Arcade Collecting > Miscellaneous Arcade Talk
Midway Arcade Cabinet by Big Electronic Games
SavannahLion:
Not knowing what was inside them it's hard to say. If it used an EEPROM or Flash, it might be fried. If it used a battery, it might not be a CMOS. It could be very well a simple capacitor or a small Alkaline battery soldered directly to the board. Look for blown or leaking components on the board. Caps also swell sometimes before popping. If it dried out... well.... goodluck finding it. You'l have to study the board or find a schematic
jserrawi:
Interesting C1 and C3 are not populated. Could anyone take a peak at their board? I wonder if they pulled them on the demo system. Might have to find a couple of caps!
jserrawi:
--- Quote from: jserrawi on July 21, 2014, 12:29:32 pm ---Interesting C1 and C3 are not populated. Could anyone take a peak at their board? I wonder if they pulled them on the demo system. Might have to find a couple of caps!
--- End quote ---
Crap. No joy. All of the other caps were 25v 10uF. I found two 25v/10uF from an old motherboard and soldered them in but the game scores are still not saved. I swear there is just an internal reset that happens when it goes into demo mode that clears all of the scores, but I've asked other people and they say the scores do in fact save. Well, the hunt continues. Maybe I'll find a replacement cartridge...
SavannahLion:
Just realized that Clay Cowgill did the firmware for this hardware. He runs http://www.multigame.com/ as well as other sites. If the NDA ran out, he might be able to tell you what keeps the high scores. Hopefully you'll get lucky. According to Clay at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.games.video.arcade.collecting/rBBj7m_AOTk
I didn't look too hard but multigame is his business site so there must be some way of contacting him. Unfortunately the last update is from 2007??
Clay Cowgill wrote:
--- Quote ---Chuk" <ch...@ourcade.com> wrote in message
news:A56mf.10180$l1.6422@fe26.usenetserver.com...
> Someone mentioned that the emulation was identical to the MW board, and
that
> the menus were almost identical. Though I thought that arcadeshop had
hired
> them out to do that board. I wouldn't think he could produce it for
someone
> else. However, I have no idea what the actual situation is there. Maybe
> Clay will speak up if he can?
Well, hey, I was just waiting for someone to ask!. ;-)
Of course I'm NDA'd on the subject as to most of the particulars, but yes,
we were involved with the product. We worked under contract to do the
software development and help bring up the hardware design. (Our software
solution is optimized to run on hardware with very limited RAM and CPU
resources-- a good match for a very cost sensitive device like this one).
The hardware wasn't directly done by us (we worked with another contractor
that implemented the ASICs and handled the final hardware design). If
someone tears into it it's kinda anticlimactic-- a couple 'block blobs' (COB
packaging) and a little memory. That's about it!
I must admit that I've been conducting a little science experiment
collecting the feedback here before people got any sort of bias knowing any
back-story about it. :-P
(Clearly the product wasn't intended for readers of this newsgroup.) ;-)
That having been said, it really *is* fully emulated. (...and quite
accurately so with the exception of the TV output instead of a full-on
arcade monitor.) One of the early comments to the contrary was from someone
who had pitched a competing design that we beat out. I didn't feel like
getting in a pissing match over it. No, it's not a Nintendo or Genesis. :-P
I will say that every 'negative' that people mentioned here was not the
first time it had been thought of... When it came right down to it though,
the costs couldn't move and the delivery date was set in stone. If the
retail price point was going to (really) be $499 and not $397 that might
have changed some things, but the channel buyers know what will sell at what
price points and the product needed to go out the door at the $397 mark and
still make everyone a profit at that price.
Like most engineers, given my druthers I'd probably just work on 'unlimited'
price stuff with 'open ended' timetables, but alas, that's not the kind of
thing you can sell by the truckload at Target... That having been said, all
indications are that it's going to do quite well in its intended market. I
suspect you'll see more.
-Clay
P.S. Some years down the road when the NDA's expire and if anyone's
interested in hearing them, I do have some good stories to tell about the
project. :-)
--- End quote ---
and
--- Quote ---"Scott Caldwell" <lscottc...@excite.com> wrote in message
news:bGDmf.26948$BZ5.8503@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com...
> Seems like that could be sold
> for less than the existing Multi-Williams JAMMA
> PCBs, by a large margin.
Price is, of course, largely volume driven. In the case of the Target unit,
the very first shipment that left the factory was more total units than the
sum of every multigame kit, JAMMA adapter, pacman daughterboard, etc. that
I've ever sold in the last *ten* years combined. Suffice it to say that at
those volumes they can get a lot better deals on parts that the little guy!
They also kept the per-unit cost down by doing custom ASICs to integrate a
bunch of functionality down onto a couple IC's... Then they ran a lot of
product through high speed factories which gets good pricing (because the
setup/teardown expense on the line gets smaller when you run the line
longer). The problem for small volume products is that ASIC math just
doesn't pan out when you consider minimums and NREs. (Even if you just put
one wafer through on a small process you wind up having to buy 5-6K parts,
plus the engineering costs up front, plus the cost of the ASIC designer. ;-)
> Clay, is the sound 100% emulated too? The Target
> game I played sounded a little off.
Yep-- but the cabinet, speaker, and the audio output stages make a big
difference in the "sound" as you hear it. I can't imagine the TV has a very
beefy speaker in it. It's hard to get good bass without one, so higher
frequencies might seem more prominent. The original games also all have
slightly different analog filtering in their audio path, so we did have to
compromise a bit to try to get things as good as possible across all titles.
(Having a steep rolloff on a filter to make the old Williams games sound
'just right', resulted in the other games sounding too muffled, etc. We had
to pick something that was "good" for all, but probably not the best
possible for any one particular architecture. You could likely 'fix' that
with some DSP on the sound, but there wasn't that kind of budget in the
hardware.)
-Clay
--- End quote ---
If the problem is with the ASIC, you'll probably have to live with it.
Good luck.
jserrawi:
Thanks SavannahLion.
I had wondered where that post had gone. I had come across it a few months back and couldn't find it again. I will see if he's responding to any emails. I think I tried previously with no success, but I'll try again.
Yesterday I got to play hacker for a little while. I found out that the PCB that plugs into the back of the cartridge is one pin longer than a floppy disk connector, so I modified a FD cable to accept it and then broke all of the wires out onto a PS1 controller PCB. I plugged the PS1 controller into the playstation, loaded up Midway Greatest Hits and tested things out. The MGH disk has all of the games the original 12 in 1 had, minus Wizard of Wor, but it also has another 13 games on top of that. Player1 worked! Now to find a second donor controller to set up player2. And guess what? It saves games! :-) The loading times are a little annoying, but not too bad. Played some Marble Madness, 720 (Skate or Die!) and Joust 2. I couldn't get Spy Hunter mapped correctly. We'll see about the other games. I was very excited it worked on the first try and I can always plug the original unit back in. Good times.
Thinking about a 20" (4:3) LCD upgrade. Will see how it looks and possibly build a new face for the unit to house it. Fun stuff!
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