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Comment by koz1000 | Hacker News Reader

MAME saved my bacon. True story:

I was working on code for a pinball machine for Stern back in 2005. I had a memory corruption issue and Stern's crusty old 6809 hardware didn't have anything resembling a real-time debugger that I could use. There was no time or budget to get a 6809 ICE procured and running.

So I loaded up my code in PinMAME and let it run. I was able to watch memory in real time and caught the bug in an afternoon. It would have taken me a week or so doing it by hand.

So thank you, MAME.

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Isn't pinMAME a complete different project from MAME? Either way, thanks for sharing your story. I'm a pinball fan and love hearing stories like this!

I recall PinMAME being a fork of MAME, the UI was identical and they borrowed a lot of cores like the 6809 and various common sound boards that video used, like the Williams Yamaha 2151 and Midway DCS AD2105 DSP.

For a while they tried to keep the manufacturers happy by not allowing modified ROMs to run, I got a special build from the developers to let me run anything I wanted. I think those restrictions do not exist anymore.

Well, out with it: which pin? (There's a Stern Sopranos in this house, though I think that was developed before this story would have happened.)

Stern NASCAR

https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=5093

Sopranos was around the same time, but there were actually two versions of the code. One was in the old 6809 and the other was a test version of their new ARM-based hardware.

Were you acquainted with Lyman Sheets (RIP), or possibly a co-worker at some point?

I was very sad to learn about his recent passing.

I knew Lyman from USENET in the early 90s and then I worked with him at Williams. We started around the same time and got laid off together in '99 when WMS shut us down. Lyman was at my wedding.

It's extremely sad. It's a huge loss.

There's such a poetic justice that Sheats, who was a world-class player, also helped design The Who’s Tommy pinball game.

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