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Have to say, I'd be a bit concerned on the amount of options you've added (and the calibration help stuff in the input assignments), might be a bit much for the mame team to swallow.

Regarding Airborne, looking at the control inputs service menu, the steering range is fixed from 0x000 to 0x3FF, and there is no steering calibration menu section... Perhaps steering for this was just a potentiometer, not the free spinning dual encoder idea after all...  If that is the case, I reckon removing the code that toggles the latch bit completely might help. Or having it toggle only at 0x200 maybe? Just guessing.

Hi geecab, you don't sound preachy at all mate i actually did submit options like that before for Airborne and street drivin' on mame's github and one of the devs just said he didn't think it was worth adding extra controller configs .....so it was never merged. I do agree there should be a IPT_DIAL option and that is one of the things i was originally testing out and a guy who's been following what i was doing was willing to do beta testing since he has a spinner wheel and i think he's talking about making his own custom flight yoke for it using a cheap fixed position wheel and modifying it so that it can free spin but will have centring springs and a mouse wheel in the back that detects the motion of the wheel and going to make the wheel able to move back and forwards to control up and down motion in Airborne.

Now i know the differences with the machines i agree with you that IPT_DIAL should be the default option for the compact cabinets for use on a spinner wheel and then there should be a 2nd option for a normal wheel. I don't know what the most common wheel ranges would be but i have a 900 degree wheel and the steering was just a bit too sensitive so i lowered it and used a youtube video online that shows a guy doing a hard left at the start of Hard Drivin' to go onto the "secret" bit of road that takes you to that big post in the middle of a circle. I kept lowering it until the car didn't make the turn as sharp as i saw him do it in that video. It's probobly not 100% accurate but my guess would be it's got to be above 95% accurate at least.

That info in the options i know would never be accepted into the official branch i just put it here in case somebody wanted to incorporate it into their own version or something. I don't know how to make or change messages/warnings that pop up before the game starts otherwise i would have just added the info in there for those specific games.

The Airborne steering range used to be like all the others by default, 0x010 to 0xff0 , i made my own commit that was merged into the mamedev/master that changed it to 0x000 to 0x3FE to fix the steering for Street Drivin' and Airborne then one of the devs suggested it should be 0x000, 0x3FF and edited it and merged it into the master branch along with the brake calibration fix for street drivin'. Just waiting for the brake fix for race drivin' and hard drivin' compact to hopefully be merged into the master now.

The code i have made for the Airborne issues that utilizes EMA smoothing/buffering although it's not in anyway accurate or true to the arcade machine it does stop the steering from going out of alignment in almost all scenarios as long as you don't crash the car and have the wheel held to left or right lol. The only way I've been able to throw it off center is by doing really stupid fast movement with the wheel that would just never happen IRL. I can make that code run in mame on the condition that it detects the Airborne game being loaded up but in all other versions it would just use your modified code. It could be a kinda halfway fix/patch untill somebody like yourself who's way more qualified than me can look at what is going on. I remember when you posted the code to pull the wheel values from the game itself i was just looking at the popmessage box on the screen wondering wtf is going on

I had put my hacky steering fix for the compact version into a pull request on mame's gitbub but i think i should remove it now that you have actually fixed it properly. You know what's funny is i never realised there was a problem with those games because the only couple of times i tried the compact roms i had toggled that wheel centre edge button to be on all the time by accident and made it seem like it worked  I only realised that it had that problem when you mentioned it and i went back and had a look and realised it was messed up badly. You should put your fix for the steering into a pull request for the mame master branch i have been having a lot of fun playing the compact version because i don't have a analogue gear shifter so i was always playing with a automatic car in the cockpit version before you made that fix and the game does run way smoother than the other versions.

I was wondering why the compact versions use less CPU? Another thing i was told by the guy who's talking about making his own flight yoke for Airborne is that there are a few cabinets known in existence and a couple of them are cockpit versions and the others are compact.........i was wondering if the problem is maybe the rom dump available on the internet is maybe from the compact version? Maybe it had a different set of values for the steering so the 0xC00 thing might need tweaked to another value for that to work properly? I really don't know it's just a thought. I have thought about taking the roms from the earlier prototype and trying to mix and match them with the one that is working to maybe see if the steering code could be different in the earlier version.

When you mention disabling the latching code could i just "//" out that section and compile the game without it? I've not tried anything yet i was having too much fun on compact hard drivin' yesterday to be bothered about it and just woke up

Um, this is a tricky one...

I would like to see an IPT_DIAL option in the configuration (with no PORT MIN/MAX limitation). I'd encourage it to be the default option too. The reason is because it would be most authentic to the arcade Compact cabinets, and the in-game steering re-positioning latching behaviour can now be observed working. I think that's what the arcade purists and the mame team are all about.

I do think there should be an IPT_PADDLE option there too (That benefits from your changes, because having just an IPT_DIAL option means the game is pretty much unplayable using a self centring wheel like many people have). Hard/race drivin compact cabinets were unusual in that their dual encoder (free spinning) steering idea was trying to act like the steering potentiometer seen in the hard/race drivin cockpit cabinets. Its almost like mame needs an IPT_DIAL_PRENTENDING_TO_BE_A_PADDLE option). Have to say, I'd be a bit concerned on the amount of options you've added (and the calibration help stuff in the input assignments), might be a bit much for the mame team to swallow.

Hey, just read the above back and I sound like I'm preaching a bit. Really, don't listen to me too much, I can't speak on behalf of the mame team and am just giving you my thoughts. I'll be cool with what you choose to submit
 
Regarding Airborne, looking at the control inputs service menu, the steering range is fixed from 0x000 to 0x3FF, and there is no steering calibration menu section... Perhaps steering for this was just a potentiometer, not the free spinning dual encoder idea after all...  If that is the case, I reckon removing the code that toggles the latch bit completely might help. Or having it toggle only at 0x200 maybe? Just guessing.

@offset - Hi there, I've looked at the racerMame v160 diff (which I think is the latest). I couldn't find any hard/race drivin changes in there. I think generally most people with self centring wheels would use the Cockpit roms with racerMame. The only reasons I can think of using compact roms instead of cockpit roms is because of 1. Performance (The compact roms are less CPU intensive than the cockpit roms) and 2. You have a mame cabinet which uses a spinner/mouse for steering (Thus steering repositioning will work as it should).

I'm still tinkering away on the bartop. It's in functional and presentable state and has been playtested extensively at a couple of parties. So far it's been totally reliable, and I'm relieved that the frontend UI has been pretty easy and intuitive for guests to pick up.

It took a long time, but the edge molding eventually arrived. In the wrong size. The seller refunded without return, so no harm, no foul from my end. I went ahead and did a "temporary" installation using the incorrect material, and it actually came out pretty nicely with some x-acto trim work. It might be good enough as-is, but I reserve the option to replace it later if I feel like it. Proper photos of this soon, but here's a preview:





The lack of an active cooling solution was still bugging me, so I decided to bite the bullet and run it off a relay.



$4 in AliExpress parts later and I have two 12V 60mm fans, fan grilles, and a 12V relay module with hi-low trigger jumper. I plan to mount one of the 60s as an exhaust (intakes are vent holes in base), but I have a second If it seems that it wants additional airflow. The blue board is a dc-dc (buck) converter, with it I can take the 19VDC from the pc power supply and regulate the relay and any load it supports down to 12V (or lower).



The screw terminals on the relay board expect heavier wiring than what's actually in use, so I soldered the "fixed" leads to pins on the the board to prevent anything from coming loose. The fan itself is still connected via the screw terminals for easy removal/replacement.



The blue wire is the trigger wire for the relay, and will connect to the common terminal of the arcade button wired to the pc power switch. The relay has a jumper to set the trigger either low (0V) or high (5V), and I've measured the current from the power switch at 3.7V. I don't recall whether it's active high or active low, but it shouldn't matter anyway with the jumper available. I've bench tested the assembly and it seemed to trigger ok from 3.7V using three AA batteries, so I think the trigger threshold should work out fine even if I'm not feeding it 5V.

I also ordered a cheap 8GB ram module to replace the original 4GB to help the old Dell live its best life in bartop retirement. When the RAM arrives I'll pull everything apart at once to do the fan installation and wiring. Should have "finished" photos to share at that time 

 

 




 

Slight update:

I checked the B+ voltage at the 854 resistor and I have 170v. It warbles a bit between 169 and 173, but mostly stays at 170.

This means my power section is good, right?

Just to reiterate, I can hear the tube static as it powers on, the screen is black, the 'no signal' message is NOT present, and the neck has glow. All the while, something is clicking away constantly in the general area of the HOT. This is without the game board plugged in, so no input signals are present.

Any possability of sharing your code?

What country are you from? I would be interested in the Angelina guts ( mobo, ioboard, ect...ect )

I got nothing to sell, the juke is working with all of its original hardware minus the IO board, Im even using the led matrix for RGB lights. Lik ei said, I'm using rockbe irocker touch lite, as the software, its simple and works nice, has some nice features as well, plus if you are missing a song or something new comes up, it will pull up the song/video from youtube.  Ill post a nice video of it tomorrow.

What country are you from? I would be interested in the Angelina guts ( mobo, ioboard, ect...ect )

So i didnt had the time to test whether the amps were working correctly or not, today I did that, turns out my pinout was somehow wrong. If you look at the picture, you can see, there are 4 audio outlets and 1 ground, thats left right for amp 1, and left right for amp 2, ground is shared. They work nice and sound great, although I don't like that when I turn the PC on, theres a pop sound on the speaker as the USB audio interface turns on and of several times. Il see if I can find a work around for that.
Im also waiting for  local currency bill acceptor that I bought to see if I can make it fit in there without to much modification on the outside. Also I did send out the acceptors I had to a company that will update them with 2018 pulse firmware, he said and I quote.

The PULSE protocol was only included with our V6 (Vending) models, per Touchtunes' request to support their older legacy jukeboxes. Since 2018, TT no longer supports these older legacy configurations and have since then removed that interface from the V6 firmware. Thus, the V6 now only supports the MDB protocol, as originally anticipated.

We still have archived versions of this firmware available, but it's not advised to use them, as they will lack any newer security and bill pattern updates to block counterfeit bills and allow for better acceptance

To be honest, we don't get many dollar users here, so I'm not worried about people using fake money to play music, so I did go with it, I'm just waiting for them to arrive and test them out.

Once I install the acceptors, and everything gets to be working correctly, then I'ma think to see if I should exchange it for the virtuo with speaker stand or if I should keep it, will see.

Bandicoot and njz3 from the French gameoover forums have made this great little device called VIDEOAMP.

It sits between your CRT and graphics card. Any graphics card on any PC. Even a laptop. No test mode or ATI card or emudriver required.

It's compatible with the the custom modeline text file that's generated from vmmaker. The file imports into the VIDEOAMP software and flashes the EDID data.


The problem is, switchres in groovymame always picks the 2560x240 60hz value. There are 15 modelines generated and imported, I see them all listed in the windows settings display resolution drop down but swithcres always picks the same one.  I tried using the old "static" mode with the "Max number of modes" uncapped but I get the same 15x modelines regardless if I choose "dynamic" or "static" (with the mame exe and XML options" selected).

1. Could switchres be configured to dynamically set custom EDID to the VIDEOAMP like it does with emudriver and ATI cards?

2. Is there a bug in vmmaker that the old "static" mode table method no longer works?



With a few tweaks I think this VIDEOAMP device could be a really amazing solution to future proof the CRT, switchres and groovymame ecosystem since it doesn't rely on using a dedicated PC in test mode with older ATI card / older drivers. You plug in the USB/video cable to the VIDEOAMP, connect it up to the CRT as the second screen, add "screen \\.\DISPLAY2" to the mame.ini then run groovymame on your main PC still with your HDMI 4K monitor attached.
I know some people are using groovymister for this same purpose but this is a lot cheaper.

More info if you are interested:
French: https://www.gamoover.net/Forums/index.php?topic=44224.0
English: https://www.arcade-projects.com/threads/vga-video-amplifier-board-for-arcade-monitor-with-sync-filter.24936/

I considered that they might be fully modeled, but my brain recoiled at the possibility. It does look nicely organic!

I was tempted to make them even more bumpy and irregular but settled for the result you see. 3D printers are such a natural progression from 3D design. I guess it's taken me this long to acquire one because I wasn't that impressed with them in the early days. I have a few build tasks coming up which will need printed parts. I'll post the results here as well.  I'm also doing a larger articulated mech spider with more detail, just for fun! Happy to share the STL when its ready.