T7 and t8

[radstockben]

Keep seeing a guy on tube playing t8 and t7 emulated games? Am I missing something can’t find them anywhere? How has he got them?

[slotsmagic]

13 minutes ago, radstockben said:

Keep seeing a guy on tube playing t8 and t7 emulated games? Am I missing something can’t find them anywhere? How has he got them?

I believe he is just capturing the video outputs from a T7/T8 PC, much like streamers will capture the output from games consoles e.t.c. to show gameplay. 

[radstockben]

10 minutes ago, slotsmagic said:

I believe he is just capturing the video outputs from a T7/T8 PC, much like streamers will capture the output from games consoles e.t.c. to show gameplay. 

So it’s not an emulator then 

[slotsmagic]

2 hours ago, radstockben said:

So it’s not an emulator then 

Pretty sure that as said it'll be video capture from a T7 cabinet. But if you want confirmation get in touch with the person behind the channel. If there is a software T7/T8 emulator currently available I'll eat my hat

[niallquinn]

I've thought about this before, it's just a pc isn't it?  Is t7/8 a pc with mpu5 carts like my Rio?  Or is it a differrent tech?

 

 

[slotsmagic]

18 minutes ago, niallquinn said:

I've thought about this before, it's just a pc isn't it?  Is t7/8 a pc with mpu5 carts like my Rio?  Or is it a differrent tech?

 

 

A T7 PC is just an industrial PC chassis from the late 2000s (dual core Celeron), old AMD graphics cards in the early ones, from memory based on the X300 series. Later ones used an S3 graphics card which is rare / daft.

The game licensing is handled entirely by a Sentinel HASP USB stick, no need for separate game cards like you had with the eRio PCs in earlier single game cabinets, although there is also an MPU5 or MPU6 for handling IO with the coins, notes, buttons, e.t.c. and if there isn't one present the machine won't work.

So you could basically have a PC, and MPU, and you might also need coin mech, notey and hopper, and you could basically run a T7 on a desktop - definitely for real money mode. Got demo / door open mode you might be able to skip some components but then you'll be stuck in demo mode with cheats enabled.

Then you've got the murky world of converting T7 PCs to run T8 content. Which is a doddle now but I imagine figuring it out took some skills

Edited October 27, 2025 by slotsmagic

[nails]

1 hour ago, slotsmagic said:

A T7 PC is just an industrial PC chassis from the late 2000s (dual core Celeron), old AMD graphics cards in the early ones, from memory based on the X300 series. Later ones used an S3 graphics card which is rare / daft.

The game licensing is handled entirely by a Sentinel HASP USB stick, no need for separate game cards like you had with the eRio PCs in earlier single game cabinets, although there is also an MPU5 or MPU6 for handling IO with the coins, notes, buttons, e.t.c. and if there isn't one present the machine won't work.

So you could basically have a PC, and MPU, and you might also need coin mech, notey and hopper, and you could basically run a T7 on a desktop - definitely for real money mode. Got demo / door open mode you might be able to skip some components but then you'll be stuck in demo mode with cheats enabled.

Then you've got the murky world of converting T7 PCs to run T8 content. Which is a doddle now but I imagine figuring it out took some skills

the industry did this all behind Barcrests back, but nobody has an emulator....

[slotsmagic]

2 hours ago, nails said:

the industry did this all behind Barcrests back, but nobody has an emulator....

The content being shown online will be video captured from an original T7 PC, I can say that with 100% confidence.

But that isn't to say nobody has worked on, or is working on an emulator.

I'd love to see them emulated

Edited October 27, 2025 by slotsmagic

[radstockben]

Thanks for all the replysb

[jabbathehut]

Surely they would be the actual thing running on your pc rather than an emulator.Its probably possible if someone was motivated enough to do it.I don't see it though but you never know.

[nails]

yes, it would only be the mpu being emulated.

[thealteredemu]

Not sure why barcrest didn’t just go full pc based on these techs.  What does the mpu control, lights, hoppers etc?

J

[thealteredemu]

The games are pc based.

J

[Road Hog Mad]

Well we need someone to get it emulated as I want to play elvis top 20

[slotsmagic]

1 hour ago, thealteredemu said:

Not sure why barcrest didn’t just go full pc based on these techs.  What does the mpu control, lights, hoppers etc?

J

A lot of them are the same. My Astra / Novomatics cabinets used a Firefox PC and backplane combo, where the backplane handled I/O. My Storm Games cabinets used a very basic Dell office PC, but combined with a Paylink board for lamps, switches, and coin handling.

The PC on the T7 was only connected directly to the displays (video output and USB touchscreen input) and amp / speakers - everything else was done via the MPU5 or MPU6, which the PC communicated with over USB.

With the Storm cabinet, one nice thing is you can run the PC without peripherals and the games can run, albeit in demo mode.

[Road Hog Mad]

4 hours ago, slotsmagic said:

A lot of them are the same. My Astra / Novomatics cabinets used a Firefox PC and backplane combo, where the backplane handled I/O. My Storm Games cabinets used a very basic Dell office PC, but combined with a Paylink board for lamps, switches, and coin handling.

The PC on the T7 was only connected directly to the displays (video output and USB touchscreen input) and amp / speakers - everything else was done via the MPU5 or MPU6, which the PC communicated with over USB.

With the Storm cabinet, one nice thing is you can run the PC without peripherals and the games can run, albeit in demo mode.

be nice to see the games even in demo mode

[slotsmagic]

44 minutes ago, Road Hog Mad said:

be nice to see the games even in demo mode

I've already shared them I think, most of them were already available. When I say Storm, I mean Storm Games (mainly club £400/£500 jackpot simple games), not the Storm Fobt cabinets running Astra and Blueprint content. Also got older Thunderbolt stuff from the £250 jackpot era.

In any case I've kept hard drive images from every machine I've owned so if needs be I can sort bits out and share them.

As long as I don't get banned or sued  

Edited October 28, 2025 by slotsmagic

[niallquinn]

Well that's just it, like all the arcade games being just pcs now, they run in the Technoparot loader.  Its hooking up the mpu side.  I bet you could do it with mame for that side, it's hooking up the bpak, unpacking it and incorporating it into some sort of interface.

 

[Road Hog Mad]

15 hours ago, slotsmagic said:

I've already shared them I think, most of them were already available. When I say Storm, I mean Storm Games (mainly club £400/£500 jackpot simple games), not the Storm Fobt cabinets running Astra and Blueprint content. Also got older Thunderbolt stuff from the £250 jackpot era.

In any case I've kept hard drive images from every machine I've owned so if needs be I can sort bits out and share them.

As long as I don't get banned or sued  

I can't remember what I have tried and what I have not, I don't have any on my PC, probably because they loaded wonky or didn't work properly.

[Road Hog Mad]

On 26/10/2025 at 20:27, radstockben said:

Keep seeing a guy on tube playing t8 and t7 emulated games? Am I missing something can’t find them anywhere? How has he got them?

Do you have a link to the video?

[mainjohn21]

hi all its a utuber streaming his own machines from his home reelistic slots is his channel

[fruitsnappa]

1 hour ago, Road Hog Mad said:

Do you have a link to the video?

It will be in here somewhere

https://www.youtube.com/@REEListicSlots

[jono3000]

I'm sure someone done a video screen on here a few years back but I think it went not sure if it was quiz names

So is thr software available to play in demo mode instead 

[Road Hog Mad]

54 minutes ago, jono3000 said:

I'm sure someone done a video screen on here a few years back but I think it went not sure if it was quiz names

So is thr software available to play in demo mode instead 

Me and a few others had a crack at this many years ago and we all hit a brick wall, from what I remember they were called bpaks and we couldn't do anything with them. This was in the days of the first £2 £500 Jackpots, Barcrest ones. I think we went down the route of trying to extract them but I've slept about 15 years since then lol.

We got hold of a hard disk out of one and we tried running it on a normal PC but failed, I think the software was looking for certain hardware and just didn't do anything. Maybe someone else on here can fill in the blanks.

[slotsmagic]

1 hour ago, Road Hog Mad said:

Me and a few others had a crack at this many years ago and we all hit a brick wall, from what I remember they were called bpaks and we couldn't do anything with them. This was in the days of the first £2 £500 Jackpots, Barcrest ones. I think we went down the route of trying to extract them but I've slept about 15 years since then lol.

We got hold of a hard disk out of one and we tried running it on a normal PC but failed, I think the software was looking for certain hardware and just didn't do anything. Maybe someone else on here can fill in the blanks.

You shouldn't even really need to extract the BPAKs - when you are on a T7, T8 or similar and install the games, they are unpacked and moved into the 'running', rather than 'packed' folders.

Although having said that I don't know if it just extracts the games there, or if it makes loads of other changes elsewhere across the drive.

Almost certainly if you took the HDD out and put it into any random PC it would blue screen as the drivers and whatnot for the original industrial PC wouldn't match (you'd want the same ICs on a replacement board for audio, networking, drive controllers, and pretty much everything else).

The ideal solution would just be finding a way to run the games skipping the whole Windows and Barboot side of it. Never really looked into it properly and I'm confident it's beyond my skills. It's entirely possible that even if you managed to get the games to run outside of the Barcrest software, the games would (unless possibly in demo mode?) still be looking for a USB connected MPU5/6 or similar.