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| Joined: | Mar 3rd, 2008 |
| Location: | Muskogee, Oklahoma USA |
| Posts: | 349 |
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There are tons of dead/damaged boards out there that no longer play the game they were built for, but whose video stages are quite fine. Even working boardsets of various games can be had on Ebay for a matter of a couple of dollars plus postage.
Being as most games output to a standard resolution arcade monitor, which runs at 15kHz, that 's the same frequency as a TV. Indeed, the first game cabinets often had actual TV sets inside them.
Such hardware would need the main rom code changing to not trigger a Watchdog reset whenever it felt confused (a common feature to limit damage from failing components) and basically reprogramming gameplay roms in probably C to handle the functions.
Possibly, hacking a game board such as Galaxian (a common source for bootleg games in the era) would yield a video ready board, own software to read the video area (as it normally would) but then be taking video that was encoded on the fly for output. Instead of the video game rom full of graphics, you'd have ever changing image data. The old games only feature Z80 or 6502 or at best a couple of 68000's from 90's games, but they may well be able to do what's required. Hard way around the problem though probably and would be dealing with quarter century old gear in any case
However, as a source for video ready output, they might hold potential.
Along your lines, it could be imagined that a hacked Playstation or even better, a PSP, might deliver the necessaries to carry the idea forward.
Back in Atari ST/ Amiga days there was a device called a Genlock, something used in video editing daily by those in the field. Such good but older home computer technology might be used to grab the random imaging of ITC and make it deliverable to a screen of choice ?
A thought of mine for portability was to use two cell phones. Have one on the preview screen of taking a picture and another that's sat opposite and viewing the screen of the first. The hacking of the output/input between two same model phones might be a decent route if that didn't work or have two screens running off the same output lines, facing each other.
Last edited on Oct 17th, 2008 10:51 PM by Slider2732