Lunar Lander on Asteroids. :-)

Hee. Hee-hee-hee. :-)

Working!

After fighting with MAME a bit I got all my patches working.

(I think MAME's vector display is a flash-tube-- seems like stuff stays
on the screen even if the DMAGO isn't being strobed :-) For some
inexplicable reason MAME also shifts the screen "down" in the Asteroids
driver (so running LL code on MAME's Asteroids driver results in the
bottom 1/5th of the screen getting chopped off-- real hardware doesn't
do that. Beats me.)

So, I now have Lunar Lander running on an Asteroids board with only
software mods (and a close relative of my CPU Get Well Kit board).
Button mappings seem OK (Rotate, abort, coins, start, test, etc.).
LL's self test code is expecting "real" Lunar Lander hardware and dies
when run on an Asteroids board normally-- I fixed that though and was
able to verify Dave's test screens (diagonal line, cross hatch, ">",
intensity, etc.) with the test button strobe.

Apparently when the ROMs are working correctly you see that 8 9 10 11 12
message in self test (I also get 14 15 21 22 23 24 25 and a bunch of
others because of the patches apparently). The factory test docs I have
say something to the effect the you will see the sequence of numbers
instead of "ROMS OK" if the foreign language ROM is NOT installed.
(They must have stored the more verbose test mode strings in the third
Vector ROM.)

Anyone an expert on LL software versions? Seems that one version allows
the lander to rotate 360 degrees, where the other allows only 180? Or
did I select a different level or something that allows you 360 degree
control?

I still need to patch up the sound code, but it all looks OK so far.
Played a few games with only rotational control and the Abort button.
That's kinda fun when it doesn't cost quarters to experiment. ;-)
Without sound patches I've rewritten about 2% of the LL code to run on
Asteroids. Not too bad...

On to Asteroids Deluxe!

-Clay
Received on Thu Feb 18 12:57:42 1999