7 replies to this topic

[zodiax]

Some old pinball like Silverball Mania, Centaur, 8ball deluxe.. have a very long time delay from power on to "game ready to play" status.
Some other old games like flash, Black Knight have no time delay time and booting very quickly.
The booting delay time is programmed in specific game rom.

During the boot time the pinball CPU seems to do nothing but wasting time in a delay routine.
Is there a known patch/mod/ solution to skip the delay time during start and instant make the pinball machine ready to play?

On my opinion there are two possible ways to fix that:
1) by modify the specific game ROM or
2) modify and recompile source code of  VPinMAME in a way that the Clock generator becomes a higher value for emulating game CPU during boot time
   

 

Greets from munich, germany

Jan

 

[xenonph]

Not sure if this is what you are talking about, but you can hit F1 while table is running and checkmark "Skip Pinball Startup Test".

[wiesshund]

Some old pinball like Silverball Mania, Centaur, 8ball deluxe.. have a very long time delay from power on to "game ready to play" status.
Some other old games like flash, Black Knight have no time delay time and booting very quickly.
The booting delay time is programmed in specific game rom.

During the boot time the pinball CPU seems to do nothing but wasting time in a delay routine.
Is there a known patch/mod/ solution to skip the delay time during start and instant make the pinball machine ready to play?

On my opinion there are two possible ways to fix that:
1) by modify the specific game ROM or
2) modify and recompile source code of  VPinMAME in a way that the Clock generator becomes a higher value for emulating game CPU during boot time
   

 

Greets from munich, germany

Jan

 

 

If you edit the ROM, it wont be accepted as an official ROM

 

PinMAME does not make use of the fastboot (fast forward) the MAME does
pinball machines go through a lot more checks than a video game, and they need to check state of various physical table parts, among other things at boot

 

Depending on table, speeding one up could well break said table depending on how table is made.
You could implement fast forward, it might result in tables that dont start or throw errors though.

 

You can do what Xenonph said, that's about it

 

Though i am not sure how "very long time delay" is measured?

If i died in the short time it took centaur to start, i probably did not belong playing centaur anyways lol
i definitely wasnt going to finish a game

[zodiax]

Not sure if this is what you are talking about, but you can hit F1 while table is running and checkmark "Skip Pinball Startup Test".

It seems that the "The Skip Pinball Startup Test"  option does not work. Can't see here no difference if this was enabled or not. Tried on several tables and different PinMame Versions.

[zodiax]

 

Some old pinball like Silverball Mania, Centaur, 8ball deluxe.. have a very long time delay from power on to "game ready to play" status.
Some other old games like flash, Black Knight have no time delay time and booting very quickly.
The booting delay time is programmed in specific game rom.

During the boot time the pinball CPU seems to do nothing but wasting time in a delay routine.
Is there a known patch/mod/ solution to skip the delay time during start and instant make the pinball machine ready to play?

On my opinion there are two possible ways to fix that:
1) by modify the specific game ROM or
2) modify and recompile source code of  VPinMAME in a way that the Clock generator becomes a higher value for emulating game CPU during boot time
   

 

Greets from munich, germany

Jan

 

 

If you edit the ROM, it wont be accepted as an official ROM

 

PinMAME does not make use of the fastboot (fast forward) the MAME does
pinball machines go through a lot more checks than a video game, and they need to check state of various physical table parts, among other things at boot

 

Depending on table, speeding one up could well break said table depending on how table is made.
You could implement fast forward, it might result in tables that dont start or throw errors though.

 

You can do what Xenonph said, that's about it

 

Though i am not sure how "very long time delay" is measured?

If i died in the short time it took centaur to start, i probably did not belong playing centaur anyways lol
i definitely wasnt going to finish a game

 

 

 

 

Some old pinball like Silverball Mania, Centaur, 8ball deluxe.. have a very long time delay from power on to "game ready to play" status.
Some other old games like flash, Black Knight have no time delay time and booting very quickly.
The booting delay time is programmed in specific game rom.

During the boot time the pinball CPU seems to do nothing but wasting time in a delay routine.
Is there a known patch/mod/ solution to skip the delay time during start and instant make the pinball machine ready to play?

On my opinion there are two possible ways to fix that:
1) by modify the specific game ROM or
2) modify and recompile source code of  VPinMAME in a way that the Clock generator becomes a higher value for emulating game CPU during boot time
   

 

Greets from munich, germany

Jan

 

 

If you edit the ROM, it wont be accepted as an official ROM

 

PinMAME does not make use of the fastboot (fast forward) the MAME does
pinball machines go through a lot more checks than a video game, and they need to check state of various physical table parts, among other things at boot

 

Depending on table, speeding one up could well break said table depending on how table is made.
You could implement fast forward, it might result in tables that dont start or throw errors though.

 

You can do what Xenonph said, that's about it

 

Though i am not sure how "very long time delay" is measured?

If i died in the short time it took centaur to start, i probably did not belong playing centaur anyways lol
i definitely wasnt going to finish a game

 

I know edit the specific ROM results always in checksum error, but this can be bypass by "Ignore ROM CRC errors" in PinMame settings.
Comparing the booting time  FLASH boots up in 4 seconds, Gorgar 6 sec, Firepower 9 sec, Black Knight 8 sec, Medusa 18 sec,  Centaur in 22 secs

I'm thinking always about making things better and for me personally an instant game start would be nice.
I got already PINMAME source code from githup, and now going to study it, and a external disassembler/debugger of the Bally 6800 CPU will help me also
to understand whats going on here. May I found a solution and building a patch, lets see... if so I will post it.
Thanks for your comments,

 

best regards

Jan
 

[wiesshund]

centaur does not take 22 seconds to boot, not for me anyways, it takes between 5 and 5.5 seconds until ready for coin.
Medusa is 5 seconds from start until Hahahaha

 

think you need to look elsewhere than rom and vpinmame editing for your issue, cause those aint the causes for your issue.

[zodiax]

centaur does not take 22 seconds to boot, not for me anyways, it takes between 5 and 5.5 seconds until ready for coin.
Medusa is 5 seconds from start until Hahahaha

 

think you need to look elsewhere than rom and vpinmame editing for your issue, cause those aint the causes for your issue
 

 

That sounds good. Could you provide MAME and VP Version ? Thanks

[wiesshund]

 

centaur does not take 22 seconds to boot, not for me anyways, it takes between 5 and 5.5 seconds until ready for coin.
Medusa is 5 seconds from start until Hahahaha

 

think you need to look elsewhere than rom and vpinmame editing for your issue, cause those aint the causes for your issue
 

 

That sounds good. Could you provide MAME and VP Version ? Thanks

 

vpx 10.7.2 rev 285
vpinmame 3.5 rev 187