Attack UFO - Arcade game that uses the 6560

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lance.ewing
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Re: Attack UFO - Arcade game that uses the 6560

Post by lance.ewing »

highinfidelity wrote: Nice, it works!!! I don't know if it's only me, but it seems a bit too stretched vertically than it should. Was it really that way? I mean on real hardware.
Yeah, it probably is stretched a bit. I was playing with the scaling in one of the directions back when I was trying to make it fit into a predetermined window size (based on something I'd been building for Android). This doesn't apply anymore, so I'll try to make it more realistic. I do think that the MAME screen shots I've seen are too much in the other direction though.
lance.ewing
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Re: Attack UFO - Arcade game that uses the 6560

Post by lance.ewing »

plgDavid wrote: It didnt show more than the powered down Attack UFO cabaret itself, not its insides.
Even seeing the powered down cabaret would be great. Did you happen to grab a still frame of it? I can't find one online. No idea what it looks like.
plgDavid wrote:I was interested in this ever since its mention in Bagnall’s book.
On the strength of this, I've just purchased the Kindle version. Looks like a great read. How many times does it mention it?
plgDavid wrote:Tried to ask some of my fellow MAME devs about who still owned it and no one seemed to remember. Being searching for one ever since.
Did that include the guy that wrote the driver? Is there a MAME forum where we could ask?
plgDavid wrote: Whether its a pre release VIC-I or custom mod is anyone’s guess.
Hmmm, yeah, given they were initially targeting buyers such as arcade machine designers, then perhaps this is pre the version we're familiar with.
plgDavid wrote: The only pictures of the pcb are lowres, but afaik the chips markings were sanded off perpetuating the mystery even more.
Yeah, from the photo it is obvious the 40 pin chips have had the chip markings removed. For the smaller chips, it seems to be more a case of a blurry photo. I can just make out the Mitsubishi logo on some of the chips.
plgDavid wrote: I havent watched the last two installments of the video series since....paywall, but presumably the dudes that won the lot still own the cabaret. Something to look into I guess.
Would be great to track them down. I'd love clearer photos of both sides of the PCB.
plgDavid
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Re: Attack UFO - Arcade game that uses the 6560

Post by plgDavid »

lance.ewing wrote:
On the strength of this, I've just purchased the Kindle version. Looks like a great read. How many times does it mention it?

Did that include the guy that wrote the driver? Is there a MAME forum where we could ask?

Yeah, from the photo it is obvious the 40 pin chips have had the chip markings removed. For the smaller chips, it seems to be more a case of a blurry photo. I can just make out the Mitsubishi logo on some of the chips.

Would be great to track them down. I'd love clearer photos of both sides of the PCB.
The first edition Bagnall "company over the edge" book had a whole section on the 6560 dev and how MOS wanted to find companies interested in using the chip, and that in the end it was only used in "one Japanese Space invaders clone" or a similar wording (from memory). Nothing more but was enough :)

[EDIT] I just asked the top current MAME devs if they remember, and I might be onto something. Will update when I know more.

BTW The clearest PCB picture is
http://hico-srv004.pixhotel.fr/sites/de ... image.jpeg
But you probably have seen it.
Is a recent post, so maybe the author might sell it or loan it for research?
http://www.gamoover.net/Forums/index.php?topic=34498.0
lance.ewing
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Re: Attack UFO - Arcade game that uses the 6560

Post by lance.ewing »

plgDavid wrote:I just asked the top current MAME devs if they remember, and I might be onto something. Will update when I know more.
Let us know when you hear back.
plgDavid wrote:BTW The clearest PCB picture is
http://hico-srv004.pixhotel.fr/sites/de ... image.jpeg
But you probably have seen it.
No, I hadn't found that one yet. That's a much better picture than the one I found. It is obviously of a different PCB as well. So there are at least two of these PCBs still out there, possibly three if the one in the cabaret shown in the video you watched isn't one of the two we have photos of.

This one you've found is a lot clearer. I can read the chip number of the M53354P now. It wasn't readable on the other photo. There are more chips with the markings removed in this one. Those three 16 pin chips up in the top right seem to have had their numbers removed. I wonder why? I'd imagine they would have been the tri-state bus transceivers, maybe something like a 74365 tri-state hex buffer (since there aren't enough pins for them to be octal). What would they be trying to hide by removing the markings?

Many of the other chips are now recognisable. The 1K ROM chips are 2708, which is what I'd assumed. And we've got a M53202P, which is the same as a 7402 quad 2-input NOR. I'm going to guess that that is used for the colour RAM chip select logic due to its proximity to the 2114 RAM chips. Perhaps the closest 2114 to the M53202P is the colour RAM. The chip in between them, also with the markings removed, appears to be the same type as the three on the other side of 2114 RAM chips. So maybe that is the tri-state buffer that allows the 6502 to access colour RAM during phase 2.

Looks like someone has damaged the top of the 6560, like it has been burnt.
plgDavid wrote: Is a recent post, so maybe the author might sell it or loan it for research?
http://www.gamoover.net/Forums/index.php?topic=34498.0
Wouldn't that be great? It would be too much to hope for that he would sell it. But a photo as clear as this of the whole of the other side of the PCB would be great. Are you able to try contacting him? If he would be willing to sell it, I wonder how much he'd part with it for?
lance.ewing
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Re: Attack UFO - Arcade game that uses the 6560

Post by lance.ewing »

plgDavid wrote:I was interested in this ever since its mention in Bagnall’s book.
...
The first edition Bagnall "company over the edge" book had a whole section on the 6560 dev and how MOS wanted to find companies interested in using the chip, and that in the end it was only used in "one Japanese Space invaders clone" or a similar wording (from memory). Nothing more but was enough :)
plgDavid wrote: Whether its a pre release VIC-I or custom mod is anyone’s guess.
lance.ewing wrote: Hmmm, yeah, given they were initially targeting buyers such as arcade machine designers, then perhaps this is pre the version we're familiar with.
After reading a bit of the Bagnall book, and getting up to the bits that discuss the 6560, 6562, and 6564, I'm starting to think now that the 6560 in the Attack UFO game is the original 6560 chip designed back in 1976 and completed in 1977.

The way in which the chronology of events is presented in the book suggests that the Japanese company (Ryoto Electric) had already bought the chip prior to the big push by Tramiel for his engineers to produce the TOI, which lead to the work on the 6562 and 6564. The 6562 was basically a 2-week hack of the original 6560 to make it support 40 columns and seems to have been abandoned almost as quickly due to the dependence on expensive RAM. The 6564 was worked on for a lot longer but couldn't be made stable enough. However, the colour generation from the 6564 was fitted back into the version of the 6560 used in the VIC 20. This seemed to be happening towards mid 1980. The MicroPET prototype (i.e. the concept that lead to the VIC 20) was unveiled to Tramiel in May 1980, and although it might have already had the modified 6560 in it, it is unlikely given the timing (and sensitivity of the MicroPET) that Ryoto Electric would have ended up with that version. So Attack UFO must surely have the original unmodified chip. There is no discussion in the book about producing customisations for customers, only that they struggled to sell the original chip, other than to the Japanese arcade game company.

I hadn't thought about this before, but that means that the colour generation logic that I was looking at back in my die shot posts last year originally came from the 6564. Yannes added the multi-colour mode as part of the 6564 work while Charpentier was improving the colour generation itself in the 6564 work. The whole of the 6564 video system seems to have been dropped back into the original 6560, so that is what we're seeing in the 6561 die shot. There is also a suggestion that the sound generation may have been updated, but I'm not certain about that.

I would so love to see a die shot of the Attack UFO 6560. That must be the earliest form of the 6560 rather than being customised. It seems that it isn't that the multi colour mode was disabled, but rather that it hadn't been added yet. Maybe we'll have to wait until one of these Attack UFO PCBs out there stops working due to a video issue and then convince the owner to send it to Kakemoms or John McMaster.

It is interesting that the 1981 Commodore Component Data Catalog has both the 6560 and 6562 in it. This doesn't quite tie up with what the Bagnall book says. The book implies that the 6562 was being worked on for a few weeks prior to a show in early 1980 and was abandoned not long after. The 1981 Catalog suggests that they were still willing in 1981 to sell it to people who happened to want it. The requirements to use it were too expensive for Commodore themselves to use it in a home computer. I assume since they'd designed it, they thought they may as well put it in the catalog in case someone wanted to buy it.
Kakemoms
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Re: Attack UFO - Arcade game that uses the 6560

Post by Kakemoms »

lance.ewing wrote:
lance.ewing wrote: The Mitsubishi logo is recognisable on the 53354 chip. Not sure how somebody managed to read the number. From a quick Google, not a lot of information about this chip
In general, it seems to be difficult to find information on Mitsubishi chips. I think I can make out the Mitsubishi logo on at least four of the chips on the PCB. After searching for a bit, I found the following list of Mitsubishi logic chips that also happens to list next to each the equivalent 7400 series or CMOS chip:

http://www.ceitron.com/semi/ceimitsubishi.html#digital

Apart from the M53354P, the other three Mitsubishi chips appear to be 14-pin chips, so are probably simple logic gate chips.

This PCB would need some tri-state bus transceivers for the address bus, but if it has them, then they aren't 8-bit bus transceiver chips because none of the remaining unidentified chips have enough pins. Perhaps we have a number of 4-bit chips that service that purpose. Hard to say.

I've located the eight ROM images online and I'm now very tempted to try emulating this myself so I can do further diagnostics on how the game is using its memory.
Well, at least later Mitsubishi chips as the M50747 microcontroller was based on the 6502 core and had a mask programable ROM. Apparently they have released over 600 versions of chips with 6502 cores. Later, the Mitsubishi IC devision was renamed Renesaas. So it might be that the pcb contained a Mitsubishi microcontroller, and not the MOS 6502... That would at least explain the missing markings.

PS: Mitsubishi microcontrollers does not have all the opcodes of the original 6502, so one should be able to see this from the ROM files.
groepaz
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Re: Attack UFO - Arcade game that uses the 6560

Post by groepaz »

the ROM _does_ use decimal mode at least...
I'm just a Software Guy who has no Idea how the Hardware works. Don't listen to me.
r.cade
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Re: Attack UFO - Arcade game that uses the 6560

Post by r.cade »

groepaz wrote:the ROM _does_ use decimal mode at least...
Strange, that is the part that Ricoh cut out of it for the NES. It has been said that was the only part that was patented? I find that hard to believe, but who knows.
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