Home Page Forums MAME MAME The Newer All-Singing, All-Dancing 2023 WIP Thread

Beena driver starting to shape up. Here's the intro sequence very close to the real thing. But still need more work on the tile layers, for example one of the screens is missing text.

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this is just amazing! are all available games already bootable?

i have a package with 13 more undumped games on the way to me…after that we just miss ~15 games from the complete game-library (not counting any game-revisions…which will be hard to get anyway, as you can‘t identify them from the cartridge- or case-outside…)

I've only tried a few so far, all of them get to the Beena logo (they can also boot into test mode), but some hang after that. Might be due to waiting on some status register I haven't identified yet. It also happens on some ingame screens where transitions should happen but also hang.

The good thing is that any edge cases can just be verified on hardware with a debugger if needed.

I've been working on the Pegasos 2 skeleton I added a few days ago. Implementing the bare minimum needed already gives us this:



(Connected with PuTTY to the MAME RS232 port)

New dump today from spinalfeyd: Wanpaku Fishing:

Do you already have the Psion Revo? I own a German model with all original accessories and AFAIK there is a program to dump the rom for preservation. Due to soldered batteries and flimsy construction likely not many have survived in working condition.

https://wuffs.org/blog/building-a-psion-emulator
https://www.r3uk.com/index.php/tech...mako-disassembly-and-battery-replacement

After years of storage (fortunately not moist) I tried to recharge mine without success; the screen flashed on/off with beeps and red LED (fast charge) was flickering red. So I dismantled it to remove the infamous soldered NiMH battery, which already leaked (white salt) and had corroded the voltage converter/IrDa PCB. After dismantling the rear case, the screen stayed dead and reset did not help. Apparently someone had superglued the battery cable plug into its connector; it needed extreme prying with small screwdrivers to get it out, which may have damaged its solder joints. (I have cutted off the leaking cells, keeping temperature sensor intact, and wired a battery box with 2x NiMH for test.) Even thoroughly cleaning and reflowing the solder on the voltage PCB with rosin flux and hot air SMD soldering station did not help, despite the infamous foil cable to the main unit (I unplugged it) measured ok. Apparently I had jammed a piece of the adhesive foil into that connector while replugging (hard to see with my lousy mole eyes). Also one of the overloaded flimsy lid spring plastic pegs was snapped (likely by design), so I superglued an u-shaped copper wire into its place to avoid loosing the spring.

So I dismantled the main case of the machine, which was another ordeal. The silicon keyboard mat is coated with weak adhesive, which may fail to stick if it gets dusty.

CAUTION: Never use force during keyboard removal - mine possibly had a superglue spill (not by me) under the "5" key, so peeling it off ripped a 6mm hole into the mat; fortunately no contact ripped out, so it still works. (I later patched the spot with adhesive film.) The main PCB (held by small screws) must be unhooked and pulled up and forward at the front rim first. Never lift at the rear edge first; it has a tiny push button switch (lid close contact) there which will snap off (I did) if lifted or pushed down at rear edge first.

After cleaning and replugging the foil cables, the screen still was dead, but made horizontal black lines etc. when holding the cable at certain angles. So I finally reflowed the solder (with rosing flux and hot air solder station) of all small components and connectors, which made the screen come back to life.

Important is that it needs 2 connected NiMH batteries and a cold reset (insert wires into both holes for 10 seconds while plugged in) to start properly. The battery charging voltage seems to be software controlled and without batteries can be anywhere between 2 and 6V when the controller starts crashed. Using only an electrolytic capacitor (I tried 2200uF) does not stabilize supply voltage to a safe enough level to run properly, so it tends to crash during beeps and the red LED (fast charge) flickers instead of staying on or off.

Currently I have no battery pack installed, but only soldered 2 thin wires to the outside to hook up an external battery pack when needed. Because I am not actively using the Psion Revo and will not regularly charge it, this is the safest way to prevent further leak damage of the hardware to preserve it.

Fixed a few low hanging fruit in Virtual Boy driver (edited to one screen simplification):
- fix GFXs in Hyper Fighting, the first case where it was breaking multi-map paging (sets big and normal tilemaps in 1024x1024, others generally don't bother and use affine instead):

- fix Space Invaders missing shots (sets X Affine outside the possible range of -4095 < x < 8191)

Model 80 Type 1 and Type 2 planars are up and running, along with a bunch more MCA cards including a Sound Blaster, 3C523 NIC, and 32-bit memory expansion. Model 50 uses the same southbridge and DMA controller so that's probably next.

Hi Luigi,
I posted my IBM ROMs a while ago.
The dropbox links are long gone. Please let me know if you can use any of the stuff I dumped from my PS/2 machines, and I'll make them available again if they were not saved my the MAME crew at the time.
I couldn't upload them myself then.

Robert

New Namco System 10 ROM dumps and redumps brought some more progress to the driver. This fills out most of the old bad dumps with what should be good dumps thanks to Guru and Buffi.
https://github.com/mamedev/mame/pull/11092

The dumps that worked in my last PR (Mr. Driller 2, Gamshara, Kono e Tako, Uchuu Daisakusen Chocovader Contactee, Star Trigon) were already covered in this thread and other places so I will focus on the newer progress.

The redump of Gekitoride-Jong Space makes one more playable Namco System 10 game for the MAME 0.254 release.



Ball Pom Line is also a new redump which is now bootable but needs MGEXIO emulation to be playable. You'll see an error screen normally but if you make it think the I/O exists then you can see the demo roll. This was a previously unnamed dump (unks10md2) which was able to be renamed thanks to the redump actually booting (surprisingly doesn't use encryption?). Something to look forward to in the future.




There's one more game in Namco System 10 that's bootable but isn't playable due to missing I/O: NFL Classic Football (nflclsfb). It will hang at a black screen but internally it throws an EXIO error. If you patch the EXIO check it boots and the demo roll works just fine. Something else to look forward to in the future.