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?

[Heihachi_73]

Your best bet would be to contact Palindrome on the forums, without him the MK5 driver would be nothing more than a placeholder for the games (as MK6 currently is). As far as coding goes, all I have done is minor cleaning up and adding a few games to the code (copypasta) which were sent by someone who wished to remain anonymous.

As for the hopper/coin emulation, the reason why MAME doesn't want to go there is because of possibility of companies commercially distributing illegal MAME-based machines (it has been done in the past, but most of these xxx-in-1 MAME-on-a-chip bootlegs are generally limited to early arcade titles from very old builds - gaming machines haven't really been a target yet, probably because they traditionally weren't allowed in MAME).

The problem is that the base system the MK5 is derived from, the Acorn Archimedes A3010 (not the 310), isn't fully emulated yet, as well as a number of MK5-specific devices (e.g. LAB comms board, driver board). MAME (actually, MESS) wants the Acorn "PC" side of things to be emulated and working before starting on the MK5, as currently portions of the MK5 is breaking the emulation for other systems, notably the arcade games Poizone and Erotictac/Tactic (ertictac) which use the earlier Archimedes system.

AFAIK, when the MK5 game tries to boot after POSTing, it runs into the weeds and the watchdog kicks in (without the watchdog reset emulated, it just sits there in an infinite loop, or in the case of NZ games and Diamond Touch, a trap call). Of course, in MAME it doesn't even get that far because it still has a 2KHz timer error, as the fix was deemed "too hacky" to add.

MK4 (and MK2.5) still needs a bit of work as well, particularly in emulation of USA systems and dumps of Australian/NSW games (currently, only two Australian games are dumped, the rest being USA or New Zealand - and both these NSW games have a coin error which doesn't happen on the NZ sets - in fact, the dumper of Enchanted Forest thinks that this set may have been for the Venezuela/Spanish market rather than NSW, although it seems to be a normal 10 "cent" machine). Caribbean Gold was a rush job added by me, but it really needs to be hooked up properly as some inputs are wrong, despite not having any problems with any other game (the EPROMs for this game were sourced from US eBay).

[Lord-Data]

Your best bet would be to contact Palindrome on the forums, without him the MK5 driver would be nothing more than a placeholder for the games (as MK6 currently is). As far as coding goes, all I have done is minor cleaning up and adding a few games to the code (copypasta) which were sent by someone who wished to remain anonymous.

As for the hopper/coin emulation, the reason why MAME doesn't want to go there is because of possibility of companies commercially distributing illegal MAME-based machines (it has been done in the past, but most of these xxx-in-1 MAME-on-a-chip bootlegs are generally limited to early arcade titles from very old builds - gaming machines haven't really been a target yet, probably because they traditionally weren't allowed in MAME).

The problem is that the base system the MK5 is derived from, the Acorn Archimedes A3010 (not the 310), isn't fully emulated yet, as well as a number of MK5-specific devices (e.g. LAB comms board, driver board). MAME (actually, MESS) wants the Acorn "PC" side of things to be emulated and working before starting on the MK5, as currently portions of the MK5 is breaking the emulation for other systems, notably the arcade games Poizone and Erotictac/Tactic (ertictac) which use the earlier Archimedes system.

AFAIK, when the MK5 game tries to boot after POSTing, it runs into the weeds and the watchdog kicks in (without the watchdog reset emulated, it just sits there in an infinite loop, or in the case of NZ games and Diamond Touch, a trap call). Of course, in MAME it doesn't even get that far because it still has a 2KHz timer error, as the fix was deemed "too hacky" to add.

MK4 (and MK2.5) still needs a bit of work as well, particularly in emulation of USA systems and dumps of Australian/NSW games (currently, only two Australian games are dumped, the rest being USA or New Zealand - and both these NSW games have a coin error which doesn't happen on the NZ sets - in fact, the dumper of Enchanted Forest thinks that this set may have been for the Venezuela/Spanish market rather than NSW, although it seems to be a normal 10 "cent" machine). Caribbean Gold was a rush job added by me, but it really needs to be hooked up properly as some inputs are wrong, despite not having any problems with any other game (the EPROMs for this game were sourced from US eBay).

Thanks for the response! I've already been briefly discussing with Palindrome, his name is synonymous with the MKIV stuff, so I started there

The coin/hopper part for MkIV is now already done, and accepted by mame. It is in build 0.152, I contrib'd code to disable the meter sound effects, added outputs to drive physical meters, and also to drive a physical hopper (and to expect a 'input' for each coin dispensed)

I did this code for my own use, and didn't expect mame to accept it, but they have, so there's that..

I'm looking into this 2k timer fix now, even if mame won't work with it, it would be good to be on the page as you guys have gotten to before. I figure if we can push past where we're stuck at now, and get even more progress working, even if mame won't accept it, we can smooth out the hacks later on, if they help to get it running further for now, it saves spending man hours on solving superficial issues, instead of spending the time on core issues

I have a contact that tells me he can get some dumps of roms from MKIV machines that are not currently in mame, so I'm hoping to be able to bring those in and add support for them. I'm also looking through some of the issues listed on mametesters for the MKIV driver, and it seems to be very 'general' and non specific issues, but I'm happy to keep tinkering with this driver, it's good clean code and providing me a good learning platform for getting into this stuff. I'm a well enough versed programmer (although it had been some time since I worked in C!), but I'm rather new to mame and it's approach to emulation. I've got a few further minor mods to the MKIV I'll be contributing soon, including proper 'wiring up' of the door switches (via options to enable/disable), so that a cabinet can have proper 'alarm' state as appropriate.