Home Page Forums MAME MAME TMS-09xx/1xxx thread (was New Dumps)

I finally typed in the Touch & Tell / Vocaid patent listing, I will see to adding it to the tispeak.c driver.

http://pastebin.com/wgyshMuL
http://www.google.com.bd/patents/US4403965?cl=en (missing some lines! but this one is easier to read)
http://www.google.com.bd/patents/EP0048835A2?cl=en

I double-checked the first half - 100%!

I've received several handhelds the past few days:
Konami Star Trek 25, Konami Contra, Nintendo G&W Boxing, Mattel Football 2, Mattel Classic Football 2, Mattel Classic Baseball, Mattel Bowling. Konami Gradius is on the way.

From the pinout, the Boxing CPU is likely an SM510 or SM511. I'm going to play around with the test pin this weekend. It must draw very little power; while I was tracing out the connections with my Fluke, it powered up and played a little tune, no batteries installed.

Unsurprisingly, Contra looks very similar to Top Gun and TMNT. Star Trek looks pretty similar, but has a 2nd glob that I'm thinking is a DAC for the speech. If I figure out the test pin on Boxing, I'll see if I can de-glob the Konamis enough to get to the necessary pins without trashing them. I assume we won't be able to dump the melody ROM, but I can probably capture the output with an LA and reconstruct it.

The Mattel classic games have globs; stenciling on the Classic Football 2 PCB includes RA0-RA3, RB0-RB3, RC0-RC3, RD0, and RE1, which makes me think it's a PIC.

The classic games use a regular Phillips screwdriver, but I found the perfect tool for the triangular screws used on the originals; I took a Torx T10 screwdriver and ground off every other ridge using a Dremel cutoff wheel.

Check out line 1897 of the Touch & Tell patent listing, which is line 1493 of the pastebin, 2 bytes after the only B7 in the file. Everything else matched, although I was fooled by several 8s that looked like 3s.

Got it, thanks.
The output PLA is in the patent, as you probably saw. But the microinstr. PLA is not and judging from the disasm it is not the default one either. See for example line 0499, the comment "Y is also incremented by RSTR"

Hmm, I didn't catch that. Didn't we run into that somewhere before? Or am I thinking of the TMS0980? I know the SR16 calculator removed one instruction and used that spot in the PLA to modify one of the built-in opcodes.

I'm pretty sure the Mattel Classic Football 2 CPU is a Winbond 4-bitter, in the same family as the W541E260. The pinouts line up perfectly, but it looks like there are a lot of members in the family, so I'm not sure which exact one it is. Interestingly, it's EEPROM. I haven't found enough info on the chip to see if it can be read.

Yes, modifications to the microinstructions PLA are more common on TMS1000(SR16) and TMS0970. Touch & Tell looks like it changed much more. Here's some just from the 1st page of the patent, I think it's a bit too much to be able to construct a correct PLA. Maybe you can decap one if you find a one cheap?

default 1100 -> touch n tell

03: XMA -> TAM
3E: IMAC -> XMA
3C: SAMAN -> DCY
01: ALEM -> YNEA

Winbond? I don't think we emulate any of them in MAME.

This interview mentions how they switched to MCUs. I don't believe it says exactly when it happened, though.

http://www.plasticpals.com/?p=23596

Yamamoto: Mr. Izushi and I were rookies until the fourth title, “Fire,” but I do remember that at the beginning, the games weren’t programmed as much as they were built in hardware.

Iwata: You mean the games weren’t made by being programmed like they are now, but by building the actual hardware circuits.

Izushi: That’s right. Actually, it was the same as it was for “Racing 112″ and “Block Breaker.” Keeping the gameplay in mind, you would put together a circuit schematic in your head, and pick up a soldering iron. That’s how I made the prototype for “Fire.”

Iwata: So you used a soldering iron instead of a keyboard. (laughs)

Izushi: I always thought it was faster that way. It was faster then, actually.

Yamamoto: It was, wasn’t it?

Iwata: But at some point, you changed over to conventional programming.

Izushi. Yes. When I learned to use programming languages and started to make games that way, I thought “this is so much easier!” (laughs)

Iwata: It was easer and definitely faster. (laughs)

Izushi: It was faster, and I didn’t have to get my hands dirty. (laughs)

All: (laugh)

That game list is incomplete. I have Nights Into Dreams, Zorro, and Football/Soccer, which aren't listed. I've never seen Nascar Racing, Judge Dredd, Star Trek, and Waterworld, so I don't know if those are real or not.

"The chip we used to make “Ball” could control a total of 72 segments."
That is much less than SM510, maybe it's SM530/31(same MCU family) or something. Or it is SM510 and they were mistaken on the exact number :P

*edit* or a more primitive 'calculator chip' of course

Anyone that opens these on a regular basis I recommend to just buy the bits for them:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/231507477051

You only need two (TA20 and TA23), but it never hurts to have extra security bits, never know when they'll come in handy.

Mattel used two different sizes of these, one the triangle is almost the exact size as the head of the screw (TA23), the other is obviously smaller (TA20). You can make one bit that will work in both, but one small enough for the small size can actually strip the head of the larger size if it happens to be stuck for some reason (rare in plastic, but you never know). The small size I think I've only seen in the earliest games (Missile Attack, Auto Race, etc), the TA23 size is the most common. Works in most of those disposable games/toys too, like the McDonald's Happy Meal games.

There's also an exact replacement screw you can get with a normal phillips head... I have a box of them at home (I can check the screw specs tonight), the head is the same size, and the threads are exactly the same, so you won't damage the hole putting them in. Handy if it's a game you think you will be opening a lot for some reason (or if you just hate those damn screws... )