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Williams Multigame ROM (questions/download)
clay_cowgill:
Hey Everyone,
Thanks for the praise of the Williams Multigame, glad some of you liked it.
It's not been emulated in MAME per-se (although I did the development work using MAME-- probably something around 0.36 or so).
Emulating it wouldn't be hard, but it would be a fair bit of work. There is extra hardware floating around in the kit that handles a bunch of functions-- remapping memory, modifying hardware functionality on the ROM board, completely replacing the "widget" I/O board with a new one that knows how to handle inputs from all the games, plus some non volatile memory...
(AKA, it would be a lot of work to do just to get a menu!) Probably the main useful thing that the menu does is to allow 'fast boot' which skips the "rug test" on the williams games. MAME could approximate this by doing a memory/register snapshot (save) right after the self-test completes and just start the game at that as a load point. (Not sure if there's an automagic way to do that or not?) The other functions like control input test, monitor tests, enabling and disabling games, etc. are kinda pointless for MAME...
I don't want to release all the hardware functionality information on the kit just yet (I just bought all the circuit boards and parts for one last run of the kits) since I've had problems with my kits being cloned and sold to undercut my price-- so I'm a little sensitive about it. I don't really care what happens once I quit making something, but when I've got $$$ tied up in component inventory I want to keep my cards close to my chest. ;) (That's one of the reasons why there are two, good sized programmable logic chips with security functions on the design.)
-Clay
Edgedamage:
--- Quote from: clay_cowgill on August 07, 2004, 01:53:42 pm ---Hey Everyone,
Thanks for the praise of the Williams Multigame, glad some of you liked it.
It's not been emulated in MAME per-se (although I did the development work using MAME-- probably something around 0.36 or so).
Emulating it wouldn't be hard, but it would be a fair bit of work. There is extra hardware floating around in the kit that handles a bunch of functions-- remapping memory, modifying hardware functionality on the ROM board, completely replacing the "widget" I/O board with a new one that knows how to handle inputs from all the games, plus some non volatile memory...
(AKA, it would be a lot of work to do just to get a menu!) Probably the main useful thing that the menu does is to allow 'fast boot' which skips the "rug test" on the williams games. MAME could approximate this by doing a memory/register snapshot (save) right after the self-test completes and just start the game at that as a load point. (Not sure if there's an automagic way to do that or not?) The other functions like control input test, monitor tests, enabling and disabling games, etc. are kinda pointless for MAME...
I don't want to release all the hardware functionality information on the kit just yet (I just bought all the circuit boards and parts for one last run of the kits) since I've had problems with my kits being cloned and sold to undercut my price-- so I'm a little sensitive about it. I don't really care what happens once I quit making something, but when I've got $$$ tied up in component inventory I want to keep my cards close to my chest. ;) (That's one of the reasons why there are two, good sized programmable logic chips with security functions on the design.)
-Clay
--- End quote ---
Well I just like to say nice work anyway.