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"SEGA Tera Drive" installation and exe files working on old PCs and even DosBox :)

ItsMeMario

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And another thread I wanted to rescue from AG :



Once a HDD image got shared by Nemesis and thanks to him, Shane McRetro (whos not here yet) and Trimesh, I managed to run a "TeraDrive" on my old Pentium Toshiba Satellite 220CS Laptop (120MHz).

And while you can discover the most amazing stuff, by just hex editing the raw image-file itself...well, here is what I got after trying to run all those exe files :


screenshots2.jpg


1st I installed PC DOS 5.1 japanese :


pcdos 5 1.jpg


A menu.bat that starts right after booting. It will start different exe files, but not all of these exe files will work and some result into screens like this :


screen b.jpg




The fancy BIOS itself cant be started...I took a screengrab from one of ShaneMcRetros videos so you can see it too :


!menu good HQ.jpg



Ok, 1st quick tests of the applications that asked for japanese DOS :

After booting : (Shift-F9 exits to command prompt)


1.jpg



A texteditor, if I googled right :


2.jpg



3.jpg




4.jpg



The working Tetris game example, that didnt look correct in DOSBOX :


5.jpg




The memory manager fails to install because of the wrong chipset :



6.jpg



IBM Multiplan (later Microsoft Excel):


7.jpg




And some screenshots, I could grab with "ScreenThief" :


screenshots.jpg




The music files dont look like the MegaDrive CYM format. The file header starts right with the instruments. Anyone got an idea ?

music file header.jpg




I also stumbled across the cdram.exe :


SILKA lily of the valley.jpg


Now I know the CD ROM (Mega CD) never was released for the Teradrive and only 2 prototypes existed according to

http://segaretro.org/Teradrive.

So what about this tool/loader and who would SILKA (Lily of The Valley) be ?

The exe file says :
PRODUCED BY OR UNDER LICENSE FROM SEGA ENTERPRISES Ltd




And just some examples of the deleted stuff inside the raw image :

#isho.dic

contains the mentioned serial numbers and all kind of TeraDrive Models enlisted.
Probably fragments of a IBM Multiplan format, like some of the others, if not the japanese Lotus 1-2-3.
The word SONY shows up a lot...

#gbdosv.sys

contains all text from the game SIM CITY and enlists the TERRAIN EDITOR as well.
There are many references to the assembler and C files enlisted, probably the whole source code of SimCity.
Which got released in 2008 anyway, but this 90s version could be truly different.


Its a "DOS-V Version By Kiyotaka Kono"


#agepro.exe
references to:
C:\123\DAYLY\MASTER'S.WJ2
C:\123\DAYLY\INPUT'S.WJ2 (jap. Lotus 1-2-3)
C:\HG3\DATA\ROCKTOP.PCC (HGcopy utility)


Stuntcar Racer (STUNTS) was also installed on that machine once...but there is even tons of emails by SEGA, as this was an internal machine and...you better read Nemesis original post (original text by nemesis can be found below here):


So, this probably was the login page of TERA-NET :

login.png



You can download the image here :



_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________​

And here is the 2 old posts by Nemesis that changed my (our) world back then :

Here you go:
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/HDD/TeraDriveHDD00000201.7z
Meant to circulate this years ago. This image has the famed "Puzzle Construction" software on it. To my knowledge, this is the only copy that has ever surfaced of this software. This unit originated from within Sega itself. It appears it was a demo unit or reference unit kept within a sales department of Sega, which makes sense given the low serial number (201). I managed to salvage email fragments from this drive image, some of which I put up here:
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/HDD/Salvaged/Email1.txt
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/HDD/Salvaged/Email2.txt
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/HDD/Salvaged/Email3.txta
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/HDD/Salvaged/Email4.txt
There's also pieces of inventory data scattered across the drive image. Makes for some interesting digging. I paid over $2000 for this unit back in the day (including keyboard/monitor), which was a small fortune, but the data finds made it worth it.

Oh, and the software. Here's some floppy disk images I've made/acquired:
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/Software/Driver Disk J4.0 serial.ima
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/Software/Driver Disk J4.0 no serial.ima
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/Software/IBM DOS J4.06.ima
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/Software/IBM DOS J4.07.ima
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/Software/IBM DOS J4.0-V Rev 4.06.IMA
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/Software/IBM DOS J5.0-V Rev 1.2.IMA

And here's some pictures:
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/Pictures/
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/Pictures/HDD/

I've never properly dumped the BIOS files from the TeraDrive, but that would be worthwhile doing. I had plans to make a website with info about my collection, but I've never got around to it.

_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________

I had a bit more of a dig at that drive, and retrieved some more internal data from Sega. Here's a presentation which was apparently prepared for the CEO of Sega on the TeraDrive. It may have been incompete at the time, because it really only seems to show manufacturing numbers for the Mega Drive. The file was prepared as a "Harvarrd Graphics" show (powerpoint in the days before powerpoint), but I've converted it to something that can actually be opened nowadays. There are also a few extra/unused slides that were in the same folder:
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/HDD/Salvaged/PROTO1.SH3.pptx
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/HDD/Salvaged/$01.CH3.pptx
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/HDD/Salvaged/MAK_PVAC.CH3.pptx
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/HDD/Salvaged/TOT_REC.CH3.pptx

And here's the source manufacturing data on the Mega Drive that was used to make the above presentations. This was in a Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, but I've converted it to an Excel spreadsheet:
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/HDD/Salvaged/MASTER.xlsx
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/HDD/Salvaged/RECENT.xlsx

And here's some of the complete recovered emails I had in text form before. These were WordPerfect docs that I've converted again"
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/HDD/Salvaged/19JUL91.FAX.docx
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/HDD/Salvaged/TRAN.FAX.docx

There's also that inventory of Teradrive hardware I talked about. It appears to be in a database format with a "DAF" extension, which may or may not be related to the "Digital Anchor" database tools I can find only vague information about. The files seem to contain equipment/stock listings, including serial numbers for TeraDrive hardware, and references to other equipment. It's hard to get useful info out of it without opening it in the proper program to read it, but it would be interesting if they could be recovered and opened.

_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________




p.s.

Since mcretro.net no longer has downloads enlisted, I still have all the deleted files, BIOS images etc. etc. etc.
 
Last edited:

DeChief

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Sometime in 2014?

Thanks for bringing this thread over! Here's Shane McRetro's Teradrive Google Drive folder, I've got everything downloaded too if anybody needs it in future.
 

Pazzard

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Great stuff! Sort of unrelated because I know this is not your usual Teradrive, even though non used by Sega versions are rare enough, I own a UK equivalent (the Amstrad / Sega abomination) and that was from an ex Amstrad employee. Sadly it never contained a HDD when I acquired it so it just sits in my factory unused and unloved.
 
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DeChief

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Sometime in 2014?
Great stuff! Sort of unrelated because I know this is not your usual Teradrive, even though non used by Sega versions are rare enough, I own a UK equivalent (the Amstrad / Sega abomination) and that was from an ex Amstrad employee. Sadly it never contained a HDD when I acquired it so it just sits in my factory unused and unloved.
I'll take it! ;) I used to own an Amstrad Mega PC and regret selling it. Please tell me you've at least cut the battery out, those things leak badly and destroy the motherboard entirely.
 

Pazzard

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I'll take it! ;) I used to own an Amstrad Mega PC and regret selling it. Please tell me you've at least cut the battery out, those things leak badly and destroy the motherboard entirely.
The battery is long gone, and it also has a 486 upgrade thingy. Sadly it's currently not for sale...
 
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DeChief

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Sometime in 2014?
The battery is long gone, and it also has a 486 upgrade thingy. Sadly it's currently not for sale...
Glad to hear it, and lucky you on the 486 upgrade. Mine came from Shane McRetro and he'd swapped out the whole motherboard for one from another compatible Amstrad PC that had a 486SLC, I played all the way through Doom for the first time on that thing. Does yours have a 486DX?

Speaking of CPU upgrades and to get back onto the TeraDrive topic, I've got a 286 to 386 upgrade module out of an IBM PS/2, as well as a 286 to 486DLCe module meant for a PC-98. Apparently the PC-98 upgrades will work fine, you just can't use the included floppies to activate the cache on the board or something like that. Once I get my TeraDrive fully recapped (hopefully fixing this insane floppy drive issue that it's had on and off since I got the damn thing), I'll likely be attempting to upgrade the CPU with one of the two modules.
 
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