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DU: 3 Possibilities+
#234655 - 09/26/10 03:38 AM
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There are 3 possibilities of needed stuff at the moment so I want to see if anyone is interested in helping. One is Big Buck Hunter, the old original one from 10 years ago... It still doesn't seem to be dumped, which is odd. We could get that for 100-150ish. Next is Offroad Thunder, which is a great and old game and still somehow undumped. I'm researching an original set of it. It's extremely pricey but gamerfan might be covering most or all of it, I'll know more about that one in a few days. The main problem with these games and a lot like them is that they used hard drives and they have been failing and replacement drives are getting sold that work but are different sizes. Well, that's a best case scenario on replacement drives actually. Sometimes the data gets crap-hacked to let the hardware not use security dongles... Anyway the clock is ticking on them. And in fact we might end up accidentally buying a replacement drive on something at some point, forewarning. They're everywhere.
Lastly there is a 1942 "Charger" hack version, which looks like a "real hack" released in the 80's, but it's really expensive, about $160. Ouch. But it's available, if anyone wants to pay for it, we can get it. So anyway, if anyone wants to donate toward one of these, send in a donation and let me know which one you want it spent toward. There are also other possibilities but they are more risky dice rolls, basically some boards where I'm not 100% sure they are undumped versions, but mostly sure. I could go after some if donations are high enough, so I guess we'll see.
On a side note I wrapped up the Japan deal. I ended up spending some of my own money to sweeten it up. It will probably be a couple of weeks before the boards arrive. I've also bought some other bits here and there that are on the way. Also BrianT got a pretty interesting board the other day, I'm sure he'll give me the OK to announce it after it arrives, and Kold666 is working on a plan that will blow your mind into the 1980's but nothing solid has happened yet. Also Bygone was dumped, not sure why it isn't in MAME yet. Maybe next release.
Thanks so far for donations from:
ranger_lennier (no game specified)
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| ninjakid |
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MAME PUNK
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: Smitdogg]
#234665 - 09/26/10 04:09 AM
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Since I own an Area 51 Site 4 cab and know you can get imaged drives off ebay fairly easily I did a simple search and came up with this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/BIG-BUCK-HUNTER-HARD...=item2307c007a3
I noticed it says this:
"YOU WILL BE PURCHASING A TESTED AND 100% WORKING HARD DRIVE THAT HAS BEEN IMAGED WITH BIG BUCK HUNTER > PLUG AND PLAY"
WTF???
Unless I'm mistaken "BIG BUCK HUNTER PLUG AND PLAY" is one of those craptastic games you plug into your TV!
So they are using an image from that to replace the original Arcade disk image???
They could be exactly the same but if I owned an original cab I would NEVER be able to feel it was authentic if it was running one of those drives.
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| Foxhack |
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: ninjakid]
#234668 - 09/26/10 04:14 AM
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> Since I own an Area 51 Site 4 cab and know you can get imaged drives off ebay fairly
> easily I did a simple search and came up with this:
>
> http://cgi.ebay.com/BIG-BUCK-HUNTER-HARD...=item2307c007a3
>
> I noticed it says this:
>
> "YOU WILL BE PURCHASING A TESTED AND 100% WORKING HARD DRIVE THAT HAS BEEN IMAGED
> WITH BIG BUCK HUNTER > PLUG AND PLAY"
>
> WTF???
>
> Unless I'm mistaken "BIG BUCK HUNTER PLUG AND PLAY" is one of those craptastic games
> you plug into your TV!
>
> So they are using an image from that to replace the original Arcade disk image???
>
> They could be exactly the same but if I owned an original cab I would NEVER be able
> to feel it was authentic if it was running one of those drives.
I think the guy meant that you can just plug the hard drive into your cab and boot it up, since it's been imaged with the original hard drive data somehow.
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: ninjakid]
#234669 - 09/26/10 04:15 AM
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I haven't Googled it but I think he just means "plug it in and turn it on - voila it works". But yes that's an example of what I was talking about.
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: Smitdogg]
#234677 - 09/26/10 04:34 AM
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Any of those would be good buys, but personally I'm most excited by Offroad Thunder. Midway made some great racing games in that time period. One I particularly remember playing is Hydro Thunder. Hopefully that one pops up sometime.
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: ranger_lennier]
#234679 - 09/26/10 04:38 AM
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We have a hard drive dump of it but that's it. Gerald has a full set but I think it doesn't work. He's supposed to try to fully dump it any day now though and hopefully get high res pics of everything. I also keep an eye out for them for sale constantly but I can't move on anything until Gerald tries to dump his stuff.
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| ninjakid |
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MAME PUNK
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: Smitdogg]
#234686 - 09/26/10 05:01 AM
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Ahh yeah, my mistake in reading it wrong.
As for the size issue, this is something that MAME needs to settle on at some point. The chd images in MAME are in some instances larger than need be this is due to chdman making an exact image even when the actual data portion of the drive is much smaller.
I know this has been discussed before but it just seems to me that MAME should trim the chd's down to what the actual game requires.
Point in case, like I said I own an Area 51 Site 4 and have purchased 3 separate board sets trying to get it working without the dreaded reboot issue that these games suffer from.
With those 4 board sets I have had 2 different ORIGINAL FACTORY HD's of different sizes. I guess this could have been because of the image version which is still not supported in MAME as far as I know.
But the point is I used chdman to image my HD's and write the image to a 2gb SD card which I now am running on my WORKING board set using an SD to IDE adapter. Chdman did report an error when writing to the SD card that it ran out of room when writing but it was writing zeros for the empty space of the drive.
My cab now works 100% no HD and no reboots!
BTW anyone who has an Area 51 Site 4 board set with the reboot issue if you ask nicely I can tell you the simple fix! 
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: ninjakid]
#234690 - 09/26/10 05:07 AM
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The fact that some games were released from the factory using different size drives makes it tricky to decide I guess. The worst is the ones that have protection hacked out to not use dongles though, and that info is rarely in auction listings. That happens a lot with touchscreen games.
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: Smitdogg]
#234714 - 09/26/10 06:26 PM
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Smit, I sent you years ago the dump of the original Big Buck Hunter, I'll look to see if I still have it but think the HDD they were on crashed.
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I can look around for it but it wouldn't be enough on its own, there was a rom on the PCB.
[ATTACHED IMAGE]
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| Fever |
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Reformed Sk3n3 Quitter
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: Smitdogg]
#234727 - 09/26/10 08:12 PM
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> The fact that some games were released from the factory using different size drives
> makes it tricky to decide I guess. The worst is the ones that have protection hacked
> out to not use dongles though, and that info is rarely in auction listings. That
> happens a lot with touchscreen games.
So would the devs not put a hacked board + replacement HD into MAME until something better turned up?
Seems worth getting dumps anyway...
with the CHD images, you'd think if it really was just writing 0 for gigs the compression could losslessly compress it to virtually nothing anyway - the eqivalent of a note saying "write 0's for 5Gb" instead of actually having 5Gb of zeros in the image!
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: Fever]
#234735 - 09/26/10 09:09 PM
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I'm not worried about compression/chd size. It's a matter of trying to document what the real hardware used and not some jackass refurb dude on eBay. It's also a matter of, can the chd be written back onto the correct hard drive type/size to restore a game. Also you don't always know if other things have been user-hacked if you buy a replacement drive, but yeah some might get used in MAME and be marked as bad dump or something and it's better than nothing.
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| t152 |
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MAME Fan
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: Smitdogg]
#234737 - 09/26/10 09:19 PM
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I have a complete working Midway OffRoad Thunder box so I could help out with infos about that. Just let me know what you like to have dumped (drive, chips...).Cheers
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: t152]
#234740 - 09/26/10 09:24 PM
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Awesome, that will save us a boatload of cash. Can you get me high res pics of everything, boards, hard drive, if there is a dongle, if there is a BIOS bootup screen, the BIOS chip, go crazy on it. Then I could tell you for sure. At the very least, we need a CHD of the hard drive and a dump of the dumpable chips on the board (probably a BIOS + boot ROM or just a BIOS). And I know it might just look like a standard Award BIOS or something but we need the actual chip dumped if possible. Use this for making the CHD:
http://guru.mameworld.info/tutorials/dumping_cds_&_hdds/index.html
Then upload it to a free hosting site and send me a PM with the link.
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| t152 |
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MAME Fan
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: Smitdogg]
#234742 - 09/26/10 09:34 PM
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> Awesome, that will save us a boatload of cash. Can you get me high res pics of
> everything, boards, hard drive, if there is a dongle, if there is a BIOS bootup
> screen, the BIOS chip, go crazy on it. Then I could tell you for sure. At the very
> least, we need a CHD of the hard drive and a dump of the dumpable chips on the board
> (probably a BIOS + boot ROM or just a BIOS). And I know it might just look like a
> standard Award BIOS or something but we need the actual chip dumped if possible. Use
> this for making the CHD:
>
> http://guru.mameworld.info/tutorials/dumping_cds_&_hdds/index.html
>
> Then upload it to a free hosting site and send me a PM with the link.
Ok, I go over the my game-shed tomorrow to catch the box and get pictures, rom dumps and drive chd from what I'll find. I will let you know afterwards what I have. Cheers.
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: t152]
#234743 - 09/26/10 09:35 PM
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Thanks dude, if there's any way you could send me a list of the other games you have, I could tell you if you have any others that are needed.
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| t152 |
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: Smitdogg]
#234746 - 09/26/10 09:45 PM
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I'll prepare a list... for the moment:
I think the *FRENZY EXPRESS* could be of some interest. I didn'd see that on the list of dumped games. There's also a 'Taito X' title which is REALLY rare by all means, I've never seen this as I bought it: "Trouble Witches AC". I could prepare pics, dumps and drive chd for that too. I just try first to dump and reload the data to be sure it will work. Cheers.
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: t152]
#234747 - 09/26/10 09:47 PM
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Sounds good. Remember not to ever reload data onto an original hard drive you copied data from (I can't really tell what you meant - just be careful).
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| Fever |
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Reformed Sk3n3 Quitter
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: Smitdogg]
#234749 - 09/26/10 09:54 PM
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> I'm not worried about compression/chd size.
Yeah, that part was more aimed at teh Ninja's moan, the part about it being potentially added as a Bad Dump or whatever was aimed more at you
Should have made 2 seperate replies really, being lazy, sorry for the confusion!
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| t152 |
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: Smitdogg]
#234753 - 09/26/10 10:01 PM
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: t152]
#234756 - 09/26/10 10:15 PM
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Oh wow, you have a nice collection. Are you familiar with the shortcuts to see if you have undumped revisions? There are most certainly some in there. Basically with most stuff you can compare rom sticker labels to dumps in MAME (ideally dumps are labeled stickername.pcblocation), starting with program roms (the most likely rom type to change between revisions/regions). So basically you'd have some old game that's in MAME, look it up in MAMEUI and have MAMEUI set to show "Source", once you know that go here:
http://mamedev.org/source/src/mame/drivers/index.html
Click on the driver, scroll near the bottom where you see rom definitions (ROM_START( gamename ), look first in "maincpu" section, those will be program roms. Sometimes revs have an A or B added to the name or sometimes they will be totally new numbers, like with some Sega stuff. To test if a dump is dumped or not you can run mame -romident foldername where the foldername is the folder you have your dumps in. That will tell you if it's dumped or not. Anyway, those are a few starter tips, maybe you knew already...
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| Moose |
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: t152]
#234785 - 09/27/10 05:34 AM
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: t152]
#234823 - 09/27/10 07:04 PM
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All I can say is WOW !!! thank you so much too for offering to
help save these games, in the process it saves the DU project
money for other rare games.
My hat off to you sir, again a heart felt thanks!
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: Renegade]
#235502 - 10/04/10 04:08 PM
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I'd like to see the 1942 Charger hack emulated as I have never seen one for sale before. (Rare as rocking-horse shit).
Thanks for the fine work so far everyone.
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Re: DU: 3 Possibilities+
[Re: Tingoes]
#235517 - 10/04/10 06:46 PM
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Unfortunately the seller knows how rare it is and has chosen to use that info to create a get-rich-quick scheme on the price. It's still available if anyone wants to donate the money for it.
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