tomcat: MAME ROM Information.
History:
TomCat (c) 1983 Atari.
A color vector flight simulator where the player chooses between a fixed-wing jet or a helicopter. The player can choose between flying a fixed-wing jet and a helicopter. The universe shows a horizon line, a heads-up display, some simple objects on the ground to provide a reference, and a Battle Zone tank (also on the ground). There is also an enemy helicopter that came from the US Army version of "Battlezone".
- TECHNICAL -
Main CPU : (2x) M6809 (@ 1.512 Mhz)
Sound Chips : (4x) POKEY (@ 1.5 Mhz), TMS5220 (@ 640 Khz)
Players : 1
Buttons : 4
- TRIVIA -
This game was the very last XY Game created at Atari. It was around this time that Atari went 'supernova' but was never finished. By late 1985 Atari had decreed that XY was dead, and despite Jed's demo (which featured two linked TomCats) Jed was unable to get any of the Game Designers interested in working on it. Shortly before the demo, when Jed was costing the hardware, Jed has called American Microsystems Inc. (AMI) to verify the cost of the VG Gate Array. They said that they had contacted someone at Atari and asked him if it was ok if they threw out the tooling for the VG Gate Array and he had said, YES. And no, they didn't remember his name. They were willing to create new tooling for $20K. Jed was planning to investigate using a TMS32010 DSP to replace the AVG State Machine (and the Gate Array along with it), but the handwriting was on the wall so Jed canceled TomCat and accepted Rick's invitation to join the "Hard Drivin'" team.
- STAFF -
Lead Programmer : Jed Margolin
Graphics Designer : Hans Hansen, Doug Snyder
- SOURCES -
Game's rom.
Jed Maegolin homepage; http://www.jmargolin.com
MAME Info:
0.129u4 [Mariusz Wojcieszek]
0.107u1 [Mathis Rosenhauer]
TODO:
* Hook up TMS5220 speech
WIP:
- 0.146: Couriersud improved sound emulation for POKEY chip. Changed audio emulation to emulate borrow 3 clock delay and proper channel reset. New frequency only becomes effective after the counter hits 0. Emulation also treats counters as 8 bit counters which are linked now instead of monolytic 16 bit counters. Fixed high pass filters for POKEY. Added POKEYN device based on modern device. Fixed random lfsr generation. Consolidated polynom code. Removed legacy left overs from pokey code. Added a internal pokey_channel class. Convert all remaining drivers to use the modern pokey device.
- 0.142u3: Angelo Salese removed deprecat.h dependancy and updated irqs accordingly for TomCat.
- 0.138u4: Miodrag Milanovic fixed assert in debug build of TomCat.
- 0.129u5: Couriersud added save state support to TomCat.
- 0.129u4: Mariusz Wojcieszek added TomCat (prototype) (Atari 1985).
- 23rd January 2008: Mariusz Wojcieszek - Here are some preliminary wip screenshots from TomCat, prototype of last Atari vector game. This version runs on dedicated hardware (unlike the older one, which runs on StarWars hardware and is already supported in MAME). It doesn't work completely yet (DSP used for calculations is missing), but I'm sure it will soon. For more information about the game (including game history, screenshots and movies) see Jed Margolin's website - www.jedmargolin.com. Jed Margolin actually designed the TomCat hardware and he also wrote the software. More information at: http://www.jmargolin.com/tomcat/tomcat.htm
- 0.121u4: Mathis Rosenhauer implemented status flag in Star Wars matrix processor, which affects gameplay speed.
- 0.115u1: Changed region proms to user1/2.
- 0.113u3: Derrick Renaud fixed analog controls by adding back a faux VBLANK timing in TomCat.
- 0.108u5: Mathis Rosenhauer rewrote the Atari vector generators, using the schematics and actual state machine PROMs. The state machine is now emulated so timing should be much more realistic. Clipping hardware in bzone and others is emulated instead of hardcoded. Improved accuracy of clocks and various other bits of cleanup. Changed M6809 CPU1/2 clock speeds to 1512000 Hz, VSync to 40Hz and added prom ($1000 - AVG PROM). Removed flags dispose from REGION_PROMS.
- 0.107u1: Mathis Rosenhauer added TomCat (Star Wars hardware, prototype) (Atari 1983).
Recommended Games (Helicopter 3D):
Cobra Command
TomCat
Thunder Blade
Thunder Blade (Tourvision PCE bootleg)
Super Thunder Blade (Mega-Tech)
Apache 3
Metal Hawk
Steel Talons
Air Rescue
Gunblade NY
Zero Gunner
Zero Gunner 2
Under Defeat
Romset: 65 kb / 3 files / 16.8 zip
MAME XML Output:
| | <game name="tomcat" sourcefile="tomcat.c"> |
| | | <description>TomCat (prototype)</description> |
| | | <manufacturer>Atari</manufacturer> |
| | | <rom name="rom1k.bin" size="32768" crc="5535a1ff" sha1="b9807c749a8e6b5ddec3ff494130abda09f0baab" region="maincpu" offset="1"/> |
| | | <rom name="rom2k.bin" size="32768" crc="021a01d2" sha1="01d99aab54ad57a664e8aaa91296bb879fc6e422" region="maincpu" offset="0"/> |
| | | <rom name="136021-105.1l" size="256" crc="82fc3eb2" sha1="184231c7baef598294860a7d2b8a23798c5c7da6" region="user1" offset="0"/> |
| | | <chip type="cpu" tag="maincpu" name="68010" clock="6000000"/> |
| | | <chip type="cpu" tag="dsp" name="TMS32010" clock="16000000"/> |
| | | <chip type="cpu" tag="soundcpu" name="M6502" clock="1789772"/> |
| | | <chip type="audio" tag="lspeaker" name="Speaker"/> |
| | | <chip type="audio" tag="rspeaker" name="Speaker"/> |
| | | <chip type="audio" tag="pokey1" name="POKEYN" clock="1789772"/> |
| | | <chip type="audio" tag="pokey2" name="POKEYN" clock="1789772"/> |
| | | <chip type="audio" tag="tms" name="TMS5220" clock="325000"/> |
| | | <chip type="audio" tag="ymsnd" name="YM2151" clock="3579545"/> |
| | | <display tag="screen" type="vector" rotate="0" refresh="40.000000" /> |
| | | <input players="1" buttons="5"> |
| | | | <control type="stick" minimum="0" maximum="255" sensitivity="50" keydelta="30"/> |
| | | <dipswitch name="Service Mode" tag="IN0" mask="8"> |
| | | | <dipvalue name="Off" value="8" default="yes"/> |
| | | | <dipvalue name="On" value="0"/> |
| | | <driver status="good" emulation="good" color="good" sound="good" graphic="good" savestate="supported" palettesize="0"/> |
|
|
