158 replies to this topic

[DialTone]

Genuinely nice to see the enthusiasm here, but I'm a little puzzled why there's so much focus being placed on "info needed for Epoch" - unless you have a working CPU core already that is?

Until you have a working CPU core, all the other info is irrelevant, and IMHO the core is the lion's share of work involved here (especially with Epoch as there are *NO* currently workable emulations of this core available yet afaict).

I've already looked into this, and it's no small job, so regardless of whichever route you choose, good luck!

BTW, I presume you already have the processor datasheets? That much you WILL need In case you're not aware, the processor was originally designed and manufactured by Hitachi - their interest in this processor was later sold to a company called "Renesas" (Renesas Technology)

DT

[ploggy]

edwardb said

Stardust, as in the JPM machine in the Electra cab? It was the first game released in the Electra cab if I recall correctly....

...and yes I am sure I have it somewhere. Let me rummage after I've eaten me indian takeaway.

Yep. That's the one, mate.

Diamond shaped, feature board. A machine that I would love to DX. Hopefully you'll be able to find the sucker!

Here are a few more JPM Impact machines that require a DXing:

JPM

Big 50
Big Wheel
Caesar's Palace Club
Cash Towers
Casino Crazy
Colour of Money
Cops N Robbers
Diamond Geezer
Dr Dough
Easy Money
Fast Trak
Filthy Rich
Football Crazy
Force 10
Fruit Pots
Gladiator Club
Golden Goal
Its Showtime
Jackpot Justice
Popeye and Olive
Quicksilver
Reel Money
Robin Hood
Silver Ghost
Stardust
Three bags Full
Up Pompay
Wild King Club
Wild West

Some of the machines in the list, have had DX's done for them, but could be improved if the flyers were to become available.

What about Maygay machines, mate? Do you have anything on machines around the Monopoly era?

I'm thinking of a machine called 'That's Life', mainly. A true classic, that is crying out for a DX. A machine that has never come-up for auction on ebay, which is rather odd because it was quite a popular machine in it's day.

[Gazeyre1966]

DialTone said

Genuinely nice to see the enthusiasm here, but I'm a little puzzled why there's so much focus being placed on "info needed for Epoch" - unless you have a working CPU core already that is?

Until you have a working CPU core, all the other info is irrelevant, and IMHO the core is the lion's share of work involved here (especially with Epoch as there are *NO* currently workable emulations of this core available yet afaict).

I've already looked into this, and it's no small job, so regardless of whichever route you choose, good luck!

BTW, I presume you already have the processor datasheets? That much you WILL need In case you're not aware, the processor was originally designed and manufactured by Hitachi - their interest in this processor was later sold to a company called "Renesas" (Renesas Technology)

DT

Genuinely nice to see one of the original's on Fruit Emu. I know nothing about programming but it lifts my heart to see you here when I know what you have previously done for the scene. f*** it. Want a pint?

[Guitar]

I have the datasheets. All 600+ pages of the H8 3002 manual in PDF. Got my dad to skim bits of it today and he seemed to know what meant what. Got a copy of the agemae source and gave it to him too. The idea being that if I/we can get a working H8/3002 core into agemame then the people who know the fruit machine side can do their bit. That then leaves the protection. Which is where all the information we can get is needed.

I have kinda roped my dad into doing this and teaching me C properly at the same time. The problem is I can see us getting to the end with a working H8 core and I still won't know what was going on. WHich is why I have suggested agemame to integrate the core into as it will at least mean that the Agemame team can work their magic if I dont(and probably wont) have a clue..

[Guitar]

The problem I have is that my dad hates fruit machines (probably due to my previous addiction) and therefore doesn't want to invest a whole lot of time into something that will only encourage me. So I told him that this would let me play for free rather than spending my money playing for real. I don't think he believes me but I introduced him to mame a couple of months back and he spent hours reliving his youth on crazy balloon and a few old cocktail table games. Since then convincing him to do some Agemame stuff has been a lot easier. And as a result he said he would help me try and crack Epoch. The original plan was to do a couple of previously done and therefore known about techs and progress from there. However its basically dad wants as little to do with writing emu's as possible so if I can pick only 1 thing for him to do, its Epoch/H8.

That said, if there is an older tech that enough information is known about to emulate I'd be up for attempting to emulate it. However it would be more of a project to see if I could do it, rather than a promise of getting it done.

If you have ever used crocodile clips the electronics based designer then I want to make an emu constructed in a similar style. Emulate all the individual chips and then link them together via a series of wires (drawn lines with a mouse). Basically emulate a motherboard 1 chip at a time. That way to change a coin mech or something you could just drag and drop a different coin mech type in.

That will probably only make sense if you have used crocodile clips but I think it would be a great way to emulate a system. Probably talking Dual /Quad core to run smoothly though for any really technical systems. Hence my interest in something old.

[DialTone]

Hi,

Getting the core into agemame and working is certainly a good starting point (if for no other reason than the core in agemame also contains some other bits that you'll need such as timers, and I believe some fruit hardware handling such as reels etc, as well as other misc hardware such as the sound chip).

The core that's already there (courtest of the main MAME codebase) is a good way there already, but there's quite a few things missing from it and/or errors in the implementation so you'll have a lot of tedious checking to do to get it running anything "serious". Don't waste too much time getting all the onboard (CPU) peripherals working as I believe you will only need the timers for now - the rest aren't so significant unless you take on EPOCH video. IMHO, you'd be better focusing on the missing and incorrectly implemented instructions first (although of course the code in the ROMs will dictate which instructions specifically are required).

Depending on how much available time you and your dad have, I'd guess there's some point between a few weeks' and a few months' work involved getting the core polished enough. If you make it that far, feel free to post requesting extra tech info and I'll see what I can dig up for you...

DT

[DialTone]

Just re-read my post and it gives the impression that I am suggesting you duplicate work that I've already done - to be clear about this, I've already done some work with the MAME core, but what I have done still isn't complete enough to run the code inside an EPOCH ROM, and is now no longer in an easy state to be re-merged back into the original MAME source (it's now C++ for instance). If I had finished this, my intention was to patch the MAME source and return it to MAME, but sadly I didn't get that far.

DT

[g-man]

ploggy said

...Here are a few more JPM Impact machines that require a DXing:

JPM

Big 50
Big Wheel
Caesar's Palace Club
Cash Towers....

I saw a suggestion at the mecca that someone is working on a Big50 DX..
As nice as it would be to have these old Impact machines 'DX'd' it would be even nicer (IMO) if some early ROMs turned up, rather than the tight,nasty ones that most of the layouts are currently running.

Too many of the Aces and JPMs we have at the moment are on those terrible chip revisions that simply roll in jackpots before they let you get your 'own' jackpots by using skill and strategy.

They're mostly travesties of their original incarnations.

Inteesting thread, btw.

[Guitar]

Knowng my dad, if he writes the core it will work, all of it, he's a perfectionist. It'll either be all or nothing knowing him. Though if you can tell me what bits we don't need I'll try and get him to leave them till last.

[DialTone]

As far as I know, from the CPU peripheral perspective you can ignore DMAC, WDT, TPC, and ADC - only ITU and SCI are required. Instruction-wise, not really sure - perhaps some of the more obscure bit-manipulation (long) functions may not be required - BOR/BIXOR/BAND/BIAND/BLD/BILD, but that will depend on the ROM. SLEEP isn't required either, of course. I haven't actually mapped out which instructions are (typically) used and which aren't - might be an interesting exercise actually.

Not sure if the EEPROM stuff is used either, but I'd imagine it probably is.

Oh, and remember the H8/3002 operates only in advanced mode - it doesn't support "legacy" mode, so no need to bother with that.

Other than that, the Epoch Tech Reference Manual will be your friend concerning memory size, I/O size etc etc

DT

[ross]

i know this is going to sound noobish but i have no idea what goes into making a emulator but would it be helpfull to take photos of the boards n stuff inside a epoch machine as i have one sitting downstairs

[Guitar]

I'm not sure whether or not it will help, but as I still haven't seen an epoch board the photo's would be nice all the same.

[edwardb]

The EEPROM on Epoch was only used on Spanish games (it's da law).

[ross]

ok in the zip are 3 images 2 are from my machine the other is from ebay sorry for my images they were taken with a shitty 2mp cam in a dark room hopefully though they will be of some use

Attached Files

•  images.zip   1.67MB   31 downloads

[wirralbret]

Ah, epoch - or POXY, as we all used to call it at RLMS! who would have thought you could daisy chain so many boards together and get quadruple the number of problems!

[skabaz]

thank good we have got rid of most of our epoch machines.

they were/are terrible technology to work with.

baz

[prizeguy2005]

out of interest was there anything on the epoch board you can point to why the machines were so unreliable. My memory's of epoch machines are loud buzzing noises, reels being out of sync. The test of time has shown how unreliable epoch was. Would love to purchase an impulse/global machine but heard some many stories about when epoch machines go they really are knackered. Think I better just stay with barcrests never had a problem with them

[edwardb]

I can point to many things:

1. PSU was a bag of shite. Frequently blows up and if you wiggle the power connector, the refill meter clicks away like mad.

2. Interconnected boards; some engineers are dipshits and connect the boards up wrongly, swapping the link input/output and blowing up the board(s) which then takes you ages to find which one is knackered.

3. Lamp driver board. The bain of everyone's life. The transistors got so hot on earlier versions, they caught fire (and yes, I know of the fire brigade being called to a few pubs!) or they melted the solder and just fell out, and you'd find them in the bottom of the cabinet.

4. Terrible problem with alphanumeric corruption, but that was Maygay not fitting shielded looms.

There is more....why they didn't just use a single board I will never know. Thank god Eclipse came along, albeit 5 years too late.

[TTX]

Not exactly Mr. Powell's finest hour then!

[skabaz]

epoch tech gave so many faults with the power supplies that we just sold them all to global.

a bad fault for us was sometimes when the power supply went faulty it emptied the hopper when no one is playing it.

maygay always insisted that their psu's had nothing wrong with them which makes me think they knew fine they were crap and were fed up giving excuses.

baz