MAMEWorld Forums - News - DU: This magnet moment, so different and so new

A bit lengthy with my post, but I hope the url links help out.

> I am a owner of Magnet 1 since long ago (+30y).
The cabinet died 20 years ago and we stored it in the basement until now...

>Yesterday I was taking a look into the board and it seems that something is damaged. I found some pictures of the board and I'll do my best to fix it (if possible)

Some pcb hardware documentation is within some of the source code files.

https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/efo/cedar_magnet.cpp

If any particular pcb parts are not yet documented in the source file, an opportunity to help out with
any missing pcb hardware details.

A couple folks to contact are Haze and ClawGrip. Haze does the software emulation work and ClawGrip does the hardware side contributions such reading ROMS, diskettes etc and Spanish or European hardware documenting.

Haze visits here, but also has his own Twitter feed

https://twitter.com/mamehaze

Visit Bobby Tribble’s unMAMEd web page https://unmamed.mameworld.info

and look for link to Haze's MAME WIP web page https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/

Look for page entry 2018 – Starting Early https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/2018-starting-early/

Some mention of Dinamic / Inder products, and EFO products and the emulation of some of the games in 2017 and 2018.

—
Spanish Rarities

Digging up obscure pieces of history is one thing MAME has a good reputation for, and by emulating Hammer Boy MAME once again fulfilled that role in 2018. The Arcade release of Hammer Boy probably never left a handful of arcades in Spain. It runs on the same board as the previously emulated Mega Phoenix, which too was a very rare title.

The Cedar Magnet System is another piece of Spanish hardware. Previously the only dumped games for it were unofficial bootleg remakes of better known arcade titles, with little hope being held for any of the original software for the platform being discovered. Amazingly a disc for one of the original games, War Mission was found in 2018. The disc didn’t give a perfect read first time, and even when using the original game drive it was problematic, but with the original drive only the later tracks on the disc were reading inconsistently, and while they did contain
—

For following updates visit MAME on GitHub. https://github.com/mamedev/

The products of EFO SA (Electrónica Funcional Operativa SA)
are in this link.

https://github.com/mamedev/mame/tree/master/src/mame/efo

and the magnet product is in this main file while other related files are also in the same folder.

https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/efo/cedar_magnet.cpp

The supported games can be found on line

https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/d50...agnet.cpp#L1164

The games that are supported is a minimal amount and what you listed would be a great addition for preserving this type of hardware.

After a quick check, I'll found the following games:
Booby Kid
Cocomania (aka Pacmania)
Dodge Ball
Double Dragon (Test)
Double Dragon
Exzisus
Flying Shark
Paris Dakar
Super Contra (Lenta)
Super Contra
War Mission
War Mission 090487
World Wars

> I found some threads like this, trying to preserve all these old games.

You found the best place to get things underway.

> I am not sure if the floppy disks will work yet, but if someone could give me some advice about how to dump
> them, I'll do my best to preserve them. It would be amazing if we could let them work in Mame

Probably expect a message or two in your account when visiting later for contacting to see what can be done such backing up diskette images or repairing pcb.

Another EFO SA (Electrónica Funcional Operativa SA) product that has yet to be fully emulated is

—
Night Mare is an earlier game by the same developer, EFO, on very different hardware. It’s definitely a better playing game than any of the Magnet System ones too. The Spanish version was found and dumped as one of the highlights of 2018, although the sound ROM was missing from the PCB, so the speech, which is one thing people remembered about the game, is entirely missing, along with the rest of the sound. There should also be an English version, called Clean Octopus, that was exported from Spain.
—

https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/efo/nightmare.cpp

A complete, hopefully working pcb, of the game is on want list in order for all the roms to dumped and supported. If you have Night Mare or Clean Octopus pcbs, those would be welcomed additions. Although Night Mare is supported, there are no audible sounds because audio ROMS were removed from a pcb when game was being preserved a few years earlier.

I hope things work out with games preserved or pcb able to be repaired,
The diskette photos already help out with more documentation of what games the system supported.
Expect the info from the photos to be added to the source file eventually and hopefully the games too.

You might also get a question about the pcb as well.

Edited by gregf (05/09/23 10:30 AM)