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#123116 01/31/24 08:40 AM
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MAME 0.262

After two long months, we’re back with MAME 0.262! Of course, it’s full of exciting work on multiple fronts. In core media support, MAME now supports FLAC compression for compact cassette images, and Zstandard compression in zip archives and CHD disk images. For maximum compatibility, chdman won’t use Zstandard compression by default, so you’ll need to enable it if you want to use it when creating or converting disk images. For your convenience, unidasm now allows you to specify offsets in hexadecimal or octal.

Three LaserDisc games designed by Rick Dyer are now working: the Japanese version of Time Traveler, the console-to-arcade conversion Thayer’s Quest, and Don Bluth’s Dragon’s Lair. It’s very exciting to see multiple LaserDisc captures combined to eliminate all dropouts from disc degradation and pressing faults for Dragon’s Lair and Thayer’s Quest.

Following up on work in the previous release, MAME now supports Sega’s TV Ocha-Ken system, based on the same technology as the Advanced Pico BEENA. It’s a far simpler system designed for young children, using barcode cards to trigger mini-games. Also from Sega, initial support for the AI computer has been added. No, this isn’t related to the current artificial intelligence craze; it’s a rather obscure system from 1986 featuring a pen tablet and using cartridge and compact cassette media.

Two more Casio Phase Distortion synthesisers have been added: the CZ-230S keyboard and the rare SZ-1 sequencer. The CZ-2230S lacked sound editing features but added a programmable drum machine (using PCM samples) and sequencer. Also in synthesiser emulation, MAME’s Wave Blaster host driver now supports multiple synthesiser modules from Casio, Samsung, and Yamaha. In other musical news, the original version of the very obscure Shamisen Brothers rhythm game from Kato’s has now been fully dumped and emulated.

The microcontroller program for Taito’s KiKi KaiKai was recently extracted. This contains a substantial amount of game logic, allowing the simulation code previously used by MAME to be retired and giving more confidence that the emulation is accurate. Improvements to our Fujitsu MB8841 emulation have fixed persistent issues in Arabian from Sun Electronics. HT1130 microcontrollers are now supported, allowing cheap hand-held “brick games” to be emulated, albeit without sound for now.

This is a big release for chess computer emulation. There are lots of newly supported chess computers from the brands you love, like Hegener + Glaser, Novag, and Saitek, as well as more versions of systems that were already supported. There were also a couple of backgammon computers added, from Saitek and Tryom.

There’s inevitably far more than we have time to talk about here, including an Arabic version of the Mattel Aquarius, an 8" floppy drive controller for the Apple II family, numerous Aristocrat Leisure gambling systems promoted to working, some big software list updates, and lots of code modernised. You can read about all the two months of development in the whatsnew.txt file, or get the source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page.

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Vas Crabb #123118 01/31/24 01:14 PM
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Not even a word about Gakken TV Boy which was such a huge mark on emulation and preservation and definitely one of the highlights of this month.

And yet stuff like the arabic version of Aquarius gets mentioned lol

I wonder how the stuff for these summaries is picked really.

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Vas Crabb #123119 01/31/24 01:32 PM
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What's interesting for one person may be the complete opposite for someone else.
It seems to me these summaries are meant to try to appeal to a broad audience (highlighting something for everyone: i.e. people interested in Japanese consoles, people interested in computers, people interested in arcades).

Full disclosure: I have no role in writing the summaries, but I appreciate people using their free time to write them.

Vas Crabb #123120 01/31/24 01:48 PM
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Sorry, but that makes no sense if as you say it's for a broad audience then it would be on the top of the list.

How is it that preserving and emulating the whole library of such a historical system such as the TV Boy is not more interesting than dumping some weird arabic aquarius rom, some gambling games or a floppy drive controller that mostly anyone will even care?

Acquiring and dumping the games alone is a huge task itself considering their insane prices.

Vas Crabb #123121 01/31/24 01:57 PM
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I get you have huge interest in this hardware, but most people have probably never heard of it (raising my hand here). Whereas Arabian-speaking people may very well consider an Arabian language dump more interesting.

Vas Crabb #123122 01/31/24 02:39 PM
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Yes, I agree it should have been placed in cuavas's release notes.

BUT:
https://web.archive.org/web/20201128020232/https://tms9918.hatenablog.com/entry/2020/07/18/002516
All 6 games were already dumped in 2020, although hoarded so IMO not properly preserved (depending on interpretation of 'preserved').

The MAME driver, it's a small driver and wasn't much work for me. It's also not that big a deal to users due to already existing emulation in Takeda's Common Source Code Project.
Having to do fixes to the 6801U4 emulation was more time consuming.

Vas Crabb #123123 01/31/24 02:50 PM
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The summary isn't anywhere near the entirety of what's new even in normal months, let alone a release this significant. If you're relying only on it for what's new you're missing out on cool stuff for every single release.

Vas Crabb #123124 01/31/24 03:16 PM
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You seriously underestimate the amount of goodwill we gain from supporting localised versions of home computers. We got a massive amount of mindshare in China by supporting the CEC line of Chinese Apple II derivatives, which has translated directly to more contributions.

People have limited attention spans, so only a few interesting things will get called out. If you want to talk about what most people are interesting in this time, it’s the LaserDisc games. There’s also a fair bit of interest in synth emulation, and the rhythm game community are pretty curious about Shamisen Brothers.

If anyone has a right to complain about not getting a call-out, it’s cam900. He’s taken it on himself to clean up and encapsulate very poorly-structured MESS-era code, as well as tidying up a bunch of arcade systems. Or maybe Robin Sergeant, who’s shown up out of nowhere and started fixing issues with a very neglected system.

There’s a bunch of other important and/or interesting work in this release that didn’t get mentioned. How about not corrupting memory when mounting CD-ROM images? Or the slotted PCI devices? Or the PXA255 becoming less of a clusterfuck? Or applying alpha when drawing text components so a lot of internal artwork looks less crap? Or Brother PN-8800FXB emulation? Or an LCD game with a radiation scintillation counter?

But you know what’s great about the Internet? It gives everyone a platform. If you think everyone wants to hear about Compact Vision TV Boy emulation, go ahead and promote it.

Vas Crabb #123125 01/31/24 03:21 PM
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Great news, I'm also super happy seeing progress on the Epoch Cassette Vision, the battlevader cart I had taunted me for many years as it seemed undumpable and I eventually sent it to sean riddle with everything else that frustrated me. The most surprising to see was the Sega AI, I thought that would be permahoarded.

Last edited by incog; 01/31/24 03:22 PM.
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Vas Crabb #123126 01/31/24 04:00 PM
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To amplify Vas's point, if you want to promote something in MAME, make a YouTube video about it. It doesn't have to be slick like Bob Zed or Mog's stuff, even just an -aviwrite with a good description can work.

Also, the Sega AI computer is giving me weird nostalgia for something I didn't know existed before the PR came in. In the mid to late 80s, US computer magazines regularly touted advanced Japanese "fifth generation computers" and Prolog as an AI language. Of course, that never went anywhere, but it always sounded like Skynet was about to happen.

There was also a general air of how even cheap JDM machines were crazy advanced and we were lucky to have the IIgs/Amiga/ST and EGA/VGA PCs that could run Japanese games like Thexder and Silpheed, which is laughable now that I can play the actual PC-88 originals.

Last edited by R. Belmont; 01/31/24 04:27 PM.
Vas Crabb #123127 01/31/24 05:15 PM
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Heck, Pump It Up got a decent reaction on my Twitter account but apparently not enough to actually make the redump to happen. I'm not exactly sure what the users really want at this point (and no, the troll reactions about wanting HNG64 sound doesn't count, at all).

Kale #123128 01/31/24 05:47 PM
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Originally Posted by Kale
I'm not exactly sure what the users really want at this point (and no, the troll reactions about wanting HNG64 sound doesn't count, at all).
if yuo're not exactly sure what they really want, simple, just ask them
and yes, wanting to see HNG64 sound be fixed does count, "troll reactions" or not


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Originally Posted by Modulus RC-28
Originally Posted by Kale
I'm not exactly sure what the users really want at this point (and no, the troll reactions about wanting HNG64 sound doesn't count, at all).
if yuo're not exactly sure what they really want, simple, just ask them
and yes, wanting to see HNG64 sound be fixed does count, "troll reactions" or not

You're missing the point, and besides: HNG64 needs Akai MPC3000 synth being fixed, for very obvious reasons.
Now, how many MPC floppy dumps there are in the wild?
By quick glance ZERO -> users don't care enough.

Vas Crabb #123130 01/31/24 06:42 PM
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HNG64 *could* be fixed without MPC3000, it's just that having the MPC working means a lot less guesswork.

Vas Crabb #123131 01/31/24 06:43 PM
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FYI all those 6801 family MCU dumps recently (including Gakken TV Boy), it's because Sean figured out a new way to dump those chips a few months ago. I don't think any HD6301Y0 were dumped before that, unless it was done via a trojan. Berger verified it and also dumped a few HD6301 V1/X0/Y0 MCUs.

If any of the ROM dumpers here have undumped HD6301 MCUs, ask Sean how to dump them. He wrote a how-to doc, but I don't know if it's public yet, so just email him.

Kale #123132 01/31/24 07:04 PM
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Originally Posted by Kale
[quote=Modulus RC-28]You're missing the point, and besides: HNG64 needs Akai MPC3000 synth being fixed, for very obvious reasons.
Now, how many MPC floppy dumps there are in the wild?
By quick glance ZERO -> users don't care enough.
yeesh, in that case i don't know how to help here, good luck with that

Last edited by Modulus RC-28; 01/31/24 07:04 PM.

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Kale #123133 01/31/24 07:09 PM
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Originally Posted by Kale
Heck, Pump It Up got a decent reaction on my Twitter account but apparently not enough to actually make the redump to happen. I'm not exactly sure what the users really want at this point (and no, the troll reactions about wanting HNG64 sound doesn't count, at all).

Trurip dumps are bad? Sorry to post this in, just curious.

ttp://database.trurip.org/s/s61
ttp://database.trurip.org/s/s171

Vas Crabb #123134 01/31/24 07:30 PM
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First Dance Floor dump has a different SHA1 than the one currently in MAME (marked as BAD_DUMP).
It's easy to check if the dump is good, it should allow you to play the game without like 1 full minute of waiting for arrows to happen (it literally checks for the subchannel integrity under the hood).
http://database.trurip.org/st/st61-1
It would be kinda easy to hack things so that it can be promoted otherwise, it makes a very limited use of Pentium 2/Voodoo Banshee features.

Vas Crabb #123135 01/31/24 11:52 PM
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I wish I had access to test that. Trurips were so rare they were only available on invitation only private trackers during the PD days. No idea what it has become of them now.

Vas Crabb #123137 02/01/24 04:31 AM
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I need a new hard drive, y'all are killing me here.

But this release is great, I'm glad almost everything submitted over the past two months made it into it.

Last edited by Foxhack; 02/01/24 04:31 AM.
Vas Crabb #123138 02/01/24 04:54 AM
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Quote
Also from Sega, initial support for the AI computer has been added. No, this isn’t related to the current artificial intelligence craze...
In 1980th there was an AI craze as well. Everybody was talking about "expert systems", and chess computers, speech synth chips and parsers of text adventures (Infocom etc.) made people think that they were only few years away from computers with human-like intellectual capabilities.

Originally Posted by Vas Crabb
You seriously underestimate the amount of goodwill we gain from supporting localised versions of home computers.
By the way, my rom dump of the German "Psion Revo" still hasn't appeared in MAME, isn't it?

Originally Posted by ssj
Not even a word about Gakken TV Boy which was such a huge mark on emulation and preservation and definitely one of the highlights of this month.
Originally Posted by incog
Great news, I'm also super happy seeing progress on the Epoch Cassette Vision...
Those single-chip game consoles are definitely worth to be emulated. Even though gameplay was inferior to VCS2600 and will never permit homebrew games on real hardware, they are historically important to see the technical standard of minimal hardware created at that time.

Last edited by =CO=Windler; 02/01/24 04:54 AM.

MAY THE SOFTWARE BE WITH YOU!

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=CO=Windler #123139 02/01/24 10:09 AM
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Originally Posted by ssj
Not even a word about Gakken TV Boy which was such a huge mark on emulation and preservation and definitely one of the highlights of this month.
Originally Posted by =CO=Windler
Those single-chip game consoles are definitely worth to be emulated. Even though gameplay was inferior to VCS2600 and will never permit homebrew games on real hardware, they are historically important to see the technical standard of minimal hardware created at that time.

I wouldn't say 'never'. There is actually a TV Boy multi-game cart using a 6803 and an external ROM. Don't remember the details but I read it somewhere. There are a few TV Boy homebrew games out there.


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ssj #123141 02/01/24 12:40 PM
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Originally Posted by ssj
Not even a word about Gakken TV Boy which was such a huge mark on emulation and preservation and definitely one of the highlights of this month.

Never heard of it.

Originally Posted by ssj
And yet stuff like the arabic version of Aquarius gets mentioned lol

Very significant considering how little Arabic language software has been preserved and how little awareness there is more broadly about the history of Arabic language microcomputing.

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Originally Posted by Modulus RC-28
Originally Posted by Kale
I'm not exactly sure what the users really want at this point (and no, the troll reactions about wanting HNG64 sound doesn't count, at all).
if yuo're not exactly sure what they really want, simple, just ask them
and yes, wanting to see HNG64 sound be fixed does count, "troll reactions" or not
There are multiple problems with that:
  • Ask three people what they want most, and you’ll get four answers with no overlap.
  • A lot of them are unrealistic, e.g. “emulate <hoarded game>”, “fix all the bugs in <complex undocumented platform> emulation”, “make <demanding emulation target> run full speed on my ARM handheld”.
  • A lot of the time when you do achieve one of these holy grails, they immediately realise it isn’t all it was cracked up to be and/or forget about it five minutes later to start demanding something else (e.g. consider the history of Marble Madness 2, Um Jammer Lammy NOW!, Namco System 10, etc.).

Vas Crabb #123144 02/01/24 05:09 PM
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Originally Posted by Vas Crabb
There are multiple problems with that:
  • Ask three people what they want most, and you’ll get four answers with no overlap.
  • A lot of them are unrealistic, e.g. “emulate <hoarded game>”, “fix all the bugs in <complex undocumented platform> emulation”, “make <demanding emulation target> run full speed on my ARM handheld”.
  • A lot of the time when you do achieve one of these holy grails, they immediately realise it isn’t all it was cracked up to be and/or forget about it five minutes later to start demanding something else (e.g. consider the history of Marble Madness 2, Um Jammer Lammy NOW!, Namco System 10, etc.).
double yikes
nvm then, sorry i've ever said anything of the sort here, if the "community" really is as bad as you say here then i'll keep mum about it from here on out


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Vas Crabb #123145 02/01/24 05:17 PM
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Yes, some of them really are that bad. Marble Madness 2 was more active for that stuff than UJLN! or System 10, but there was steady asking for those too.

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Originally Posted by Modulus RC-28
Originally Posted by Vas Crabb
There are multiple problems with that:
  • Ask three people what they want most, and you’ll get four answers with no overlap.
  • A lot of them are unrealistic, e.g. “emulate <hoarded game>”, “fix all the bugs in <complex undocumented platform> emulation”, “make <demanding emulation target> run full speed on my ARM handheld”.
  • A lot of the time when you do achieve one of these holy grails, they immediately realise it isn’t all it was cracked up to be and/or forget about it five minutes later to start demanding something else (e.g. consider the history of Marble Madness 2, Um Jammer Lammy NOW!, Namco System 10, etc.).
double yikes
nvm then, sorry i've ever said anything of the sort here, if the "community" really is as bad as you say here then i'll keep mum about it from here on out
Oh, I’m not offended. It isn’t that the whole community is horrible, there’s just a small and rather noisy subset of it that’s very easy to notice.

The thing is, emulation is a lot of work for very little reward besides personal satisfaction. You’ve got to be doing it for yourself.

I do frequently get positive feedback from random people, often for things I didn’t expect anyone to care about at all.

We do implement requested features as well. For example in this release, Zstandard compression CHDs and FLAC cassette images are things people have requested at various times that Wilbert and I ended up implementing. Demand for Zstandard in CHDs came primarily from people using other emulators that make use of the CHD format.

R. Belmont #123147 02/01/24 05:25 PM
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Originally Posted by R. Belmont
Yes, some of them really are that bad. Marble Madness 2 was more active for that stuff than UJLN! or System 10, but there was steady asking for those too.
UJLN! was the topic of emugen posts every day from when the machine appeared in a YouTube video until it was emulated.
“Why haven’t MAMEdev emulated this? It would drop straight in!”
“Why haven’t MAMEdev said anything about this? It should be the emulation event of the year!”

Never mind that that the ROMs hadn’t actually been dumped, and the CD-ROM interface it used wasn’t emulated. Then as soon as it was emulated, they go straight back to bitching about us not emulating rare versions of Cave shooters that there were given as competition prizes at game shows (often less than five examples made).

Vas Crabb #123151 02/02/24 12:09 AM
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I’m personally very grateful we have rarities like marble madness 2 preserved. Among many other incredibly rare esoteric stuff like the mindset game Vyper or other prototypes.

I still believe that the service this will give to future generations will be huge. Even if many people don’t see it this way today.

Vas Crabb #123152 02/02/24 07:05 AM
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Bob Zed’s video of highlights from the new release:

[video:youtube]
[/video]

MAME 0.262 is a huge release, and this video doesn’t come close to covering everything that was added, but it does feature some nice highlights.

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