60, 48, 19, 9, etc. in 1 Multicade - Adding Roms and changing look

[tjc02002]

I am trying to figure out how to modify the software and add games to the multicade boards, mentioned in subject line. It seems that basically these boards are running MS DOS and MAME, earlier versions of MAME though. I found somewhere that an older 19 in 1 board was running MAME .124a I just think it would be really cool to be able to change the "iCade" text or background colors in the menu, and add different games and delete some of them. I have attached a picture of my multicade 60 in 1 board with what I can find out about the components on the board. Looks like most of the data is probably stored on the flash memory chip(top middle of picture). Also, on the left edge(circled in yellow) there are some circuit board pins that look like a communications type connection which nothing is connected to but there is some remnant solder from the factory...  Also, it looks like it has the same pin count as an SD flash card so maybe thats how to communicate with it. I really dont know yet, but I would like to communicate with the board by connecting something there, or plan b, desolder the flash memory and try to get the data off that. Does anyone have any information about this?

Some other interesting info I found on a forum, a guy said he had a 6 in 1 board, and he put the prom(the older boards had removable proms) from the 9 in 1 and it worked with 9 games. I also find it very curious that the 60 in 1, and 19 in 1 look exactly the same. Also there was, or maybe still is, a programmable board available but it doesnt let you modify the interface/menu and only lets you put a short list of games on the board. I would personally like to be able to change the menu and maybe update the mame software and put a few more games on it. I mean, the board only sports, a 200mhz cell phone processor and 64mb of ram but I would think that could run some decent software and games if we could only mess with the programming a little.

Anyway, if you can help me with some information about this or you are also interested in this, please post. Thanks.

[matsadona]

You are probably right in your assumptions. And with the right software I guess it would be possible to change the flash stored software through that non-present connector in the yellow circle.
It is beyond my expertise though, but I will certainly follow this progress with great interest.

[BobA]

Sounds like an interesting project.  Best of luck.  Sorry nothing to add to your info.

[Popcorrin]

These boards have been dumped and emulated.  I don't know if the mameworld forums would have more info for you but mooglyguy, rbelmont and guru probably know everything you would need to know about these boards.

[tjc02002]

I guess  the biggest thing i am wondering is if the software that is embedded on these boards is encrypted or can it be accessed and modified easily. Im fairly sure these boards are actually running MS DOS and an early version of MAME, so I just want to access the program files. When you boot up the board in test mode, it checks all the files and you can see on the monitor that it has some game files and such. Basically, I want to communicate with the board to modify the files.

Does anyone know what signals the pins on the side of the board, that i circled in yellow, are? Should be like power, ground, data in, data out, sync, etc. Also does anyone know what JP1 is on these boards. I think the board may work like an SD card and I could potentially communicate via USB to SD card with the proper pins jumpered to the board.

[matsadona]

I thought these boards were running some kind of Linux?

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Yeah, they're almost certainly running some variant of linux, that CPU, a PXA255, is an ARM architecture chip, of of Intel's XScale line. You're not going to find MS-DOS running on that natively.

[tjc02002]

Ok, so Linux huh. I had just read somewhere that it was "probably" running DOS but its probably not. I guess im gonna have to research Linux a little. Does anyone know about the circuit board and what the pins are to communicate with it?

[Howard_Casto]

The 48 in 1 board is actually emulated in mame.  It might be worth poking around in the source code to figure out what is going on. 

Just for the record though I think it uses PDA-like software/hardware. 

[Haze]

The xx-in-1 of this kind are a highly customized build, they even include basic save state support, know when the game is finished to automatically exit, patch out all copyright details, add the front end, coin passing etc.  while still using a large amount of old MAME code for their core emulation etc.

Program roms are encrypted + have some security stuff which differs per 'type' (meant to stop you swapping one for the other)  apparently the flash rom contains all the games for the highest xx-in-1 version, and the different revisions of the main program simply enable different games, either because they were still working on the emulator, or wanted to do an artificial pricing model which would easily allow them to sell different versions at different prices with minimal actual changes to what went on the boards.

A fair amount of work clearly went into making those, and the games seem to play correctly, but the sound isn't very good, and with all the hacked out copyrights etc. they don't seem very authentic and they're not remotely licensed or legal, despite what some sellers claim.

You wouldn't just be able to compile a modern MAME version and expect it to run on one of those due to the mods needed / security and other stuff.

The newer 'Happy Fish xxx-in-1' and 'Blue Elf xxx-in-1' are more closely based off stock MAME, running on a flavour of Linux.  The emulation quality is very poor however, the Blue Elf ones seem to be the same thing, but are newer / have more games, but have worse performance, it looks like they simply updated the version of MAME they used, and increased the frameskip because the newer MAMEs were slower!  Either way the original Happy Fish runs CPS1 at around 30fps (Ironically CPS2 is faster), with plenty of glitches.  The Blue Elf ones seem to run CPS1 and 2 at around 15fps, and CPS3 at around 30 (strange).... They also have games in there which crash after a few levels because they've copied incomplete protection simulations from older versions of MAME!  Those ones are also very shoddy in the way they pass coins, have terrible low sample rates, screen tear, and are generally rather bad.  Also those are the ones where you have to insert a fresh coin and press start to return to the menu (and you'll lose any credits you have)  Some games also take in excess of 2 minutes to load!  It's clear these things weren't tested properly (they'll even eat your coins if you insert during loading)

I'm pretty sure the latter are produced by a company who were trying to get me to fix their bugs for them, subscribing me to their bug tracker against my will and assigning me bugs etc!  A lot of the stuff emulated on those boxes are things I've emulated in MAME.

Basically none of the emulation based multi-games are actually that good.  They're underpowered boards with a fair number of glitches, or in some cases critical bugs.  There are some others based off PCs but again they'll ship with underpowered PCs and a selection of badly tested games, I've seen Pentium 4 based ones with all the PSX based games enabled in their MAME build which automatically frameskip to maximum and stutter like crazy should you attempt to play them.

So not only are these multi-games all just an abuse of MAME, they're about as far from an authentic experience as you're going to get, and it really isn't worth your time trying to compile an alternative MAME version for them because the hardware simply isn't good enough.

For the non-emulation ones you have to be careful too, most of the NeoGeo xx-in-1 carts ship with cheap crappy flash roms, which fail and often result in some games having bad sound, bad gfx, or even games crashing mid-way thought playing because the code becomes corrupt.

My best advice is to simply avoid them, at all costs.

[taylormadelv]

I actually like this idea! I have absolutley no idea how to make any changes on these boards but man, it would be awesome to be able to really mess around with those multiboards. The number 1 complaint is that he sound on Millipede is just awful, completely unplayable, Gyruss is too loud and Juno First is kinda off as well. The number 2 complaint is that Bosconian is not on a horizontal board and it really should be.
Number 3 is a bit more complicated: The "new" 19 in 1's are mostly reworked 60 in 1's with a different set of games and setups. That's why many horizontal boards are identical to 60 in 1 vertcals but not ALL 19 in 1's. The cheap horizontals only support 4 buttons per a player( I think) and so Defender and of particular interest to me personally, Stargate are unplayable.
As far as I know, the quality "A" version of the 19 in 1 supports all 6 buttons needed to play Stargate, as pin 11 is hyperspace and pin 26 is inviso ( I may have this mixed up but pins 11 & 26 are needed). In addition, most jamma harnesses sold new do not even have a connection on pins 11, 25 or 26 and so this again must be addressed to play Stargate. The quality "a" goes for like $175!! $175 just to play Stargate on a multiboard....hmm I don't know...
I am very interested in your results!!

[Howard_Casto]

I actually like this idea! I have absolutley no idea how to make any changes on these boards but man, it would be awesome to be able to really mess around with those multiboards. The number 1 complaint is that he sound on Millipede is just awful, completely unplayable, Gyruss is too loud and Juno First is kinda off as well. The number 2 complaint is that Bosconian is not on a horizontal board and it really should be.
Number 3 is a bit more complicated: The "new" 19 in 1's are mostly reworked 60 in 1's with a different set of games and setups. That's why many horizontal boards are identical to 60 in 1 vertcals but not ALL 19 in 1's. The cheap horizontals only support 4 buttons per a player( I think) and so Defender and of particular interest to me personally, Stargate are unplayable.
As far as I know, the quality "A" version of the 19 in 1 supports all 6 buttons needed to play Stargate, as pin 11 is hyperspace and pin 26 is inviso ( I may have this mixed up but pins 11 & 26 are needed). In addition, most jamma harnesses sold new do not even have a connection on pins 11, 25 or 26 and so this again must be addressed to play Stargate. The quality "a" goes for like $175!! $175 just to play Stargate on a multiboard....hmm I don't know...
I am very interested in your results!!

I think you need to listen to Haze's advice.   I considered getting one of these boards a while back... until I read the growing list of complaints in regards to accuracy. 

Understand that inaccuracies are NOT caused by hacked up roms (making a hacked up rom requires skill, and the companys that manufacture these boards obviously don't have any) but by inferior hardware.  If any of the roms were hacked they were hacked to get them running on the POS board that has no business running the roms with it's low system specs. 

Why in the world would you bother?  Buy a micro pc and put it in a machine.  It is essentailly the same thing in terms of heat and bootup time but now you have a processor that is 10 times as powerful and a hardware platform that allows you to put a real version of mame and the FE of your choice on it. 

The cost is going to be nearly identical as well.  I think a micro atx starter kit often goes for under 100 bucks on the net.   Add a cheap hard drive and you are good to go.

[nox771]

Actually in the same line of thought, would it be practical to get a running setup on a Raspberry Pi (once they come out naturally)?  It would be running Linux already, although it would be an ARM processor.  Would a 700MHz ARM11 be underpowered for this application?

[Howard_Casto]

Actually in the same line of thought, would it be practical to get a running setup on a Raspberry Pi (once they come out naturally)?  It would be running Linux already, although it would be an ARM processor.  Would a 700MHz ARM11 be underpowered for this application?

Don't you mean IF they come out.  I was really excited about the Pi foundation.... 4 years ago...  still no board. 

Regardless, if and only if the target price of 25 bucks is met then it would be great for mame and a myriad of other uses.  Unfortunately I think the reason that it's taking so long for a release is that the foundation realized that while making a tiny board with a arm processor is cheap, it gets a lot more expensive once you start adding things like ram, hdmi and networking support. 

That being said, a 100 dollar micro itx is still going to give you more processing power and a more universal platform to work on.  But in general, yeah the Pi would make a good "multicade" board if it ever comes out. 

[Haze]

I think the people hating on the multiboards have never actually sat down and done a build with one or spent any real time on it.  I've enjoyed mine immensely and so has everyone else that's used it.  It's simple and intuitive and really nails home that there's only about 20 good vertical games.  If you're so caught up on something minor like the sound effects being a little off (newflash, they are in MAME, too) then you may be in the wrong hobby.

They're more than just a little off, Gyruss grates your ears, and the emulation is flakey at best (timings are all wrong, just like the old versions of MAME they're based off)  The majority of 80s & 90s MAME sound emulations, aside from discrete stuff which is always tricky, are absolutely perfect to the PCBs these days.

I'm sure people without an eye or ear for detail can appreciate the xx-in-1 ones, because on the surface they appear to be fine, but to say everybody else is satisfied is a gross overstatement because they're really quite crap although at least you can see some work went into making them and individually tuning (read hacking) each game to perform adequately and integrate seamlessly with the system.  This is really what the original question was about, and why you couldn't just replace the builds on such boards with a stock one and have it work.

As for the xxx-in-1 or xxxx-in-1, you'd have to be blind and deaf not to notice how poor they are.  Golden Axe has about 2 seconds of input lag on them for instance!  Half the games on those ones border on unplayable.  You could probably replace it with a stock build, but you wouldn't want to, the ARM cpu is too weak for the more modern MAME versions they're attempting to run.

For ~800mhz systems your sweet spot would be something about 0.80, for more modern versions you want as much cpu power as you can get, genuine emulation improvements were being made which needed it.  Keep in mind that you now have phones with better CPUs than this tho, and people are still porting older versions (although I'm sure they could port something a bit newer).  The most recent versions you simply want to avoid completely until something is done about some of the severe bugs and performance issues which have been introduced in the last 2 years for little to no actual benefit and definitely won't run on some low powered ARM board or phone.

[nox771]

The most recent versions you simply want to avoid completely until something is done about some of the severe bugs and performance issues which have been introduced in the last 2 years for little to no actual benefit and definitely won't run on some low powered ARM board or phone.

Can you clarify what version(s) you are calling "recent"?  Looking here, two years ago was about version 0.134.  Is that what you recommend as best?  Also what kind of bugs would manifest, is it obvious?  I just want to know what specifically to look for and avoid.

[Haze]

The most recent versions you simply want to avoid completely until something is done about some of the severe bugs and performance issues which have been introduced in the last 2 years for little to no actual benefit and definitely won't run on some low powered ARM board or phone.

Can you clarify what version(s) you are calling "recent"?  Looking here, two years ago was about version 0.134.  Is that what you recommend as best?  Also what kind of bugs would manifest, is it obvious?  I just want to know what specifically to look for and avoid.

It's hard to put an exact number on it, but there have been some really nasty issues introduced with some drivers over the last couple of years, see the thread complaining about some insane levels of slowdown in Wardner for example, apparently that was introduced around 0.139u2 as the result of some changes Aaron made to the banking and memory system.  It appears to have since become worse.

Other games have seen performance issues introduced due to the overhead of the timer system, and devices being converted to use it.  Aaron wanted things to be updated to be modern devices, and use his internal timer / scheduling system for any timers, but the problem is when a game attempts to set up a high frequency timer it can absolutely slaughter the framerate, as happened on several Namco System 1 sets resulting in significantly worse performance is selected areas of those.  (which was then further compounded by the banking thing above)

I'm also observing some weird and unexpected behavior even with drivers I've worked on.  Some of the games on MegaSystem32 are showing sprite / background desync issues for no obvious reason, and highly dependent on framerate, even tho there is no code at all in the driver which should depend on the actual framerate.  I have no idea when this was introduced, but it's hard to fix as the behavior is no longer deterministic.

There's also a long standing issue with the OKI sound chip, which is one of the most common in MAME
http://www.mametesters.org/view.php?id=4268
This causes most games using it to break in nasty ways if save states are used, and was introduced when Aaron attempted to convert the driver to C++.  It was never fixed

Long fixed bugs with Joypad buttons not being saved / corrupt config files have been reintroduced.  This happened when Aaron updated this side of MAME to use C++ etc.

On a development front, the current toolchain is highly unstable, and hindering my ability to actually debug and work on the project, the debugging tools don't work properly, gdb isn't even packaged properly in the 64-bit toolchain, and some of MAMEs exit mechanisms in the case of failure aren't terminating the application as expected, but instead crashing it in bizzare ways which cause the actual error message to be lost.

Also some of the built in helper tools have become ridiculously slow, again when Aaron started updating things to C++.  Romident is now painfully slow, and it's nothing to do with the database size, ClrMAME can manage a database of equal size in a split second, it's simply because of a flaw in the code design.  The debugger is also no longer showing registered save areas, which is annoying, again this seems to be related to something Aaron did to the debugger.

Newer versions also have a new cheat system Aaron did based around the debugger, unfortunately this is completely incompatible with the old one and lacks the user-friendly features which made finding cheats so easy in the past and required no technical knowledge to use.  The system is 100% incompatible with cheats found with the old system, and was never properly finished.

There's also the MAMEUI situation, MAMEUI, which was always the most popular windows port, is now on life support, it barely works, Aarons core changes combined with a lack of developer interest / active developers have left it in a state where it barely works, people are still putting together compiles but each and every one is just a horribly unstable mess.

It's a shame, because at the same time a decent amount of work HAS been put into improving existing drivers, but there are too many cases of odd and unexpected performance issues due to poor code choices.  Some argue it's when MAME got converted over to C++, which isn't strictly true, although I suspect a number of the issues are due to *poor use* of C++, which isn't an actual flaw in the language, but those using it.

It's a little unfair to blame Aaron entirely for this mess, but he was the core developer, working on the core code while everybody else worked on drivers, so naturally this is all going to be stuff he touched, but there are too many cases where he started changing core functionality, and left it in a far less functional state than it was in before, for no REAL benefit.  This is greatly in contrast to some of the major changes made in the past, which did have a cost, but always resulted in genuine tangible improvements.  Trying to code within the framework of MAME 0.37 for example is a nightmare, because you have to manually manage a whole lot more within a driver than you do today, there is far less of a difference in that regard when it comes to a build from 4 years ago vs. one from today, if anything some aspects have become more difficult again, mainly because of the multiple standards now present through the code tho.

There are benefits to the device system and things like that, and the C++ code is a lot cleaner and neater to work with, but there are just too many deep rooted niggling issues, and unfinished / unoptimized bits of core work for me to actually recommend the new versions as a stable emulation platform.  The performance in some areas has become woeful, areas which really needed improvement have been ignored, and plenty of bugs have been introduced which simply haven't been fixed.

Naturally not all of this stuff applies if you're simply doing a port, but it's definitely worth considering if you're thinking about what MAME version to use, and unless there has been an actual fix you desperately wanted to see in a newer version I simply wouldn't bother.

The only real shining light is MESS, which has managed to more fully embrace the changes introduced from MAME, and still continue to improve, and is slowly catching up with some of the standalone console and computer emulators in spite of the problems, that said many of the issues present in the newer versions of MAME still rear their head there, which I fear could affect peoples opinions of the project.

You could say that I'm over-critical of some recent changes, but this is just my experience as both a developer and a user and while a lot of developers still seem to have rose-painted glasses over the current state of the project, and will leap to defend each and every change I don't see the point in doing that.  It's going to take some big changes, and a significant pull factor to undo some of the damage, and while many will misattribute the recent problems to things like 'bloat' or 'too many mahjong games' it really has nothing to do with that, it's mainly down to shoddy, half implemented, unoptimized core changes.

[nox771]

Thanks for the verbose response.  Based on your description, it sounds like the language switch to C++ will take quite a while to work out.  (for some reason this reminds me of the development path KDE, and more recently GNOME, took - reworking of the core resulting in a large drop in functionality, which hopefully (eventually) progresses on to something better)

[Haze]

So, in other words, MAME is a dodgy hack that exists solely to play arcade games?

What they'd do to Amidar, btw?  I was playing that 100% on a 486 in the 90s.   

You've clearly demonstrated from your praise of the multi-game boards that you have little grasp of the finer details.

MAME isn't meant to be a dodgy hack, if it was a dodgy hack it would have far better performance on low end systems like 486s and cheap multi-boards.  That's exactly why the emulators running on the multi-boards ARE cheap hacks.  You can easily make a lot of things faster with dodgy hacks which will bloat the code, as you end up rewriting parts of the game and having copies of core functions in each and every driver.  The key is to design a system whereby you don't have to resort to dodgy hacks, but still maintain an acceptable level of performance on current machines while maintaining a good framework and high level of functionality and that's where MAME is falling down as of late.

Unfortunately the problems also seem to scale with the complexity of the systems rather than the overall overhead of MAME becoming less of an issue with newer systems as it was in the past where often you could clearly see a shift of the optimization point from 8-bit games with less than 256 colours and minimal per-frame visual changes to 16-bit games with true-colour displays.  Right now I'm not sure where the optimization point sits, I'm borderline on saying nowhere, and with a marked decrease in the rate at which host CPUs are improving (in a meaningful way) that's a worry

MAME is just going through some troubled times IMHO.  The information contained within the drivers and various cores is an invaluable resource, but the current execution leaves a lot to be desired and simply isn't futureproof.

MAME always stayed top of the pile by innovating, doing things that were new, pushing the envelope and doing things that were considered impossible while providing a high quality framework (relative to other emulators at the time) with acceptable performance.  Lately it isn't doing any of those things, and is quickly slipping behind everything else.  The capability of the framework to provide has been surpassed in terms of both accuracy, and performance cost of that accuracy this becomes especially evident when you look at the console emulators and the arcade hardware based on said consoles.

[taylormadelv]

I am NOT trolling here but I find this discussion very interesting. This particular issue seems to be the "big divide" between byoac and klov type peoples. There's a "NEW" multiboard buzzing around the klov forums here:
http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=197982
Not matter how great the creators of this product claim it to be, it is just another multiboard and probably has the same issues of legality as the Chinese ones. For $300 a pop, I doubt that royalties are being sent to the game manufacturers, so even though this particular board IS superior to chinese stuff, it's just still in the same bag as everything else and it doesn't support Bosconian!
The multiboard has some cool things about it. I like the attract mode where it goes through all the games and displays their attract mode for a few minutes each and moves on to the next. There was an old thread about trying to recreate this in mame but I never got a clear explanation on how to pull it off.
The other neat thing is that you can coin up at any time, even while playing a game and that coin credit stays in the system, even when the game is over and you return to the main menu. Obviously, this is manadory for any revenue earning arcade game.
Last thing is the simplicity. While klover's may be proficient with fixing old arcade games, many are NOT proficient with mame and have no idea what they are doing, just look at the ZVG fiasco, peeps have no clue about accessing all the little tweaks in mame and the differences between dosmame, command line mame and mameui. Some people think that framerate issues can be solved by moving to another operating system!!!!
So a multiboard eliminates the need for a computer, an encoder, audio amplifier and allows easy connection to a CGA monitor without any conversions.
It's also real small and has realitively low failure rate and it's a lot simpler to sell one to a customer you do not know. I only make mames for friends.

[SuprSprint]

Great read. I just bought a 60-in-1 board to replace a MAME system that I built. It played well but always seemed to need some TLC before guests could play it, even if it was just breaking out a KB to press F1 to continue. I was hoping that I was giving up quantity for simplicity, while maintaining a similar quality of play.  So far, that's only semi-correct.  Anyway, it's done now so I'll give the new board a week or two to see how other people react to it, but my gut is that I'll be putting the MAME system back in.

For those interested, I posted some game play videos that I shot of the 60-in-1 board over at Klov. Here's a link;
http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=178696&page=2

And here's the Gyruss audio that was discussed earlier;

Video of Gyruss played on the iCade 60-in-1 rev B board.

[matsadona]

This topic is always interesting, even though we might slide off the initial topic a bit.
First of all, I would like to set the different multiboards apart. According to my experience there are some differences between the xx-in-1 (also referred to as Icade) and the xxxx-in-1 (like Babystar etc.). There is also other examples like Happyfish and Blue Elf.
There is also another board called Gamebox/Redbox that I use with great joy.

My experience with all multiboards is that they  usually have a low CPU capabilities, but as long as you go with the classics you are fine.
Yes, there are glitches, timing issues in some cases and also stuttering sound in some games. However I’ll guess that is the situation with a lot of MAME computers as well, due to poor configuration. And I think that is the key in this discussion. Simplicity!
I’m very happy with the convenience of the 60-in-1 Icade board. Just plug in and play. Yes, there are some poor quality games in it (especially regarding sound) but those can be turned off in the menus.
For me, that has never played an original Donkey Kong or Pac Man, it is perfect for some casual gaming. If you put it in single mode in a DK cabinet, few people I know could tell if it is the original PCB or not playing.
When it comes to timing, I can hardly blame the wrong MAME driver since my reaction isn’t what it used to be back in the days anyway
The only thing that really bugs me is when resolution/refresh rates are not correct in scrolling games.

So, what is really my 5 cent to this topic? Well, some multiboards are OK or maybe even the best alternative to have a MAME computer that most people doesn’t have the skill or time to configure properly (correct ROM sets, correct MAME version, correct gfx-drivers and so on).
But there are also some multiboards that should be avoided. The Happyfish version I have is really bad. Menus missing, wrong colors in games and generally poor performance, depending on the hardware it tries to emulate.
But as said before, I am happy with my 60-in-1 game, regardless of its shortcomings. I am also very happy with my Redbox modified Gamebox, which is a DOS based CF-card based JAMMA board. It can be altered in menus for horizontal or vertical games and it runs with almost correct resolutions etc.

But, finally before anybody says it – Of course I prefer original hardware. But even though I have more than 15 cabinets I will never be able to afford original and dedicated games for all my favorites. And yes, I have a MAME cabinet as well, it all started there. But I tend to play more on other cabinets with the multiboards because it is more accessible and convenient.

To be more constructive than just bashing those who prefer the multiboards even though they are not perfect maybe we should have a separate thread listing PROS and CONS with all multiboards that are available?

Finally, I’m still interested in if it is possible to hack the (xx-in-1) multiboards or not. And what that extra connector can be used for?

[taylormadelv]

"COM 8" is just a 4 pin molex ATX power supply input. I am not familiar with other inputs on these boards but some have another port that looks like where they actually program the boards.

[SuprSprint]

"COM 8" is just a 4 pin molex ATX power supply input.

Good input. I thought so but it wasn't documented so I hooked a switcher to the jamma harness to power it.