Getting coin credit count out of MAME

[mikefr]

Does anyone know how to get the credit count out of MAME?   maybe a plug-in or a external driver?  I need some way to get the credit count  out of mame and to output it to the SERIAL port on the PC.   

The ultimate goal is to drive the original LED credit counter display on a NEO-GEO MVS cabinet.   It sounds simple, but it truly could be a daunting task to get this info out of MAME.  I can easily make a driver circuit using a PIC chip to control the LED display.  The PIC chip also can read a PC Serial port.   If MAME can output the credit count to the serial port I am in business. 

I suck at programming stuff for the PC but I can program a PIC chip easily.

[TheShanMan]

This comes up occasionally, but basically MAME will never support this because it encourages commercial use of MAME. Plus some games don't use start buttons to initiate game play (instead they use buttons used during game play or some other control), so it wouldn't be a trivial job to modify the mame source to keep an accurate count of credits (bear in mind I haven't determined this by looking at source code - just from playing the games).

People who have talked about implementing count counting for front ends or whatever have taken a LOT of heat. If you go back and find some of these threads you'll see that.

[mikefr]

ah okay.  I don't want to start any trouble.  I just thought it would make the cabinet look more authentic.   I have no real need for the LED counters other than that reason alone. 

Thanks for the heads up. 

[mikefr]

I have a solution.   I always give myself credits by hitting the real coin switch/lever on the cab.   I will just program the PIC chip to monitor how many times the coin switch is pressed and subtract how many times the two start buttons are pressed.  This would be an entirely separate system from mame.   When I exit the game, the pic chip will reset to zero and will be ready to count the next time I start a game.   

[TheShanMan]

I know you're not trying to start trouble. Doesn't hurt to ask!

While that's a good solution for many games, just remember that it won't work for games that don't use the start buttons.

Out of curiosity, what cabinet do you have? I assume since you said you want it to look more authentic that you have a cab with 7 segment LED coin counters? If I had a cab like that, I'd probably want to implement something like that as well.

[mikefr]

I have a MVS Neo Geo cabinet.  I left it original for the most part except I added two extra buttons per player.  I left the LED counters installed but now of course they do not work. 

I'll keep the forum posted about my outcome.  I'll start messing around with it now that its getting cold out and I will be spending more time inside.

You can check out my cabinet here if you like:  http://www.freemansgarage.com/mamecab.html

[jtslade]

I was wondering if you had been working on getting a MV-LED credit display to interface with a computer via USB or serial connection.

I am working with some hardware and software programmers on doing just that.

http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=187755

I am also talking to the developer to Mame Hooker about mame's abilities to drive led displays.

http://dragonking.arcadecontrols.com...boutmamehooker

Let me know if your in to try and solve this for all of the MVS Neo Geo people out there.

Any help/advice you can give would be very much appreciated.

[Popcorrin]

I am also talking to the developer to Mame Hooker about mame's abilities to drive led displays.

http://dragonking.arcadecontrols.com...boutmamehooker

How did you get ahold of Howard?  I have been trying to contact him for awhile.

[headkaze]

Take a look at the MameInterop SDK as that's a good starting point, although the one located on Howard's website hasn't been updated since a bug was found in ledutil.

My PluginLCD plugin for GameEx can output what are called "digit" outputs from Mame to an LCD or scrolling LED sign. I support a few of them in my plugin.

MameHooker essentially uses my Com port library (CommIO.dll) along with my Mame.dll which is just the ledutil program from the Mame source code modified into a dll. I believe MameHooker has some sort of API to send the data from Mame to the Com port so I guess it can do what you want.

[jtslade]

Does anyone have experience with the Ultimarc U-HID

http://www.u-hid.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=1

It uses the generic HID interface to drive multiple devices. It can output 5v.

With some programing it may be possible to take the

Mame hooker which interfaces with the new Mame output signals added by Aaron G.

And drive a MV-LED credit 7 segment LED or compatible 7seg led to emulate a real MVS credit display.

http://dragonking.arcadecontrols.com/static.php?page=aboutmamehooker

[headkaze]

Does anyone have experience with the Ultimarc U-HID

I expanded the PacDrive.dll to support U-HID so it will work with both devices. It's on the Ultimarc website. You might consider using a PacDrive too but both are easy to interface with using the PacDrive.dll in my SDK.

I have example source in a few languages, so you could get Mame.dll and PacDrive.dll and write your own program to output to it. It would be easy to do IMHO. I know nothing about Mame Hooker TBH.