T7 and t8

[andrew96]

4 hours ago, slotsmagic said:

You'll get the graphics incorrectly split across the screens, like half of a screen visible on one screen and then the other half on the other screen.

From memory that is lol.

I used no end of ATI cards of that era to make my modded cards. Still have a bunch of them, unless I binned them.

yes that is exactly what happens, same as you from memory, Even if its the correct graphics card that still happens if it has not been 'processed' by barcrest on T7, i don't know about T8, i never got round to investigating T8

[redbags]

37 minutes ago, andrew96 said:

yes that is exactly what happens, same as you from memory, Even if its the correct graphics card that still happens if it has not been 'processed' by barcrest on T7, i don't know about T8, i never got round to investigating T8

Too bad none of us have a T7 to test it on. But I suspect the issue is one of graphics card setup + configuration vs underlying code issue.

The API at that time did not support multiple displays as draw canvases so it was left to the developer to treat them as two screens but managed via a single desktop resolution. Apparently horizontal span mode needs to be configured at the driver level vs extended mode or some variation on that. And looking at the code there are some fairly strong indicators it is drawing to a single resolution and doing a bunch of operations on that to make sure things are drawn to the correct viewport.

So if someone out there has a broken T7 graphics card and is willing to tinker then I think it's possible to get any card working so long as it supports the relevant API and required resolution. I'm only going on registry settings but it's something like 2560x1024.

[slotsmagic]

55 minutes ago, redbags said:

Too bad none of us have a T7 to test it on. But I suspect the issue is one of graphics card setup + configuration vs underlying code issue.

The API at that time did not support multiple displays as draw canvases so it was left to the developer to treat them as two screens but managed via a single desktop resolution. Apparently horizontal span mode needs to be configured at the driver level vs extended mode or some variation on that. And looking at the code there are some fairly strong indicators it is drawing to a single resolution and doing a bunch of operations on that to make sure things are drawn to the correct viewport.

So if someone out there has a broken T7 graphics card and is willing to tinker then I think it's possible to get any card working so long as it supports the relevant API and required resolution. I'm only going on registry settings but it's something like 2560x1024.

I never made any software configuration to any T7 hard drive to make my GPUs work. I just wondered what Barcrest may have done to the GPUs to make them output in a non-standard format...

Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best  

Edited November 3, 2025 by slotsmagic

[redbags]

9 minutes ago, slotsmagic said:

I never made any software configuration to any T7 hard drive to make my GPUs work. I just wondered what Barcrest may have done to the GPUs to make them output in a non-standard format...

Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best  

I suppose my wider point is that I'm pretty sure they haven't done anything as low level like creating custom silicone, drivers or firmware and such such like on the gfx. I think that's a bit of a myth / something mired in mystery. I suspect any replacement card you got working either shared the same driver or that default driver setting came with the required settings.

Out of interest - did you ever tinker with the graphics setup in the actual operating system?

[slotsmagic]

Just now, redbags said:

I suppose my wider point is that I'm pretty sure they haven't done anything as low level like creating custom silicone, drivers or firmware and such such like on the gfx. I think that's a bit of a myth / something mired in mystery. I suspect any replacement card you got working either shared the same driver or that default driver setting came with the required settings.

Out of interest - did you ever tinker with the graphics setup in the actual operating system?

Nope

[slotsmagic]

3 hours ago, andrew96 said:

yes that is exactly what happens, same as you from memory, Even if its the correct graphics card that still happens if it has not been 'processed' by barcrest on T7, i don't know about T8, i never got round to investigating T8

Mk7 PC I gave up on, with it using an S3 (defunct) GPU chip. They probably got a good deal on them just before they went bust  

To run T8 content on a Mk7, as I'm sure you are aware, you add a second S3 GPU and use 3 out of the 4 outputs across the two cards (top screen, bottom screen, marquee).

But I don't know if that means a T8 itself uses those GPUs, never had one to work on

Edited November 3, 2025 by slotsmagic

[andrew96]

I did mess about with MK5 T7 graphic cards and did work out the changes from the standard cards, and was able to modify a standard version of the same type bought off ebay to work happily on T7 as the T7 see it as a barcrest one, this was back around 2015 when i was messing with them, so definitely they are modified to barcrest needs. I did buy a big box of them at the time to change then to barcrest type for T7 as barcrest T7 ones were really expensive at the time! but it bit the dust, didnt progress with that, just being able to work out what barcrest did was good enough for me. it was only the electronics on them that interested me

Edited November 3, 2025 by andrew96

[andrew96]

I found these pictures from october 2014 when i was messing, just by modifying the cards physically they worked perfectly, originals are gigabyte blue ones, these are a different model and green, but the mods worked! it was my proof barcrest did something to them!

 

Edited November 3, 2025 by andrew96

[slotsmagic]

I only worked it out as I didn't like the idea of paying £80+ for what we're basically 10-15 year old £10 GPUs

I started getting requests so to cover my costs and experimentation I started selling a few for £27.50 or so including postage once modded and tested (cards and mods cost me about £10-£15, after postage I was making at most a tenner a card and that is without my initial outlay and effort).

I then found some bell-ends were buying from me under the pretence of being amazed at how well they worked in their cabs... slapping them on eBay at £60  

One of the reasons I gave up trying to help people. I wasn't some big business, I was a nice / generous person trying to work stuff out to keep home use machines going without people being ripped off.

When I realised machine owners - many of whom were addicts but couldn't admit it, expected everything for free, were ripping off my generosity - fuck them.

But like you I guess, just working something like that out have me a massive buzz.

Edited November 3, 2025 by slotsmagic

[andrew96]

yeah i had the same thing too when i sold stuff, exactly the same! and the hassle on the forums for 'making coin from poor collectors' which is why i stopped releasing everything and just did things for myself because it interested me. you think your helping people out but everyone is just wanting to suck off your work for there own profitable ends!. that's why i release nothing since then

[Road Hog Mad]

I was speaking to my friend last night who is a programmer, he has registered on this site as @Norwenglish if admin @Reg could approve him please or whatever the criteria is for him to post here and in other places.

He's not a gambler and doesn't understand fruit machines, he somewhat gets the jist of playing Road Hog in The Reel Vegas Blackpool after me helping him lol, but that's his limits.

Anyway, after a conversation last night with him about about getting these animated machines working, he asked me for a list of things he wants so he can understand a little bit better the hardware. He won't be creating an emulator but hopefully a work around.

He asked that if he was to build a Rio animated machine from scratch, for example a T7 what hardware was inside it.

Motherboard, Hard Drive, GPU, CPU, RAM, Graphics Card, Display etc (including model numbers etc.) He mentioned using x86 or something which can emulate actual hardware used, I was getting sleepy by this point lol. He also mentioned that Barcrest only having certain graphics cards that will work would seemed silly, because if there was a fault with one they'd have to replace/recall them all. That makes sense to me as well but I've read here somewhere that only certain ones will work.

He went on a bit more about the software or loader doing checks to see if things where in place, he's under the impression he can bypass the checks. So he needs a copy of the loader, a game for example Elvis Top 20, or maybe just a clone of a hard drive uploaded somewhere so he can download it and have a look.

To add he is bit busy at the moment so we may not get a response for a while and certainly not if his account is restricted.

 

Thanks

[andrew96]

i guarantee that a standard graphics card  with the same number as barcrest use won't work, even if it is the exact identical part, barcrest ones are not the same even if everything matches

Edited November 4, 2025 by andrew96

[thealteredemu]

I imagine the barcrest gpu’s have a modified bios rather than off the shelf consumer units.

I’m sure someone who has one can get a dump of the gpu bios to see what mods where made regarding screen config.

J

Edited November 4, 2025 by thealteredemu

[redbags]

38 minutes ago, thealteredemu said:

I imagine the barcrest gpu’s have a modified bios rather than off the shelf consumer units.

I’m sure someone who has one can get a dump of the gpu bios to see what mods where made regarding screen config.

J

Never say never but this just seems very unlikely to me.

For starters the driver used to support the graphics is stock AMD. And modifying the BIOS of a commercial graphics hard is both a.) technically challenging and b.) something almost certainly off limits from AMDs perspective.

If you look at the behaviour outlined by slots magic - sticking in any old graphics card doesn't break it - the output just comes out incorrectly. And I'm sure that's a gfx card configuration vs something more technical.

The exec in T7 land is drawing to a single canvas and managing offsets etc to know where to draw to recreate the 'multiple' display effects. But the graphics card and driver has the job of sending half of that canvas to one monitor over one port and the other half to the other monitor over the other port. Things change in T8 because of the addition of an additional screen but in T7 that's how it works.

I suspect that if you were to connect a single screen which supports the resolution of 2546 x 1200 (typing off hand here but it's something like that) to any graphics card it would work as expected.

And final thought - keeping the graphics card uniform makes a lot of sense when you look at at the setup of these systems and how locked down/controlled they are. Fewer hardware types = less management overhead. So I think it's less about custom graphics vs a tightly controlled system where introducing new hardware becomes a headache.

Now someone can come along and say.....I did all this via the OS on a T7 and it still didn't  work to prove me wrong. But installing and configuring a graphics without somehow interacting with the OS - it's hard to know what you actually did.

[Road Hog Mad]

Ok then, I'm sure the comments will be read by friend when he becomes available so we just need what I have asked for above....

Motherboard, Hard Drive, GPU, CPU, RAM, Graphics Card, Display etc (including model numbers etc.)

And I'd probably say a cloned hard disk would be the answer as everything will be on that.

If someone would kindly oblige in providing the above.

[thealteredemu]

41 minutes ago, redbags said:

Never say never but this just seems very unlikely to me.

For starters the driver used to support the graphics is stock AMD. And modifying the BIOS of a commercial graphics hard is both a.) technically challenging and b.) something almost certainly off limits from AMDs perspective.

If you look at the behaviour outlined by slots magic - sticking in any old graphics card doesn't break it - the output just comes out incorrectly. And I'm sure that's a gfx card configuration vs something more technical.

The exec in T7 land is drawing to a single canvas and managing offsets etc to know where to draw to recreate the 'multiple' display effects. But the graphics card and driver has the job of sending half of that canvas to one monitor over one port and the other half to the other monitor over the other port. Things change in T8 because of the addition of an additional screen but in T7 that's how it works.

I suspect that if you were to connect a single screen which supports the resolution of 2546 x 1200 (typing off hand here but it's something like that) to any graphics card it would work as expected.

And final thought - keeping the graphics card uniform makes a lot of sense when you look at at the setup of these systems and how locked down/controlled they are. Fewer hardware types = less management overhead. So I think it's less about custom graphics vs a tightly controlled system where introducing new hardware becomes a headache.

Now someone can come along and say.....I did all this via the OS on a T7 and it still didn't  work to prove me wrong. But installing and configuring a graphics without somehow interacting with the OS - it's hard to know what you actually did.

Ah right.  I thought it just wouldn’t accept another graphics card.  I meant firmware by the way.

J

[thealteredemu]

21 minutes ago, Road Hog Mad said:

Ok then, I'm sure the comments will be read by friend when he becomes available so we just need what I have asked for above....

Motherboard, Hard Drive, GPU, CPU, RAM, Graphics Card, Display etc (including model numbers etc.)

And I'd probably say a cloned hard disk would be the answer as everything will be on that.

If someone would kindly oblige in providing the above.

He’ll only likely need an image of the hard drive to start with so he can take a look and see what’s going on.  I don’t know how specific or bespoke the motherboard is, off the shelf or modified?

 

J

[Road Hog Mad]

@thealteredemu probably I'm just going off what he said last night.

Anyone Got an image they can drop in here then?

[slotsmagic]

4 hours ago, thealteredemu said:

He’ll only likely need an image of the hard drive to start with so he can take a look and see what’s going on.  I don’t know how specific or bespoke the motherboard is, off the shelf or modified?

 

J

The motherboards were 'industrial' designs, I believe made by DFI (not sure they still exist, they used to make LanParty motherboards with brightly coloured sockets and stuff stuff back in the day ). They aren't anything special really. The components are basically standard, I don't think there was any additional security on the board itself or anything.

I'd always been tempted (as I've probably said before) to just catalogue all the various chips used on the motherboard - northbridge, southbridge, network, audio, SATA e.t.c. in the hope that if I found one with exactly the same chips, it would boot without any driver issues / blue screens.

Alas I never bothered in the end. Partly because I'd lost interest, partly because you'd be buying aging hardware, similar age to the original boards, with no way of knowing how they would last either. T7 PCs date back to 2008 or so (we had one or two installed by Barcrest on test in 2008).

I believe others have managed it, but some of them are people who ripped me off in the past so they may be full of shit  

But as long as the chips basically all match, as near as damnit anyway, it could work.

I documented all the stuff (chips and whatnot) but not sure I kept it, when I binned the garage arcade off and couldn't be arsed giving info out to be made money out of I probably shredded it  

Edited November 4, 2025 by slotsmagic

[Norwenglish]

Hello there,

I'm trying to piece together information from various threads and earlier posts here, but are these games running on consumer versions of recent Windows or Embedded XP or Enterprise LTSC?

While it sounds like it makes sense, it sounds unlikely that software would be tied to specific consumer grade hardware, because that would make servicing a nightmare.

If it were possible to acquire all the parts of the necessary (T7, T8) equipment, what would that look like? An industrial backplane is unlikely to matter, because it's just a backplane. I'm thinking CPU, I/O chipset, disk controllers, GPU family. Those are things that could, but very loosely be controlled.

[slotsmagic]

15 minutes ago, Norwenglish said:

Hello there,

I'm trying to piece together information from various threads and earlier posts here, but are these games running on consumer versions of recent Windows or Embedded XP or Enterprise LTSC?

While it sounds like it makes sense, it sounds unlikely that software would be tied to specific consumer grade hardware, because that would make servicing a nightmare.

If it were possible to acquire all the parts of the necessary (T7, T8) equipment, what would that look like? An industrial backplane is unlikely to matter, because it's just a backplane. I'm thinking CPU, I/O chipset, disk controllers, GPU family. Those are things that could, but very loosely be controlled.

Embedded Windows XP from memory. I've lobbed all my research out I think but the PCs in a T7 didn't use a backplane as such, just a USB connection to an MPU5 or MPU6 fruit machine processor for fruit machine I/O stuff (coins, buttons, lamps, e.t.c.).

The PCs used were basically off the shelf DFI industrial PCs. Mk6 PCs used (I believe) a Celeron D from circa 2007, the later Mk7 PC used something like an E5300 so a little bit newer. The Mk6 used a proprietary GPU (or so we were led to believe) but really it was an ATI x1300 or similar with minor changes made which you could probably get around easily enough. I managed it

The Mk7 PC was a bugger as it used an S3 Chrome GPU, and you can buy them but people charge silly money for realistically a pretty worthless GPU.

Main components you'd need to run in real money mode (you may be able to run in 'door open' / 'demo' mode without the latter bits. Note that my Interplay cab used to throw up errors for things I consider trivial - cabinet fans failing - so again, you might need to overcome loads of trivial stuff that wouldn't seem important  :

1) The industrial PC. Barcrest referred to them as the Mk6 and Mk7 for the T7 cabinets, but they are basically DFI motherboards in basic metal chassis with SFF PSU.

2) The MPU5 with T7 program card, OR The MPU6 with T7 loader flashed on it. 

3) Sentinel HASP - pretty sure you'd need this as I'm confident the HASP specifies the cabinet type (T7, T8, Interplay, e.t.c.). Unless you had a workaround for say emulating a HASP or bypassing any checks made to look for it.

(Possibly optional bits below)

4) I feel like you'd probably get errors if you didn't have the coin handling components connected - that would be a coin mech / note validator and possibly even the hopper. I'm sure on the real machine you'd get the machine lock up with a 'serial coin mech fail' for example if no coin mech detected.

5) I also think I may have had errors from the cabinet LED drivers failing - these were a pair of PCBs that controlled the colour changing LEDs at the side of the cabinet but I can't remember exactly how they were connected. I assume they came off the MPU unit.

6) Touchscreen support - these will hide mouse cursor by default so if you don't have a way of overcoming that, you'd possibly want to use a touchscreen. Original T7s were I believe 1024x768 whereas the T7s were 16:9 format, can't remember if 1920x1080 or something like 1360x768.

 

 

 

Any error on a standard fruit machine that would cause the MPU5 or MPU6 to alarm out could basically do the same on a T7. If the MPU5 or MPU6 entered alarm mode, it was a power cycle job. It locked the terminal up. Might be worth looking at a T7 manual (loads available online) for a full list of available errors and stuff, I bet there's bloody hundreds!!

Edited November 4, 2025 by slotsmagic

[redbags]

10 hours ago, Norwenglish said:

Hello there,

I'm trying to piece together information from various threads and earlier posts here, but are these games running on consumer versions of recent Windows or Embedded XP or Enterprise LTSC?

While it sounds like it makes sense, it sounds unlikely that software would be tied to specific consumer grade hardware, because that would make servicing a nightmare.

If it were possible to acquire all the parts of the necessary (T7, T8) equipment, what would that look like? An industrial backplane is unlikely to matter, because it's just a backplane. I'm thinking CPU, I/O chipset, disk controllers, GPU family. Those are things that could, but very loosely be controlled.

It's Windows XP embedded. The application software is all just standard windows x86 32bit.

Hardware wise - I know the graphics card is an Radeon X1300. In terms of all the other hardware - not exactly sure as I no longer have the physical unit. Opinions tend to vary but I'm not convinced there is physical dependencies on the underlying PC hardware except for the fact that Windows XP embedded needs to be able to boot + install the necessary drivers.

PC hardware aside there are two key peripheral dependencies when considering the PC environment. One is the MPU - this is a proprietory piece of hardware connected via USB which manages all the cabinet hardware i.e. note acceptors, hoppers, led lamps etc. The other is the Sentinel HASP - this essentially serves to provide the encryption/protection of some of the software + individual games.

If your goal here was to get the system up and running on something other than the OEM hardware - MPU/HASP and all that other stuff aside - I'm pretty sure that is possible.

If your goal was can I run these games via some sort of emulation or on hardware that eliminates the need for the proprietory hardware - what I can say is that you will need very strong reverse engineering skills and the appetite to take on a huge task. There is probably somewhere in the region of 50Mb+ of code before you even get anywhere near a game. For anyone not versed in reverse engineering - 50Mb is massive. 10s of thousands of lines of code and some very complex code I might add.

[Road Hog Mad]

2 hours ago, redbags said:

It's Windows XP embedded. The application software is all just standard windows x86 32bit.

Hardware wise - I know the graphics card is an Radeon X1300. In terms of all the other hardware - not exactly sure as I no longer have the physical unit. Opinions tend to vary but I'm not convinced there is physical dependencies on the underlying PC hardware except for the fact that Windows XP embedded needs to be able to boot + install the necessary drivers.

PC hardware aside there are two key peripheral dependencies when considering the PC environment. One is the MPU - this is a proprietory piece of hardware connected via USB which manages all the cabinet hardware i.e. note acceptors, hoppers, led lamps etc. The other is the Sentinel HASP - this essentially serves to provide the encryption/protection of some of the software + individual games.

If your goal here was to get the system up and running on something other than the OEM hardware - MPU/HASP and all that other stuff aside - I'm pretty sure that is possible.

If your goal was can I run these games via some sort of emulation or on hardware that eliminates the need for the proprietory hardware - what I can say is that you will need very strong reverse engineering skills and the appetite to take on a huge task. There is probably somewhere in the region of 50Mb+ of code before you even get anywhere near a game. For anyone not versed in reverse engineering - 50Mb is massive. 10s of thousands of lines of code and some very complex code I might add.

There's an American software program he was considering buying, no idea what it is called but its in the region of £800 per year and it makes reverse engineering a doddle apparently. 

[Road Hog Mad]

Anyone Got an image they can drop in here then?

[thealteredemu]

It will be too big for bandwidth, a link to a download is best.  It might be no one has one any longer.

Or maybe search the net or facebook groups they will be about.  I had one years ago when I was having a dabble but I no longer have it.

J