subject: SENSATION:"Phoenix" arcade game version from GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC found!!! [ROMs are intact!] Date: Sat, 01 Apr 2000 03:31:53 +0200 From: CYBERYOGI =CO= Windler Organization: (I am teachmaster of Logologie - the first cyberage-religion!) Newsgroups: rec.games.video.arcade.collecting, comp.emulators.misc, rec.games.video.classic, alt.games.video.classic And the Phoenix refurbished from its ashes... I found the game and resurrected it in MAME! We have phoned Alois Pirl now if he knows more about the RFT "Phoenix" melody module of the doorchime I had found in garbage.He lives nowdays in the German city Stade(only some km away from my home) and was just about to start a 6 month voyage to Scottland tomorrow,though I met him just in time to ask him about the melody module and whether it was part of an arcade PCB set.He agreed that the module was once plugged into a set of connected "computer PCBs" which he got in 1988 together with a Trabant car load of office computer scrap from Leipzig.He told me that there were 3 PCBs in the set and he still has the re- mains of 2 of them,but the 3rd(smaller,with many socketed RAMs and 74LS ICs) he had wrecked and thrown away after selling its parts to someone else.He said he never heared about the game "Phoenix",but he explained that "Musika" melody modules were also industrially built into doorchimes and clocks,but these pro- ducts were very expensive and scarce in the DDR(German Democratic Republic), though he was glad at that time to find one on a scrap PCB. [If you don't know where I talk about,in the attachment is a detailed descrip- tion of the Musika module.] I took a train ride to Alois to show me the remaining PCBs.They are 31*48cm, light brown and connected by a row of pins at their left side.There are no part numbers etc. printed on them.The traces are coated with solder(no protec- tive varnish) and remind me by their right angularly designed layout of my Sinclair ZX81 board.The PCBs are in very bad condition and at least half of the chips are missing(but the ROMs are intact!).I wrote down some notes about the boards. The 1st(upper) PCB is single-sided and the lower left corner is cracked off (missing).At it hangs a black,plaited ribbon cable(ca.60cm long) with 16 leads and grey connectors;the leads are not moulded as a single piece by their plas- tic insulation like normal flat cables,but instead are a kind of knitted toge- ther.On this PCB are besides the ROMs only 1 large IC socket(40 pins);Mr.Pirl said that once a "U880"-CPU had been in it.There are lots of smaller sockets with 74LS chips etc.Many ICs are missing.The IC sockets are grey.There are 12 socketed ROMs with white paper labels on the board;they are still there be- cause they seem to be PROMs(plain black plastic case,24 pins,"PR2516-17",no brand label) instead of EPROMs and though were worthless to be gutted out.In the upper right corner is an audio amplifier and the grey 18 pin socket for the melody module.Left to it are two rows of each 8 pins those are connected by 4 metal jumper plugs(like on an old PC mainboard).At the right side is a 34 pin connector for the(missing) RAM board.In the lower left corner seems to be a power supply connector(4 thick pins).On the board is a white paper sticker with the numbers "#41.50.52.49.4C". The 2nd(lower) PCB is double sided;on it are no large chips,only sockets with 74LS ICs(many missing) and the lower 1/3rd of the board is covered with rec- tangular fields of glass diodes(forming 2 matrixes of 8 rows and 7 colums each - a primitive kind of ROM or something similar?).Also something that looks like a TV modulator(metal box) is on this board and a similar sticker with the numbers "#46.4F.4F.4C.21". At the left upper corner a white plastic bracket holds both boards together (the PCBs have a hole in each corner where a plastic bolt goes through).The bracket has 3 slots(not connectors,but slots of the kind a saw makes) for the PCBs and a mounting hole for a screw.I guess that once 4 of them at the cor- ners held the board set together. Below each ROM socket on the 2nd board is a round yellow paper sticker with the last 3 chars of the ROM name("OB3","OB4" etc.) to mark their positions.I asked Alois if he could read in the ROMs with his EPROM burner,which worked without problems. On the ROMs labels are numbers/letters those last characters I managed to match with the corresponding MAME ROM files by the "Readme.pho" description files from my downloaded "phoenix.zip" for MAME. ROM label: MAME name: 0401XA-OB3 IC23 0401XA-OB4 IC24 0401XA-OB1 IC39 0401XA-OB2 IC40 0401XA-OH1 IC45 0401XA-OH2 IC46 0401XA-OH3 IC47 0401XA-OH4 IC48 0401XA-OH5 IC49 0401XA-OH6 IC50 0401XA-OH7 IC51 0401XA-OH8 IC52 The great thing is that these ROMs seem to run on MAME without problems,though I could test it.I guess I indeed discovered an unknown variant;the on-screen texts of this Phoenix game are all in German and include the following copy- right message: "PHÖNIX(c) KONSTRUIERT 1985 RFT & ROBOTRON-KOMBINAT HOCHTECHNOLOGIE DER D.D.R." English translation: "PHOENIX(c) CONSTRUCTED IN 1985 RFT & ROBOTRON-KOMBINAT HIGH-TECHNOLOGY OF THE G.D.R. " The game apparently was created in the in German Democratic Republic.I guess that the historical importance of this found can not be estimated high enough, because as far I know,from the communist DDR previously only a single other, very simple arcade videogame machine(the "Poly-Play",quality similar like the VCS2600 "Air Sea Battle"?) was known to exist. (Remark: "Robotron" here has nothing to do with the "Robotron 2084" arcade game,but was a large,national electronics and computer manufacturing trust of the DDR republic.) On the PCB's melody module connector the pins 2,3,4,7,8,10,11,12,13,14,15,17 are open;short traces from 7,8,15 and 17 lead to something that looks like open solder jumper pads and the traces from pin 4,10,11,12,13,14 are dead ends leading to empty holes where no components are soldered in.(They weren't wrecked;I guess that some resistors or capacitors are missing here due to de- sign changes.) The audio signals from pin 5 and 6 are mixed together by 2 68kOhm resistors and then passed through a 100nF capacitor onto a trace which gets additional inputs through capacitors and resistors from other PCB areas and which leads to a 22kOhm potentiometer of a simple transistorized mono am- plifier above the module.With the present wiring the module must have run in sequence mode and can only have played the 4th melody bank(the one with the 4 non-xmas melodies). I have recorded WAV samples from all the melodies and made a ZIP file of the ROMs. Beside the German text,the game itself doesn't seem to differ much from other "Phoenix" versions.Does anybody know more about this variant? (e.g. the cabi- net design or where such games were operated.Were they used within the GDR or were they exported?) For Alois it just had been "computer scrap" and he said he knows not more about it. MAY THE SOFTWARE BE WITH YOU! *============================================================================* I CYBERYOGI Christian Oliver(=CO=) Windler I I (teachmaster of LOGOLOGIE - the first cyberage-religion!) I I ! I *=============================ABANDON=THE=BRUTALITY==========================* {http://www.informatik.fh-hamburg.de/~windle_c/Logologie/e_index.html}