Touchmaster infinity software

[wrongdon]

If I send you a drive, would you be able to clone me one? I have no idea how to go about cloning a drive at this point. Mine is getting worse. I used to be able to play it for an hour or more before it locked up, now I get about 5 minutes out of it or it won't boot at all, giving an error message telling me it can't find the security key and I should contact Midway support. The whole time the drive whines and whirrs louder and louder.

I would do that for you , but for some reason mine didn't work or i have a deeper issue.It is telling me to insert a disk with boot media on it and press any key to continue.It is seeing the drive on the boot screen as i turned off the logo and such so i could watch the post messages.It says drive 0 maxtor and then i get the no bootable drive message.So once i figure out if it is how i wrote it or if there is a problem with my drive or one of my boards i would gladly do yours.I am going to try it on another drive, i have 9gb laying around here somewhere.

 

[Phetishboy]

I would do that for you , but for some reason mine didn't work or i have a deeper issue.It is telling me to insert a disk with boot media on it and press any key to continue.It is seeing the drive on the boot screen as i turned off the logo and such so i could watch the post messages.It says drive 0 maxtor and then i get the no bootable drive message.So once i figure out if it is how i wrote it or if there is a problem with my drive or one of my boards i would gladly do yours.I am going to try it on another drive, i have 9gb laying around here somewhere.

Sweet, thanks Don. Preciate it.

 

[coil1002]

I just encountered the same thing,it would give an error on hunk 7. I came here to see what version you used , chdman , chdman32 or chdman64 and looks like we both went with chdman.Went into drive management and deleted the volume and it is writing away right now.This is pretty cool,i am using a 4gb drive and after failing on hunk 7 , windows reported the drive as 24 mb.So what i think is cool is whatever size drive you use it will appear to be the size of the image when it is done.Instead of 2gb with 2gb free it will appear to be a 2gb drive.

24 mb is correct thats what windows reports to me as well

 

[KevinMullins]

or it won't boot at all, giving an error message telling me it can't find the security key and I should contact Midway support.

That sounds like what mine does if I unplug the little security board we were talking about earlier. Check (unplug/replug) that little ribbon cable)

Now your drive making a bunch of noise and such....well, we know that is just a failing drive.

 

[wrongdon]

24 mb is correct thats what windows reports to me as well

I have tried 3 different drives , it must be another problem. I read on here somewhere about caps on the top board causing problems so i imagine if i have those values i will replace them at least to rule them out.

 

[wrongdon]

Making progress.I replaced those 3 caps and now it loads a boatload of stuff and then says automatic reboot in so many seconds or press a key to reboot now. It just does this over and over.Progress is progress lol.

 

[KevinMullins]

Can you read the post screen enough to see what it is doing prior to the reboot ? (like an error)

 

[wrongdon]

Can you read the post screen enough to see what it is doing prior to the reboot ? (like an error)

Yea , it is unable to mount the root , it seems to be expecting a 7995mb drive and my 4gb drive does not entirely fit in the slice lol,i have no idea what any of this means..I got to a prompt and typed ?. and was able to see some commands and play with them,and the best i can figure it is looking for an 8gb drive.So i am setting up a 20gb now as it is my next smallest and we will see how it goes.
I did a little reading on the mount prompt in bsd but havent been able to get to it to use the mount commands to see if i can get it to expect a different sized drive..
Looks like i will be learning a little bit in this adventure..

 

[wrongdon]

Success!!!
I used a 20gb maxtor diamond plus 8 and it booted and works fine. Phet ,i'm going to try it on another 20gb drive i have here and see if it works.The drive i used is similar to the bad one i removed, so i want to see if it will work on any larger drive of a different brand..
I wonder how (insert name of super nice guy who posted image here) got away with a 2gb drive..
I'll post the results and then we will get you hooked up.

 

[Phetishboy]

Success!!!
I used a 20gb maxtor diamond plus 8 and it booted and works fine. Phet ,i'm going to try it on another 20gb drive i have here and see if it works.The drive i used is similar to the bad one i removed, so i want to see if it will work on any larger drive of a different brand..
I wonder how (insert name of super nice guy who posted image here) got away with a 2gb drive..
I'll post the results and then we will get you hooked up.

That made my day. Thanks Don. My Infinity will live again!!

 

[coil1002]

Success!!!
I used a 20gb maxtor diamond plus 8 and it booted and works fine. Phet ,i'm going to try it on another 20gb drive i have here and see if it works.The drive i used is similar to the bad one i removed, so i want to see if it will work on any larger drive of a different brand..
I wonder how (insert name of super nice guy who posted image here) got away with a 2gb drive..
I'll post the results and then we will get you hooked up.

The names Liam I will look it may have been a 20gb I used now that I think of it. I dont see how I would even have a 2 gb around.

 

[wrongdon]

Well , i just don't get it.I didn't have another 20gb but did have a 19gb.So i tossed it on there,no dice..Then i put it on an 80gb and it doesn't work either.Maybe 20gb is the magic number..I will see what else i can try lol.

 

[KevinMullins]

Are you deleting any kind of partitions that may be on those drives first ?
Not "formatting"... deleting.

I haven't tried one yet.

 

[wrongdon]

Are you deleting any kind of partitions that may be on those drives first ?
Not "formatting"... deleting.

I haven't tried one yet.

Yea , i am using the drive management in windows to delete volume.Mine is running great but i still want to figure this out,poor ol phet needs one..Here is what i am thinking..It seems the software is originally installed through that goofy port on the back which leads to ide2 ,maybe like windows it sets itself up for whatever drive it is being installed on..for example if coils was originally installed on a 20gb drive the ini files or whatever this uses are geared towards a 20gb drive..so that is what the image needs to be on in order for it to see the drive as is expected...
Over the last few hours i got ahold of a local who has a drive that is on its last leg,his is also the version 2.03c but is on a 10gb drive.I made an image of it and it is dumping onto a 10gb drive i have.I have my fingers crossed that it will work..If it does then i would say that you need to use the same size drive as the image came from..
If it doesn't,,,lol,,well hell, i just don't know.But being as i can get a prompt and type commands , i imagine there is something that could be done to make the image work on any size drive.But i know nothing about this software.It seems to an old version of linux.
I'll keep posting my progress as there are so many of these out there and hardly any info.

 

[wrongdon]

Ok dumped the 10gb image on a 10gb drive and it gave an error on the last hunk of data.I tossed it in anyways and it works.I am guessing the error may be due to the slightest difference in size of the drives..
So to prove my point from above i dumped it on a 13gb drive and i was sure it would not work because it is not the right size..The dam thing worked...so this leaves me stumped as to why some drives work and some don't.

 

[KevinMullins]

"mmmmmm...... cherry pie"
(Liam reference)

I finally got to play around with this a bit and as the instruction on that site mentions, size of drive does matter.....to a point.
I used chdman32.
Seems it really all depends on what size the drive is that the CHD was created from. (like you had mentioned)
Liam's image came from a 20GB drive, so it should be dumped to a 20GB or slightly better drive.
I took his image and dumped it to a 30.7GB drive twice without a hitch, worked perfectly. But anything much bigger than that gave me fits. (I only had a 60GB and 120GB handy, both were Maxtors)

I then created an image from the original 40GB drive that was in my machine and it absolutely would not dump to a smaller (30GB) drive. Wouldn't work on the bigger drives either, would write to them fine, but wouldn't work in the machine. I don't have another 40GB drive around to try my image on, but I created an image twice and they came out identical in size.

All the failures I had gave me the same "could not mount" type error you had. (Error 6 or whatever, then reboot)

The "hunk" numbers proved my point....there was almost exactly double the number of hunks from my 40GB drive versus Liams 20GB drive.
And when my 40GB image would fail trying to go to the 30GB drive, the numbers were proportional to the missing space it need. (that extra 10GB)
So obviously the CHD images take into account for data "space", not just the data itself. (otherwise the images would be teeny if it was "just" data)

Oddly the CHD I made of my drive is smaller than Liams.....I don't quite get that.
His was 1.61GB and mine was 1.52GB even though my original drive was bigger. (?)

So now the quest is to figure out how to create a small enough image to dump this to a smaller CompactFlash drive. (inexpensive size that is)
That 10GB CHD image would be a good choice to start with.
Would be nice to find a CHD image from say a 2GB drive if it exists. I know a Megatouch Titanium is barely 850MB, figured these Infinity games weren't much bigger than those data wise.

By the way Liams version is " 2.03c NJ " mine is " 2.03b ".
I think the NJ versions have some minor difference in pricing and such due to different regulations in New Jersey. Or something to that affect.

Also learned all the highscores are saved directly to the drives....

This was the first time I had ever messed with chdman, so it was kinda cool just to toy with it a bit.

 

[wrongdon]

it sounds as if your experience was similar to mine.So yes,even though the data is 1.61gb the chd occupies the space of the drive it was made from , that seems simple enough.I would like to find a way to pause the boot sequence and read all those lines.As our problem seems to be that the software loaded on the drive is expecting the same size drive it was originally installed on and that the chd requires a similar sized drive.Even if we manage to strip the image down to fit on a 2gb cf i think we will be help up as the software wont be happy.I could be wrong there , i hope i am as it would be really cool to toss these on compact flash.

 

[KevinMullins]

I don't think the Touchmaster software is looking for anything ..... I think it has to do with chdman being able to "finalize" the image. Like the boot record or whatever isn't correct or something. The data may be there, but the drive itself isn't "bootable" so to speak.

I dunno, just shootin' in the dark here.

 

[Phetishboy]

Hey-o, Plugged the 'new' HD in this morning, reconfigured my settings, recalibrated the touchscreen and presto! My machine ran a solid hour in attract never freezing up once. I played through a game of Mahki, no problems. THANK YOU DON!! The only issue I noticed was that the drive is a little noisy/buzzy. Does that mean it's going bad too? Be nice to have a brand new drive in here at some point. But damn nice to have it working for now. Now, can I get a new 20G HD, and have it reformatted to change this to a Touch Juke? Like create a partition or something so that it can be half megatouch/half juke? Or is that impossible?

 

[wrongdon]

I'm glad it works.Thats another reason i didn't charge you as all these old drives around here are only so so.If you buy a 20gb I'll set it up for you if you want.I wasn't happy with the one i used in mine either so i just bought a lot of 10 hard drives off ebay today so i have some better ones (hopefully) laying around.
Wow,,that would be cool to be able to do what you are thinking..I wouldn't know where to begin to try that.But one option i could think of is to set up a second hard drive on the second IDE channel and maybe add a toggle switch to only apply power to the drive you want to use.With power to the primary drive you would have touchmaster and then i would imagine you would have to shut it down , flip the switch to kill the first drive and it would boot from the second drive..I have no idea how you would set it up as a juke though.
Don

Hey-o, Plugged the 'new' HD in this morning, reconfigured my settings, recalibrated the touchscreen and presto! My machine ran a solid hour in attract never freezing up once. I played through a game of Mahki, no problems. THANK YOU DON!! The only issue I noticed was that the drive is a little noisy/buzzy. Does that mean it's going bad too? Be nice to have a brand new drive in here at some point. But damn nice to have it working for now. Now, can I get a new 20G HD, and have it reformatted to change this to a Touch Juke? Like create a partition or something so that it can be half megatouch/half juke? Or is that impossible?