40 replies to this topic

[Christophero Sly]

mr. toast, on Sat Mar 26, 2011 4:01 PM, said:

Now THIS made me throw up a bit

http://www.arcadeath...images/dump.jpg

[Raygunn]

They're both sacrilegious. But STARCASTLE? REALLY? How many cabinets in good shape are left 15? 10? besides, these games aren't on the icade PCB- at least start with a cab that's included on the board. By the way, that looks like a BAD Photoshop job on the Starcastle machine....

[bennybingo]

Christophero Sly, on Sat Mar 26, 2011 6:38 PM, said:

mr. toast, on Sat Mar 26, 2011 4:01 PM, said:

Now THIS made me throw up a bit

http://www.arcadeath...images/dump.jpg

Mr bill says:



OH Nooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!

[mr. toast]

rmaerz, on Sat Mar 26, 2011 5:53 PM, said:

mr. toast, on Sat Mar 26, 2011 4:01 PM, said:

Now THIS made me throw up a bit

http://www.arcadeath...images/dump.jpg

I saw those pix before and I don't recall if those are the cabinets a bunch of guys rescued and moved them into a barn.

In any event, when you look at those photos a lot of those are salvageable.

Okay good, because I saw the pic with the cocktail cabinets and those don't just show up anywhere.

[rmaerz]

mr. toast, on Sun Mar 27, 2011 4:33 AM, said:

rmaerz, on Sat Mar 26, 2011 5:53 PM, said:

mr. toast, on Sat Mar 26, 2011 4:01 PM, said:

Now THIS made me throw up a bit

http://www.arcadeath...images/dump.jpg

I saw those pix before and I don't recall if those are the cabinets a bunch of guys rescued and moved them into a barn.

In any event, when you look at those photos a lot of those are salvageable.

Okay good, because I saw the pic with the cocktail cabinets and those don't just show up anywhere.

There's always a handful of cocktails at the auction. Guess what they have inside of them? Booze? No. 60-in-1 boards? Yes.

Edited by rmaerz, Sun Mar 27, 2011 8:05 AM.

[Fuseball]

rmaerz, on Thu Mar 24, 2011 9:12 AM, said:

You're going to see more and more vector cabinets be converted to 60-in-1s because there just aren't enough people knowledgeable enough in repairing vector monitors let alone arcade PCBs.

Now that really is depressing. In some ways a vector monitor is easier to repair than a raster one, and out of necessity collectors have been fixing them for years so there is a lot of good information out there on how to troubleshoot them. I personally know very little about electronics but I managed to troubleshoot and repair a Wells Gardner colour vector monitor without much trouble and had it hooked up in my Star Wars upright in no time. I managed to get the original Amplifone monitor in the Star Wars going but the red colour gun in the tube had gone.

For years we thought that raster monitors would be around forever so it was cheaper and easier to replace them than fix them. Now even they are becoming a commodity.

Still, that Tempest would make a beautiful dedicated cab again...

[Crazy Climber]

Raygunn, on Sat Mar 26, 2011 8:33 PM, said:

They're both sacrilegious. But STARCASTLE? REALLY? How many cabinets in good shape are left 15? 10? besides, these games aren't on the icade PCB- at least start with a cab that's included on the board. By the way, that looks like a BAD Photoshop job on the Starcastle machine....

Starcastle is rare but it's more of a sought after rareness than actual machines rareness. There is easily hundreds of them.

[bennybingo]

Crazy Climber, on Sat Apr 23, 2011 10:26 AM, said:

Raygunn, on Sat Mar 26, 2011 8:33 PM, said:

They're both sacrilegious. But STARCASTLE? REALLY? How many cabinets in good shape are left 15? 10? besides, these games aren't on the icade PCB- at least start with a cab that's included on the board. By the way, that looks like a BAD Photoshop job on the Starcastle machine....

Starcastle is rare but it's more of a sought after rareness than actual machines rareness. There is easily hundreds of them.

I just loved Star Castle (almost as much as Tempest - which I own), and in all of my searches, I have never come across one in the wild that looked that clean.That's why I feel It's a shame that it was turned into a multi cab.

[bradx]

rmaerz, on Fri Mar 25, 2011 9:07 AM, said:

And regarding MAME: whether it's a MAME front end or not, the 60-in-1 boards are legal to sell. Perhaps the manufacturer has a licensing agreement.

they are technically illegal to sell. the manufacturers are chinese bootleggers, the idea that they would have contacted every single manufacturer and gotten licensed games from namco, nintendo, atari, and still be able to sell the boards for a hundred bones, in direct competition with the copyright owners arcade games which still sell new for thousands of dollars and only include 2 or 3 games, is laughable. the copyright owners are not selling the right to use roms in these boards.

60 in 1 boards are chinese made bootlegs running pirated roms on an embedded MAME board. even if the roms were licensed by some miracle, the mame license clearly states that it is not for commercial use, if it were it would put them on very precarious legal standing. have you seen the instruction manual for one of these boards? the chinglish is hilarious and there is no mention of copyright of course. the 60-in-1 boards contain stolen intellectual property. they are neither licensed by the manufacturers or mame and are not technically legal to sell, at all. you cannot sell any mame based product legally, period. the 60-in-1 boards are derived from mame, and technically just as illegal to sell.

these quotes are from a MAME developer:

Quote

The lower capacity ones appear to be running an older version of MAME (0.36 era and before) that has been ported to the SH2/4 and ARM cpus found on the boards. I've been sent an extract of one of the roms from them which contains MAME-like structures with some copyright strings etc. blanked out.

Quote

I've been sent partial dumps of several of these from fried boards. They contain tell-tale signs of being MAME, for example mame.cfg files, mame.dk readme, MAME romset names, disclaimer strings disabled but not deleted etc.

these were going for $359 with a 60-in-1 installed, and some of the copyright holders had a problem with that...
http://forums.arcade...ad.php?t=110413

namco currently is one of the companies enforcing their copyrights. here is the text of a recent ebay auction for a 48-in-1 they pulled:

Quote

Dear xxxxxxxxxxx,

You recently listed the following auction-style listing:

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX - NEW 48-IN-1 Classic Arcade Multicade JAMMA Game Board

The listing was removed because it violated eBay policy. All fees related to this listing have been credited to your account. We also notified members who placed bids on the item that the listing has been canceled.

The rights owner, Namco Bandai Games Inc., notified eBay that this listing violates intellectual property rights. When eBay receives a report of this type of violation, we remove the listing to comply with the law.

Edited by bradx, Tue Apr 26, 2011 6:51 PM.

[Mxyzptlk]

bradx, on Tue Apr 26, 2011 6:50 PM, said:

rmaerz, on Fri Mar 25, 2011 9:07 AM, said:

And regarding MAME: whether it's a MAME front end or not, the 60-in-1 boards are legal to sell. Perhaps the manufacturer has a licensing agreement.

they are technically illegal to sell. the manufacturers are chinese bootleggers, the idea that they would have contacted every single manufacturer and gotten licensed games from namco, nintendo, atari, and still be able to sell the boards for a hundred bones, in direct competition with the copyright owners arcade games which still sell new for thousands of dollars and only include 2 or 3 games, is laughable. the copyright owners are not selling the right to use roms in these boards.

60 in 1 boards are chinese made bootlegs running pirated roms on an embedded MAME board. even if the roms were licensed by some miracle, the mame license clearly states that it is not for commercial use, if it were it would put them on very precarious legal standing. have you seen the instruction manual for one of these boards? the chinglish is hilarious and there is no mention of copyright of course. the 60-in-1 boards contain stolen intellectual property. they are neither licensed by the manufacturers or mame and are not technically legal to sell, at all. you cannot sell any mame based product legally, period. the 60-in-1 boards are derived from mame, and technically just as illegal to sell.

these quotes are from a MAME developer:

Quote

The lower capacity ones appear to be running an older version of MAME (0.36 era and before) that has been ported to the SH2/4 and ARM cpus found on the boards. I've been sent an extract of one of the roms from them which contains MAME-like structures with some copyright strings etc. blanked out.

Quote

I've been sent partial dumps of several of these from fried boards. They contain tell-tale signs of being MAME, for example mame.cfg files, mame.dk readme, MAME romset names, disclaimer strings disabled but not deleted etc.

these were going for $359 with a 60-in-1 installed, and some of the copyright holders had a problem with that...
http://forums.arcade...ad.php?t=110413

namco currently is one of the companies enforcing their copyrights. here is the text of a recent ebay auction for a 48-in-1 they pulled:

Quote

Dear xxxxxxxxxxx,

You recently listed the following auction-style listing:

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX - NEW 48-IN-1 Classic Arcade Multicade JAMMA Game Board

The listing was removed because it violated eBay policy. All fees related to this listing have been credited to your account. We also notified members who placed bids on the item that the listing has been canceled.

The rights owner, Namco Bandai Games Inc., notified eBay that this listing violates intellectual property rights. When eBay receives a report of this type of violation, we remove the listing to comply with the law.

Great post. So are we not going to see the boards for sale anymore? Anywhere?

[bradx]

naw, they're everywhere just like mame. thats why i said "technically" illegal. back in the 80s illegal bootleg PCBs were common too in arcades, but back then they were for single games. our copyright laws dont apply where the boards are made so there is no way to stop them. every now and then they bust someone importing them or selling them, but like bootleg CDs or DVDs if theres no way to stop them at the source, theres not alot they can do about it. its alot like mame, if you have one in your house nobody is going to care, but if you open a business selling them then the possibility of consequences increase. likewise, if you download some music CDs youre probably not gonna get hassled, but if you open up shop selling them its more of a risk. people buy and sell all kinds of illegal stuff all the time without getting busted for it.

Edited by bradx, Tue Apr 26, 2011 10:06 PM.

[bradx]

Quote

2nd August 2009: MooglyGuy - I'm not sure how many people are aware of this, but there's an interesting little non-working game in MAME that goes by the unassuming nickname, "39in1". It's one in a line of numerous "Xin1" games, including 4in1, 9in1 and 48in1 as well, though only 4in1 and 48in1 have been dumped in addition to 39in1.. The reason why these games are interesting is because they're bootlegs of MAME, hacked to run on a 200MHz Intel XScale system-on-a-chip, so there's a very good chance that these games will be the first instance of MAME self-virtualizing, albeit with an earlier version than itself.

# 0.134u2: Guru added clones '48 in 1 MAME bootleg (ver 3.02)' and '48 in 1 MAME bootleg (ver 3.09)'.

# 15th August 2009: Guru - Dumping a MAME rip-off 48-in-1 PCB.

http://maws.mameworl...ws/romset/39in1

[rmaerz]

bradx, on Tue Apr 26, 2011 6:50 PM, said:

rmaerz, on Fri Mar 25, 2011 9:07 AM, said:

And regarding MAME: whether it's a MAME front end or not, the 60-in-1 boards are legal to sell. Perhaps the manufacturer has a licensing agreement.

they are technically illegal to sell. the manufacturers are chinese bootleggers, the idea that they would have contacted every single manufacturer and gotten licensed games from namco, nintendo, atari, and still be able to sell the boards for a hundred bones, in direct competition with the copyright owners arcade games which still sell new for thousands of dollars and only include 2 or 3 games, is laughable. the copyright owners are not selling the right to use roms in these boards.

Yes, you are correct!

About a week after I posted this, I spoke with a person that has a business selling arcade games. We got on the subject of 60-in-1 boards and he did say that they were illegal. He says that they sell them but they won't advertise them. According to him, he said that the Centipede-Millipede-Missile Command boards are legal as well as the Ultracade boards.

I believe the Williams multi may be legal as well - not sure...

At the auctions I attended over the last year, there were cabinets with 60-in-1 boards all over the place - they outnumbered the original cabinets. I assumed that they were legal since there were so many of them.

Then I found out why there were so many of them after I installed one myself - they're easy as hell to install!

[bradx]

rmaerz, on Wed Apr 27, 2011 6:46 AM, said:

bradx, on Tue Apr 26, 2011 6:50 PM, said:

rmaerz, on Fri Mar 25, 2011 9:07 AM, said:

And regarding MAME: whether it's a MAME front end or not, the 60-in-1 boards are legal to sell. Perhaps the manufacturer has a licensing agreement.

they are technically illegal to sell. the manufacturers are chinese bootleggers, the idea that they would have contacted every single manufacturer and gotten licensed games from namco, nintendo, atari, and still be able to sell the boards for a hundred bones, in direct competition with the copyright owners arcade games which still sell new for thousands of dollars and only include 2 or 3 games, is laughable. the copyright owners are not selling the right to use roms in these boards.

Yes, you are correct!

About a week after I posted this, I spoke with a person that has a business selling arcade games. We got on the subject of 60-in-1 boards and he did say that they were illegal. He says that they sell them but they won't advertise them. According to him, he said that the Centipede-Millipede-Missile Command boards are legal as well as the Ultracade boards.

I believe the Williams multi may be legal as well - not sure...

At the auctions I attended over the last year, there were cabinets with 60-in-1 boards all over the place - they outnumbered the original cabinets. I assumed that they were legal since there were so many of them.

Then I found out why there were so many of them after I installed one myself - they're easy as hell to install!

yeah theyre easy to install and i think overall they are good for the hobby as they keep people interested in the classics, the only problems i have with them are A) supporting bootleggers, and B) if someone trashes an original cab to stuff one in. for generic jamma cabs i think theyre ok. personally i'd rather mame a cab tho...

[rmaerz]

bradx, on Thu Apr 28, 2011 2:49 AM, said:

if someone trashes an original cab to stuff one in.

The boards are really small so if someone trashes a cab doing the install then they have issues.

What I really hate is e.g. a Pac-Man cab with some lame "Arcade Legends" marquee and lame control panel.

[jhd]

While calling in an "arcade" is perhaps a bit generous, there are a handful of games at the Greyhound Bus Depot here in Calgary. Included is a 60-in-1 and on or two other xxx-in-1 machines.

While these are technicaly illegal here in Canada too, I suspect that the machine generates enough revenue to compensate for the (minimal) that someone would trouble to report the operator to whomever might care.

Personally, I was just happy to be able to play Donkey Kong while I waited for my bus.