After two long months, we’re back with MAME 0.262! Of course, it’s full of exciting work on multiple fronts. In core media support, MAME now supports FLAC compression for compact cassette images, and Zstandard compression in zip archives and CHD disk images. For maximum compatibility, chdman won’t use Zstandard compression by default, so you’ll need to enable it if you want to use it when creating or converting disk images. For your convenience, unidasm now allows you to specify offsets in hexadecimal or octal.
Three LaserDisc games designed by Rick Dyer are now working: the Japanese version of Time Traveler, the console-to-arcade conversion Thayer’s Quest, and Don Bluth’s Dragon’s Lair. It’s very exciting to see multiple LaserDisc captures combined to eliminate all dropouts from disc degradation and pressing faults for Dragon’s Lair and Thayer’s Quest.
Following up on work in the previous release, MAME now supports Sega’s TV Ocha-Ken system, based on the same technology as the Advanced Pico BEENA. It’s a far simpler system designed for young children, using barcode cards to trigger mini-games. Also from Sega, initial support for the AI computer has been added. No, this isn’t related to the current artificial intelligence craze; it’s a rather obscure system from 1986 featuring a pen tablet and using cartridge and compact cassette media.
Two more Casio Phase Distortion synthesisers have been added: the CZ-230S keyboard and the rare SZ-1 sequencer. The CZ-2230S lacked sound editing features but added a programmable drum machine (using PCM samples) and sequencer. Also in synthesiser emulation, MAME’s Wave Blaster host driver now supports multiple synthesiser modules from Casio, Samsung, and Yamaha. In other musical news, the original version of the very obscure Shamisen Brothers rhythm game from Kato’s has now been fully dumped and emulated.
The microcontroller program for Taito’s KiKi KaiKai was recently extracted. This contains a substantial amount of game logic, allowing the simulation code previously used by MAME to be retired and giving more confidence that the emulation is accurate. Improvements to our Fujitsu MB8841 emulation have fixed persistent issues in Arabian from Sun Electronics. HT1130 microcontrollers are now supported, allowing cheap hand-held “brick games” to be emulated, albeit without sound for now.
This is a big release for chess computer emulation. There are lots of newly supported chess computers from the brands you love, like Hegener + Glaser, Novag, and Saitek, as well as more versions of systems that were already supported. There were also a couple of backgammon computers added, from Saitek and Tryom.
There’s inevitably far more than we have time to talk about here, including an Arabic version of the Mattel Aquarius, an 8" floppy drive controller for the Apple II family, numerous Aristocrat Leisure gambling systems promoted to working, some big software list updates, and lots of code modernised. You can read about all the two months of development in the whatsnew.txt file, or get the source code and 64-bit Windows binary packages from the download page.
Loads of impressive work rolled into this release thanks to the many contributors in various projects being supported in this release.
> the console-to-arcade conversion Thayer’s Quest, and Don Bluth’s Dragon’s Lair. It’s very exciting to see multiple LaserDisc captures combined to eliminate all dropouts from disc degradation and pressing faults for Dragon’s Lair and Thayer’s Quest.
Let tv show character Eric Foreman (That 70s Show) provide the appropriate comment.
Applauds to Simon and his crew for a great product to help preserve some 20th century product technology from going the route of ‘Nitrate film’ disappearance calamity. The group of contributors to the project there can toot their horn and pat themselves on their own shoulders just to show other preservation groups such as film preservation that the Domesday project has made an impact as well.
Anyone playing Thayers Quest is required to also have Frank Zappa’s Thingfish album with the “The Crab-Grass Baby” segment.
> Improvements to our Fujitsu MB8841 emulation have fixed persistent issues in Arabian from Sun Electronics.
Damn. I must have have missed that. The chip has prevented other emulated games from correctly working, but I don’t remember which games.
>. an 8" floppy drive controller for the Apple II family
Heh. I temporarily worked in high school library for a semester for class credits when I was student at the high school in early 1980s. One of the back rooms was a computer room meant for only select users and groups and clubs affiliated with the school. The room had a mini computer system and several various desktop computers including Apple II computers with one or two actually using an external 8” diskette drive. While working there, I was rarely allowed to be in that room except if having to hand off stuff to staff in that room or if having to retrieve stuff from the room.
The 8” floppy diskettes were actually used by some on the staff, but no idea what the 8” diskettes were specifically used with various projects. The mini computer was the primary system for obvious large scale projects. I don’t recall seeing any dedicated Wang word processing systems because those are mainly what use the 8” floppys. There might have been a Wang word processor system in the front office room in front building, but the school library back room area only had a mini computer system and only desktop computers that were either Apple II or IBM desktop computers.
It makes zero sense of why a couple Apple II computers were using external 8” diskettes then when 5.25” diskettes were already in use and had more disk storage capacity. The only thing that can come to mind is maybe the work data with 8” diskettes was tied down to having to be stuck with some software program that used threatening software copy protection and would destroy the 8” diskettes data …. sort of like ‘Stockhold syndrome’ hostage scenario.
Maybe Stanley Kubrick Space Odyssey’s Hal holding library staff as hostages to 8” diskette format whether the library staff agrees or not.
“Library staff. This is Hal. Do not attempt to remove nor discard my 8” related stuff. My Super MasterLock software copy protection program will alert me should any changes occur.”
I’ll be sure to announce it just like Jerry Seinfeld’s tv show character friend Joel Hornick (second episode) yelled inside Monk’s cafe dinner: “Go see their show.”
>. Two more Casio Phase Distortion synthesisers have been added: the CZ-230S keyboard and the rare SZ-1 sequencer. The CZ-2230S lacked sound editing features but added a programmable drum machine (using PCM samples) and sequencer.
Posting this in case anyone wants to try out the Casio items.
A decent tutorial clip of how to use Cz - 230S sequencer’s control functions.
SynthMania : I think this is the first video on the Internet that features a Casio SZ-1 sequencer...? Anyway, here's a circa 1986 all Casio MIDI recording setup: Casio SZ-1 = sequencer Casio CZ-1000 = synth used in multitimbral mode Casio RZ-1 = drum machine —
Since MAME works with one item per time, it would mean having to run multiple instances of MAME. Unsure if there is a current way of somehow linking all three to recognize each other similar to what is shown on YouTube videoclip. It is one of the few clips showing how the Casio Sz - 1 works.
Casio Cz - 5000 has its own built in sequencer module, but Cz - 5000 not yet emulated.
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