Classic Pong?

[GlynH]

Hi there,

Brand new to MAME having just purchased an arcade coffee table so I could relive some of those classic games from my youth such as Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Galaga/Galaxian etc. that I used to play on sit-down tables and my old Atari 2600 console with games on cartridges - wish I could remember who I gave that to!

Anyway I was wondering if there was a ROM for the original Pong game of two 'bats' and a square ball or something similar?

When I mentioned to a friend that I was buying an arcade coffee table he got all excited about playing Pong but a quick look through the @1000 games shows it does not exist.

Such a simple game but it feels somehow that my table is incomplete in its line-up without a Pong game of some kind.

Is this available at all and if not why not? 

Thanks & kind regards,
-=Glyn=-

[DisFanJen]

*Removed as it looks like it could be breaking forum rules.  Sorry Guys*

[*Kegger*]

On the 2600 I think it was called Video Olympics. It had different variations of Pong games

[GlynH]

Wow...thanks guys! Don't know how I missed that when I searched for it?

Even the manufacturer of the table said the ROM wasn't available when I asked...

On the link it states MAME O.164 but do you know if this will play on MAME 0.146 by any chance?

I've posted in the software forum to see if I should upgrade MAME or not.

Thanks & kind regards,
-=Glyn=-

[Token]

Read the rules.

5. Nothing illegal! Do I even need to explain this one? Need a ROM to repair an arcade board you own? Fine to talk about. Need a ROM to complete your MAME collection? Don't bother to post here. If someone posts such a request, please don't answer it -- no direct answers, no hints, no private messages.

[big10p]

Didn't think Pong was in MAME?! You need spinners to play it, anyway.

[Thenasty]

mame supported PONG back in the days. It's been removed and don't know if i's been put back.

There are different versions that added pong, neo-pong and others. I think Misfitmame and Advmame are the ones I remembered. I know I have a version of Advmame running Pong and Neo-Pong.

[BadMouth]

Pong used only discrete circuits (no cpu).
It wasn't emulated in MAME last time I checked.
Most people play it on DICE emulator or just don't have it on their cab.

[Haze]

Pong has been back in MAME since 2012 (actually I think initially earlier, but not playable) and slowly improving ever since.

We also do Pong Double and Breakout.

All of them have VERY high system requirements, and aren't quite perfect yet as these discrete games are some of the most difficult and demanding to emulate of anything.

but seriously, they've been back for 3, almost 4 years, how long does it take for news to filter down these days?

[leapinlew]

Pong has been back in MAME since 2012 (actually I think initially earlier, but not playable) and slowly improving ever since.

We also do Pong Double and Breakout.

All of them have VERY high system requirements, and aren't quite perfect yet as these discrete games are some of the most difficult and demanding to emulate of anything.

but seriously, they've been back for 3, almost 4 years, how long does it take for news to filter down these days?

Great news. Thanks Haze. Let us know when Galaga is in mame. Thanks.

 

[GlynH]

Great news. Thanks Haze. Let us know when Galaga is in mame. Thanks.

 

I already have Galaga in my arcade coffee table running MAME 0.146 marked as 1981, Namco if that helps?

Thanks & kind regards,
-=Glyn=-

[vwalbridge]

Great news. Thanks Haze. Let us know when Galaga is in mame. Thanks.

 

I already have Galaga in my arcade coffee table running MAME 0.146 marked as 1981, Namco if that helps?

Thanks & kind regards,
-=Glyn=-

Guess you didn't get the joke.

[GlynH]

Great news. Thanks Haze. Let us know when Galaga is in mame. Thanks.

 

I already have Galaga in my arcade coffee table running MAME 0.146 marked as 1981, Namco if that helps?

Thanks & kind regards,
-=Glyn=-

Guess you didn't get the joke.

No obviously not...it was a whoosher as I'm new here (but not to IT nor Tech) so am also struggling with the usual abbreviations and 'in-jokes' etc.

Sorry...the humour was lost on me although I did have a flicker of irony as I hit the Post button...

Ah well...if I made someone smile from being a dumbass all was not lost! 

-=Glyn=-

[leapinlew]

You're alright with me Glyn!

[big10p]

I demand Pac-Man, in MAME!

[GlynH]

Pac-Man? Never heard of it.

Is it a game and was MAME a typo? 

-=Glyn=-

[vwalbridge]

Pac-Man? Never heard of it.

Is it a game and was MAME a typo? 

-=Glyn=-

Yep, you're alright GlynH.     (Sometimes left)


We like to joke and have fun on BYOAC. Great to see members with a good sense of humor.   

[big10p]

Just to be clear, I wasn't poking fun at you GlynH. My sense of humour gets lost in translation, sometimes. 

[Jamesbeat]

Pac-Man? Never heard of it.

Is it a game and was MAME a typo? 

-=Glyn=-

Um, I think you'll find it is spelt 'Pokemon'

[yamatetsu]

"What are you playing ?" "Poker, mon."

[GlynH]

Ah well...back on topic. Sorry guys 

I downloaded Pong Rev E and learned a couple of things;

The Mac mangles the file download and labels it as pong.netlist so becomes useless

The PC downloads it as a .zip but the automated front end doesn't download it automatically

So I copied the .zip file directly into MAME/ROM and refreshed the MALA front end so it appeared in the main games list...along with about 100 other files as my games lost went from 952->1058 games!

Long story short; I select Pong Rev E from the main games menu, it says loading but then black screen and a request or pops up saying MALA encountered an error and do I want to send an error report to Microsoft.

No not really because the games PC does not have an Internet connection but even if it did I don't suppose for one minute Microsoft would be able or willing to help me! 

So fountains of knowledge...where do I go to determine the issue here please?

I am running MAME 0.146, Haze said earlier that Pong has been back in since @2012 (0.146 was released May 2012) but the site I downloaded the ROM from made a vague reference to MAME 0.133 BIOS pack although MAME 0.164 appeared at the top of the page.

Nothing straightforward huh?

Also if I go back through the games list manually and trim out some of the rubbish that got thrown in when I refreshed the list what should I do to prevent it being thrown back in when I refresh the list in the future after I add another game?

Thanks & kind regards,
-=Glyn=-

[BadMouth]

Another thing to keep in mind is that MAME stopped playing nice with Mala somewhere around v.162
The way game details are formatted in mame.xml has changed and Mala is no longer being updated to work with it.
There are workarounds, but being a noob it's probably more than you want to get into.

[PL1]

I select Pong Rev E from the main games menu, it says loading but then black screen and a request or pops up saying MALA encountered an error and do I want to send an error report to Microsoft.

I am running MAME 0.146

If you look on MAMETesters, there were two crash-related reports around that version for driver "pong.c".

#04999 is what you are seeing now - "Crash after OK" which was fixed in 0.147.

The other was #05009 - "Both sets in pong crash upon exit of game" which was fixed in 0.147u1.

The only other issues reported were a minor compile error fixed in 0.153 and several open reports about the pitch of some sounds.

the site I downloaded the ROM from made a vague reference to MAME 0.133 BIOS pack although MAME 0.164 appeared at the top of the page.

Without getting into Rule 5 territory, I'm familiar with the site and the version they currently have does not work with 0.152. (just tried it)

As always, you'll need to find a version of the ROM that matches your desired version of MAME or try the alternate version at the end of this post.   

Pong.c driver info as of 0.166:

WIP:

- 0.163: Introduced user definable truth tables: This enables the addition of devices without changing the netlist source code and allows the creation of libraries. Used pong.c as a proof of concept for the time being [Couriersud].

- 0.162: Added layout\breakout.lay.

- 0.153: Enhanced the netlist parser and cleaned Pong driver [Couriersud].

- 0.151: Added video\fixfreq.c/h.

- 0.146u1: Added new pong.c driver.

Pong info as of 0.166:

WIP:

- 0.154: Changed description to 'Pong (Rev E) external [TTL]'.

- 0.153: Pong now has complete emulation of discrete logic for runQ and SRST signals. Rewrote switch2 device to be based on resistances as well. Implemented an improved solving scheme into netlist. This improves performance for Pong. Also set Pong frequency to NETLIST_CLOCK. This is necessary to avoid issues with time conversion into attotime and consequently rounding issues in fixfreq [Couriersud]. Changed description to 'Pong (Rev E) external'. Added new pong.netlist. Changed 'netlist' CPU to 'Netlist CPU Device'.

- 0.152: Added new pong.netlist. Replaced first "macro" NE555N device in Pong with NE555 and connected components. Performance drop is within expectations. Don't process hsyncs while we are vsyncing (video\fixfreq.c). Fixes video jitter/jumps in Pong. Pong update: Based on feedback from IRC hopefully fixed issues like "jumping". Adjusted VR1 and VR2 to 50%. Disabled all printf output. Added save-state support to Pong. The state saving is now 80% generic. This still needs some polishing, but works [Couriersud].

- 0.151: Added a fixed frequency monitor emulation to emu\video. This implementation takes an analog composite signal, extracts hsync, vsync and field information in addition to greyscale video. Pong now uses the new analog monitor device. Cleanup code. Minor improvements. Fixed a bug in netlib's NE555 emulation. Optimized some netlist code by inlining clock device. This improves pongf performance by approx. 10%. Fixed a small but important bug in netlist code. In addition, some more performance improvements. More netlist cleanups. All netlist device setup now takes place in constructors. Slightly improved performance on netlist components. Minor code clean-up in netlist devices. Fixed to work with MSVC 2012, the second NETLIB_DEVICE parameter is a list of the protected variables and MSVC doesn't like #if within the parameters to a macro. Fixed an Netlist issue with 7493 and other minor fixes. Netlist cleanup: Simplified classes and separated logic and analog inputs/outputs. Moved device setup out of constructor (again). This wasn't a good idea because some more advanced stuff like virtual function address caching doesn't work in constructors. Some hand-crafted optimizations. GCC seems to like ugly pointer C more than using readable arrays [Couriersud]. Fixed for empty controlled statement with MSVC 2012. Fixed linking with MSVC 2012. Moved netdev_mainclock update & update_param from netlist.c to net_lib.c to fix linking error in MSVC and still have it link with MSVC [smf]. Changed netlist to 1GHz, visible area to 858x525 and VSync to 29.970030 Hz.

- 0.147u3: Symbols starting with _ are reserved in many BSD-derived environments (machine\netlist.h) [Robert Muth].

- 20th October 2012: Mr. Do - And now that MAME supports Pong, the real bezel artwork can be moved from the Other Games page to here. Originally vectored by jcroach, on loan from Vintage Arcade Superstore.

- 0.147u1: Oliver Stoeneberg fixed pong/pongf crash on exit - re-introduces a memory leak for now (machine\netlist.c).

- 0.147: Updated netlist implementation: Now supports any resolution fitting reasonably into a UINT64. Execution now uses a list sorted by execution time. Implementation now supports analog and digital inputs / outputs. First step in a move to "terminals" being both input / output. Improved object model. Pong: Rewrote video code, now emulates a monitor by analyzing the analog video signal and identifying vsync and hysnc pulses. Removed all hacks. Overall performance increase of about 10% over the previous "pongf" implementation. Fixed Pong crash in debug build [Couriersud]. Changed netlist clock speed to 1GHz, visible area to 375x246 and VSync to 60.053687Hz.

Looks like 0.154 - 0.161 is what you're looking for.   

If you can't find a matching ROM, look into "Pong (Rev E), no subcycles" (pongf) -- no ROMs required. (verified in 0.152, not sure if Mala can add it to the gamelist)   


Scott

[PL1]

The Mac mangles the file download and labels it as pong.netlist so becomes useless

Forgot to mention that "pong.netlist" is the file you find inside the pong.zip ROM file.


Scott