Link a Real Model 3 PCB to SuperModel Emulator

[twistedsymphony]

I'm wondering if anyone has any knowledge or advice on setting up a multi-player link between a PC running SuperModel and an actual Model 3 PCB.

I've got a Pair of Model 3 PCBs in my Virtual On Cab running VOOT 5.2, this version of VOOT support a "Live Monitor", that is a 3rd PCB linked in the network chain that shows the in-game action from a 3rd person perspective.

I want to play the game on actual hardware but running a 3rd PCB is a real pain the ass... first off VOOT boards are expensive ($700 on YAJ right now + shipping from Japan) then I have to deal with the ridiculous amount of wiring, a 3.3V compatible power supply and converting a 25KHz video output.

I'd much rather run a cheap PC with it's own cheap internal PSU and just output to a nice LCD since for a spectator monitor I don't care about lag or scaling issue etc. and the wiring of this setup would be a lot simpler/self-contained, I could probably hide a PC under one of the hoods of the VO Twin unit... I wouldn't be able to do it with a Model 3 board and another PSU and video converter boards etc.

By this point you've probably seen my Sega Versus Billboard thread, that whole project was a small part of a much larger idea. That is: if I'm running SuperModel then I could also build a Virtual Billboard App that run on this PC and display a virtual 7-Segment output and Winner Lamps right on the LCD... heck if I run the Game Video in 4:3 I could probably fit the 7-segment and winner lamps in the black bars.

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The most I've seen someone dig into this is SailorSat who connected a Model 1 Comm Board to a PC: http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=333324&page=&view=&sb=5&o=&vc=1 She also got this working with Model 2 Emulator as well.

What I'm really hoping is that the comm board is already emulated in Super Model and I could simply build some kind of serial to tosslink adapter with some basic software to tie into the emulator in order to make this work.

Any ideas or insights into this would be appreciated

 

[Darksoft]

I'm in a similar situation. I'm tired of all these cables, sound boards, FFB Boards and what else! And if you want to see it in a LCD monitor add the upscaler.

I believe the best would be to try to contact Bart, the creator from the emulator. He has a forum on his site: http://www.supermodel3.com/Forum/index.php

The emualtor already suppports FFB, so it would be a question of checking if he has support for linking.

 

[twistedsymphony]

I poked around the SM forum and didn't see anyone else breach the topic so I posted this up. post didn't appear so I'm assuming it's being held for moderation, we'll see...

 

[Darksoft]

Good. We'll see

 

[MetalliC]

@twistedsymphony bad news for you - comm.board is not emulated in Supermodel and no one from 'team' working on it.

it was reverse engineered and HLE emulated (iirc on same PC only) few years ago by one of SM members, but he disappeared from radars a long ago, and doesn't shared anything from his work (sources, information, documentation etc), but just compiled binaries.

so, I'm afraid I'm the only person who working on it's research and emulation now, mainly for NAOMI system (Sega used almost identical comm.devices in Model3, NAOMI and Hikaru)
so Bart expecting and waiting some results/info from me to start working on it's HLE emulation in Supermodel.

PS: but... in general - there used special optical cables, how do you expect it to be connected to PC ?

 

[twistedsymphony]

PS: but... in general - there used special optical cables, how do you expect it to be connected to PC ?

The optical cables for networking are just normal Audio Tosslink cables; one for TX one for RX. I was thinking if emulation of the comm-board existed maybe a simple adapter could be made to convert electrical to optical for TX and optical to electrical for RX.

it was reverse engineered and HLE emulated (iirc on same PC only) few years ago by one of SM members, but he disappeared from radars a long ago, and doesn't shared anything from his work (sources, information, documentation etc), but just compiled binaries.

Do you have a link to these binaries? Maybe an external application could read/write the TRX signals directly in memory and output to a serial port with the optical adapter.

 

[MetalliC]

Do you have a link to these binaries?

it was private, I don't have it
anyway it useless for you, because there is HLE, and hardware level protocol is unknown.
if you really interested - you'll better grab MAME, I've mostly implemented this comm board there. it doesn't send actual data over TCP but at least tries to send/recv packets, also you can run M68000 debugger and look how it works

 

[twistedsymphony]

if you really interested - you'll better grab MAME, I've mostly implemented this comm board there. it doesn't send actual data over TCP but at least tries to send/recv packets, also you can run M68000 debugger and look how it works

I'll give that a look, thanks!