johnparker007

If there is a magic string of bytes per game, that could included in the MAME driver per game definition, that would be acceptable to the core MAME devs. We already do it with the characteriser lamp column values for MPU4 (to 'unscramble' the lamps).

If it was my sole day job it would go insanely faster But I need to pay the bills and not have a big burnout... so I'm just back to a bit of casual tinkering for now. On the plus side, we are getting a little progress on the ROM decompilation front, which people have often wondered about before

I'm still dabbling in the occasional bit of light FME stuff, hacking the odd ROM etc, but with life and work as it is as the moment, I'm needing to take a break from the big push developing the new software (which is another multi-year project). It is of course all open source and 100% of the Oasis code so far is on github for other programmers to get involved, but it seems like fruit machine software is just too niche to tempt anyone else capable of this kind of work! If I was retired it'd be a breeze, get up, have a coffee, code some Oasis... one day lol

I wonder if they may have more security outside of the Pluto 6 'core' emulation; from the Heber website: Safety against game piracy is imperative. Pluto 6 uses two-stage customer-specific security giving superior protection to your gaming application. A security chip and security software ensures that once your application is developed it is well and truly safeguarded. Hopefully not of course (this may even be a recent development, and not be present on the older fruit machine hardware already deployed), and if the dev has a running game, then they may have already bypassed it... but might be a roadblock depending on how it's implemented etc.

Oooh nice!

I just checked that, no actual emulation code changed really, just adding more game ROMs to the MAME BFM Cobra driver. I tried a couple of others that were already there on a oldish MAME install, and they worked perfectly (gfx and sound), so MAME has a fairly functional BFM Cobra driver already

I think it was a good call getting AGEMAME into MAME, to let others continue the work Though yeah the MAME PR process is pretty much like developer deterrent! I started on a few MAME fixes before Chrimbo, just leaving them in my own fork for now (https://github.com/johnparker007/mame/commits/master/?author=johnparker007), and will deal with that whole PR mess later, when I've done all the low hanging fruit (no pun intended!) I can spot (I had another Maygay fix in progress for another sound chip)...

Coming along nicely @appstrader

Looks legit to me, running in a Window with this title bar: and a custom 'button hover' mouse pointer graphic (not Mfme/Oasis/Mame): Also posted a Cobra 3 emulation running: Best guess is they have taken emulation code from Mame and developed it further in their own codebase - essentially taking the approach Chris took with Mfme.

Hiya @dec1962 Amazing to see others working on FME in MAME! I have some (non PR'd) FME fixes too, but I've been a bit under the weather for a few months now, so my progress has kinda stalled until I feel a bit more in the zone again I have another Maygay sound fix for another sound chip, but it's in progress from last year (will fix some looping issues and softlocks on M1A/B): I have some other projects on the go also, but I'd been tinkering with MAME as it's the new emulation backend for 'Oasis': Here's Oasis running a 'classic' layout, which will later be exportable to create MAME built in (to the MAME.exe) text only layouts, it is using a MAME.exe process in the background to run the emulation: It also does graphical layouts, so that the new version of 'Arcade Simulator' will use MAME.exe for its emulation backend rather than MFME.exe. Here's a demo of the original version of Arcade Simulator: So I do have a couple of irons in the emulation fire, just been unwell so had to take a step back for a bit. So I am super interested to see more work going into MPU3 (or any of the reel-based FME drivers!) - thanks for your work so far!

It sounds like that laptop may be a bit low spec, so initially you want to turn the attract videos off. Then, once you walk around relatively smoothly (since the attract videos aren't slowing things down) without any crashes, you will have to exclude the Arcade SIm folder from your antivirus, by following these steps: Sorry it's all a bit of a ball ache, it's because I had to do some low level stuff to control the MFME program to run the fruities, which Windows doesn't like!

This is a nice application of spreadsheets guys I do like a good spreadsheet.

It will be 'somewhere' on the Fruit Machine Rom Archive, you will have to find it though! [ Fruit Machine ROM Archive ] The archive: https://tinyurl.com/3jhzbueb

Inferno uses the 'Oki' sound chip, rather than the NEC part - so this is the chip I'm currently doing battle with lol I'm hoping to get it working properly like seen in my Bar-Gain before/after video above (Bar-Gain uses the NEC chip). I am currently using Eastenders Queen Vic as my Oki test machine, when I have the sound working in that, it should be working in all Maygay machines that use the Oki sound chip (i.e: Inferno). At least that's the plan!

I'd recommend asking him in the comments on one of his most recent youtube vids.

I've seen that before, some machines go into a 'demo mode'. Perhaps a feature for trade shows or something? If it didn't happen on an earlier MAME version, then sounds like a regression - might not be too bad to figure out the breaking change as a starting point to investigate. Been looking at the Oki MSM6376 sound chip sound/speed issues on M1A/B... though when I fix some things other things break lol

Well - so I've been looking at these scrambled lamps in Eastenders Queen Vic, kinda making some progress, but then I thought - let's just try some other rom revisions - hey presto, they have correctly working lamps! Eastenders Queen Vic - scrambled lamps ROM sa7-496.zip I then tried the ROM in MFME, and the lamps are also scrambled in MFME! God damn lol So I'm not sure what is going on with the lamps, maybe a dongle is required to unscramble them? Since Chris didn't emulate/fix these lamps in MFME either, I'll move onto something else... as we can simply not use these affected ROMs (like we do in MFME now). I could 'fix' them given time, as it's simple a 1:1 mapping, so I could even make a basic lookup table... however that table may then only work for Eastenders Queen Vic, and then other M1A/B games might have a different scrambling, needing figuring out again. Once less thing to have to sort out anyway

This is a modern project, but a guy Bernard Mitchell has been making some impressive MPU3 era machine simulations that run on a humble 48K ZX Spectrum (mainly based around Line Up type machines): The audio is particularly dialled in, and he's also implemented the G.A.I.N system, plus it plays to a realistic VTP.

That is very cool @dad! Also found an recentish Follin interview @thealteredemu

Wow not heard that one, it's got some riffs from his Chronos music! Yeah, he really made the beeper sing

I will later on, for now I'll just keep chipping away at fixes in this repo so they're safely on github... I have to get back to work on the Layout Editor before too long, so maybe then I'll pass them over to David or James to get them into the head repo I saw from testing Eastenders Queen Vic (different sound chip to the Bar Gain one above), that has an issue where the trail letters count up to slowly, and also the lamps (I think above lamp number 127) are mapped wrong... so hopefully a couple more Maygay M1A/B fixes in the pipeline

My mouse hand was very happy hearing the looping samples working properly after I've been chipping away at this with a hangover most of today lol

I have made some decent progress on Maygay M1A/B improvements (@Altharic ) Fix emulation speed, fix synth sound pitch/speed (on NEC chips), fix looping samples playing an ungodly rapidly repeating racket (seen here on Nudges and on Hi/Lo gamble: Before my fixes: After my fixes:

No unfortunately, it would make things easier! Things like the reel controllers, I believe they've just been reversed engineered thus far... they were custom chips, so it's not like they're super plentiful for decapping shenanigans...