MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Tank 8 as FPGA version

>New to the forum and new to Mame.

Welcome.

>I have for some strange reason of later years gotten into the pleasures of transferring
>TTL only arcade schematics into FPGA - to understand how it was all done without CPU,
>for the fun of it,

I like your first post since the non-cpu arcade video games era from 1971 to 1979 was my arcade years when seeing EM hardware games made by Chicago Coin and Allied Leisure standing alongside various pong clone cabs, Computer Space or Stunt Cycle.

There are actually a fair amount of manuals schematics online compared to 15 years earlier although many more needing to be added or found (if possible).

>for game preservation purposes and for those arcade owners who cannot bring
>their old PCBs back to life or who have empty cabinet (non profit of course).

For some cabs, it should be possible to find a pcb, but it is getting a bit harder as time progresses. imo the old cabs should be left as is and resold if having to sell the cab. It's better to find some Street Fighter cab or a cab that housed a JAMMA hardware games and modify that to house a computer system that runs emulation or a multi games pcb.

>So far I have worked on Computer Space (complete), Monaco GP (sound still missing), Indy
>800 (sound and some crash logic missing - but Sprint drone car logic added) and
>GT10/LeMans (crash and sound missing).

Congrats with what you have got working so far. As I understand, Indy 800 might be missing a rom or some prom, but that still needs to be verified. I thought Gran Trak and LeMans roms haven't been dumped such as may be missing a rom or two. I am not sure.

In MAME source code, a fair number of roms for non-cpu video games (Ramtek games, PSE games, Atari etc) are documented, but still a ways to go before games are ever emulated.

The main files for non-cpu video games support: src/lib/netlist, and src/mame/drivers/pong.cpp

There are other files for discrete audio support that use netlist work. See the source file src/mame/nl.lst for reference.

couriersud is doing a great job expanding MAME net list emulation. For now, the current work is at the core/ground level for improving overall netlist emulation. Should be more TTL hardware devices to be supported, but that is at a later time.

And also Adam Bousley and Rich R. have improved DICE to run more games

http://adamulation.blogspot.com/

>I was asked to look into Tank 8 - which according to the operations manual and
>schematics is all TTL, but when I look in the parts list it features some PROMs and a
>6800 CPU. The PCB layout in the manual also shows the PROMs and 6800 positions. Quite
>strange actually.

You ran into another example of inconsistency manual errors / misprints where what one page states, the part might not be on pcb (thankfully such as a rom or prom) A few other examples are Kee Games Crossfire and Atari Highway where parts list doesn't match what is shown on the pcb layout page. Even Juergen B. (former MAMEdev member) had to deal with misprints on the 2nd reprint of Atari Space Race manual schematics when he was trying to emulate Space Race back in 2010. Adam had to work around those misprint mistakes when emulating Space Race in DICE years earlier.

>I quickly noticed that Tank 8 had been released on MAME (cool - since quite some logic
>and sound generation is TTL only), which is why I turn to this forum. If anyone has some
>interesting insights to share I would be very happy.

I don't know if anyone here can help answer specific Tank 8 related questions.

Both frotz and Hans A. aren't around these days. frotz left way back in 2003 or 2004 iirc

src/mame/drivers/tank8.cpp and src/mame/audio/tank8.cpp

As for contacting former Atari employees, maybe Owen Rubin? But that is a long shot since he probably didn't work on that game.

-
Owen Rubin

http://www.orubin.com/
-

Very rarely do former arcade game designers/employees mention who they are in case any visit emulation sites. Owen is one and the other I recall was Atari Dave Shepherd who visited old MAME.net site back in 2006 to answer any questions about arcade games he designed himself for Atari. iirc Dave was doing that since Dave was attending the annual CA Extreme arcade event in 2006 along with some former Atari designers to answer questions by the attending audience.