I was strongly considering doing this myself (being a programmer too!), but as with everything with me, thoughts and reality rarely get matched up! - Oh, and my knowledge of 9010 scripting is very limited having only just started on it all.
 
However, the problem you talk about here (if i understood correctly) of which driver a Pacman on Galaxian hardware would be found in, i thought was a non-problem.
 
I had envisaged the program having a UI (or James integrating it into FIDE?), whereby the user selects the driver from a list. Then the code interrogates the last section of the driver to present the user with a choice of games available in that driver. From this same section, the code then knows which definitions within that driver the game uses.
 
If the user doesn't know which driver a game resides in then a simple search tool could be provided using grep or jgrep (both of which i have free versions under Windows - least i think they're free!), which itself greps the final section of each of the driver files in the drivers directory - obviously defined in the options section. A code method to do the searching would be easy enough if using an external program is not desired.
 
Least that's what i had envisioned.
 
A lot of the pattern matching required to do this sort of thing is pretty simple within .NET, and it isn't rocket science within VC6 (or VB6 / VJ6) - don't know about non-MS tools as i have all MS tools here due to my job.
 
Anyway, just a couple of thoughts, and yes, to answer the original question, i obviously do think it's a good idea. It doesn't really matter if the info isn't 100% accurate, at least it saves a whole bunch of typing, and just leaves you with editing instead :O)
 
Martin.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-techtoolslist@www.flippers.com [mailto:owner-techtoolslist@www.flippers.com] On Behalf Of James Bright
Sent: 16 September 2003 03:44
To: techtoolslist@www.flippers.com
Subject: RE: [techtoolslist] Work in progress, opinions...

 

Awesome…

 

I have a little bit of work to match up the MAME ROM files to my existing data structures. The ontology of this is actually rather complicated. For example, how is “Pac-Man (Galaxian hardware)” classified? It will probably be matched to the Pac-Man game entry because of the name, but it’s more appropriately matched to the Galaxian entry because of hardware…

 

And yes, as soon as I get comfortable with TL/1, it will have an option to save as a TL/1 test stub.

 

JB

--James Bright
www.QuarterArcade.com
Restored Arcade Games for your Home

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-techtoolslist@www.flippers.com [mailto:owner-techtoolslist@www.flippers.com] On Behalf Of David Shoemaker
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2003 10:28 PM
To: techtoolslist@www.flippers.com
Subject: Re: [techtoolslist] Work in progress, opinions...

 

I like it, (though I will want the same utility function for the 9100 :)

 

 

And yes the 9100 keyboard wedge is getting close.  I spent a wasted week trying to get a software uart to work so I could use the small sexy 8 pin parts for this.  Yes I know EVERYONE told me to just use the 20 pin part with the uart built in.  But I am stubborn, plus I didn't have the 20 pin parts on hand.

 

I have parts on order for the 20 pin.  Once I get them (later this week I expect) it's some code tweaking and bread boarding to finish it up.

 

Then I will probably just release the works to the list, while I would really like to get a pcb made for it I haven't got the first idea how to start that process.  And this thing is going to be dead simple to build on protoboard I think.

 

David

----- Original Message -----

From: James Bright

To: techtoolslist@flippers.com

Sent: Monday, September 15, 2003 6:33 PM

Subject: [techtoolslist] Work in progress, opinions...

 

 

Well, I’m not really working on boards or 9010A scripts right now because I know the 9100A keyboard converter is near complete (or at least I hope! :)  So I’ve been playing around with something that kev and John were talking about a while ago.

 

I’ve been hacking around the MAME code, and I’ve got it to the point where I can walk through the data structures and pull out information like ROM files and addresses, and read & write addresses. What I am thinking of building is a simple “pre-code” generator that will help you build a 9010A script based on this simple memory map. It would build the map for any of the supported MAME games (even if the game isn’t working; that is not what is important). It could also link you directly to the MAME source code for quick reference. Just wondering if people would find this helpful or useful. Although it would be a first pass, here are possible pitfalls:

 

* ROM banking is frequently “hacked” in MAME (see Qix.c)

* read/write addresses in software are not always read/write in hardware

* I have no good way to insert the actual 9010A signatures right now because I would need to have all of the MAME ROMs (I don’t) and my programs don’t yet unzip the ROMs

* I don’t know exactly how precise or accurate the memory map is in MAME

* I almost guarantee mismatches between reality and the MAME driver :) Not that the programmers didn’t do a good job, but just that the software emulation might not match the actual hardware

 

But… the good would be that you have something to start with given a game that you’ve never worked on (the memory map is usually where I start). I would also be able to add in other hardware information to my database (CPU, # CPUs, type, etc.) and provide a cross reference to other games.

 

Does this reference material sound helpful? John, is this sort of what you’d had envisioned?

--James Bright
www.QuarterArcade.com
Restored Arcade Games for your Home