M8 kiosk

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Fiskbit
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M8 kiosk

Post by Fiskbit »

Voodooween dumped the M8 kiosk's firmware and was kind enough to take a lot of photos of the interior, which I've attached. The kiosk consists of a power unit, a standard NES-001 NES-CPU-03 main board, a 60-pin M8 cartridge, and an LED and game selector board.

The main board is modified such that it doesn't have a CIC and the CIC's host reset output is directly connected to the M8 cartridge. Two fully-populated joypad ports are hooked up to the joypad 2 connector to allow a controller and zapper to both be connected at once. It otherwise looks stock.

The 60-pin M8 cartridge plugs into the NES cartridge slot via an adapter, which I do not have a picture of. It has the PRG and CHR ROMs for all 16 games, and the 'firmware' is actually just one of these games, with no special hardware controls. Mirroring is controlled by 16 DIP switches (switch down = H, switch up = V). The board has connectors S1 for a timer switch, P2 for the main board reset, P3 for the LED and game selector board, and P4 for power. The timer and ROM muxing appear to be handled by this board. The timer switch provides 4 settings: 20 seconds, 3 minutes, 6 minutes, and 25 minutes. I don't know what happens when the timer expires, and I don't know if it can be disabled.

The LED board provides 16 LEDs to show the currently selected game and a game select button to switch to the next game. Presumably, pressing the button resets the console and increments the selected slot.
Attachments
M8 back.jpg
M8 front 1.jpg
M8 front 2.jpg
M8 front 3.jpg
M8 front 4.jpg
Fiskbit
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Re: M8 kiosk

Post by Fiskbit »

Main board and LED board.
Attachments
M8 main front.jpg
M8 main back.jpg
M8 LED front 1.jpg
M8 LED back 1.jpg
M8 LED back 2.jpg
Fiskbit
Posts: 891
Joined: Sat Nov 18, 2017 9:15 pm

Re: M8 kiosk

Post by Fiskbit »

Interior, joypad ports, power connections (right connector goes to P4 on M8 board), rear ports, and various game configurations. The photo showing the games is from Steve Lin. Note that the 'firmware' ROM is not necessarily in the first slot and not necessarily even present at all, so the timer presumably does not reset to the first slot.
Attachments
M8 interior.jpg
M8 joypad ports.jpg
M8 power.jpg
M8 rear.jpg
M8 games.jpg
kmg
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Re: M8 kiosk

Post by kmg »

Very nice. I don't suppose anybody bothered to verify the contents of all the game EPROMs?
lidnariq
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Re: M8 kiosk

Post by lidnariq »

Heh, so the M8 is effectively just a mapper.
Fiskbit
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Re: M8 kiosk

Post by Fiskbit »

I've asked if the games were confirmed to match the consumer versions and will report back when I hear.

While it is just a mapper, it's actually an interesting case from the perspective of ROM headers because there is no ROM to assign to this mapper. None of the games require the mapper hardware; even the firmware is just NROM and isn't even present in all M8 units. Furthermore, it's challenging to make games that rely on this mapper, because there isn't any hardware for them to access. All I can think of is that games would be able to communicate using the initial RAM state when switching games. This is something that exists outside the header formats.

The M8 shares a lot of similarities with the FamicomBox (16 slots, selected-game LEDs, two joypad 2 ports, a timer of some sort), but the FamicomBox requires FamicomBox-aware software in slot 0 and all slots in the stock unit have meaningful differences compared to a standard console. I've been in a debate for some time on whether the FamicomBox should get an NES 2.0 console type or not, but unlike the M8, there actually is something that can use that header.
Fiskbit
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Re: M8 kiosk

Post by Fiskbit »

Looks like all of the games are standard releases. This is mentioned on the Forest of Illusion page I linked above.
kmg
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Re: M8 kiosk

Post by kmg »

D'oh! Note to self: read first, ask questions later :)
tepples
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Re: M8 kiosk

Post by tepples »

Does that make M8 a multicart mapper? Such mappers are designed to turn a set of unmodified (or very lightly modified) ROMs for a simpler mapper into one bigger ROM image.

Make your selection now!
NewRisingSun
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Re: M8 kiosk

Post by NewRisingSun »

It is not a mapper, because it switches between several cartridge connectors. A mapper switches the address lines after the cartridge connector.
Fiskbit
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Re: M8 kiosk

Post by Fiskbit »

This is purely a matter of definitions and context. There is nontrivial cartridge-side hardware and it is clearly mapping memory, either of which is good enough for me to call it a mapper. However, from the context of a header format, it should not be designated a mapper number because there is no software to assign to this mapper and the software cannot interact with the cartridge hardware. It can't be anything but NROM from the perspective of the software.
kmg
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Re: M8 kiosk

Post by kmg »

Nobody's seen this thing in motion and knows the high level behavior of the timer? M82 alternates back and forth between one of the games and then the built-in ROM (similar to FamicomBox). I'd guess M8 would just cycle through all 16, returning to the splash screen once per cycle. There's no point including a timer for 20 sec. if it doesn't also cycle through and advertise all the games.

I'm also curious if the game select button resets the timer or not?
Fiskbit
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Re: M8 kiosk

Post by Fiskbit »

Voodooween's unit has the timer removed, so he's not sure. That makes me wonder if the device is smart enough to disable the timer if there is no switch connected. There are probably people on Twitter (Steve Lin?) who have this and can provide more info on timer behavior.

The M8 doesn't use any custom chips, so when someone gets around to tracing out the images, we should be able to narrow down specific behavior (like exact timer length).
Pokun
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Re: M8 kiosk

Post by Pokun »

We had something like this in the video game corner of a local super market in Sweden when I was a kid. I don't know which one it was, but it had a timer that switches games automatically after some time and a round button that allows switching manually.

The games were different though and included The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants, Battletoads and other games that I can't remember.
It always switched games around the time when I came to the first boss in Battletoads.
Fiskbit
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Joined: Sat Nov 18, 2017 9:15 pm

Re: M8 kiosk

Post by Fiskbit »

You may be thinking of the M82 kiosk, which takes cartridges instead of NROM chipsets. It has a game select button and holds 12 games, with labels externally visible. Unlike the M8, it contains a custom chip which I don't believe has been publicly documented.
Attachments
M82.png
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