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MAME 0.242
#393640 - 04/01/22 10:37 AM
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MAME 0.242
Today is a bittersweet day. After a quarter of a century, we’ve decided that it’s no longer in our best interests to distribute MAME as Open Source/Free Software. Wait, that’s not the right announcement… After many fruitful years, we’ve come to realise MAME has achieved everything it can. The project is now in maintenance mode, and there will be no new functionality or regular releases. Hang on, that can’t be right, either! Happy April Fools’ day!
We have an interesting release today in several ways. Yes, the rumours are true, after many years, we’ve added support for another LaserDisc-based arcade system. It’s a system that only ran a single game: Time Traveler, created by Rick Dyer at Virtual Image Productions, starring Stephen Wilber, and published by Sega. This full-motion video game consists of a near-constant stream of quick time events, utilising a mixture of live action video and computer-generated imagery. Although re-living the early ’90s corniness is pretty awesome, this is a milestone because it’s the first LaserDisc arcade game preserved using the Domesday86 Project toolchain. In short, this involves the use of custom hardware to record the raw radio frequency signal from a LaserDisc player’s laser pickup, and then decoding it in software. This frees you from the limitations of LaserDisc player demodulators and video capture devices. As well as better, more consistent video quality, this opens up possibilities like combining multiple captures to overcome disc degradation and laser pickup dropout.
In another first for emulation, MAME 0.242 adds support for systems based on Rockwell B5000 family microcontrollers. This includes several electronic toys from Mattel, and calculators from Rockwell themselves. You’ll also find the first working game based on a Sharp SM530 microcontroller: the Star Fox game watch from Nelsonic.
There are plenty of software list updates this month, including recently-released prototype dumps for Mega Drive, NES and Super NES, all the latest Apple II dumps, and some more of the steady stream of Commodore 64 cassettes. You’ll also see that a big batch of Amiga software has been promoted to working – that’s because the Amiga family has had an overhaul this month, and it’s paid off with substantial improvements in compatibility.
There’s lots more going on, in fact this was a record month for pull requests, with over a hundred and thirty merged, including quite a few from first-time contributors, as well as some regulars. It’s great to have you all with us! There are dozens of reported bugs fixed, too, with a particular emphasis on fixing up DIP switch labelling.
As always, you can read about all the bug fixes, newly supported systems and software, and other development in the whatsnew.txt file, or get the source and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Re: MAME 0.242
[Re: Vas Crabb]
#393647 - 04/01/22 02:41 PM
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This is awesome, I can finally compare the home ports of Time Traveler on DVD and PC CD-ROM to the arcade original!
But I think this description misses a mention that the game was one that showed in Sega's holographic cabinet via fancy mirrors and glass. I wonder if anyone will have a stab at replicating that with MAME artwork 
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Re: MAME 0.242
[Re: VirtuaIceMan]
#393650 - 04/01/22 05:09 PM
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| gregf |
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Ramtek's Trivia promoter
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Re: MAME 0.242
[Re: Vas Crabb]
#393654 - 04/01/22 08:00 PM
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>Today is a bittersweet day. After a quarter of a century, we’ve decided that it’s no longer in our best interests to
> distribute MAME as Open Source/Free Software. Wait, that’s not the right announcement… After many fruitful
> years, we’ve come to realise MAME has achieved everything it can. The project is now in maintenance mode,
> and there will be no new functionality or regular releases. Hang on, that can’t be right, either! Happy April >Fools’ day!
Hard these days to have the luxury that Santeri S. / Gridle had back in the early era of MAME when source updates weren’t online / available to end users in 2002 in which he was able to pull off the most memorable April
Fools stunt of making it appear that Sega Model 2 games were playable from the 2002 April Fools wip joke.
Most posters on the old MAME.net web site had a hunch that wip update was a prank, but it was entertaining to
see it actually did fool some users that were excited and posted on the forum that day in which they were excited
only to become upset hours later by Gridle’s prank.
I wished I had saved that update while it was still online back then. That was the best of the pranks then.
>In another first for emulation, MAME 0.242 adds support for systems based on Rockwell B5000 family
>microcontrollers. This includes several electronic toys from Mattel, and calculators from Rockwell themselves.
My thanks to hap and Sean and also to one of the Mattel game designers that sent in some of his work to a web
site last year which made it possible for Sean and hap to be able to emulate the Mattel Electronics led games
and also the Rockwell brand calculators in which Sean and hap still have several more calculators yet to be emulated along with accounting equipment that used the Rockwell chips. MAME users that are Rockwell brand calculator fans can
finally have their day just like the TI calculator fans and HP fans had earlier when their calculators were emulated in the past.
I was an HP brand fan myself, but I am grateful just seeing the Mattel Electronics games finally emulated.
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Stiletto |
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They're always after me Lucky ROMS!
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MAME 0.242 on Social Media!
[Re: Vas Crabb]
#393659 - 04/02/22 01:19 AM
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| gregf |
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Ramtek's Trivia promoter
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Reged: 09/21/03
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Posts: 8613
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Loc: southern CA, US
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Re: MAME 0.242 on Social Media!
[Re: Stiletto]
#393681 - 04/03/22 02:19 AM
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> (PS. Yes, I copied the April Fools' Jokes there too, for the heck of it!
The 2002 April Fools stunt that Gridle did was the ultimate and I had wished I had saved that
on that day. It was on the wip page update for 10 to 12 hours before he took it down.
There had to have been 20 to 30 upset posts in that thread. The 2001 April Fools wip update was okay,
but the 2002 April Fools update was the hands down winner. I was guessing that the 2003 April Fools stunt by
Gridle would have been a Marble Man wip update. I already envisioned what the thread could have been like.
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