Mame MK5 emulator?
langersld:
Just wanted to see if anyone had any info regarding MAME and Aristocrat MK5-MK6 emulation...
From what I understand MK4 is currently only supported?
Nash:
I'd like to see MK5 and MK6 emulation as well but no news so far?
Heihachi_73:
Massive bump. With Aristocrat MK5, we hit a technical brick wall with the emulation, namely, we couldn't get around it from its number of trap calls which it performs after something fails, which is followed by a watchdog reset, POST, then crash again in an infinite loop. Secondly, a few devices are still not emulated which may also contribute to the problem, however, as far as emulation goes, these devices aren't even accessed yet (driver board, comms for example). We are not sure whether the problems lie with the core code (e.g. the Acorn A3010 emulation which the MK5 is based on), or whether the MK5 really is a touch-and-go system which barely works, but works well when it does. Thirdly, there were a number of "political" issues with the MAME dev team at one point, where our submissions were rejected outright by the then-coordinator ("lead dev" if you will) without anyone even trying to help fix what was wrong. In fact, MAME still doesn't even get past the POST since the new code refused so many times that we gave up (in fact, we got as far as Golden Pyramids showing graphics (and crashing afterwards) in Arculator with a few hacks to bypass some additional beyond-POST hardware checks, but with the exact same code ported to MAME, it doesn't get as far).
As for MK6, no-one in the dev team seems interested, even with the similarities between the recently emulated Sega NAOMI (Dreamcast) and the MK6 system, which uses the same CPU, but a different video chip despite both being PowerVR chips (the MK6 having a PowerVR 250, which is not emulated).
Basically, the emulation is a one-man band (the core code is not by me either, my additions to MAME are only trivial such as adding ROM dumps and fixing minor errors), we desperately need people willing and able to contribute code and help get these systems up and running.
Additionally, the current MK6 emulation doesn't actually do anything yet; the system chips are not even hooked up (its inclusion in MAME is just a placeholder to preserve the EPROM dumps for now). As for other slot hardware which is not working and/or in hiatus, there is Konami Tasman, Konami Endeavour, VLC Winning Touch and probably countless "golden era" video poker games which are sitting in MAME not working. In fact, without the PE+ King himself, we probably wouldn't even have IGT emulation at all.
MK2.5 and MK4 games should work, but there are not enough dumps out there to really test the hardware (for example, there are no reel slots, keno games or non-NZ poker games dumped yet). The latest dump was Caribbean Gold (which was sitting on eBay forever), which despite having one chip which had crumbled into nothing, it worked fine with no modifications to the driver (luckily, the same video/sound chip was already dumped). However, I didn't have time to fiddle with the slightly different inputs (so far, it's the only slot game which differs from the others when it comes to inputs), thus the game has a few errors due to poking the wrong memory (e.g. inserting a "coin" clears the logic door error, which will then let you set up the game and start playing, yet it somehow still inserts coins anyway).
knagl:
For the VLC stuff, you might get stuck. VLC machines require a special clear chip that has to match the main chips you install after the clear. The physical clear chips were burned onto EPROMs that literally self destruct if you try to read them in with a chip reader. As such, unless you know a way around that which nobody (to my knowledge) has yet found, you're going to be up the creek even if you get the emulation 100%.
Lord-Data:
Ok, I'll introduce myself here. I've (very recently) done some minor mod work on the mk4 driver, primarily focused on running mame in a real (fully operational) cabinet. (Code accepted in 0.152 build)
I'm interested in progressing work on the mk5 platform, at least for the Aussie system (where I'm located, no clear roms, and more access to physical hardware for comparison work)
I'm lead to believe there has been a fair bit more progress made on this beyond what is currently in mame source, but either not published to mame, or not accepted.
I'm hoping to make some contact with anyone who's previously worked on this platform, or knows more in depth information. I'd hate to waste heaps of hours on the next steps only to find it's already been done by someone previously..
Anyone got any starting points/contacts?
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