Omnimaga
General Discussion => Technology and Development => ROM Hacking and Console Homebrew => Topic started by: kruuth on January 10, 2013, 12:16:04 am
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Hey, first post, and I wasn't sure where to stick this. Anyway. I was wondering, has anyone ever looked into hacking one of these multi-game jamma arcade boards like the 138 or 352 in 1? They're running a version of *nix and checking the games listing against some sort of encrypted checksum files on an SD card. Thoughts/ideas?
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Hey, welcome to Omnimaga! I'd say this is pretty much the right place to put this. Now when you say multi-game arcade boards are you reffering to like the atari controllers with a whole slew of games built in, Arcade machines with multiple games on them, or something else? I've never seen a topic here about such an endeavor, but that is not to say that no one here has attempted it. What exactly are you wanting to do, modify it so you can run different games? It's probably doable, it just depends on how things are set up and if the board has writeable memory.
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I think other forums have more users that have experience with the arcade boards you're talking about.
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I'd love to find one. Unfortunately everyone seems to put their hands up on this.
What I know is that it is running everything off the SD card. There's some sort of serial number on the SD, and then there's a checksum for the games listing. I don't even know where to begin.
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What's the brand name?
I actually had a 5-in-1 arcade thing, but it did real hardware, either emulation via FPGA or just an ASIC with all the stuff inside.
Yours sounds like much more fun. Have you got a directory listing to show?
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I think it's Ting Le or something like that. If you google "138 in 1 Jamma" You'll see it.
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This (http://www.computersolutions.cn/blog/tag/jamma/) might be a good place to start, as well as here (http://www.jammaplus.co.uk/forum/default.asp).
It's called a XingYe (or XingLi, I can't tell) 138-in-1 JAMMA board.
According to the first site, the *nix version you mention is just a gzipped kernel and ramdisk on an arm board ("FriendlyARM") - linux 2.6.36, to be exact. The blog post provides a readout of the bootscript and filesystem. It looks like it would be fairly easy to construct your own replacement kernel/zImage/bootscript/etc if you so desired, assuming you have a little experience in those areas.
The second site is just a forum that the first article points to; you may be able to find more answers to your question(s) there.
Have fun and good luck!
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I know. I have been in contact with him. There isn't much more about it.
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What exactly do you want to do with the board? Also, I'm just curious, but how much do you know about the hardware of this board?
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I know the CPU, the linux version, the frontend, the version of mame, etc.
What I want to do is be able to copy the SD card, and add/remove games.
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Granted, I'm no expert, but the first thing that sticks out in my mind is attempting to get your own custom code to run on the device. I'm assuming you have access to the sd card and can read/write/modify files on it. Is there anything preventing you from doing so? As long as you have a backup of the original files on the card, you shouldn't have to worry about screwing anything up. Also, is there a toolchain or compiler out there for this board? At best, you may be able to load your own code through the current kernel through some hex editing or an exploit or something along those lines. At worst, you could end up compiling your own kernel and version of mame, which isn't the end of the world. IDK if any of this helps at all, but right now I'm just thinking through how I would approach something like this.
Just my two cents.
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Correct. It has an edge connector for CGA and a VGA port, however, I have not had much luck getting my own code to run outside of one or two things on the screen popping up.
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If you have access to the SD card, why not tell us what's on it? That could help. After all, if it's just Linux on the thing without any special gimmicks, you could just send new binaries to /usr/bin, set it up so it goes to a shell, and you're good to go.
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I tried that...problem is getting it to output to the VGA or CGA. That seems to be the big hangup right now. I need to order another one as I had to ship the old one back to the owner.
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There is some custom stuff...but it's running FriendlyArm and the only way I can get things going onto the screen is to pipe it out to /dev/tty1.
It looks like the rcS file is mostly commented out but it calls three things
/bin/dorb
/etc/rc.d/init.d/mkjoy
/bin/xswinit
then runs the shell script that starts the frontend.
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Try reading that shell script that starts the frontend. If possible, post it here so we can read it too.
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It's literally one line. It just starts up the frontend. It's something like "./xrunmh"
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Oooh, now that sounds like an opportunity. You have a shell script available that starts the x server it runs.
check in /bin and /usr/bin for startx. If that exists, put that in there instead, and you might be lucky enough to have a standard xorg server running!
edit: actually, try editing xrunmh. It sounds like it might be a script too, in which case we may learn about any special cases for launching X.
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No. xrunmh is the frontend. It's a hack of LemonLauncher for linux. The problem with it is that it does a check on this game listing checksum file and if it's incorrect or the menus have been edited then it just goes into a reboot loop.
This is an embedded system, it doesn't have xorg or x.
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Oh, I tried building my own version and it won't run. Not sure why. I think it has to do with how it outputs or something. If I open their version, xrunmh in a hex editor then I can actually see the filename it's looking for called games.bin.
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Is it an md5sum? If so, generating a new one should be pretty easy. It sounds like it's intended for verifying the files, rather than preventing other apps from running.
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is not an md5 from what i can tell. i think it would be easier to have the launcher top just go on regardless of the checksum but I've got no idea how top do that.
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Well, that's not easier if it's built into a binary. If it's a shell script, then you would just alter that particular line of code.
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yeah that's what i figured. any thoughts on how top go about this?
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How big is the SD card image? It would be really helpful to be able to see it all.
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i can post the image it's about 120 mb.
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That would help a lot.
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Here's the image. Look at the second linux partition.
http://depositfiles.com/files/xjihei4ax
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Hi im also interested in hacking these boards. I have a 355 in 1 and 138 in 1. Have you noticed (and this might be a noob comment) that the SD cad is a 4gig but in windows its 50mb? Also I have copied the exact files from game board sd card to anther SD card and game board failed to boot. Any luck with youre attempts at hacking?
Thanks
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Smerff, your problem is that the SD cards have multiple partition, but windows doesn't recognize ext partitions. If you open it in disk management you'll see it.
Also, when copying, simply copying the files isn't enough. You need to copy the partition layout as well. The easiest ways to do this are all on linux, but there are some windows programs that can help you out.
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Hmm ok thank you. So do you know a program or should stop being a noob and learn to use Linux once and for all?
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Well, reading the ext partitions is difficult on windows. That really would be easiest done on linux, although you could easily do so off of a liveCD.
If you're going with linux in some form anyway, the easiest way to perfectly duplicate an SD card is with the dd command.
sudo dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sdc
for example, would duplicate the second drive in the computer. SD cards are treated like drives in this case. Make sure you have the right disks, though!
For reading/writing to them, the other partitions should show up readily in a file manager when you plug in the SD card.
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Hey thanks this sounds great. So ive never used or seen Linux. Ill watch some tutorials on youtube and get my head around it then go about duplicating an SD card. What would be of my first interest is if I could plug a 355 in 1 SD into a 138 in 1 board or vice versa. Then go about hacking and adding/removing games
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Do they have similar hardware? If so, then it would probably work just fine.
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Hey sorry took so long to reply. They both work with either SD card. Meaning there must be a way to combine all the good games onto one SD card. Ill start look into linux
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I wonder if this program would work on the Chinese boards: http://www.phoenixarcade.com/ArcadeSD.htm
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Ok so ive opeed the other partitions with a Linux opener program and I can see all the roms and the mame programe ect ect. Im waiting for a 750g HDD to arrive then Ill partition it to have Linux os on it, so I can copy ect. Im first going to try duplicate one of the SD cards and see if it works. If successful I will try adding a game like defender from one sd to my new experimental SD card. Problemis I will have to find where all the list directories is kept to add it to the ffront end. Its a wee bit confusing. Total gig of space one SD card is about 1.2gb. If I were to upload it maybe someone could find out how it works? Anyways keep you posted
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I don't have permissions on the SD cards in Ubuntu to copy, edit or even open some files. Trying to gain permissions. Would help if I wasn't such a noob
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Run as root?
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How do I do that? lol
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su
(or sudo <command>)
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I managed t gain access to permissions, edited game list: Tried adding donkey kong. Then saved cofig file. Next thing sd card disappeared and wont show up again. I used sudo chmod -R 777 which im finding out is BAD!SD wont work in game board either now. It shows the crap and says happy family or whatever but then goes to coloured screen. I can still access dip settings but cant load frontend. Damn it
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I hope you made a backup copy of your memory card before changing anything.
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Na I made a backup of the game list and then as I was editing it I thought of making a backup of the whole SD card then it all disappeared. I might have to copy the other game board SD card over to that SD then try editing a third card. That whole "sudo chmod -R 777" command is bad but I found anther command that only makes me the access rights instead of the card being completely accessible by anyone. Does anyone know why it has disappeared though?
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HAHAHAHA Man am I pleased, to my massive relief and much unnecessary software I discovered that the cheap Chinese SD card reader I was using just so happened to crap out. Guess it didn't like the Chinese SD card hahaha how ironic. Ok so im back in action, have changed the config file and am starting the back up OH YEAH!!!
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Good to hear. :) Have you had any luck changing the games or not yet?
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Not yet, Im still making a back up. Its 3 partitions and im having to change ownership of EVERY folder individually before I can copy them. 70% there
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Weird, one file wont copy, I have permissions but its saying can't copy special file. Its called "console" looks like a word file, its 0 bytes. Prob nothing at all but whats a bet it wont work without. Im going to attempt a clone of the game card then gonna put it in my arcade and watch it catch on fire. Update soon: Tea ready :p
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Got games on there. Now working on building a new binary. How does someone convert params for config to a makefile?
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Next step here is advancemame. Not having a lot of luck. Anyone here got experience building advancemame?
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I'm afraid not. Are there that many MAME games you want to play? Seems like covering handhelds and consoles should get you usable clones anyway.
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Ive been tinkering with the 500-in-1 game-elf SD card.
One problem im having is as soon as i alter the gamelist it go's into a re-boot cycle
even if you just alter 1 letter its bizzare.
But you can access the game edit section and any roms you have added and altered the gamelst.cfg to show your new rom . the added rom/game will show up ok but when you exit it follows the re-boot cycle again. :(
im more looking at adding my own selection of roms rather than getting round the serial number
items ive added are ROM/Snap/cfg/nv ram
ive managed to clone the card easy enough that boots and plays ok , and this comes in handy for tinkering with with no comeback if i mess up.
if you require to write to the sd through ubuntu just bring up the terminal and type sudo nautilus
then your password , it will warn you there is insufficient space but write anyway and it does the job .
reagards
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That's not bizarre at all if it has a checksum as part of the boot cycle.
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That could be true :)
Its bizzare that ive altered alot of other cfg files + added and delated files but it's just that one file that causes the problem.
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Managed to crack it in the end
Kruuth if you need more info lmk
but im now able to add roms that are supported by xmame or aemu etc
cheers
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We got it going....we're able to add roms. The thing that we need now is to compile proper MAME distros. If someone can do that I'd be forever grateful. I can get advancemame to go but it's slow. That leaves SDLmame, and mame4all. Neither I can get to build.
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i was looing at getting other emus working like gens etc
has someone cracked the H binarys ? this could make like easier
you can add roms but cant mess with the xrun.conf as this also has a checksum
to be honest im getting fed up of looking at the binarys but will have another look at them after the new year festivities
cracked binarys for the vertical are here http://www.twentyways.com/2013/10/01/cracking-the-276-in-1-jamma-board/
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We're past that. We have a working linux on there. Now it's a function of building emus. THe one we really want is MAME but I don't have enough know-how to do it.
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Ok you care to share any of your progress
thanks
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On the KLOV boards look for "forget the 19-in-1" board thread. We've got linux going, and we've fixed the issues with the video not working as well. I'm still not able to build anything but advancemame, which is slow.
http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=229853