MAMEWorld Forums - News - Re: Prototype RCA Arcade Game from 1975 Dumped and Emulated *edit*

>Andy Modla has added Swords to his emulator of the RCA Studio II and related hardware.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbSNnIyc1K4

I like the video clip, but after having more time to look at links and photos including some of the paperwork, I'd like to believe the RCA Fredotronic arcade hardware can also be emulated in MAME...assuming there is permission to support the tape data in MAME.

>Swords was developed by RCA for their Fredotronic arcade hardware in 1975. It was based on
>the RCA 1801 CPU, a predecessor to the better known RCA 1802. It was location tested, but
>never put into mass production. However, RCA did release the RCA Studio II home console in
>1976 using similar hardware. To put the time frame into perspective, Midway released Gun
>Fight, the first mass produced arcade game to use a CPU, in November 1975.

MAME is part way there to supporting the hardware. The cpu support is there, but unsure if other hardware components such as video need to be added first in MAME before the RCA Fredotronic arcade hardware can be emulated.

-
src/mame/drivers/studio2.cpp

CONS( 1977, studio2, 0, 0, studio2, studio2, studio2_state, 0, "RCA", "Studio II", MACHINE_IMPERFECT_SOUND | MACHINE_SUPPORTS_SAVE )

src/devices/cpu/cosmac/cosmac.cpp

RCA COSMAC CPU emulation

// device type definition
DEFINE_DEVICE_TYPE(CDP1801, cdp1801_device, "cdp1801", "RCA CDP1801")
DEFINE_DEVICE_TYPE(CDP1802, cdp1802_device, "cdp1802", "RCA CDP1802")
-

>The program data was found on an audio cassette at the Hagley Museum And Library in
>Wilmington, Deleware, which holds a number of records from an RCA research laboratory.
>Thanks also to Ubersaurus, who arranged for the tape to be digitized.
>Based on the labels of other tapes in their collection, they appear to have data for
>other games on the hardware. The other known titles are Mines, Chase II, and Bowling.
>Some of these tapes have been recorded as WAV files, but have not been processed further
>as far as I'm aware.

I hope more of the tapes can be preserved sometime later.

Edited by gregf (01/18/18 09:18 PM)