Please note: regression testing is in progress, but the first round
of glaring regressions have already been taken care of. That said,
there is likely to be a host of regressions as a result of this
change.
Also note: There are still a few rough edges in the interfaces. I
will try to clean them up systematically once the basic system is
working.
All sound chips are now proper devices.
Merged the sound chip interface into the device interface,
removing any differences (such as the whole ALIASing concept).
Modified every sound chip in the following ways:
* updated to match the device interface
* reduced read/write handlers down to the minimal number
* added the use of get_safe_token() for ensuring correctness
* other minor cleanup
Removed the custom sound device. The additional work to just make
custom sound cases into full devices is minimal, so I just converted
them all over to be actual devices.
Vastly simplified the sound interfaces, removing the ghastly
sndti_* business and moving everyone over to using tags for
sound identity. sndintrf, like cpuintrf, is now just a header
file with no implementation.
Modified each and every driver that references a sound chip:
* all memory maps explicitly reference the targeted device via
AM_DEVREAD/AM_DEVWRITE/AM_DEVREADWRITE
* 16-bit and 32-bit accesses to 8-bit chips no longer use
trampoline functions but instead use the 8-bit AM_DEVREAD/WRITE
macros
* all references to sound chips are now done via tags
* note that these changes are brute force, not optimal; in many
cases drivers should grab pointers to devices in MACHINE_START
and stash them away
New games added or promoted from NOT_WORKING status
---------------------------------------------------
Go 2000 [Angelo Salese]
====================================================
Also moved go2000.o to suna.a in the mame.mak, because I believe that should stay there.
Now I'll try to fix the spriteram (even though it seems hard to RLE it, this game hardly uses it)...
New games added or promoted from NOT_WORKING status
---------------------------------------------------
TomCat (prototype) [Mariusz Wojcieszek]
There are still some small issues (complete list in driver), if somebody with more experience with Atari and/or vector hardware wants to take a look, feel free.
* Added complete reel emulation (thanks to Luca, Angelo and David drivers
studied to better understand hardware similarities).
* Press T to toggle amuse game, used to mask gambling activities.
New games added or promoted from NOT_WORKING status
---------------------------------------------------
Jackie [Mirko Buffoni]
- Created custom module for run sounds. Running the discrete sound system at 480KHz was not really optimal.
- Reviewed parts list, schematics and pcb pictures
- Brought mario run sound in line with recordings from Smitdogg
- VCO voltage needs to be 0V for this to happen. Verification outstanding
- Capacitors needed some ageing applied as well. To be removed once the VCO issue is clarified.
Not working due to the sound CPU rom is half size and the 16Mbit flash roms are not dumped.
New clones added
----------------
Head Panic (15/06/1999) [Corrado Tomaselli] (not working)
Merging back in the PinMAME drivers is proposed every now and again, and since we've just added other non-video based things I figured that now might be a good time to look at it.
This is likely to be a HUGE undertaking as PinMAME is based on old code, and is Macro-hell, I see it as a several step plan.
1) Convert all the PinMAME drivers to compile their ROM Loading with current versions of MAME
2) Clean up the ROM loading, removing the excessive Macros which really don't help readability at all IMO
3) Hook up the Machine Drivers again for each system, so that the CPU core runs again
4) Look at ways in which the artwork system can be used to simulate the display parts etc. (there is a scary amount of code in PinMAME for handling this stuff)
5) See how feasible it is to allow MAME to communicate with another program, as it's unlikely we'll be able to simulate the full table physics in MAME.
I've updated the System11 rom loading to compile for now. The old PinMAME code which hasn't been updated is there #if 0'd out for reference for when a stab is made at hooking back up the actual CPUs to run etc.
Part of me wonders if just rewriting it from scratch would be easier, but it would be a shame to throw away the information that was figured out in PinMAME.
This was done by request, so I'm not especially bothered if it doesn't get included, PinMAME is rather hideous ;-)
If anybody wants to help they're more than welcome. The other Williams systems should be easy to hook up the rom loading for because they share most of the Macros that have already been updated to compile.
---
Pyschic 5 (set 2) [Dazzer]
I haven't checked the differences in any detail, but the player appears to survive for longer in attract mode so there are probably some subtle gameplay differences.
