New PCB's have arrived. everything seems to be OK, other than my main galaxian test board is being a real pain! - may need to go and retrieve another one from the pile, as the only problem I have found with the multigame so far is most likely down to the motherboard! - One I know this for sure they will be available again. I've also made a much requested change to the Super Invader Attack game, and you can now select the pseudo colour and stars seperately. (I do have one thing I want to try with the stars as well - I almost had it working once before, so now I have resolved the problem that I think was stopping it working all the time, I should give it another go)
'Pin Thing' has moved on a bit - wiring complete, controls all mapped in Future Pinball - just need to sort out Virtual Pinball next and mount the screen properly.
Here it is with the screen balanced on top, rather than mounted, playing a slightly modified version of Stones'n'Bones - The version available on the 'net only uses a small DMD which is not even on the back glass, so I changed it to the biggest one possible and added some virtual speakers to fill the gaps.
Overall 'Pin Thing' doesn't look as pretty as some of the others that I have seen, but then I thought it best to get it working before worrying about the finish. Once the screen has been properly mounted, I'll finish off the backbox and give it a coat of paint.
When I got a Xeltec 280U programmer, I thought I would finally be able to kill off the spare Windows XP machine that I have for my existing parallel port based programmer. Apparently not, as the USB drivers that they supply will not work with the X64 version of windows 7. According to their website "Unfortunately, Xeltek's SuperPro 3000 series programmers such as SuperPro 3000U, SuperPro 9000U, SuperPro 580U and SuperPro 280U don't support 64 bit operating systems" and "working on 64bit platform requires tremendous effort from our side"
Well, being a bit of a hacker at heart, I couldn't see that it should be too difficult. So after a bit of research, a search or two on Google, and some experimentation, I now have my 280U working on Windows 7 x64 version. (and it should be possible to get it working on other 64 bit versions of windows as well)
Check out my Superpro X64 page for details and files needed to make this happen.
Well, it's now been over a year since I last put pixels to screen - many reasons, rest from arcade stuff, new PC and losing lots of programs (due to incompatibility with Windows 7 x64, not because I lost the disks) and pinballs - but the software and time has now come to add some text and things!
First thing is that I finally have some more multigame PCB's - had to do some work on converting them across to a different program, properly integrating a few minor changes and finding someone who can produce them for me at something like a reasonable price. The answer turned out to be a web site called DorkbotPDX which although mainly a site for people making robotic things, also hosts a communal PCB manufacturing program. They look good in purple and gold - now building one to make sure that the changes I made were actually correct, but hopefully Multigames will soon be available once again.
The other project keeping me on the go is that I have decided to build a Hyperpin pinball (driven by the fact that my old PC seemed to run it OK), so 10 months on, 3 graphics cards later, 5 screens later I should now have all of the parts for the initial version. Now slowly being built up on an old Williams Flash pinball carcass.
As you can see, a long way to go before it can be used to play any games, but the amplifier, sub woofer and PC have all been given places to sit, and the screens and wiring should be next on the agenda. Software is basically installed and setup on the PC for about a dozen machines, including Stones'and'Bones (the old Amiga favourite) and Psycho Wild West from the PC game.
Anyway, now I am back I will try and get some additional PAL's listed on the old Pals page, as I was sent a few by a dumper using their ABI, and I have also dumped a couple.
I've actually been fixing some things - in the past few weeks I've managed to breath life into a Fluke 68000 Pod, Rainbow Islands, Neo Geo 6 slot, Neo Geo 4 slot, Neo Geo single slot and a Nintendo Donkey Kong. I also managed to come second in a pinball competition! (it was the novelty one ... I'm still no good at normal pinball). So, time to update some of the untested / collection pages to try and reflect what now works, and what I've got rid of.
Nothing new on the ABI PAL Dumper for the moment, I've dumped a few odd PAL's (including one from and whilst updating the list notice I have a board listed as missing PAL, and I also have a working version of the same PCB, so may have to try dumping that one next)
Still plenty of dead PCB's to keep me occupied for a while.
A slight update to the script for the PAL Dumper. It seems that the original script makes it impossible for the decoder to be able to recognise if a PAL is being used in registered mode. To resolve this you simply need to change one line in the script. Line 6020 needs to be changed to say OUTPUT 1 TO 11 - The download file has been updated, but if you already have it, you simply need to change this single line on the ABI end of things.
Also changed the layout of the Old PALs page, hopefully to make ready for the influx of dumped PAL's to be sent in!
PAL Dumping for ABI Hardware!
Something that I have been planning to do for ages has finally happened. A script file to allow you to use an ABI Boardmaster as a PAL dumper. With the ABI's built in programming language, it always seemed like a reasonable idea, although it didn't turn out at all like I expected when I started. Check it out on the ABI Pal dump page.
I thought it was time to update some of the collection pages to reflect some recent sales. although downsizing is obviously not going to work, since as soon as I had sold a cab (Missile Command) I found another at a price that I couldn't ignore. So I should be picking a Gorf up next week.
Maybe I can finally discover what the light pen interrupt is used for! (if that makes no sense to you then look at the Mame source code - I managed to get Gorf working in Mame many years ago, but only by 'cheating' the raster counter a bit - that is why the missiles don't go up the screen at a fixed speed, if you watch them carefully they speed up and slow down.
