My particular machine was dug out of an old dilapidated warehouse, where pieces of the roof drywall had fallen on it. Two guys in Detroit dug it out and got it working, with the stipulation that I go through with the purchase of it. By "big, loud, and ugly", I mean this thing had a number of large, very loud fans blowing on all of the PCBs (all four of them), plus one that blew air out through the back door. Every board set I owned had one issue or another- the headlights didn't work in the tunnel zone, the input circuit didn't work, the main PCBs wouldn't talk to the sound or LED PCB, and on and on. The schematics available at the time were terribly scanned and weren't particularly helpful for repairing the boards. However, it did work enough to where it was used as the basis for the original MAME driver, written by Phil Stoffolino. All Phil did was take the particular behaviors of each element of the game and write a Z-80 assembly language driver for those elements. He never finished it, but it was a fun project nevertheless. I ended up giving the machine away in the end, and I think the next owner actually acquired good working boards and restored it.Marble_Granite wrote: ↑Fri Jul 26, 2024 3:52 amNow that is cool! Must have been quite the piece to have; it really is such a fun title, such a Quick Blast of Fun yet one that can last for hours trying to top that High Score. I'm not surprised that it was a finicky machine, with all of those Discrete Logic Chips. That Architecture is really something, and makes Ben's MGPR Windows Port even more impressive with that in mind!
The MGPR port is amazing! I have it running in my arcade cabinet at home, using a dial controller instead of a steering wheel.
Here's a VERY old picture of me working on the machine that my ex-wife snapped at a serendipitous moment. You could probably guess that I was a bit frustrated with it
