Pole Position Free Play w/attract mode

mjenison

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Hi all,

Souzilla sent me the Pole Position free play hack he had been working on but had not completed so I could take a crack at it.

The version I came up with is less feature rich than what I think souzilla had in mind.

Three EPROMs need to be replaced (unfortunately, single instructions were actually split across two EPROMS in some of the Pole Position roms).

The main "Pole Position" text screen shows "FREE PLAY' just like normal in the lower right corner.

In attract mode, "SHIFT TO START" flashes at the bottom of the screen. Moving the shifter starts the game (doesn't care whether H to L or L to H, as long as it changes).

Looking for a tester with an EPROM burner, some EPROMs and a Pole Position running the Atari version (synonymous with MAME's polepos1 EPROMS). Provided it tests out fine, will apply it other versions of Pole Position provided i have testers for those versions as well.

Lastly, and maybe most interesting, I'll be looking into how difficult it would be to write a program that would allow you to put custom billboard images into your Pole Position ROMs.
 
Nice job... I think the reason I sat on it so long is that I wanted to have the pedal start (Must be my OCD). Glad you got it going!
 
Did anyone ever figure out how to take the "GAME OVER" off the attract screen?
 
Excellent job !! I wish I had a burrner, I have both a working PP and PP2 board. I like the "Shift To Start". The billboards would be kick ass!

and Jow your avatar is creepy... I keep waiting for him to blink, or something.
 
Looking for a tester with an EPROM burner, some EPROMs and a Pole Position running the Atari version


D'oh !

Sold me PP (grudgingly) last month...

Would have really liked to have this...

sigh....

Steph
 
Hi all,

Souzilla sent me the Pole Position free play hack he had been working on but had not completed so I could take a crack at it.

The version I came up with is less feature rich than what I think souzilla had in mind.

Three EPROMs need to be replaced (unfortunately, single instructions were actually split across two EPROMS in some of the Pole Position roms).

The main "Pole Position" text screen shows "FREE PLAY' just like normal in the lower right corner.

In attract mode, "SHIFT TO START" flashes at the bottom of the screen. Moving the shifter starts the game (doesn't care whether H to L or L to H, as long as it changes).

Looking for a tester with an EPROM burner, some EPROMs and a Pole Position running the Atari version (synonymous with MAME's polepos1 EPROMS). Provided it tests out fine, will apply it other versions of Pole Position provided i have testers for those versions as well.

Lastly, and maybe most interesting, I'll be looking into how difficult it would be to write a program that would allow you to put custom billboard images into your Pole Position ROMs.

What about a fast restart option to get past those long waits when you crash at the beginning of a lap. :D

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.
 
Did anyone ever figure out how to take the "GAME OVER" off the attract screen?

I did today :)

Chip 136014.103 and 136014.104 contain instructions and data split across them. To my surprise, GAME OVER was actually stored as raw text across the two chips (meaning there must be a routine that takes raw text and converts it to characters made up of a combination of graphic blocks).

In EPROM 103 at location $0392: 41 45 4F 45 ; A E O E
In EPROM 104 at location $0392: 47 4D 20 56 52 ; G M V R

Simply change these values to spaces (20):

103: $0392: 20 20 20 20 ; four spaces
104: $0392: 20 20 20 20 20 ; five spaces

And viola! No more "GAME OVER" in demo mode. Oh, and of course we need to fix up the checksums:
103: $1FFF: 7A
104: $1FFF: 44

Or people could have fun with the nine characters and put "FREE PLAY" or whatever they like; calculating the checksum would be an exercise for the reader.
 
Update:

I did have someone test it on their machine, but it appears to be another classic case of "it works in MAME, but not on real hardware".

Maybe since Zud is currently working on his basement gameroom, he'd be willing to lend me his Pole Position for debugging purposes? :)
 
Update:

I did have someone test it on their machine, but it appears to be another classic case of "it works in MAME, but not on real hardware".

Maybe since Zud is currently working on his basement gameroom, he'd be willing to lend me his Pole Position for debugging purposes? :)

Just 1 person tested it?

Send them over my why, I'll give them a shot... really needing these as I don't like people reaching into my PolePosition because the volumes, magically, end up maxed out half the time.
 
The whole passing eprom data back and forth, waiting for reply, having to understand and clarify what happened...really more effective if someone just lent me a boardset. But for some reason, people are uncomfortable with this idea.
 
there is almost no chance of mailing a PP boardset and it be working when it arrives. I moved my machine across the room on a dolly and it quit working. I haven't worked on it yet and might just try moving it back to its original location to see if it just liked that spot. I have a stack of PP1 and PP2(on PP1 boards) that are in various states of working or not. I can loan you one but you'll have to make it work.
 
The whole passing eprom data back and forth, waiting for reply, having to understand and clarify what happened...really more effective if someone just lent me a boardset. But for some reason, people are uncomfortable with this idea.

I spent about 2 years putting together a working PP set from a stack of about 10 boards... I can understand why they'd be a little worried about mailing it.

If you were local, I'd have no problems with loaning the set/cabinet to you, though.

As it is though, I'd still be willing to take a look at the chips and seeing what comes up.

I'm -pretty- sure that my machine is running the set1 ROMs from MAME... I'd have to double check though. (as I'm fixing to pull them in the next couple of days anyway to get rid of "GAME OVER" on the screen).
 
The whole passing eprom data back and forth, waiting for reply, having to understand and clarify what happened...really more effective if someone just lent me a boardset. But for some reason, people are uncomfortable with this idea.

I'll test my PP1 board, and if it's working, I'll ship it out to you. I'l try to get to it tonight.
 
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