Hi!... My name is Roberto Fresca, and I'm part of the MAME Dev Team since 1998. Here you can find some technical things about rare hardware. This site is intended to avoid duplicated efforts.
This page is still in construction...
Hi!... My name is Roberto Fresca, and I'm part of the MAME Dev Team since 1998. Here you can find some technical things about rare hardware. This site is intended to avoid duplicated efforts.
This page is still in construction...
--- 2011/02/01 04:00 ---
Thanks to Team Europe, we have Music Sort, from ABM Games. This game was released in 1995, and looks like the original game that gave life to Magic's 10. A lot of inputs/outputs work involved (and also a new button-lamps layout and default NVRAM) to get it working properly. Here some pics (yes!.. a *LOT* as someone requested)...
--- 2011/01/20 02:45 ---
Well... After 2 years of attempts (in fact were 3 or 4 *deep* attempts) I got the Video Klein sets working. Addressing tricks, different kind of NVRAM (Dallas), and a lot of checks were involved. I did some cleanups (the set witchcde is in fact Jolli Witch). This one and a new set dumped by Team Europe (Wild Witch) are both based on the 6T/12T system from Video Klein (CPU box + Dallas DS1210 + battery backed RAM). Also each set has 2 games (Jolli Witch has a Witch Card selectable through a DIP switch, and Wild Witch has Witch Game in the same way).
Here some pics...
Now, thanks to Team Europe and Willi.O, we have Lucky Lady (Wing, 1995). The program ROMs are encrypted and the CPU unknown. The bipolar PROMs weren't dumped, but at least the tiles seems to be decoded in a proper way. See them...
And to finish the post, Team Europe and Hal9K dumped a new clone of Scramble. Seems to be bootleg, but not 100% sure, since they have only the eproms. Not the PCB. Here some snaps...
--- 2010/12/31 16:00 ---
Still clean. No cigarettes since october 4th. Just earned some pounds due to anxiety. :-/
My ghetto machine can't deal with the current sources anymore, but I have a big monster (i7 930, 6GB RAM) here for just a couple of weeks. At least allow me to continue with the emulation stuff. This time, thanks to Team Europe and HAL9K that kindly dumped a rare board, we have Silver Game working properly. They also dumped another 2 boards, but one lacks one program ROM and the other is completely encrypted. Also hooked the Ngold sets Darran already dumped and cleaned a bit the Golden Poker driver. Here some Silver Game snaps...
Happy new Year!!!
--- 2010/10/10 10:10 ---
132 hours... and still counting!. It's a *extreme* effort, believe me.
This time, a couple of 'most wanted' appeared in the scene... Arrow Bingo and Symbols. They are amusement/skill games from Advanced Video Technology. No PCB/schematics/datasheets/manuals, so just reverse-engineered the program ROMs to get them working. They run in a Z80 based hardware with an AY-3-8910 device for sound. The Z80 works with a couple of CTC and PIO devices in a daisy-chained interrupt mode. Here they're running without daisy-chain interrupts, so they are not playable ATM.
From a 80's flyer....
Do you want to see the attract mode running?
Symbols: There are 2 sets (v1.4 and v2.5), but only the v1.4 is showing something.
Also there is another one called 'NFL', but only the program ROMs and the bipolar PROM are dumped. GFX ROMs are missing,
and we're f***ed here since I really doubt about the possibility that a new board will ever appear.
--- 2010/10/07 00:01 ---
50 hours... Yes! 50 hours *without* a cigarette. I don't know if I can definitly defeat it, but it worth a try. Obviously I'm currently walking on the walls, eating everything I can find (...wakawakawaka) among other things...
I was busy trying to improve a bit the blitter based gambling games. After some code analysis, I can say that they are using a different addressing map (CPU lines A14 & A15 aren't connected). They are still not working due to the lack of MC6840 PTM emulation. Also seems that inputs are muxed in some complex way.... Here some snaps:
Videotronics Poker:
5-Aces Poker:
Now the ball is falling into Kale's domain... Somebody there?(over) ;-)
--- 2010/09/27 21:00 ---
Damn thing with my ghetto machine. A single line change, and the linker takes hours to finish. This is totally insane, so I'm currently developing on an old source tree (waaay outdated, previous to the C++ stuff) just to keep my mental health. But this isn't cheap... Once worked, I need to do several changes to bring each driver to the XXI century, and sometimes they don't work as expected. I know that this is not the best solution, but at least allow me to continue with my work in some way.
There are several things that are being worked and I never posted a WIP about. Some of them have more than
a whole year of work trying to figure out and get them working. I'll try to do a big push to the following
stuff so I can get a bit of peace soon... ;-)
THE DAY WITCH CARD GOT ENHANCED SOUND:
This is the original Falcon version of Witch Card. It's running in a Falcon original PCB marked 831 1.1. This board has place for a second encrypted CPU, plus extra ROM and RAM. Fortunately this sector is unpopulated. The hardware is a heavily modified (and enhanced) Bonanza's Golden Poker. They replaced the discrete sound circuitry with an AY-3-8910, sending data and address commands in a multiplexed way through the normal discrete channel from a single 8bit PIA port out. Once hooked the device and demuxed the data/commands, the final sounds are very impressive. Also the cards have a nice 'punk' effect (green hair, crown, etc...) due to a possible bad dumped bipolar PROM. The game is now working properly, with enhanced sounds and button-lamps.
Also another rare Witch Card set dumped by Team Europe. The graphics are different (chars are very noticeable).
And finally the big monster from Video Klein was defeated!....
(Video Klein produced one of the most evil twisted/obfuscated hardware mods (with an epoxy CPU box).
The game now is working properly with sound and lamps. Only needs proper hopper emulation.
A NEW OLD'ISH FROM FALCON:
Talking about the evil Video Klein hardware, Team Europe dumped two different versions of Falcons Wild. The game comes in 3 different flavors:
1) As kit for original Bonanza's Golden Poker hardware.
2) As standalone board from my evil friends from Video Klein (CPU + program + color PROM + RAM + PLDs in a epoxy block).
3) As original board from Falcon (same PCB marked 831 1.1, above mentioned) with extra encrypted unknown CPU (based on z80),
ROM, RAM, and enhanced sound through 1x AY-3-8910.
The code has a lot of obfuscation. Graphics sets from Golden Poker and Video Klein hardware are unfortunately bitrotten. Here the Golden Poker hardware version (also called Wild Card 1991)...
Now Falcons Wild - World Wide Poker, from Video Klein. This one hasn't the big banner mode (at least I didn't find
the way to enable it). Same evil stuff heavily protected... And finally defeated!
Heh... Did you noticed the 'LOSS #@?' message?
And the 3rd one: The original from Falcon, dumped by Darran. The encrypted CPU seems to write code to
the range 2A00-2FFF. The main code checks the range 2A00-2A03 for fixed read only values, if these are ok,
just transfer the control to the injected code. I found the bits involved and partially decrypted the
program, but it needs more work because the encryption is addressing-sensitive. Also need to identify the
CPU (seems to be z80 based). Here the only snap I got...
ANOTHER CLASSIC FROM NOVOMATIC...
This is Piccolo Poker, from Admiral / Novomatic. It looks similar to American Poker II, but it's a very different game with skills things. The hardware is also a hell. All the things are scrambled. ROMs are adress bitswapped, ports, data, inputs and lights are scrambled in a strange way. Seems that they put the American Poker II hardware into a liquidisher to get this hardware... ;-)
The game has also a nasty protection. The RAM has a single bit fixed at offset 0xC416 (or constantly written through a device), then check it with some boolean functions at different instances of the game. If these calculations fail, the game reset itself. I added a workaround to get the hardware happy. Here some snaps...
And last (but not least), Here a strange unknown game running in a M6809 CPU hardware. Graphics are blitter-based.
Far from working, still needs a lot of work. Will see what can I do about...
Now is time to leave. As soon as I get some results and commit the stuff, I'll focus into one of the 'most wanted'
(it's on hold for now...) :-)