Laser Mame

[mixedgas]

For the Record:

Laser Mame was the invention of Rob Mudryck and Matt Polack
I was setting in Rob's old office in Bay Village one day and he asked me what kind of systems used vector graphics besides laser shows. I mentioned Arcade, Military, Radar, Scientific and Medical CRTS. His next line was like "Have you ever seen the mame emulator?" I explained about the simple core vector graphics engine used on older arcade systems and the next time I was up for a visit, he had some preliminary code. Matt helped out later on parts of it.

Rodney made a similar product when Rob didnt put it in the public domain.
While I respect Rodney for putting a public version of Laser Mame up, I feel a bit of clarification is in order.

Steve Roberts

[allthatwhichis]

That was...odd.

You know my level of ignorance... Is this a way to play other vector graphic games on a projector beyond asteroids? I love asteroids and all, but, I can only amuse myself flying around the same tiny universe for so long. I want to play tempest or star wars.

[carmangary]

LaserMAME is just an extension to MAME. MAME has been around a long time. Much longer than LaserMAME. All of the vector games (Asteroids, Tempest, Tailgunner, Battlezone) are playable in MAME so should be playable in LaserMame.

I would imagine that the LaserMAME part only grabs the frames from MAME and optimizes them and sends them to a DAC. Not that big of an achievment in my opinion.

[allthatwhichis]

Alright Steve, dammit... For a good three minutes I have been questioning my sanity all because you twitched... I don't think you help either Gary...

Now, is this Laser Mame still available?

[carmangary]

These two threads are freaking me out man!

[allthatwhichis]

These two threads are freaking me out man!

Exactly...

I just did a search and found the threadon Pangoilin chat with... um someone... So, I, can't use this to play other games unless I own the ROM of the game I am playing, legally? And I bet these aren't on eBay huh?

[Dr Laser]

Nopes original arcade PCB are half a meter to half a meter ROM boards.
You can get atari 2600 rom for 5$ and you will be fine.

[carmangary]

I have almost all of the MAME ROM images. I'm just a PM away.

[allthatwhichis]

Nopes original arcade PCB are half a meter to half a meter ROM boards.
You can get atari 2600 rom for 5$ and you will be fine.

Those I can find on eBay. That is all I need to have to legally play the game on my projector?

[Pangolin]

What Steve wrote is correct. The real "Laser MAME" is a collaborative effort between Rob Mudryk and Matt Pollack. Although they did not trademark the name, they do absolutely hate other people using the same name...

Technically it is not legal to run MAME (or Laser MAME) unless you OWN the original game ROMs. These would be the stand-up arcade games. I don't think an Atari 2600 ROM beats the requirement...

If you are doing things in private (i.e. your home), then probably the police aren't going to break down your doors and take you to jail. Lots of MAME ROM images are on a site that is hosted in Denmark, since Denmark apparently doesn't have the same copyright laws as other parts of the world.

I will bring the real, original LASER MAME with me to FLEM, but I don't remember how to use MAME (i.e. the keyboard equivalents) so I hope someone else does.

And yes, Pangolin does own an original Asteroids and Tempest game, so at least we are covered for these two .

Best regards,

William Benner

[Dr Laser]

Those I can find on eBay. That is all I need to have to legally play the game on my projector?

Hmmm you in US... I don't know then. You have that YMCA....ops DMSA...or whatever is called....Millennium act. But I think if you have a cartridge and you're emulating Atari 2600. I think it should be ok.

[marconi]

I think Ive been LaserMamed

[carmangary]

What does an Atari 2600 cartridge have to do with LaserMAME?

You would need the ROMS from the stand up arcade game (ie Asteroids) for you to be legal. But really, who cares. It isn't like those companies are making any money off of those games anymore.

[Dr Laser]

Asteroids and many others were ported over from Arcade machine to Atari 2600 by Atari itself!. So they are the same games!.

[Pangolin]

A few points.

The version of Asteroids and the other games that ran on the 2600 were not really the same games. They were really lame versions of the games. To be legit, you have to have the ROMs for what you are emulating, not some dumbed down version of what you are emulating.

And actually yes, Atari and other companies are making money off of these games. You can buy legitimage PC emulators from Atari that have these legacy games.

For a while, Rob Mudryk and Matt Pollack tried to work with an IP attorney to license the games from Atari and others, but it seems that it didn't go very far...

Best regards,

William Benner

[allthatwhichis]

Is the "arcade game board" the ROM?

[buffo]

If you have the entire arcade board, you also have the rom, yes. The rom is part of the circuit board, but it's usually only one (or a few) chips. (Note that you can sometimes find these boards on E-bay, but some of them have had the rom(s) removed.)

A few arcade cabinets could actually be made to play different games just by switching the rom chips and applying different graphics to the exterior of the cabinet. Other boards would play one game only. I believe Asteroids was a single-game board.

MAME recreates (emulates) the circuitry needed to play the game, but you still have to have the rom image to make it work. And unless you actually have the physical ROM, you really don't have a legal way to get a copy of the image of the chip. Nevertheless, there are numerous websites where you can download the rom images needed to make MAME work. And yes, this is copyright infringement - except in specific (and rare) cases where the manufacturer has either released the rom image to the public, or officially declared the software to be abandoned. So you are taking a risk (albeit a small one) by using them.

Adam

[james1095]

Well this has become a bit stale it seems, and the project appears to have died.

Is anyone working to resurrect Laser MAME? How about an output module to drive the cheap soundcard DACs people are making?

I actually own most of the original Atari vector arcade machines, but it sure would be cool to play them on a giant screen with a laser projector

When the project initially appeared I thought it was cool, but never thought I'd own the ($$$$) hardware necessary to do it. Now thanks to dramatic progress in diode lasers, as well as cheap commodity PC hardware outperforming the high end workstations of a few years go I'm getting close to finishing a <$300 RGB projector with ~1.5W output so this could be a reality.

[flecom]

For the Record:

Laser Mame was the invention of Rob Mudryck and Matt Polack
I was setting in Rob's old office in Bay Village one day and he asked me what kind of systems used vector graphics besides laser shows. I mentioned Arcade, Military, Radar, Scientific and Medical CRTS. His next line was like "Have you ever seen the mame emulator?" I explained about the simple core vector graphics engine used on older arcade systems and the next time I was up for a visit, he had some preliminary code. Matt helped out later on parts of it.

Rodney made a similar product when Rob didnt put it in the public domain.
While I respect Rodney for putting a public version of Laser Mame up, I feel a bit of clarification is in order.

Steve Roberts

I hate to reply to such an old thread but it predated me so I would just like to comment...

there may have been a group of people that made the application before the publicly available one, but honestly who cares?

had they released it they would have been (probably) the only laser mame... the reason there is more than one is because they didn't want to share... which is pretty lame

[james1095]

Yeah, MAME is an open source project made possible only by generous contributions of time and expertise. To develop a cool addition and then not distribute it does seem a bit lame. Something with such limited market, especially back at that time, if it isn't open source or at least free, it's pretty much guarranteed to die on the vine.

I have no problem with people trying to make a living, but I'm pretty much always willing to share my hobbies, all I ask from those wanting to duplicate or build off of my own work is give me some credit. It's nice when others do the same.

[JohnYayas]

Well this has become a bit stale it seems, and the project appears to have died.

Is anyone working to resurrect Laser MAME? How about an output module to drive the cheap soundcard DACs people are making?

I actually own most of the original Atari vector arcade machines, but it sure would be cool to play them on a giant screen with a laser projector

When the project initially appeared I thought it was cool, but never thought I'd own the ($$$$) hardware necessary to do it. Now thanks to dramatic progress in diode lasers, as well as cheap commodity PC hardware outperforming the high end workstations of a few years go I'm getting close to finishing a <$300 RGB projector with ~1.5W output so this could be a reality.

LaserMAME is not available but LazyMAME is. It doesn't sound like you realize that LazyMAME exists. Do a search for it. It plays all those games you want and is available and is free. Not sure if it supports your DAC or not, though.

[james1095]

LaserMAME is not available but LazyMAME is. It doesn't sound like you realize that LazyMAME exists. Do a search for it. It plays all those games you want and is available and is free. Not sure if it supports your DAC or not, though.

Neat, no I hadn't heard of it. Anyone have a link? I've found some discussion and a bunch of videos, but no links to builds or an official page.

[blowfly]

Hi James, another user from Seattle! Welcome.

You can find LazyMame on the PL ftp server.

host: ftp.photonlexicon.com
user : plftp
password:ildaswap

If you get it working, let me know. I've been meaning to dig into it.

I met a guy at work who said his friend wrote LaserMame. I could try to find out more about what happened to it.

Have fun,
Mike

[badger1666]

who is the guy on pl that did lazy mame ?
i forgot, i was wondering if it would work with the riya dac ?
i used to use it with easylase ok and want to find out if it going to be made to work
on riya

[mikkojay]

who is the guy on pl that did lazy mame ?
i forgot, i was wondering if it would work with the riya dac ?
i used to use it with easylase ok and want to find out if it going to be made to work
on riya

That was my little project one winter. I made 2 versions- the first worked with EasyLase (this also means soundcards will work) and the second with QM2000. I believe that the zip file that was on the ftp had a copy of the vector.c file I used. The addition of code to the MAME program itself was very minimal. The rest of what made it work was another "middle-man" dll that received and processed the raw vector data, then sent it to a DAC. This was a separate stand alone project, somewhat disconnected from the actual MAME project. Being a c++ mingw newbie, getting all the linking and compiling to be happy was a real nightmare (for me anyway). I also did a lot of trimming to get the resultant exe size trimmed down, and to reduce the compile time by like 90%.
I sent all the code to drLava a while back, I think he was considering an experiment with multiple DAC outputs, RIYA included. That would be cool.
There are multiple variants of rom files out there, I usually tell people to send me a PM with their email address so I can give them a proven working set. I haven't messed with it in a while, it was one of those things where I just did it to see if I could make it work- I am sure everyone here knows how that goes.
-Mike