quick bootleg 48-in-1 type board question

[bradx]

is there any proof these things are using mame?

[CheffoJeffo]

Yes they are (I asked the same question some years ago).

[bradx]

yeah i know they are i was hoping for some sort of proof i could throw in someones face...

[Turnarcades]

With many of them, play one and you'll be able to tell. With others, the sellers do little to mask the fact. Even if it weren't MAME and were another multi-CPU-emulating-software-system (which is doubtful considering the development time of MAME), it is still all done through emulation and none of them have licence for the rom images. If you were to decompile the code on them (as I believe some members of this community have), you will find extracts of code and/or text that are virtually identical to the MAME drivers, and hence have been ripped from MAME source code.

[krick]

There's actually one of them emulated IN MAME...

http://maws.mameworld.info/maws/romset/39in1

0.133u1 - 2nd August 2009

MooglyGuy - I'm not sure how many people are aware of this, but there's an interesting little non-working game in MAME that goes by the unassuming nickname, "39in1". It's one in a line of numerous "Xin1" games, including 4in1, 9in1 and 48in1 as well, though only 4in1 and 48in1 have been dumped in addition to 39in1.. The reason why these games are interesting is because they're bootlegs of MAME, hacked to run on a 200MHz Intel XScale system-on-a-chip, so there's a very good chance that these games will be the first instance of MAME self-virtualizing, albeit with an earlier version than itself. Between Andreas Naive breaking the encryption on the main program ROM, me wiring up a good number of the PXA255 peripherals, and R. Belmont figuring out a lot of the CPLD communication, it finally runs far enough to display something, albeit an error message. Stay tuned; there's probably more to come.

R. Belmont - Bootstraps (10:19 AM): The 39-in-1 MAME bootleg has been getting some love lately from MooglyGuy and I. Looks like it just needs controls now...

R. Belmont - Enter the Vertex (6:49 PM): 39 in 1 MAME Bootleg's protection has been defeated. What game to play first? Gotta be Mappy in honor of Aaron Giles. UPDATE: Added Arkanoid and Xevious screens.

MooglyGuy and R. Belmont - fixed '39 in 1 MAME bootleg' - Game now playable. Fleshed out some Intel PXA255 peripherals. Improved PXA255 DMA controller emulation. Fixed FBARx register accesses to wait until the current DMA transfer has completed before triggering another interrupt. Hooked up 93C66 EEPROM. Fixed LCD DMA behavior. Fixed EEPROM byte order. Video, inputs, and flash data ROM hooked up. Improved PXA255 LCDC, DMA and I2S emulation. Working but not great CPLD protection simulation. Replaced ARM9 CPU1 with PXA255. Changed visible area to 480x296 and VSync to 60Hz.

R. Belmont - Which MAME version 39-in-1 is, it's difficult to tell from a bare binary since unlike the makers of a certain Japan-only PS2 classics series they *did* remove the MAME version message. But its likely derived from the original GP32 version of MAME4ALL which pins it back to a 0.37ish core with various backports from later MAMEs. (The latest GP32/GP2X/WIZ M4A is 0.37b5 based according to the changelog I saw, but the 39-in-1 is from roughly 2004 so that may not have been true then).

[Turnarcades]

The irony of the situation is that the xxx-in-1 developers now have a taste of their own bootlegging medicine, as after breaking the encryption the MAME devs can easily decompile and emulate their own code. The danger now though is that operation of bootlegs back in the day became commonplace and even acceptable in legitimate arcade venues, and unfortunately this trend is now back as many folks, even those aware of emulation's grey areas, are not aware of these xxx-in-1 boards' legality.

Many at the Replay show last year turned their nose up at the notion of emulation and avoided picturing PC-driven cabinets like ours, yet happily played and photographed multi-game board running cocktail machines without so much as blinking. If these xxx-in-1 boards are now gaining acceptance through ignorance, and MAME now emulates them and their custom game selection menu, there is a potential danger for PC's driving MAME to be installed in innocent-looking JAMMA cabinets and be ran coin-operated, for much less than the cost of a multi-game board, directly using MAME, and with a single coinage system running efficiently (something current front-ends don't do to discourage commercial activity like this). Worrying?

[BobA]

How can a PC running MAME and a multiboard emulation of MAME be less costly then a multiboard when the simple 60 in 1 used for cocktails and many other cabinets cost less than $100?  The multiboard emulation in MAME does not run well on my i3 so a faster motherboard would cost many times the cost of a cheap multiboard.

[Hoopz]

yeah i know they are i was hoping for some sort of proof i could throw in someones face...

There's no point of being right if the other guy doesn't know.   

You'll fit in well around here.