MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Cinematronics netlist thanks

>To be fair, most of that is from src/lib/netlist/generated/static_solvers.cpp, which is a
>machine-generated file to allow the solvers for the circuit equations to be compiled in
>advance rather than generated at runtime; that makes the solver run quite a bit faster.

I was wondering what that feature was for, but had not yet asked about it.

>On the other hand, if I'm reading this pull request report right, Antny's total seems to
>have missed some major chunks of human-written code,

Antny and I exchange 'unfunny/sarcasm' bits here and there....but...

>so it looks like Aaron really did write nearly 10,000 lines for this.

...yep...definitely many lines of code updates involved to get almost all the games analog audio updated. If the similar arrangement (all games done at once instead of piecemeal) is done for games in src/drivers/vicdual.cpp imagine how many extra lines of code being manually added for all of the vicdual hardware games. That would be for analog audio work only, but then add along maybe some video rewrites for some of the games and then further video update/improvements for games like N-Sub. I am guessing analog audio specific work first if and when that ever happens.

>> Unfortunately it is more than schematics by themselves because of possible misprints
>> in some of the drawings. Access to actual hardware needed as well to verify/test such
>> as what Colin had to do with Midway 280zzzap analog audio.

>But having schematics is a hell of a lot better than working without them. They should be
>verified and may have to be corrected, sure, but trying to do this strictly from
>photographing and tracing boards? Yikes!

Back around 2007 or 2008, Frank Palazzolo had dumped proms from a Ramtek Trivia pcb even though it is a non-cpu game. Frank considered maybe looking into adding preliminary non-cpu support of MAME running non-cpu games back at the time, but Ramtek Trivia logic schematics would be needed. iirc this was around same time that Aaron and many others involved of rewriting MAME core code to treat CPUs as just as if the cpu were an add-on component just like ttl chips etc (somewhat similar to idea of pcb being a blank drawing canvas) and getting components added to pcb whether a cpu was used or not.

The guess regarding Ramtek Trivia logic schematics is maybe Ramtek Trivia would not be as complicated compared to Pong emulation. The logic schematics for Ramtek Trivia was three or four sheets and it looks even scarier compared to Pong schematics. I need to get that scanned and online like what was done with For Play games schematics and Meadows Bombs Away back in 2018.

iirc I mailed copies of that along with other copies of other Ramtek schematics of other Ramtek games to Frank back around maybe 2010 or 2011. I wasn't sure when non-cpu emulation would happen, but I am glad 'siftware' had been able to dump many of the roms and proms from non-cpu games when he and I met back in years 2006 to 2009.

> "but trying to do this strictly from photographing and tracing boards? Yikes!"

This is what had to be done just for analog audio from a Spiders pcb back around years 2007 to 2009. There were hardly any decent logic schematics for Spiders audio. One of the contributors bought a Spiders pcb, then traced analog audio circuits to create handdrawn logic schematics for audio output. Mailed the handrawn logic schematics to Hans Andersson in Sweden and Hans did the analog audio work for Spiders to be in MAME back then.

As for non-cpu video games the tracing work might have to be done for pong clone Bailey's Fun Four (uses proms that have been already dumped and documented in MAME source). I am guessing most will say not worth the time even if it is a pong clone.