Mame is good for fixing arcade machines

[SirPeale]

So I've had an NFL Blitz 2000 Gold board and drive for a while.  Drive is dead.

I'd been reading that you can use the CHD images to get yourself a 'fixed' drive, but I always thought that you needed a drive of the *exact* dimensions of the original.  So I never bothered.

Recently someone on RGVAC had posted they had fixed a hard drive game with one of the CHD images.  I asked about it, and they said they had just used an old drive.

So I looked on eBay, found a 6.4G drive (the size of the uncompressed CHD image) and it arrived over the weekend.  Uncompressed the image (which I had to do to an NTFS partition since the file size is > 4G)

So using a Linux installation that I booted from, the NTFS drive that I ripped the image to, and finally the 6.4G drive that the image would be written to, I did this:

dd blitz2k.raw /dev/hdc

It took roughly half an hour.  Of course, there's no progress indicator, so I pretty much just kept checking on it, seeing if it would error out (I tried this once before, and it did error out) and it was just sitting there.  Finally, it told me that the total number of bytes in equaled the total number out.

Took it downstairs, hooked it up, and crossed my fingers.  Sure enough, it started up!  I got my Blitz 2000 Gold motherboard a working drive, thanks to Mame and some info from the 'net.

I've heard a lot of arcade techs lauding Mame because the technical specs are so thorough.  Reburning dead ROMs from a set to give a dead board new life.  Following the specs in the Mame source itself to be able to trace the fault on an actual board.

I'm just grateful for the Mame devs, who made this whole thing possible!

[ChadTower]

Nice... very nice.   

[TOK]

Thats so cool. Also very true to the original idea behind MAME, which is often forgotten -to preserve these oldies so they're still around when the old hardware craps out.

Being able to play them is just an amazing fringe benefit! 

[RacerX]

Sweet!  Now I'll be keeping my eyes open for dead Blitz machines...

[SirPeale]

It wasn't a whole machine; it was a set I got from an arcade auction a couple years ago.  The arcade was closing, and sold all their merchandise.

[GGKoul]

So I can get a Blitz Board without a drive and attach my own drive to it?? 

[SirPeale]

Well...technically, yes.

[DrewKaree]

Peale, you said you picked up a drive of the same size?  Did you try it with a different-sized drive too, or did you just want to ensure the best possible chance with the least amount of risk?

I ask because you brought up the other size drive that someone claimed would work.

[SirPeale]

I tried it with a 40G drive at one point, but I think the drive itself was suspect.  The image itself is only 6.4G.  So I picked up a 6.4G drive off eBay.  It was a whopping $5.00, with another $5.00 to ship it.

[iwillfearnoevil]

if a bigger drive doesn't work, i wonder if it's partitioned to the smaller (correct?) size if it would work.

[dabone]

Alot of older machines cannot address a 40gb drive, they just freakout.
The bios on machines usually have a ide cut off depending on their age.

Common bios limitations.



504 meg
2 gb
4 gb
8 gb
30gb
and 137gb.


Real fun working with older machines now a days.

(And here's a good article on why there is a problem.)

http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/bioslim.htm



And the 30gb limit exists on a lot of p2 machines.



Later,
dabone

[Gunstar Hero]

Using MAME to fix real arcade machines is priceless. It really shows that the purpose of MAME is to preserve arcade life.   

[SirPeale]

if a bigger drive doesn't work, i wonder if it's partitioned to the smaller (correct?) size if it would work.

No, for two reasons.  For the limitations mentioned below, I'm sure, and because you don't partition the disks.  You write the image directly to the drive.

[Chris]

Common bios limitations.

504 meg
2 gb
4 gb
8 gb
30gb
and 137gb.

And, if you want to really dig into the wayback machine, 32 meg.

[dabone]

Actually, 32 meg was a partition limitation, not a bios limitation.
(Computer bios didn't know about hard drives, it was up to the controller)


remember this?

debug

g=c800:5

or for the strange RLL controllers

g=c800:ccc


Later,
dabone

[dweebs0r]

Noob Question re: file system limitations:

Why did you have to use a NTFS partition because of the > 4 gig thing?
Couldnt you have used a newer Linux filesystem (Ext3 or ReiserFS)?
Is there some reason you had to use NTFS and could you do the whole thing within Linux with the NTFS writing abilities present in the latest kernel sources?

--Dweebs

[DrewKaree]

I'm guessing since he was decompressing the file, it was the required format the image was looking for.

Interesting to know all this stuff, though....all those dead HD games are starting to look more appealing!

[SirPeale]

I'm guessing since he was decompressing the file, it was the required format the image was looking for.

No, it was a limitation in the filesystems.  I keep all my drives formatted in FAT32 so if I have to boot from a floppy in an emergency, I have access to those files.  Can't do that with NTFS that I know of.

I suppose I could have done it in either EXT2 or EXT3, but it was the easiest thing to do at the time.

[JoeB]

Actually, there are a lot of tools out there (including special linux distros) that allow you to boot and mount NTFS partitions and go as far as recovering lost admin passwords.   

[Arcadiac]

I got my first cab in trade from an operator for a set of Roms and CHD files. SSWWEETT!! 
ARCADIAC!

[payment_due]

Would this work for Killer Instinct?

[Sephroth57]

i would assume so

[SirPeale]

Would this work for Killer Instinct?

Yes, but you have to use a special ROM.  There's a site somewhere that details this.  Do a Google search for 'killer instinct hard drive replacement'