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Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: SavannahLion on May 28, 2011, 01:56:51 am

Title: Restoring High Scores and Twittering
Post by: SavannahLion on May 28, 2011, 01:56:51 am
This is just too freaking cool. Why the hell didn't this cross my mind?

Here's the nut shell. Take 1943 and remove the primary Z80 and replace with a socket.

Move the Z80 onto a separate daughter board then wrap an AVR (another type of microcontroller) with a little bit of supporting logic.

Add in an Ethernet interface for kicks.

Write some supporting software to

A) Store the high score table at specific intervals.
B) Restore that high score table into the game whenever the game is powered down/up.
C) Tweet whenever a new high score is achieved.

and voila! You've updated antique hardware with persistent high score table and Ethernet capability.

That, in my book, is just too cool. In theory, it wouldn't take too much tweaking to adapt this to other Z80 based machines.  :applaud:

Here's the link:
http://spritesmods.com/?art=twitter1943 (http://spritesmods.com/?art=twitter1943)
Title: Re: Restoring High Scores and Twittering
Post by: Sjaak on May 28, 2011, 05:28:52 am
That is absolutely brilliant!
Title: Re: Restoring High Scores and Twittering
Post by: nox771 on May 28, 2011, 01:27:05 pm
I saw that too on Hack-a-Day.  While the hardware concept might not be too over the top, I think it took some serious time and skill to work out the memory layout and timing to swap out the score table.  The ethernet concept is really neat too, uploading the high scores to a server. 
Title: Re: Restoring High Scores and Twittering
Post by: Level42 on June 01, 2011, 07:01:40 pm
Very cool indeed, but I would much rather see it play 2 player over the internet instead of doing stupid tweets !!

Now THAT would be brilliant...being able to finally play MB against someone on the other end of the globe who can actually play it a bit :P

Oh by the way, this is "Made in Holland" :P
Title: Re: Restoring High Scores and Twittering
Post by: SavannahLion on June 01, 2011, 08:24:28 pm
I can't see why not except for latency issues. You don't even need to go so close to the board as this guy, a direct interface substitute on the joystick would work as expected.
Title: Re: Restoring High Scores and Twittering
Post by: Cynicaster on June 02, 2011, 12:28:41 pm
Very cool indeed, but I would much rather see it play 2 player over the internet instead of doing stupid tweets !!

Now THAT would be brilliant...being able to finally play MB against someone on the other end of the globe who can actually play it a bit :P

Oh by the way, this is "Made in Holland" :P

Never tried this personally, but it may very well do what you're asking.

http://10ghost.blogspot.com/p/mamehub-tutorial.html (http://10ghost.blogspot.com/p/mamehub-tutorial.html)