Quiz machines available on mame

Discuss Quiz Machines here..
elcondor
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Post by elcondor »

Probably not from your end - I was led to believe that the NVRAM saving was correct in those ames, but if it's erroring out every time then that needs looking at. I've not really done any work on that driver so I'd have to look more closely at that to see where the problem lies.
DildoDez
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Post by DildoDez »

elcondor wrote:Probably not from your end - I was led to believe that the NVRAM saving was correct in those ames, but if it's erroring out every time then that needs looking at. I've not really done any work on that driver so I'd have to look more closely at that to see where the problem lies.
Cheers mate. It's definitely not saving anyway!
elcondor
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Post by elcondor »

Strange, I've used the debugging tools at my disposal and it is writing something to that space in A Question of Sport, but the rest of the games that should be on the same hardware aren't bothering. What's weird is that practically every Bellfruit PCB using that particular processor has the same NVRAM chip in the same space, so unless they're writing to the floppy disk for some stupid reason like Give us a Break used to do, I have no idea what's going on.
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quizard
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Post by quizard »

So where can we get the ROMS for Hangman, Cluedo, Trivial Pursuit and Question of Sport etc? Thanks in advance :)
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JG
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Post by JG »

Busta big ballons, catch the pigeon, jet set go, to boldy go etc etc

P'd and googled to a £20 pot. Some of those questions - jeez! I know a bit more about Goodies B sides than I did at the start of that little exercise. 'ow many questionson this thing then? 'oo was doing these back in the early 90s or whenever?

Funky Gibbon wasn't their first UK singles chart top ten hit either.

You've got to know stuff like this.
pat624
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Post by pat624 »

Anyone who can work out how to even get MAME loaded and working deserves a medal in my opinion. I used to LOVE every second counts back in my UNI days, so would love to have another crack at it.....3 of us used to play, 1 on each button , only press if youve got a correct answer..

Why cant MAME be easy to use like the multiple fruit machine emulator??
cool
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Post by cool »

Id rather there was a virtual museum of quiz machines with photos and background history / manufacturer / introduction date etc. I dont attempt to learn or play anything that doesnt make me money (knowledge wise).
as I am technologically useless I doubt that I will ever have the ability to get the thing running anyway.
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grecian
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Post by grecian »

Yeah, I'd agree this looks a level of complexity too far for me as well. If an emulator was dead easy to use I suspect I'd be keen to play some of the classics from the 1996 onwards era when I first started playing SWPs, but as Cool says, the impossibility of winning any money on them would mean I'd get bored pretty quickly, I think. As it is, it looks impenetrably complex and well beyond my limited computer savvy.
elcondor
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Post by elcondor »

Can't answer about ROMs, but if you've downloaded the AGEMAME exe you just put the ROM files into the roms folder, double click on age.exe and start typing the name of the game into the text box.

Another alternative is to get the ROMs and drag the ZIP file onto the exe, that should load things up too.

Once you've got the hang of the little foibles like pressing TAB to get a menu screen etc, it's fairly easy to use.
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quizard
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Post by quizard »

On all these games the timer seems to come down quicker than on the original hardware. This makes the ones with touch screen emulation using the arrow keys and cross-hairs very difficult to play.

Any way of throttling back the speed?
elcondor
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Post by elcondor »

The speed of the timer is related to some bizarre hardware protection thing - all the communication between the main IMPACT board (like in any JPM AWP of that era) and the special video handling board is governed by a microcntroller. Since we can't dump it to get the program out, its operation has been simulated, which causes the speed up problem. If you run the proram with a command line such as 'age -cheat', you can press the ~ key to get a menu up that lets you fiddle with CPU speeds that might make this bearable.

For those still having problems, you can get a frontend called Emuloader (http://www.mameworld.net/emuloader), which is specifically designed for MAME and AGEMAME, and has easier menus to follow - it does the hard gruntwork automatically.
ZAX
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Post by ZAX »

time warp post.

I have been playing DLT's Treble top quite a bit (having never played it when it was out in the wild)- cracking game- and have come to the conclusion it must have been a big payer at one time. Jp'd it twice in one night without much trouble and noticed quite a smaller bank of questions, plus the bonus bank is almost an over-helpful leg-up for the final few rounds.

Was it around long? Or did it get hammered?

Also wondering if any more of the old school quiz machines are going to come through on mame. First one I remember playing was the one (whose name escapes me) where you had to say eg is it a rolling stones or beatle hit or neither.
elcondor
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Post by elcondor »

They switched question sets very quickly in those days, but the way it's coded is to have set banks of questions for different stages of readiness. I actually saw one still in place a few years back, so it must still be reasonably OK. Actually, the hardware was the problem, not all that suited to long operating periods

I'm not surprised at the questions coming up repeatedly, though, I reckon the battery RAM is knackered.

As for your other game, that sounds like the original Top of The Pops, which uses MPEG data off a CD, so won't be emulated for some time.

I hear rumours of Give us a Break being worked on, though.
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quizard
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Post by quizard »

A non-working GUAB is included in the 0.125 update. Is any progress being made towards a working version?
elcondor
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Post by elcondor »

Right, my original post went walkabout for this, so I'll post it again.

Copy these lines of text into a file called cheat.dat :

Code: Select all

; [Give us a Break]
:guab:00300000:08002C:00000064:FFFFFFFF:GUAB Credits
:guab3:00300000:08002C:00000064:FFFFFFFF:GUAB3 Credits
Run age -cheat (create a shortcut if you have to, or use the command line). You should see a menu called 'cheat' when you hit TAB, select it, and enable the cheat to find £1 in the credit bank to play with. While the cheat's on, that should never drop.
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