Making Star Wars Trilogy force feedback hardware work

[luisfcorreia]

Hey there, greeting from Portugal!

A friend asked me for help on getting a very old "Star Wars Trilogy Deluxe" cabinet back to life.
He has everything except the gameboard.

As soon as I can get my hands on it, I'll get board roms from both DriveBoards and start work on disassembling them (assuming they're very similar to the ones from Sega Rally 2).

My main goal is to try and make an interface similar to the one described here http://supermodel3.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=256.

I've also noticed that currently there is no support for Force FeedBack devices other then Windows, when SDL 2.0 already supports it, hopefully cross platfom.
This is my secondary goal.

I know that my path ahead is a difficult one but I'm focused


p.s. my friend also has a fully working two seater Sega Rally but it is not Model 3 hardware. Plans are also in place to make that FFB hardware work with emulators

Cheers,
Luis

[Bart]

I'd like to move Supermodel to SDL 2.x at some point (I'd also like to add a wx-based GUI, which I know is doable with SDL 1.x). It would be fantastic to see SDL-based force feedback!

As far as I know, the Star Wars Trilogy drive board has not been dumped (but that could be inaccurate -- best to check the latest MAME ROM set). Let me know if you need any general help understanding how to debug Supermodel. I don't know much about the drive board. Nik did that. Something to note is that Nik started but did not finish a high-level emulation of the drive board. The idea was to emulate it without requiring the drive board ROMs to be loaded and the Z80 to be emulated. I don't think he got it working quite right and the simulation mode is in a state of disrepair. Best to first try to get it working with straightforward Z80 emulation (this is also more useful to the MAME team).

Two important things to note:

1. There is a very good debugger built into Supermodel that lets you step through code in each of the emulated CPUs, including the drive board Z80. Look at the Makefile and you'll see that you can compile Supermodel with the debugger enabled. Then, Alt+B enters the debugger and -enter-debugger starts Supermodel in the debugger.

2. The Makefile is garbage, I know It doesn't track dependencies properly. You will notice that if you add a member to a class and compile, Supermodel will often crash. The reason is that only the .cpp file corresponding to that class is recompiled, and other modules that reference it do not get updated. In such cases, always try "make clean" first before pulling your hair out trying to figure out why it suddenly crashes.

[SailorSat]

As far as I understand he has the original Force Feedback board?
One could feed the original board with data like a real model3 would - no need to emulate the z80 on it.

That's what I do for my racing cabinets. The PC acts a a replacement for the video- and cpu-board only.

[luisfcorreia]

Hi!

yes, my friend has the original force feedback boards in (hopefully) working condition.

Can you share more details of what you're doing?

In anycase please remember, the Star Wars Trilogy has two drive boards, for X and Y axes as it is a joystick and not just a steering wheel.

(He also has a fully working Sega Rally, not model 3, from which we could learn the communication protocol between cpu and drive boards)

Cheers,
Luis

[luisfcorreia]

Hi,

yes, he has the original hardware minus the actual game board.

Do you have a guide on how you're connecting to your gameboard?
I can see an arduino in there (which I'm also planning to use) plus some other glue logic.

We're still investigating a lot of stuff over these fun Sega systems, later on in August I'll try to get dumps of all ROMs I can get my hands on.
Including some from a Model 2 sega cabinet.


Cheers,
Luis

[SailorSat]

I have two versions done - First with Arduino Mega, second one with Teensy2++ - both work the same

Well most information I got has been flowing into my tools - ( https://github.com/SailorSat/daytona-utils - focus on the "DaytonaArduino" ), however I have never done a specific "how to".
"Daytona USB"s (pun intended) first idea was to be a "drop-in" plug and play solution (and to some degree it is) to hook up any model1/2/3 cabinet by simply plugin the original wiring into it ( this works fine ).
It also supports the Lamps and Driveboard Interface (output only) - however my plans to make it a generic force feedback device had to be canned, as the sega drive board does not support multiple effects at once, but nearly every single windows game uses multiple effects.

From a technical point of view - the interface is a 8 bit wide output with an (optional) 8 bit wide input. ( = 8/16 wires )
Its the same for model 1/2/3 - although I'm curious how SWT adds the 2nd drive board into the wiring.

Most of the protocols are actually known as most of the racers share the same "core". Only exception would be the two Sega Rally games which use a unique protocol.
The differences per game being "special effects" or advanced stuff for the deluxe cabinets (airbags on Virtua Racing, pneumatic valves on Daytona, etc.).
I also did some "translation" between them (it works fair enough).

As for the "how to get the data", well I recently added the raw drive and lamps data to the supermodel outputs, however I don't know if there is a "working" output path for non-windows systems.
Need to fool around a little with SWT I guess.

(a more or less hacked scud race - proof of concept )

[luisfcorreia]

So, I see that you're building a replacement PCB.

It does look very cool, congrats SailorSat!

[SailorSat]

I am unable to find a wiring diagram for SWT and for the time being I cannot test the emulation too
However, judging from the images in the manual I assume they only use one line (8 wires) and switch between X- and Y- Servo Board via command

[luisfcorreia]

Hey guys,

I'm going to get access to a physical SWT machine next friday.

My plans include reading any EPROM's I can get my hands on, and of possible try to guess how both boards are interconnected.

Since my expertese on these matters is not so good, let me know of anything I should be taking notes or otherwise gather more intel.
I'll have about three hours of free access to the machine

See you soon!

Luis

[luisfcorreia]

news flash,

the machine hasn't got the control board we were looking for.

this arcade was "sold for parts" and apparently some stuff is missing