The REAL MK Arcade Kollection

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ded
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Re: The REAL MK Arcade Kollection

Post by ded »

actually there is a little but real chance to see umk3 wavenet dumped someday ;] as for mk3 wavenet, that will probably never happen ;/


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Re: The REAL MK Arcade Kollection

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ded wrote:actually there is a little but real chance to see umk3 wavenet dumped someday ;] as for mk3 wavenet, that will probably never happen ;/
I disagree. If UMK3 wavenet appears, to make it MK3, should be a simply rom swap.
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Re: The REAL MK Arcade Kollection

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i actually read somewhere that mk3w and umk3w had different roms. of course i may be so wrong lol some interesting read i found from Wavenet ex-worker. he talks only about mk3w tho:
MK3 used a really weird processor called a 34010 from Texas Instruments. (Weird in that it had *BIT* addressable memory, funky graphics opcodes built in that we never used, etc) However, the game designers pretty much pushed the CPU to its max before we had a chance to make it a networked game. There wasn't enough RAM, CPU, or ROM (for networking code) left to do it, as well as this board didn't have an ethernet output on it to connect it up to the router.

Midway ended up designing a tiiiiny little board (running a small embedded OS that just translated game commands into TCP/IP and vice versa) that plugged into an expansion connector on the MK3 board. It had an Ethernet controller, some ram, more ROMs for the networking code and a 386SX CPU made by AMD on it. Why not use a Pentium, or Pentium Pro? (which was the newest CPU out at the time) Cost. Power. Compare the latest generation of 386 CPUs to even a slow PII. HUUUGE difference here.

Board space. The embedded 386's are a little bigger than an american nickle. Pentium class CPU's... well... are big.

Longevity. When we bought these, we got committments from our suppliers that the CPU would be around for at least X months/years. This is REALLLLY important to us. If we're going to spend a ton of cash designing a board based around a CPU, we don't want it to disappear next month when something better comes along.

Had the embedded world not existed, and we had to use a faster/newer CPU, the board cost would have doubled, it would have been a bigger board(again more $$), We likely would have needed to put a bigger power supply(or played tricks with regulators), and then had to redsign the board every time the trendy chip got unpopular. All for horsepower we didn't even need!
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Re: The REAL MK Arcade Kollection

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Interesting indeed. I was basing my assesment on the fact that the regular MK3 and UMK3 can be changed with a simply rom swap between the boards. This makes it sound much more complicated.

ded wrote:i actually read somewhere that mk3w and umk3w had different roms. of course i may be so wrong lol some interesting read i found from Wavenet ex-worker. he talks only about mk3w tho:
MK3 used a really weird processor called a 34010 from Texas Instruments. (Weird in that it had *BIT* addressable memory, funky graphics opcodes built in that we never used, etc) However, the game designers pretty much pushed the CPU to its max before we had a chance to make it a networked game. There wasn't enough RAM, CPU, or ROM (for networking code) left to do it, as well as this board didn't have an ethernet output on it to connect it up to the router.

Midway ended up designing a tiiiiny little board (running a small embedded OS that just translated game commands into TCP/IP and vice versa) that plugged into an expansion connector on the MK3 board. It had an Ethernet controller, some ram, more ROMs for the networking code and a 386SX CPU made by AMD on it. Why not use a Pentium, or Pentium Pro? (which was the newest CPU out at the time) Cost. Power. Compare the latest generation of 386 CPUs to even a slow PII. HUUUGE difference here.

Board space. The embedded 386's are a little bigger than an american nickle. Pentium class CPU's... well... are big.

Longevity. When we bought these, we got committments from our suppliers that the CPU would be around for at least X months/years. This is REALLLLY important to us. If we're going to spend a ton of cash designing a board based around a CPU, we don't want it to disappear next month when something better comes along.

Had the embedded world not existed, and we had to use a faster/newer CPU, the board cost would have doubled, it would have been a bigger board(again more $$), We likely would have needed to put a bigger power supply(or played tricks with regulators), and then had to redsign the board every time the trendy chip got unpopular. All for horsepower we didn't even need!
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Re: The REAL MK Arcade Kollection

Post by ded »

i'm not sure about mk3w but umk3w could be a whole different rom set, because i remember reading in google groups that when they changed the cabinets, the mk3w were taken away and replaced with whole new umk3w ones.

i know it says revision 2.0 on the start up screen for umk3w, but i could not find much info about mk3w. all i got is some cyrax and nightwolf gameplay changes, which no one can confirm.

as for the mk4 beta revisions i'm sure they were released at least in chicago arcade places, so there might be a chance someone still got some of the boards.
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Re: The REAL MK Arcade Kollection

Post by YourMKArcadeSource »

One can only hope.

ded wrote:i'm not sure about mk3w but umk3w could be a whole different rom set, because i remember reading in google groups that when they changed the cabinets, the mk3w were taken away and replaced with whole new umk3w ones.

i know it says revision 2.0 on the start up screen for umk3w, but i could not find much info about mk3w. all i got is some cyrax and nightwolf gameplay changes, which no one can confirm.

as for the mk4 beta revisions i'm sure they were released at least in chicago arcade places, so there might be a chance someone still got some of the boards.
Anything and everything Mortal Kombat Arcade related... www.youtube.com/user/YourMKArcadeSource
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