorola 68000.

The Z80 microprocessor was developed by Zilog, a company founded by Federico Faggin in 1974. The Z80 was released in July 1976, as a successor to the Intel 8080. It was designed to be fully compatible with the 8080, but also included new features such as an improved instruction set, more powerful interrupts, and a more sophisticated memory management system.

The Z80 quickly became popular in the personal computer market, with many early personal computers, such as the TRS-80 and Sinclair ZX80, using the Z80 as their central processing unit (CPU). It was also widely used in home computers, such as the MSX range, SORD, and the Amstrad CPC, as well as in many arcade games. Additionally, it was also used in other applications such as industrial control systems, and embedded systems. The Z80 was widely used until the mid-1980s, when it was gradually replaced by newer microprocessors such as the Intel 80286 and the Motorola 68000. The design was licensed to Synertek and Mostek as well as the European SGS.

The Z80s instruction set is binary compatible with the Intel 8080, so that 8080 code such as the CP/M Operating System and Intel's PL/M compiler for the 8080 can run unmodified on the Z80. The Z80 had many enhancements over the 8080 such as 16-bit data movement instructions, block copy and block I/O instructions, single bit addressing of all registers, IX/IY offset registers, better interrupt system and a complete duplicate register file for context switching during an interrupt.

Source: WikiPedia
Technical Details
Released 1993 Brand JVC Type Sega Genesis / Megadrive Name Victor Wonder Mega 2 CPU Class 68000 CPU Motorola 68000 @12.5MHz
Motorola 68000@7.6MHz
Z80 @3.58MHz
Memory RAM: 72kB
VRAM: 64kB
72kB RAM
64kB VRAM
6Mbit Mega-CD RAM
512 kbit PCM RAM
128 kbit CD cache
64kbit backup RAM
Sound Chip Z80, Yamaha YM2612, Texas Instruments SN76489 Sound Stereo sound Display Chip YM7101 VDP (Combined with YM2612 as the ASIC FC1004) Display 320x240 in 61 colors out of 512 Best Color 61 colors out of 512 Best Graphics 320x480 (Interlaced) Sprites 80 hardware sprites simultanuously, 20 per scanline. Storage ROM Cartridges
Related Systems
 
Sega Game (SG)
 
Sega Master System
 
Sega Genesis / Megadrive
» 
Victor  Wonder Mega 2 (1993)
 
Sega Saturn
 
Sega Dreamcast
 
Sega Sega Computer
Related Media
 
68' Micro Journal
Magazine devoted to the 68xx user
World Wide Web Links
 
Wikipedia: Motorola 68000 CPU Family
WikiPedia page on the Motorola 68000 series of processors
 
Wikipedia: The Z80 CPU
Wikipedia page on the very popular Z80 8-bit CPU used in many computers of the 1980's era.