Home Page Forums Active Threads

I'm seeing a weird thing on Linux with 0.278. I have "volume -20" in my mame.ini for a very long time. Now I'm noticing that the first time I run a system that lacks a .cfg file, it always defaults to volume 0, but the next time I run the same system its volume -20. Same problem occurs if I run it from the command line "mame -volume -20" it's not respected until the .cfg gets written. I don't see anything specific about the volume being written to the .cfg. Here's an example of one that got created the first time I ran the system and had volume -20 in mame.ini. Looks like 0.278 might have a bug that expects a .cfg before it respects "-volume **" ??

MZ-80B (part 3). As stated before there isn't much out there, but found a 16 games disk compilation, for the extra DAD GAMING oomph.

MZ-2500 "new" gaming (part 2)

Galaga





Balloon Fight





F2 Grand Prix





King Flappy





Sangokushi

Graphics on the Super Speed Race sspeedr.cpp acting glitching.
I don't see how the car can move when their cars keep hitting it. Your car restart on the grass.
Slide the mouse back for speed. Slide the mouse forward to slow down.

Bio Freaks is glitching too.

MZ-2000/MZ-2200 games now in software list (part 1).

Amazing Tennis







Door Door





Walk Wan







Space Bee (with Color option, currently using MZ-2200 for that)

the main reason to want to load a CHD fully for me is due to spin-down of spinning discs. CHDs are large, so tend to get stored on spinning discs which these days will spin-down after quite a short idle time. Some games don't access the HDDs/CDs frequently, or only access enough that it ends up in cache for a large part of the game, meaning the entire emulations freezes for several seconds when something new is accessed and a drive has to spin up again.

This is a more annoying issue, and in cases like that it would actually be nice if MAME had the option to load a CHD of under a user-specified size fully into RAM.

I sometimes workaround it at the moment by having a music player running in the background, set to silent but streaming from the drive I don't want to spin down.

I'm not sure what others have found, so maybe YMMV applies here, but I've tried streaming CHDs across a fast WiFi network but it's too slow for normal use, especially in cases such as ld games where frequent input is needed. Of course copying CHDs to local storage for temporary use is always an option, though this defeats the purpose of having them on a remote share.

It's nice to know zip decompression to RAM is an option, I wasn't aware of that, although a method of forcing CHD to RAM would be nice, to avoid having to compress and store all CHDs for only this purpose, since there's not much space to be gained from compressing a compressed file.

For the majority of systems using CHDs, it's not significant to stream across the network, even WiFi. And if you have 10GbE to reduce the theoretical initial load you can definitely just stream it fast enough.

If you really want to do it, just zip the CHD. That will force MAME to decompress it into RAM.

Just curious as to whether or not it may be feasible and / or useful to have an option to load CHDs entirely into memory at runtime and access them from there rather than streaming them from a network share, disk, or other media. The idea is that it would effectively eliminate access latency since what would essentially be a DMA operation would be streaming the content straight to MAME without involving intermediate protocols and / or storage access limitations.

The obvious downside is that there would be an up-front delay in loading the CHD into memory. However, as network speeds increase and technologies such as 10GbE continue to reach into the mass-market, these delays are minimised. What I don't know is if there are other considerations (availability of sufficient memory on the host system aside) to take into account.

This would also save the user from having to set up a system-level RAMdisk themselves, keep launch scripts and individual configs for each game in order to use the RAMdisk, etc.

Bothered to decouple MZ-80B differences from MZ-2000.



afaik only this game is *available*, by comparison this is the MZ-2200 color version of the same game (vosque2k):

That's interesting! It reminded me that I've seen similar QFP-92 Toshiba chips in Seiko UC-2000 watch keyboards - I have some, so I'll try dumping them.

Bob Zed's longest video ever?

[video:youtube][/video]

Some low resolution pics here:

https://mario.wiki.gallery/images/c/c6/Nelsonic_SMB1.jpg

Did Sean take any pictures of the watch or bezel?

Thanks,

A-Noid

The ones I made the screenshots of are here: https://tsk-tsk.net/net/extart/
Inlay artwork only,

Another Toshiba LCD MCU marked T7826 can be seen in this teardown of an early VTech learning computer:

https://hackaday.com/2020/04/27/teardown-vtech-whiz-kid-luggable-computer/

Here's a list of 27 games running on the Toshiba QFP60/67 that I've found so far (only 6 of them are dumped):

Bandai Tondeke Parman; POPY 6983 3*K
Bandai Zaxxon; ZG16883 (T6883)
Bandai うちのタマ知りませんか? (Do you know my Tama?); 7743 9002H
Bandai めざせ三冠王 (Aiming for the Triple Crown); ?
Bandai Gundam Space Combat 3 in 1; 3IN1 T6770S 1*K; dumped, emulated
Bandai Pengo; PENGO 6941 3*D; dumped, emulated
Bandai Power Fishing; 7790 4*G; dumped
Bandai Dragonball Z; POLICE (in Japanese) 7741 9018H
Bandai Gundam Maze Operation; 0100F-0506 JAPAN 8918H
Bandai Challenge Golf; GOLF (in Japanese) 6906
Casio Crazy Bee CG-85; Toshiba T7764S
Casio Soldier Fight CG-86; Toshiba T7756S
Grandstand BMX Flyer; BIKE 6948 3*F
Gakken LCD Card Game Soccer / Lansay Football; Gakken 6814 3*A
Gakken Jumping Boy / Pyonkichi / Lansay La Traversée; T6813; dumped, emulated
Gakken LCD Card Game Tom & Jerry Prank; 6909 3*F; dumped
Mattel Competition Football; Toshiba T6819S 2*E
Mattel Long Bomb Football; X+0/F T6840S
Mattel Computer Backgammon; T6753 1777-9339 1 C (QFP67)
Mattel Diet Trac; Toshiba T6768 1*G (QFP67)
Mattel Computer Backgammon; T6753
Mattel Speed Freak; T6817S
Mattel Dungeons and Dragons; T6818S
Matsushima Astro Destroyers AD15; T6847A (QFP67)
Popy (Bandai) Animest Doraemon Dorayaki House; POPY 9?22 3*D
Popy (Bandai) Dr. Slump Arale Ncha Bycha; POPY 6815 2*E; dumped
Tomy Multi Colorlaser 6000 Mr. Go!; MR.DO 6947 3*E

You can send me the scans you have.

Well, I tried before, but I'm not that great with Photoshop so the end result surely wouldn't be that good. I'm hoping that DarthMarino might at least do his magic with the Tronica stuff since he has been doing artwork for all those. Also it's always a good thing to have the artwork preserved at this point because it's a crucial piece for these games and better do it while you still have the games on your hand otherwise later on we will need to hunt down these games again just for the sake of scanning it and especially the overlays it's not something most collectors will be happy to scan since it require the units to be disassembled.

Sean has my Lansay Football unit, but he probably won't remember the details to validate about that sticker theory since it has been a long time since he decapped it. I'll try to find my Gakken Pinball (Not 100% I have it though).

I have pause on "Pause" key, not F4. During pause there is no sound and hence can be no crackling. It was mainly during explosion sounds - possibly an overdrive issue, so I enabled compressor by default (which didn't help?). It went away after the game ran for some minutes.

By the way, the default version of Space Fury seems to be a hack with faster speech to streamline cashflow in the arcades (games shall not contain any seconds where player can't die or insert more coins). The original version has slower (more natural sounding) speech which contributes to the solemn atmosphere.

well, i did get "that vibe" when we last talked at my "PCE testing" thread.

whoa, you're asking me?
i don't have the MegaCD hardware docs, how on earth would i know that?

actually, i might have, like, a dozen requests for anyone still lurking here. i want try and unlock their potential - your potential - if possible.
(Kale, i know it has nothing to do with "fast rewind" and "fast forward" "functions" as briefly discussed earlier, i'll get to that)

1. do you have an SegaCD/MegaCD machine (and its variants thereof) (MCD onwards) that you can still use, that is still around?
1.1. if so, can you please turn it on so as to see if it's still working?
1.2. and do so without you punching in a single CD?
1.3. and maybe have something capable of capturing whatever is in your TV (composite capture, or similar, whatever) directly to HDD/SSD storage on your PC, either directly or through a device that allows you to do so.
1.4. and maybe have a camera capable of capturing your MCD setup in your living room/office, or something, tripod, maybe? or something resembling a proper camera setup? you know, so you don't have to move around while you watch it boot.
1.5. doesn't have to be the most high-end stuff you have, or even the best one period so long as i can see a clear picture of what's happening.
1.6. actually make sure said camera is pointed to your MCD.
2. and after you've turned it on, can you wait for, like, a minimum of 30 seconds for the screen to show up with this "disk check" message?
2.1. if so, does that message change to another one entirely, and if so, what does it say?
2.2. and while a different message is displayed, pay attention to the MCD itself. what exactly does it do during this time?

once you're done with all this, please post whatever you captured and/or recorded into downloadable links so i can download those myself and observe whatever is in the file that you uploaded in the first place, as i need to take a closer look at how the MCD behaves as a functioning unit under the conditions outlined above.

when uploading such files, please avoid file hosting services that give you what are essentially ad spam minefields (most often characterized by insane pop-up windows, tabs, and impossible-to-close pop-up ads within that "download link" page that serve up as obstacles for actually letting you download the actual file in question) whenever you click on a link you shared, as they're pretty terrible to navigate and people's patience and tolerance for such "features" are decreasing by the day. also, please avoid file hosting services that also impose (or otherwise "gently" or subtly require) account sign-in for faster download times, i need to be able to downlad these files from the get-go.

i also don't mind you posting a link consisting of various files, there are certain file hosting services that allow you to share links to a folder consisting of various files, they may also allow you to download all the files from a single folder at once though there may be fewer services that allow you to do so.

or if self-hosted, please post the links here.

thanks in advance to whoever fulfills this request.

Does the crackling also stop when you press Pause (F4)?

Seek is a bit of a PITA to do in a CD Controller at current time, but it's not an "impossible fix" by any stretch.
No idea about seek times for a Mega CD, I presume it's documented somewhere?

back to JX220 (the game, not the car). this game has a CD-DA music player.

see the "previous" and "next" buttons that stand beside the "volume adjustment" button? they have two meanings:

1 - whenever a CD-DA track isn't playing in there, they can switch to either the previous or the next CD-DA track that the game has.
2 - both buttons pressed will instead cause MAME to "throw in the towel" and close the window in quick succestion, followed by an error message that either tells you one of two things:
2.1 - "fast rewind" isn't supported (if "previous" button is pressed)
2.2 - "fast forward" isn't supported (if "next" button is pressed)

my guess is there's no real fix for this. like, at all, if what i'm told on how MAME handles MegaCD images are anything to go by.

Space Fury seems to be the elk test of any MAME sound system performance. Unlike my Core2Duo 1600MHz laptop, the Ryzen 2400G is (was??) definitely fast enough to run it at full speed. I also tried to toggle hires/lofi resampler(?) mode. Strange is that the crackling became less when the game is running for some minutes (does anything recompile in the background??).

With the sound device the main nuisance is not the wrong initial default, but that Audio Mixer settings is not saved. My MAME is in Windows "Program Files" folder which needed some tricks to keep it writeable (most noticeable during manual overwriting when installing a new version), but mame.cfg etc. is correctly overwritten by mame and also saving game input settings etc. work, so I wonder why the mixer settings isn't.

I was told that the Lansay clones just used a different sticker. And if you removed that sticker, there was the original Gakken sticker underneath.
It would be worth looking into multiple Gakken and Lansay games and compare their internals.

Sure, I can do it. Do you plan to create the artwork?