BETABRITE SCROLL LED SIGN IN ARCADE OS

[Netcat]

BETABRITE SCROLL LED SIGN IN ARCADE OS
HELP! PLEASE

Danny Rego submitted the modifications to ArcadeOS some time ago that allows interfacing with an LCD sign via Serial or parallel port.

I cannot find Danny Regos Email anywhere, so I am posting here in hopes
Someone can help me

I have a Betabrite LED sign (not LCD) It works thru the serial port from DOS

In order to make it work in DOS I must first issue a:

MODE COM1:4800,E,7

Command, so it will set proper parameters for serial communication with the sign


ALSO in order for messages to be displayed specific characters must be
Sent PRECEDING the text, and AFTER the text

i.e.
------------------------------CONTENTS OF TEST.TXT-----------------------------------

 " pQ

[Netcat]

I am really really sorry didnt meant to posttwice, I just couldnt find my post

perhps the sysop can remove my clone post.

thanks

[mccoy178]

I have a betabrite in my cabinet.
www.ohiostate.photosite.com
Please assist me in setting this up as this is well beyond my knowledge level.

[Netcat]

I dont uunderstand

It appears your sign is up and running in your cabinet !

you running your emulator in DOS or WINDOWS ??

it looks like its working in your photos

[mccoy178]

I am just using the program that comes with the sign.  I am interested in getting the controls.dat or whatever is used to display the controls to display before a game.  Is that what you are trying to do?

[Netcat]

Kinda.

Except I am working in DOS

using Arcade OS (DOS Based frontend)

I am under the impression you are running under WIndows ?

If you nned info on generating proper CHaracter sequences to send text to SIgn I can help you with.

Sending the data to the signs is another matter the Frontend you are usign must support it.

ArcadeOS does support sending data to a seiral port (somewhat) I suspect some of the settings are hardcoded into Arcade os i.e. Stop Bits & Parity and therefore the data is not acknowledged by the sign when it is sent.

ALl of this is of course in the realm of theory. if someon e here knows how to look into the SOurce code and could tell me, that would be great.


 

[Netcat]

AHA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Found the following information in the AOS_MAN.DOC file

Note: Any Serial Device must be configured for 8 data-bits, 1 start-bit, 1  stop-bit and no parity. BAUD rate is configured in the arcadeos.cfg file

Therefore either I figure a way to reconfigure these settings within the sign (No Jumpers here!) or I find someon able to modify arcade os.

Help !

[mccoy178]

Im using Mamewah and windows.

[Netcat]

DOes mamewah support sending information to the serial port

I now understand I nned to set the sign to 8N1, my betabrite is model 1040-4402 I am looking very hard but have yet to find out if and how to do this, either that or ARcadeOS modification.

[mccoy178]

Yes, mamewah does support LCD to comm1 port.

[Netcat]

As long as you can determine the com port settings and what text exactly is sent to the com port YOU ARE ALL SET !!!

I have written an article regarding my discoveries so far including a groovy little digram I made detailing how to build yourself an interface cable

enjoy.
http://www.780tech.com/arcade/

Now if someone could please tell me how to set my betabrite to 8N1 ?

[Netcat]

Well according to the BETABRITE Protocol PDF

my the EZKEYII (I Believe thats mine) only supports following settings

EZKEY II
First released:    1991
Baud rate:    1200, 2400, 4800
Start bits:      1
Data bits:    7
Parity:       Even
Stop bits:    2
Flow control:   NONE

If this is the case, my only hope is that someone (Much smarter than me) can modify ArcadeOS for me to allow me to set these parameters, sure would open a whole world of possibilities, dont understand why they hardcoded it to 8N1 to begin with.

Help !

[Acids]

I was with the keymaker and i think he choose a different door than normal..
Bam here we are..

[Silver]

Can't help with ArcadeOS, but Mamewah will send text from a file out the serial port, and you can set any com port settings you like. It works like a charm on an LCD attached to the serial port.

There is no reason at all this will not work with a betabrite. They use ASCII just like all the LCD's I've seen, but just just different control characters for fancy stuff. it will probably display straight text with no extra info, but for fancy wipes/scrolling you will need to specify what you want. I've looked into it briefly to try and add support for Betabrites to my LCDgen program - they use the Alpha protocol if anyone is interested. Unfortunately I don't own one, which makes any kind of testing near impossible....

[Netcat]

 I might be wrong but I believe Betabrite actually uses the alpha protocol.
Can someone confirm for me ?

[MustardTent]

I might be wrong but I believe Betabrite actually uses the alpha protocol.
Can someone confirm for me ?

Yes it does.  I have one.  Silver also just pointed this out.

[mccoy178]

I do own one, but I am no help on the testing.  I appologize in advance, I'm pretty much tagging along on this one.  But, let me know if there is anything I can do.  Silver, do you have a tutorial or something than can help me get started?  Someone set me one the path, and I will try to follow.

[Netcat]

mccoy178

Have you read teh page I put together for U? it lays out the basics on how to interface the sign and send text to it

Also anyone else interested I have put together the "most comprehensive" diagram so far to interface the Betabrite to your PC (at leat I think so)

http://www.780tech.com/betabrite/

[mccoy178]

I'm gonna go buy a new cable and modify it.  The rest will take me a minute to figure out, but I think I can handle it.  Silver, considering I'm using mamewah and windows, does his fact sheet jive with what I need to do?

[Netcat]

OK I have fixed my system so now it dual boots into 98SE in order to test the sign with mamewah

after a fashion I got Mamewah running

Have made changes to .INI files

working on generating LCD files

will let you know how it goes

[Netcat]

OK SO now I have Mamewah Displaying a nice

"Welcome to MameWah" as soon as I start the program

NICE !!!

I am having a b..... of a time getting the LCD file right


Latest version of LCDGEN states Betabrite support but it doesnt appear to be working or maybe I';m doing something wrong.

Even tryed cutting and pasting the necessary SCROLL HEADER & SCROLL ENDER

I suspect the characters are getting messed up with the CUT & PASTE functions


SILVER

could you please checkl out the Header and footer information on the following two files, THSE WORK just by sending them to the COM port.

http://www.780tech.com/betabrite/simple.txt
http://www.780tech.com/betabrite/complex.txt

If these files are edited with wordpad or notepad they stop working (use MS WORD or EDIT command)

Is it possible to modify LCDGEN to provide an option to ONLY output the game name with the proper HEADER AND FOOTER tagged before and after text

[Netcat]

OK GUYS BREAKING NEWS.

The sign is now FULLY functional within Mamewah

Could not manage for the life of me to make LCDGEN do the generate proper characters

Developped a litle application in Quickbasic that generates the gamelist, extracts the names & descriptions, creates the LCD directory, creates the files containing Betabrite compatible commands enclosing the description of each game


Pleas evisit my site www.780tech.com/betabrite to download application

Regards.

Tony

NOTE: I would still rather do this from ArcadeOS, anyone know how to modify C code ?

[mccoy178]

Wonderful, wonderful news!   This takes the idea of the sign to a whole new level.  As soon as I start to work on this, I will have a million questions.  What a wonderful thing this is.  Thanks for the hard work!

[Silver]

Hi Sorry Betabrite support is listed but not fully functional in the version available to download..... The header/ender boxes will not easily support non-printable ASCII characters which is what the alpha protcol use (and are in the txt files you printed). Notepad/Wordpad do not fully support these and tend to convert them to something else - hence they stop working.

Theres no reason I can't change LCDgen to create any output you want - the issue so far is that I don't have a betabrite to test, and although I have the full alpha protocol documentation, its clearly overkill for what we want.

you seem to known the exact ASCII characters you want (seeing as you can generate the text files above) can you post them/pm them to me? eg ASCII 10,15,25,13 "TEXT" ASCII 10,13 or whatever.

[Netcat]

The corrsponding ASCII characters that display a UNICOLOR, STATIC output
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFIX
CHR$(112)+CHR$(81)+CHR$(232)+CHR$(192)+CHR$(143)+CHR$(156)+CHR$(197)+CHR$(1)+CHR$(88)+CHR$(120)+CHR$(181)+CHR$(1)+CHR$(1)+CHR$(90)+CHR$(48)+CHR$(48)+CHR$(2)+CHR$(65)+CHR$(65)+CHR$(27)+CHR$(32)+CHR$(98)

SUFIX
CHR$(4)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The corrsponding ASCII characters that display a MULTICOLOR, DYNAMIC output
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFIX
CHR$(112)+CHR$(81)+CHR$(232)+CHR$(192)+CHR$(143)+CHR$(156)+CHR$(197)+CHR$(1)+CHR$(88)+CHR$(120)+CHR$(181)+CHR$(1)+CHR$(1)+CHR$(90)+CHR$(48)+CHR$(48)+CHR$(2)+CHR$(65)+CHR$(65)

SUFIX
CHR$(4)+CHR$(114)+CHR$(14)+CHR$(64)+CHR$(27)+CHR$(
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Netcat]

Also remember the LED sign requires only displaying the name of the game and no additional info regarding cotrollers, I tried to make LCDGEN output only this info and nothing else but was unable to do so.

It sure would be nice if Mamewah could switch Game names as you scroll thru them and not just when you load the game, mamewah could wait for 10 seconds of inactivity and then revert to the original title message it sends to the LCD/LED sign

[mccoy178]

I'm certain this is no help really, just wanted to post it FWIW:
http://www.ams-i.com/cgi/wwwthreads/wwwthreads.pl?Cat=

It is a site dedicated to betabrite support.

[Netcat]

Mccoy

How is it going with your interface?

With the information we have uncovered so far you should be up and running with Mamewah?

[mccoy178]

I could not find the proper cable this weekend.  I don't want to cut up the one I have.  I tried the tutorial that you have, but due to the cable, it didn't work.  Also, I spent all day on the J5 viewer and getting it to work in mamewah.

[loadman]

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=60732.msg600947#msg600947

Testers wanted please   

[Grauwulf]

Okay, I would have never thought of using something like that for a MAME application, but that would be cool to use in place of a marquee. Where does one find a betabrite sign?

[loadman]

Okay, I would have never thought of using something like that for a MAME application, but that would be cool to use in place of a marquee. Where does one find a betabrite sign?

If you click on the link above I put a link below the picture of the BetaBrite

[edge]

Okay, I would have never thought of using something like that for a MAME application, but that would be cool to use in place of a marquee. Where does one find a betabrite sign?

Grauwulf,
They show up on ebay alot... I've seen them as low as 75 bucks, and as high as 125+..

[Grauwulf]

Okay, now I've started looking for one of these things. Does anyone have a picture of one mounted in a machine in place of a marquee? I'm looking for ideas now.

[edge]

Okay, now I've started looking for one of these things. Does anyone have a picture of one mounted in a machine in place of a marquee? I'm looking for ideas now.

Check out mccoy's site:
http://www.ohiostate.photosite.com/MameArcade/