T7 and t8

[spa]

There's a factory image on my drive, not sure if thats any good. Both mk6 and mk7

[davep180]

I know nothing of this, but found a bpak for elvis top 20. Maybe of some help?

 

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File removed to save on bandwith (spa)

 

[Norwenglish]

Is BPAK a known format?

That is to say, it's already been reverse engineered?

[redbags]

6 hours ago, Norwenglish said:

Is BPAK a known format?

That is to say, it's already been reverse engineered?

I don't believe it's been reverse engineered but that's probably because nobody has looked too closely at it. Because the system/games are unpacked at rest it's not reallly much of a barrier to anything.

[redbags]

On 02/11/2025 at 13:16, slotsmagic said:

I'd be gobsmacked if you were able to 'emulate' the graphics cards in a computer PC, and I'm really not sure it's the right path to be taking. I'm pretty confident given it's an x86 PC architecture and the x300 based GPU used in the Mk5 is nothing that special (I managed to make replacement cards for them) - But if you fancy giving it a shot it would be interesting.

I went into the tank on this one. Based on where I've gotten so far I still maintain that there is NO physical dependency on the ATI graphics card - it's all configuration.

Here is how graphics work in the exec:-

Exec --> SDL --> OpenGL (windows) --> OpenGL (device driver)

In the above - the exec is using certain functions which are not exposed directly through the Windows XP OpenGL library as it's basically a very old/small version of openGL (v1.1 I believe). Instead, the Windows OpenGL library is forwarding those to the device driver through a function pointer.

The functions appear to be OpenGL 1.2 or higher. What I believe this means is as long as the installed video card implements OpenGL 1.2 or higher than you're good to go.

The caveat here is that it's possible further along the line some hardware specific dependency comes into play but this seems unlikely as the video card manufacturers generally played quite well with aligning with the API specs. The fact that the T8 uses another graphics card from another manufacturer supports this idea as well i.e. they'll be doing spec driven code.

[Road Hog Mad]

A bit of digging...

Anyone know what the ram disk is for? Anyone got a memory dump from a running machine?

Barboot.exe launches ge.exe but there's no barboot.exe within the image I have.

The image I have, "Bar7.tmp" is barboot.exe renamed. 

It looks for the presence of a file Test\Barcrest\Developer.txt (Be good if we had this).

A silly comment within the strings.txt file lol.

We tested the ElvisTop20.exe and its not a real .exe so it must be loaded in to some form of environment.

All speculation at the moment, comments, help appreciated. 

@Norwenglish @slotsmagic @redbags @davep180 @spa

strings.rar

Edited November 14 by Road Hog Mad

[spa]

I always think of a bpak like a zip. Once it's installed, it creates lots of files in the running folder, in which ever slot it was installed into.

[redbags]

2 hours ago, Road Hog Mad said:

A bit of digging...

Anyone know what the ram disk is for? Anyone got a memory dump from a running machine?

Barboot.exe launches ge.exe but there's no barboot.exe within the image I have.

The image I have, "Bar7.tmp" is barboot.exe renamed. 

It looks for the presence of a file Test\Barcrest\Developer.txt (Be good if we had this).

A silly comment within the strings.txt file lol.

We tested the ElvisTop20.exe and its not a real .exe so it must be loaded in to some form of environment.

All speculation at the moment, comments, help appreciated. 

@Norwenglish @slotsmagic @redbags @davep180 @spa

strings.rar 12.32 kB · 2 downloads

The RAM disk is strange and I can only assume it was intended to host ephemeral data hence they carved a bit out of RAM. Never seen one used on a production system before.

The PE bar7.tmp sounds suspiciously like the real barboot so I think you are on the right track. You might also notice they have a tendency to name exe stuff .tmp i.e. devcon, ftpserver etc.

The developer.txt file is simply a check for the presence of the file - there is nothing of significance in it from what I could tell. So just go ahead and add the file and barboot will display text informing you it's running in developer mode. Barboot also has some check for the presence of pressing of left alt key - again - not especially clear what it's intended for. There is another check for c:\settings\settings.ini which is quite important to be present so make sure you copy it if moving to another system.

Ge.exe is some sort of packed version of the real executive which is called executive.exe. If you don't have the ram drive configured then just create a small V:\ drive and the real executive will be copied there and launched.

If all goes well you will get the executive running and then be greeted by an alarm telling you that the cabinet dongle is missing. And then you're stuck.

Re: elvis20. I believe you have the game but it's in an encrypted form. I think it gets unencrypted via the licence on the HASP which is why when you poke it - it all looks like junk.

Re: hasp - I did read there are some which allow freeplay. Maybe expired or something. Otherwise I think you will need to get one. Trying to work around it without having one is going to be a serious undertaking.

I would say I've been looking at this system on/off for around one year and I probably haven't scratched the surface. It's very complex with a lot of moving parts. Be prepared to burn a lot of hours/days/weeks looking at raw computer data

[Road Hog Mad]

@redbagssure I reading the string somewhere if pre 2006 Hasp not required unless I was dreaming.

 

[redbags]

11 hours ago, Road Hog Mad said:

@redbagssure I reading the string somewhere if pre 2006 Hasp not required unless I was dreaming.

 

Maybe but not sure how accurate that is. I don't know anything about the systems that came before this but perhaps they didn't use HASP i.e. rio cabinets and it's leftover code. As far as I can tell barboot only deals with installing the HASP software - it doesn't actually communicate with the HASP.

[slotsmagic]

12 hours ago, Road Hog Mad said:

@redbagssure I reading the string somewhere if pre 2006 Hasp not required unless I was dreaming.

 

With earlier cabinets (eRio e.t.c.) there wasn't a HASP and instead each game had its own MPU5 program card, so before it was hacked (which I believe it now is), you needed to have a different program card for each game you wanted to run. No HASP that I recall.

[Road Hog Mad]

Maybe an image of an old rio cab would better then?

[slotsmagic]

Just now, Road Hog Mad said:

Maybe an image of an old rio cab would better then?

You'd have a much more limited choice of games, but might be easier to circumvent?

[Road Hog Mad]

1 minute ago, slotsmagic said:

You'd have a much more limited choice of games, but might be easier to circumvent?

 

Yeah, I mean what are the main games we want?  Rainbow Riches, Elvis, Cashino etc.

[slotsmagic]

2 minutes ago, Road Hog Mad said:

 

Yeah, I mean what are the main games we want?  Rainbow Riches, Elvis, Cashino etc.

There's perfectly good games on them, from £5, £35, £70 and up to £500. None of them have pie gambles and stuff so are more 'traditional' slot games. I used to own the Monty Python's Holy Grail, the later B3 version on £1 play. The earlier £2 play, and especially the Sec16 versions, were probably the 'definitive' versions of games. But not sure if the external random number generator on them would just be more complexity to get running  

[Road Hog Mad]

Anyone got an image of them then? 

[slotsmagic]

6 hours ago, Road Hog Mad said:

Anyone got an image of them then? 

It was my first Barcrest digital and I never kept an image, but I know there are images out there, certainly all the BPAKs are.

[Road Hog Mad]

Still looking for an image if anyone has one!?

[Road Hog Mad]

Anyone?

 

Must be someone!

[thealteredemu]

You might have more luck on a facebook dedicated slot group.

J

[Road Hog Mad]

22 minutes ago, thealteredemu said:

You might have more luck on a facebook dedicated slot group.

J

Any suggestions as to what the groups are called?

[thealteredemu]

I have no idea mate.  But, I’m fairly sure there are loads on Facebook.  You’ll have a better chance by putting something on one of them I’d say.  Be prepared to maybe have to pay for an image if someone has one for sure.

J

Edited November 19 by thealteredemu