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OpenJamma board - interest?
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1500points:
was just told about this project today.  Very nice, and will be much desired as there is nothing comparable out there.

I browsed the whole thread but here is what I'm wondering about the classic games up to 84ish.

1- will a USB happ trackball and USB slikstik spinner work with this board, for games like major havoc, crystal castles, Kickman, Centipede, Tempest, etc

2- will the mame version be update-able by the user, which is relevant for games like Robotron. ie older versions of mame below 145-148 have poor blitter emulation.
It would be nice to drop a custom \src\mame\video\williams.c into mame 148 so Robotron/Joust/Bubbles/etc have the optimal play experience.

3- will it support a 49-way stick if someone was interested in playing a game like Sinistar?

Awesome project. Kudos. I'm in for one when they are produced, regardless.  :)
happyfunball:
this sounds like an interesting project but I'm unclear a little on what emulation its running.
are you just recompiling a version of mame to run on it? If so, doesn't that sort of go against mame's terms of use that it shouldn't be used for commercial products?

or is this intended to run whatever emulators people make on their own and you're just selling a piece of hardware?
sandheaver:

--- Quote from: happyfunball on April 10, 2013, 01:56:46 pm ---this sounds like an interesting project but I'm unclear a little on what emulation its running.
are you just recompiling a version of mame to run on it? If so, doesn't that sort of go against mame's terms of use that it shouldn't be used for commercial products?

or is this intended to run whatever emulators people make on their own and you're just selling a piece of hardware?

--- End quote ---

Well, MAME doesn't run standalone, it would need an OS to run on top of.  So, it would probably need to be (given the open nature of the hardware) an open, but customized, OS such as Linux.  Linux would suit itself pretty well to this application, without question.

This will probably be distributed in similar ways as the Raspberry Pi.  Hardware sold without OS, without storage, but with downloadable OS and supporting commonly used storage media: USB drive or SD card, etc.  (edit: it is against MAME EULA to sell MAME; but if the Raspberry Pi model is followed, you purchase only the hardware -- or build your own -- then download the software free of charge.  It is in this way that the MAME EULA is not violated.) 

I think it will be a bit of a mistake to design and market it solely as a MAME/MESS platform; much more interest can likely be gained if it is made to be a general purpose embedded platform that happens to have a JAMMA connector, or possibly modular IO boards (one of which would be JAMMA.)  Just look at what is missing from the market now and you'll quickly see where you'd go with this kind of a board, if you decided you wanted to go there.  Modular IO would let you support trackballs and paddles and every control method MAME & MESS support, without necessarily including them all on the one board.  An open platform with open modules is the way to go, in my eyes.

Despite that, I find this project very interesting, indeed.
shanghaiguide:


--- Quote ---this sounds like an interesting project but I'm unclear a little on what emulation its running.
are you just recompiling a version of mame to run on it? If so, doesn't that sort of go against mame's terms of use that it shouldn't be used for commercial products?
--- End quote ---

I'm pretty sure I answered the M question already.  May have been on the otaku board though.  Have added it to the FAQ though.
->
http://openjamma.org/faq/

MAME!

The short answer – No.
The long answer – licencing wise, MAME doesn’t allow for commercial use, and an openJAMMA board for sale with MAME pre-installed would count as commercial use.
That said, the board will be updatable, and we will have a repo which you can install MAME from if you so wish. Again, this will be open source, so those who want to make it happen can, those that don’t can use the default packages we will ship with.


OS will be linux (Debian) based, and we'll have our own repo for updates.
(Well, less of the "will" have, more of the has.. a repo, I already made one a while ago).
Frontend will be python based.

Still mulling over whether I use Mamewah! or similar, or not.  Thoughts, comments?
Right now I have it booting into a simple python selector, and that then runs emulator du jour.

Yes I realise this is hard to answer without visuals, but I do have a lot of stuff to get done before I can get alpha units out to testers etc.
shanghaiguide:

--- Quote ---1- will a USB happ trackball and USB slikstik spinner work with this board, for games like major havoc, crystal castles, Kickman, Centipede, Tempest, etc

--- End quote ---

Yes, if there are linux drivers for it.
If there are not, then no until someone makes some.  The ones I have though appear as mice to a computer, so should work (assuming the usb ones you have are similar to the ones I have).
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