+ T +

I'm sure many users would appreciate some instructions as to how to get around the locks. Or is it not your intention to share this information?

You can download a MAME0.84 DAT here: http://www.logiqx.com/Dats/MAMEBeta/MAMEBetaHistory.php The entire set can be added to CoinOPS. I wouldn't recommend adding clone sets though because, unlike MAMEoX, CoinOPS does not display set information, only the game title, so you won't be able to tell which set is which. Good news for people that don't like the locks. Well done.

Personally, I wouldn't be comfortable contributing anything to a project where I didn't agree with the ethics and motivations behind it. Deliberately restricting the user experience without a very good reason for doing so isn't something that I see as within the spirit of open and progressive development. I wouldn't compromise this standpoint even if it meant my work reaching a wider userbase. I say this purely as a hypothetical answer to your hypothetical question; it isn't intended as a reference to or criticism of any specific project or developer.

Again, I'd recommend using Romcenter over ClrMAME for checking your FBL ROMs.

I don't use CoinOPS myself so this is based purely on speculation but if the lock requires that you have more than 3000 games and you don't want to have any console games, can you not just add 3000 arcade games? After all, CoinOPS is just MAMEoX so you're not limited to the games included in the download; you can add as many as you want from a full MAME0.84 set.

I'm not aware of any driver issues with decrypted NG ROMs in FBL1.9. The Neogeo driver in 1.9 is exactly the same as in 1.7 except for the ROM changes so I can only suggest generating a new DAT, checking your ROMs with Romcenter as opposed to ClrMAME, and as a last resort try different ROMs.

Assuming everything is fine with your roms and settings, this can happen due changes in the driver's DIP switches. It's not a difficult issue to fix, particularly if you have a previous working version of the driver but some games do this for reasons I was never able to figure out (such as the Commando parent set).

I accept that discussion of download sites and downloading are all a part of emulation but since this topic is serving no other purpose than promotion of a torrent site I'm going to close it. A post in the CoinOPS 4 thread would have been sufficient.

Now available in the usual places. Many thanks for this excellent release.

Damn. I guess that's gonna add up to a lot of kittens then.

The problem with the announcer is due to the older driver, it isn't an Xbox-specific problem. There's nothing that can be done about it, without updating to a newer (slower) driver. I think even the latest MAMEoX driver had this issue. I see. Seems like a strange way to do things but fair enough. Although, if you have the MAMEoX0.72 core, I don't see why you would need to run any games in the MAME-X core. Performance should be about the same. Every time you mention Midway games in Final Burn, iq_132 kills a kitten!

Surely you just put the ROMs you want to run in the MAME-X core in the mamex folder and the ROMs you want to run in the MAMEoX0.72 core in the mame0.72 folder. I haven't used CoinOPS for a long time but I don't see why it would be otherwise. Incidentally, in some testing I did a while ago I didn't notice any significant difference in MK2's performance between MAME-X b6 and MAMEoX 0.72. They both use basically the same driver and the performance issues are due to the Xbox hardware. Some Midway games do run on MAMEoX 0.72 though that don't run in MAME-X.

Well done, sir. Well done.

1.9 is every bit as solid as 1.7, there is no reason to still be using that version. If destronger decides to roll back the CPS2 driver then I would advise using the one from 1.9 as it has additions and improvements over the outdated version that you're using. You need to understand that from a dev point of view, it isn't about just making the games run by any hacky means necessary; it's about emulating accurately with a solid codebase that's as close to the source program as possible. If you just want to play the games using drivers that are years old and don't particularly care for the emulation side of things then there are more suitable programs out there for you than FBL. EDIT: You're also entirely wrong in stating that no new sets have been added to the NeoGeo/CPS2 core since 1.7.

Any other CPS2 games or is it just Giga Wing?

The package I've uploaded is destronger's release of FBL 1.10.

I have only uploaded the binaries. If someone will post a link to the source I'll gladly upload that too.

Now available in the usual places.

Plus I think lack of availability may have been an issue. The majority of users and sites that host Xbox downloads still use xb**s as the absolutely definitive resource for every piece of Xbox software past and present. Not to worry though I'll try and get this uploaded there for you in the next couple of hours.

Send it to lantus whether he wants it or not.

It's true, the PGM driver in FBL was one of the 'frozen' drivers which didn't get updated along with the rest of the core due to having Xbox-specific VMM routines. With some drivers I was occasionally able to integrate the old VMM code into the updated driver but where there was any doubt, I just left well enough alone.

Informative post and well put. I was also somewhat disheartened when the Xbox 360 came along and the original Xbox became old news in most people's eyes overnight. But I remember thinking at the time that the 360 would never see the same diversity of homebrew software and emulators that the original had, if for no other reason than that Microsoft wouldn't make the same 'mistakes' a second time in having such easily circumventable software security. That opinion seems to have been vindicated in that only a minority of 360 users have systems modified to be capable of running homebrew software and the range of emulators is only a fraction of those developed for the original Xbox. The only thing I was wrong about is that I kind of hoped this would bring about a resurgence of interest in the Xbox1 as a homebrew platform. But I guess by that time the damage was done.

Well you have to admit, it's fallen seriously behind on the news posting side of things. I even sent emails to the main site for every release of FBL and very few actually made it onto the news page or the forums.

Skins might be a good place to start. I know it sounds like a small thing but as far as I know, there is no site that has all the skins that have been made available on various forums all in one place. Which is a shame because there's some real quality stuff out there that new users won't even be aware of. Also support files and packages such as the marquee/screenshot pack from FBL.

I don't know about the 360 community but on the original Xbox side of things, the scene has simply gotten smaller and the few actively developed projects that are left are now based on other sites (this site had FBL for instance). Also, it started to fall seriously behind on the news posting side of things. Whereas once it was the go-to resource for finding out about new releases and development, once it lost that, there was no reason left to go there at all.