Getting a QCOM Pokie/slot Machine online and running

[bogan]

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[Heihachi_73]

You have to remember, that in Victoria there is also VLC protocol machines as well, so there is a mixture of VLC, Tatts QCOM and Tabcorp QCOM, and no doubt no intralot are in there there is probably also standard QCOM machines as well.


The reason the QCOM types are different is simply because the legacy systems did not have the technology to operate the same way, ie one couldn't do manual payments one way, or the TITO process was different. AFAIK, the progressive stuff is exactly the same between the 2. Maybe one Cash Express is VLC, the other QCOM? Thats one I cant answer.

It seems that the South Australian version of Scatter Magic in MAME (with 03030708 base) uses the VLC protocol rather than QCOM, may or may not be interesting to test.

[bogan]

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[bogan]

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[Heihachi_73]

Any luck with the protocol implementation? I'm dying of boredom down here, stuck inside 23/7 due to Melbourne's stage 4 coronavirus lockdown!

MAME recently implemented the BACTA protocol for some of the British gambling/amusement games (the games themselves aren't even close to slots/pokies though), some of the data-logging stuff looked remotely similar to QCOM, including being plain old RS232 serial.

[bogan]

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[Heihachi_73]

Yeah, the lack of people/interest thing can be annoying, especially with obscure systems like slots or non-PC-based 70s/80s computers, which all tend to get forgotten behind the thousands of arcade and console games. It gets worse when you're emulating an ultra-rare system and it needs a lot of work just so it will even display something at all (working with no screen output and having the game code crash within a tenth of a second of executing in isn't much fun, especially with obfuscated code and/or encrypted data and/or trying to sift through assembly code on a CPU type you're not familiar with), compared to adding a game to an already-working system which is literally copy, paste, replace a few things (hashes etc.) and compile and it works straight away (the Aristocrat MK2.5 and MK5 are this easy to add games to, but if a "proper" MK4 appeared out of the blue we'd need to implement the extra memory regions they use, as they use a lot more chips compared to a 2.5).

Going a bit off-topic, one of the low-hanging fruits in the slot emulation world would be the Konami Endeavour/ES500, where basically everything it needs already exists in MAME and just needs hooking up in the driver. Konami simply raided their arcade parts bin with this platform but the end result is *just* different enough that it isn't a simple copy, paste and run the code, but with 0 people interested it's left for dead. The fact that the resource (graphics/sound) data is stored on a tiny board (FMU2) with SMD flash chips is also a factor (presumably no-one wants to accidentally brick their machine desoldering everything or trying to read it out via the connector pins, and I don't blame them), only one game has had the FMU2 dumped so there is only that game to work with. There are only about half a dozen things left to hook up (notably, coin input!) and the game would probably coin up and start playing - note however that the sound hasn't been hooked up yet so it's in complete silence for now.

[ulterior]

Hi all,
Just been reading through a few threads and hopefully someone can point me in the right direction. My friend has a Konami ES500 which recently decided it needed a RAM reset. It's an ex-NZ machine so it now needs polling from a QCOM site controller to get going. From what I've found, I think I just need to poll the machine with a maintenance poll with a certain bit set as below.
"New control flag. EGM General Maintenance Poll (function code 0x1B). Refer to the QCOM Protocol, any version, EGM General Maintenance Poll, SIZ field - bit 7. If this bit is set in any General Maintenance Poll and provided no games have been played on the EGM and no credit has been added, then the EGM will disable the QCOM protocol in the following manner:- •The EGM will disable the logging of all QCOM events to its event queues.•The EGM must also no longer disable upon detection of a 10-second communications timeout condition so it can remain in play without a Site Controller present."I don't need to do anything fancy, just want to get the machine going again but I don't know enough about the software side of things to get it talking.  Is anyone able to point me in the right direction? I'm happy to help your projects if my friend's machine can offer anything.
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[bogan]

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[ulterior]

Thanks for the quick reply.

Had a look on the file system but couldn't find it unfortunately. Do you have any idea where I should look next?

[jj-taylor]

Ive also got a QCOM game here that Im trying to get to work, I have got my Aristocrat game going but not the Stargames machine.
I see in an much earlier post a "Little Black Box" that seems to help, are these available anywhere?
Cheers,

[bogan]

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[jj-taylor]

Excellent, and thanks very much for getting back to me!!
Your a legend...

[jj-taylor]

Hmmm post was deleted?

[Heihachi_73]

Just about every single post has been voluntarily deleted, doesn't sound good at all. Hope he wasn't C&D'd despite QCOM being an open format.

[jj-taylor]

Yes I was thinking the same thing!!

[bogan]

Just about every single post has been voluntarily deleted, doesn't sound good at all. Hope he wasn't C&D'd despite QCOM being an open format.

Got outed on another forum, not worth the risk to my career so I pulled everything.

[jj-taylor]

Sounds fair,bummer for me, but probably a good move for you ;-)