Question of backing up old 1980s/1990s era cabinet

[MrInitialMan]

I am writing a story in which a young man purchases a 1980s/1990s era arcade cabinet (it is a computer game, to be specific a side-scrolling space shooter).  The cabinet is old and dilapidated, and he decides to back up the game onto a hard drive in case the computer decides to fail.

How would he do that?

Just a couple things to keep in mind:

1)  No other ROM of the game exists
2) The company that made this cabinet is LONG out of business by the time the story takes place
3) This is the last cabinet of that game known to exist.

[abispac]

Send it to the mame team.

[PL1]

I am writing a story in which a young man purchases a 1980s/1990s era arcade cabinet (it is a computer game, to be specific a side-scrolling space shooter).  The cabinet is old and dilapidated, and he decides to back up the game onto a hard drive

Backing up a typical 80's/90's era side-scrolling space shooter to a hard drive would require dumping the ROM chips using an EPROM reader/writer.
- The ROMs would contain the game software, graphics, and sound data.
- Given the game description, there would probably be no hard drive or optical media (CD, laser disk, etc.) to back up to a MAME CHD (Compressed Hunks of Data) file.



If your protagonist is going to find some information while backing up this game, keep in mind that ROMs don't hold much data.
- There were CHD games in this era so that's a possible option for finding a large amount of data like a detailed map or multi-year journal.

You can find a list of CHD games from that era by going to this page.  http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/lista_mame.php
- Click on "Additional filters" -- select "Year from", Year to", and "Use CHD".

in case the computer decides to fail.

"Computer" implies a more general-purpose machine configuration.

Arcade games from that era used many components that you would find in a computer, but most arcade PCBs were configured to run a single game.

That said, game developers often reused hardware for later titles or bootlegs.  For example, check out this excerpt from the Scramble History entry. (bottom of page)

This game was the first title to use the 'Scramble Hardware', which was later used for "Super Cobra", "Lost Tomb", "The End" and a number of other titles. Many of these titles were actually bootlegs of other games, such as Namco's "Pac-Man". This was because Konami neglected to give Scramble ANY copy protection whatsoever; making it incredibly easy to run just about anything that used a Z80 processor, which, at the time, was pretty much every game out there. There were, of course, a lot of Bootleg copies of Scramble itself floating around, such as "Explorer" or "Strafe Bomb".

Hope this info helps you avoid those pesky plotholes.   


Scott

[abispac]

I am writing a story in which a young man purchases a 1980s/1990s era arcade cabinet (it is a computer game, to be specific a side-scrolling space shooter).  The cabinet is old and dilapidated, and he decides to back up the game onto a hard drive

Backing up a typical 80's/90's era side-scrolling space shooter to a hard drive would require dumping the ROM chips using an EPROM reader/writer.
- The ROMs would contain the game software, graphics, and sound data.
- Given the game description, there would probably be no hard drive or optical media (CD, laser disk, etc.) to back up to a MAME CHD (Compressed Hunks of Data) file.



If your protagonist is going to find some information while backing up this game, keep in mind that ROMs don't hold much data.
- There were CHD games in this era so that's a possible option for finding a large amount of data like a detailed map or multi-year journal.

You can find a list of CHD games from that era by going to this page.  http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/lista_mame.php
- Click on "Additional filters" -- select "Year from", Year to", and "Use CHD".

in case the computer decides to fail.

"Computer" implies a more general-purpose machine configuration.

Arcade games from that era used many components that you would find in a computer, but most arcade PCBs were configured to run a single game.

That said, game developers often reused hardware for later titles or bootlegs.  For example, check out this excerpt from the Scramble History entry. (bottom of page)

This game was the first title to use the 'Scramble Hardware', which was later used for "Super Cobra", "Lost Tomb", "The End" and a number of other titles. Many of these titles were actually bootlegs of other games, such as Namco's "Pac-Man". This was because Konami neglected to give Scramble ANY copy protection whatsoever; making it incredibly easy to run just about anything that used a Z80 processor, which, at the time, was pretty much every game out there. There were, of course, a lot of Bootleg copies of Scramble itself floating around, such as "Explorer" or "Strafe Bomb".

Hope this info helps you avoid those pesky plotholes.   


Scott

If the game is that unique, instead of having to risk of trashing the game, go with a team that knows what is doing, send it to the name team.

[PL1]

If the game is that unique, instead of having to risk of trashing the game, go with a team that knows what is doing, send it to the name team.

If he was talking about preserving a real game, then I would suggest getting ahold of experienced MAME dumpers like the Dumping Union (DU) or maybe someone who used to be with CapsOff if there's encrypted hardware to decap/crack.

The downside to that approach is that the real game preservation process usually does not make for a compelling narrative . . . unless we're talking about raflsiau.      


Scott

[MrInitialMan]

Thanks for all your advice.  Making a ROM/Emulator is only a small part of this story (it's about a kid trying to ace the game in question).  But the advice I've gotten from you guys and from others has caused me to write the following exchange:
=======================================
"Could you guide me through backing up the cabinet?" asked Markaius.

Mr. Gruffy looked at the youngster and slowly shook his head.  "Lad, I know owt about cabinets like these, an' I know yer knows nowt about them.  Gettin' th' game out o' a cabinet like this is 'ocus pocus I don' like t' touch."
=======================================
Bit of a note here, Markaius is the kid in question, Mr. Gruffy is a repair tech who is "taught himself to fix those new-fangled 8-tracks" experienced.

[PL1]

Making a ROM/Emulator is only a small part of this story (it's about a kid trying to ace the game in question).

Writing an emulator program from scratch for even a single game ROM/PCB is WAY too technical for a kid.
- He'd have to be a highly competent programmer (Assembly Language for the game software and C++ for the emulator program) and electrical engineer (to know how to simulate the electrical components on the PCB), in addition to many other skills.
- Even if he started the story with the necessary skillset, it would take a long time to figure out and document all of the connections on the PCB -- every trace, every component.

To get a small picture of how difficult it would be, take a look at the schematic diagram for the Scramble PCB that I mentioned earlier on pages 8 and 9 of the manual here.
https://www.arcade-museum.com/manuals-videogames/S/Scramble.pdf



A plausible approach to the kid being able to import the game from the GameY PCB to an already-written emulator is if:
- GameY is a prototype developed on a PCB from a previously released GameX.
- GameX is already well-documented and emulated.

Under those circumstances, it would be possible for the kid to dump the GameY ROMs and run them using the emulator program for GameX.  He'd probably need to change the checksum value for the ROM files in the emulator source code and recompile the program to make it work.

For example, the hardware from Scramble (Konami 1981) was also used for Super Cobra (Konami 1981).
- Notice that the audio ROM names end in "5c", "5d", and "5e".  This tells you the physical location on the PCB using the letters and numbers printed on the PCB.  These are the three white label ICs in the pic above -- 5c is on the right.
- Here's the different checksum values for those ROMS in the MAME source code.
https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/galaxian/galaxian.cpp

Scramble (lines 14756-14759)

Code: [Select]

ROM_REGION( 0x10000, "audiocpu", 0 )
ROM_LOAD( "ot1.5c",       0x0000, 0x0800, CRC(bcd297f0) SHA1(8ed78487d76fd0a917ab7b258937a46e2cd9800c) )
ROM_LOAD( "ot2.5d",       0x0800, 0x0800, CRC(de7912da) SHA1(8558b4eff5d7e63029b325edef9914feda5834c3) )
ROM_LOAD( "ot3.5e",       0x1000, 0x0800, CRC(ba2fa933) SHA1(1f976d8595706730e29f93027e7ab4620075c078) )

Super Cobra (lines 15573-15576)

Code: [Select]

ROM_REGION( 0x10000, "audiocpu", 0 )
ROM_LOAD( "5c",           0x0000, 0x0800, CRC(d4346959) SHA1(5eab4505beb69a5bdd88b23db60e1193371250cf) )
ROM_LOAD( "5d",           0x0800, 0x0800, CRC(cc025d95) SHA1(2b0784c4d05c466e0b7648f16e14f34393d792c3) )
ROM_LOAD( "5e",           0x1000, 0x0800, CRC(1628c53f) SHA1(ec79a73e4a2d7373454b227dd7eff255f1cc60cc) )

How would this prototype game end up with the kid?
- Prototype games were often sent to a regular arcade for play-testing.
- If the company developing the game had to suddenly shut down, they could have lost/misplaced the records showing where that game was being play-tested.
- If the company developing the game used hardware designed by another game company, the game devs would have good reason to be secretive about the project and conceal the records.
- If the arcade owner went out of business, put the games into storage, and later passed away, the heirs might sell the dilapidated old cab to the kid, not realizing that the game is a unique prototype that collectors would want to preserve.
- If the prototype game is in a dilapidated generic cab and the PCB is from a common but not-so-popular game, many buyers -- particularly game-flippers -- are not likely to buy the cab, especially if they don't notice that the labels on the ROMs are different or if the game isn't powered on so they don't notice that it isn't the game they think it is.

Another possible approach is that the kid could use the GameY ROMs with a GameX PCB/cabinet.
- This eliminates the emulation plot points, but still allows for the repair and ROM dumping/burning plot points if desired.


Scott

[MrInitialMan]

Trust me, this kid's not doing the ROM/Emulator.  He gets in contact with someone who REALLY knows what he's doing.  :-)

If it's okay, I think I will post the story on this forum after the convention is over (which will be next year)