36 replies to this topic

[Guitar]

Well its been a long time coming, and it'll be a bit longer I am afraid.

I have tested Blues Boys (the real one) with just an alpha display attached and teh CHR removed and it boots up fine. So, that means its down to the main hardware emulation not being correct.

I spent the last 2 days rewriting the 6840 timer, and made it worse, but t will be fixed and should run the test roms when I am done too.

PIA's need to be checked for accuracy then after that it should all run. If it doesnt then its time to go bug hunting in the core.

[Guitar]

Ok well, The 6840 has been rebuilt to a much better standard and is far more accurate now.

The 6821 PIA;s have been looked at and, well Im surprised as much runs as it does. The PIA IRQ's werent being recognised, the PIA special case logic is broken, as is the pulse outputs.
The Tristate line logic is the main cause of problems, and Im not clearing the IRQ flags correctly.

Soo a big 6821 rebuild is in progress.

Have also discovered that the PIA and 6840 on the program card link in to the NMI, not IRQ as first thought, so that is also wrong.

I will be rebuilding the 6821 code asap, fixing the other noted bugs, and adding in support for MPU4 linked games so we can run the top boxes. Only downside to that is we only have one complete romset which is Big Ben iirc, but its a start and Im sure more will turn up once there is an emu for it.

After all that, if Blues Boys still wont run, Im stumped. There was a suggestion in a FF thread many moons ago that the Blues Boys bankswitch gets moved to 0883 instead of 0850, but that appears to not be the case as the bankswitch would interfere with the sound board PIA.

So anyone who thinks they might know the correct bank switch location please let me know, looking at the german members in our midst here. If that BB video that got posted isnt a fake, it definately wasnt using 0883 as a bankswitch, so where is it.

There is a whole group of 128k roms from the same era that wont run (BWB), so whatever is stopping one, is stopping the others, we find this and thats BWB cracked and done.

[jmon]

It will be worth the wait im sure

[scofer]

just a quick question. what can FMEF emulate that MFME cant/

[Guitar]

A Bit of a breakthrough....

The Big Match now boots the reels up before it resets, Blues boys shows the init message and then crashes, Double Diamonds, and Lucky 7's, boot up and give a CHR error.

Im tracing the rpoblems, but its a big step from the roms doing absolutely nothing.


Edit, Dancing Diamons (not Double Diamonds) boots the reels and crshes, Quids In (Normal and showcase) both boot up and give the CHR error. Until I go in and get the chr info, that is exactly what is expected so that is a good result.

I also very heavilly suspect that the german made video of BB running in MFME was faked, or if it wasnt they did much more than they said to get it running in V2.

Edit 2: Harlequin boots to CHR error, I thought it did nothing but thats because it has no alpha, th 7 segs show the errors.

There are stil a few BWB ROMs that do nothing at all, but far less. Isuspect I know where the bugs lie, just a case of finding them now.

Edited by guitar, 27 August 2009 - 12:39 PM.
More stuff happened

[FRUITJUNKIE1971]

Got to say I do enjoy following your progress with FMEF, it makes interesting reading.

I look forward to seeing the latest FMEF in action in the near future. Keep up the good work and thank you for giving the scene some hope of a bright future to come!

Gary.

[nails]

im amazed at your dedication to the cause. good on you my son!

[Guitar]

what german video, didnt see this. Got to be fake no way has this worked in the emu yet.

It was put on FF about 2 years ago when I first decided to try cracking BWB games. It all started because I wanted to play Blues Boys. The germans claim to have hacked it out I'm not convinced. Unfortunately the video was on a temporary donload site (usendit or something).

I tried to find the video to post with the thread but alas it as gone.

It was very convincing but from what I have seen, I dont think MFME2 (as in the video) is capable of running it. Unless they hacked the roms about a hell of a lot and fixed the way it deals with dimmed lamps. There is a strict timing check to prevent overloading or short circuiting or somthing like that. The CHR is also a different setup in BB too. Maybe they did, maybe I am wrong, but personally I think there are too many missing or slightly out bits in MFME2 for it to run.

The Germans made few claims as to how they got it running and so far it would seem that the little info they gave was wrong. Maybe as a deliberate red herring as the Germans arent too fond of the scene over here as their requests for addons to run slighlty diferent setups used over there went unrequited. I believe that in europe a real time clock must be used to record certain information. Not entirely sure what, but its there.

Like I say I could be wrong, but what they say and wat apears to be the case dont match up.

[Guitar]

just a quick question. what can FMEF emulate that MFME cant/

About 60% of the BWB catalogue.

MPU4 Linked Games

Rotateable 7 seg displays to put them at sloped angles

Onine "arcades". You can play on ram files left by the last person to play a game, see how much you can win / lose without the ram always being where you last left it.

Lamp dimming on payout

Coin in / out sounds, meter clicks, button clicks, hopper movement,

Multiple lamps in the same place / overlaid colours.

And some other stuff too.

Of course techniclly MFME3.2 can play BWB, but only if you can fix the CHR, which you cant unless you are wizzy.

Edited by guitar, 06 September 2009 - 12:09 PM.

[Wizard]

After all that, if Blues Boys still wont run, Im stumped. There was a suggestion in a FF thread many moons ago that the Blues Boys bankswitch gets moved to 0883 instead of 0850, but that appears to not be the case as the bankswitch would interfere with the sound board PIA.

So anyone who thinks they might know the correct bank switch location please let me know, looking at the german members in our midst here. If that BB video that got posted isnt a fake, it definately wasnt using 0883 as a bankswitch, so where is it.

There is a whole group of 128k roms from the same era that wont run (BWB), so whatever is stopping one, is stopping the others, we find this and thats BWB cracked and done.

The bank switch is at 0883 but it uses the cb2 line to do the switching. That should get you up and running :-)

[Guitar]

The bank switch is at 0883 but it uses the cb2 line to do the switching. That should get you up and running :-)

Superb, thanks very much

Any idea why they did that? Seems odd to change it on only a few machines and with no real visible benefit I can see.

was / is MFM2 capable of emulating that? Or did they really hack those roms around?

[Guitar]

Well, about 5 of the BB roms now work, and give a meter shorted error, I'll take a closer look tomorrow.

Emulating reels 5 and 6 might not be a bad idea too lol. BB using 5 reels and all.

[Guitar]

Ok so a mixed bag of news this time around...

Due to me getting ahead of myself I cannot confirm that the CHR percentage screwing is hacked out. In fact its definately not right.

I can make the game play, but you will get the odd JP roll in. Same probably goes for every BWB game I am afraid. Its something I am pretty sure I can fix, but its not a quick fix at all. Going to take a lot of time and staring at the debugger. Im sorry for misleading people (and myself) into thinking the percentage screwing was done. But hey we will get there eventually. At least it boots up and does stuff.

The debugger, following a monumental rebuild there is now a very handy (and working) disassembler, and the rom traces and disassembler now follow some standard notation practices. The running debug is still to be done but is actually less usefull anyway now I have the rest.

Speed is one thing that I dont need to worry about, I can make it run at 2.5Mhz at the moment and that is with running the lamps and PIA's every cycle. Normally these are called only when their specific PIA is written to and thus needs attention. So for once speed isnt a problem.

With those removed before the rebuild (I always run things as accurately as possible whilst writing the emulation, its slower but spots bugs more efficiently) it was hitting 4MHz, which is double real time speed.

more later...

[Guitar]

later...

Ive had a big think and I am going to just keep going till its done now, no more half-releases. They dont really seem to get noticed and until there is a firm base to start from it seems a little silly to release half working, unfinalized bits. Even if someone did make a layout with it, chances are the layout scripting will have changed by the next few releases.

So I am holding off on any releases until MPU4 is ready to go. Probably not totally bug free as it tends to need public use to spot every little thing.

The releases that have been so far are enough to let everyone know that it is a real and viable emulator.

I have some fun plans for things to put in it. There will be a dedicated server running for it to allow online swapping of ram files and online chat whilst playing the emu. Some idea's wont make the final release, others will, and until then I will stay tight lipped.

I would expect this to take at least until christmas to prepare and make ready. Possibly longer.

There are a few onogoing tests to see what can be made better. The editor needs a thorough rebuild but is on hold until the emulation itself is working and stable. Reels need improving in some way too.

Synth sound still needs implementing, Sampled sound needs fixing too, it works for about 50% of machines but others repeat samples or just play the wrong sample at the wrong time.

BWB CHR needs fixing to correct the over payout.

Debugger needs finishing off.

7 Segment Display extenders need implementing.

Dimmed lamping needs looking at again.

Disc Reel implementation is required

Linked Games half work if you fiddle with them enough to get the timing right so the boxes detect each other, needless to say this needs fixing.

Along with the little bugs, and the fun stuff I want to put in, and any other stuff that comes along, its going to take a while. But I can say with confidence that its well on the way. If you compare that list with the list of things I had to do when I started (including learning how to write an emulator) its got a long long way.

So, that's that. If anyone can arrange 36 hour days it would help.

Of course when the time finally comes, it will be the most complete MPU4 emulator in the public domain, maybe even in the private domain too.

And I'm still waiting for a cup of tea.

[Guitar]

any chance of a biccy?