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I bought a Project Diva Arcade Future Tone Cabinet!

Discussion in 'Project DIVA Arcade & Arcade Future Tone' started by N10248, Apr 22, 2020.

  1. da1l6

    da1l6 Welcome to DIVA!

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    I met an old friend who knows more about Elo touchscreens and we got it working with the current (8.0.0) windows driver.
    The key setting is to enable serial port hardware handshaking in the Elo driver.

    Steps:
    1. Uninstall any Elo driver if you have it installed.
    2. If you had AFT running since last power-on, disable auto starting of AFT and POWER DOWN the Machine (AFT changes the Serial Baud Rate of the touch controller, causing the Elo Driver not to find it), then boot it up again.
    3. Download the 8.x.x MultiTouch Driver from the Elo website
    4. Run the self extracting .exe.
    5. UNCHECK the "When done unzipping open: ...\Setup.exe" option.
    6. (Optional) Change Unzip folder to some non-temporary folder to keep a correctly configured setup around.
    7. Click "Unzip"
    8. Open the file <Unzip Folder>\<Driver version>\Common\EloOptions.ini with a text-editor (e.g. Notepad++)
    9. In the section "[Setup Options]" set the "HardwareHandshaking=0" option to "HardwareHandshaking=1" (this will make the touchscreen work at all)
    10. In the same section set "ForceMouse=0" to "ForceMouse=1" (this is required for the PD-Loader Input Emulator to pick up touch reliably, because it is just polling for mouse button state)
    11. Save the file
    12. Run the Setup.exe in the unzip folder and install normally.
    13. The touchscreen should be detected and working.
    14. The calibration is probably wildly off, calibrate using EloConfig installed with the driver.
    15. Done
    Caveats:
    The windows driver does not increase the baud rate of the touch controller, but keeps it at 9600 baud. This makes the in game volume slider operation slightly less smooth.

    However, it also eliminates AFT randomly not detecting the touchscreen on startup (which i attribute to the baud-rate switching and no fault tolerance in the AFT Touch screen code) that i had with both the original Nu and my replacement setup.

    Regards,
    da1l6
     
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  2. IceKareem

    IceKareem Newbie Player

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    Hii, I know I haven't talked here in a while but I'm a bit curious to know, what's the format of the game drive?
     
  3. N10248

    N10248 Advanced Player

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    Not sure but most likely NTFS like the other drive but could be exFAT too I supose.
     
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  4. N10248

    N10248 Advanced Player

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    Been a while since I posted on here. A while ago I got a Nu 1.1 mainly for spare parts like the PSU and Amex card. But decided today to try and use it's motherboard and SSD in my cab to make it more original.

    I am keeping my cab's original board and drives packed away unaltered, but don't care if the 1.1 board is never able to boot it's original drives again (I'm fairly sure it's Sonic and Mario at the olympics).

    I prepared a Windows 8.1 hard disk in an old HP PC and turned it off at the first reboot during setup, this way the installation copies all the files and picks up the OEM Windows key embedded in the HP system, but doesn't install any drivers and will activate properly when running on the Nu's Advantech motherboard. Plus I wasn't sure if the Nu would allow booting from a CD or USB installer so this was an easier option.

    [​IMG]

    The Nu board booted the drive with no issues and finished the setup, and activated properly when it went online. Windows update didn't find the specific Realtek audio drivers so I had to download them seperately, it had sound before via the generic windows driver but the game needs the proper Realtek ones.

    This board differs slightly to the original Nu 1.0 model in that the colour coding of the audio ports is different. I connected headphones to the green port but got no sound, it turns out the pink one is the default audio out which would normally be an input on most boards. This layout matches the original 1.0 board which had green (bottom), black (middle) and orange (top) ports.

    I copied the game onto it and its runs perfectly with sound.

    I formatted the original Apacer SAFD 64GB SSD, these are not password protected but there are multiple partitions which some are encryped with bitlocker. However it is easy to format in Windows Disk Management like any other disk. it's SMART stats show it's only been on for about 2800 hours.

    Later I'll do it all again on this drive and only install the bare minimum needed.
     
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  5. N10248

    N10248 Advanced Player

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    Got it all installed and put back together...

    [​IMG]

    It works well but have noticed somtimes at the during a song and often when entering the initial menus there is a tiny pause. The CPU and GPU usage is low so I thought it may be disk related lag.

    It was, the drive Sega used is terrible...

    [​IMG]

    I'm surprised these stutters aren't present on a real setup. I'm guessing by the slow write speed whenever windows has to do any saving for logs and background stuff etc it causes a pause in the game. A real arcade setup makes zero writes to the disk when running and is why it's safe to just switch the cab off without a proper shutdown.

    I'm going to clone this drive to the Intel 545s later and see what happens as i never had any issue like this on the last setup when using this drive.

    Another interesting issue is that the board cannot boot a GPT disk, it only seems to boot MBR ones when I install windows. However both of the original drives are GPT. It could be related to the TPM which is unaltered preventing it booting anything but the original ones.
     
  6. N10248

    N10248 Advanced Player

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    Drive cloned to the Intel 545s and problem solved, perfect performance now.

    [​IMG]

    The board does in fact boot from a Sata connected DVD drive if the hard disk isn't bootable.

    These are the main steps I made to make it all work, my board is still BIOS password locked so there is no real need to get into the bios...

    - Convert disk to MBR if you can't get it to work as GPT: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/w...management/change-a-gpt-disk-into-an-mbr-disk
    - Install Windows 8.1
    - Windows Update - just install driver updates for network and Intel ME.
    - Install nVidia Drivers 344.75 https://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/79891/en-us/ if using the original 650TI as this is the version the original machine uses.
    - Leave all the Nvidia graphics settings at default, but maybe enable adaptive v-sync as this helps hide dropped frames and other slowdowns of slower pcs.
    - Install Audio Drivers from Advantech https://www.advantech.com/support/details/driver?id=1-1DPGN3Z
    - Run from CMD: "bcdedit /set {globalsettings} custom:16000067 true" to hide the Windows logo when booting.
    - Install Visual C++ Runtime: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-US/cpp/windows/latest-supported-vc-redist?view=msvc-170
    - Install .net framework 4.8 if using newer PD-Loader, I'm using an older one so the included version is fine.
    - Run from CMD: "bcdedit -set TESTSIGNING ON" to enable Test Mode so the Amex card works
    - In Windows' visual settings set it to "Best Performance" to turn off all the animations and effects, this will appear to skip the brief Welcome / login screen if the SSD is fast enough.
    - I set a desktop picture of the Nu logo... https://mikucity.com/cabinet/nu-start.jpg, I also set the start screen accent colurs to black
    - Add a shortcut to diva.exe to the Start Menu startup folder, usually C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp set it to run minimised and the black command window that appears before the game starts will be hidden.
    - Once you have your PD-Loader settings how you want them set it to skip the launcher so it goes straight to the game on bootup.
    - The only way to exit the game when using the JVS controls is to hit Alt-F4 on a keyboard, pressing Alt-F4 again wiill give the shutdown option so you can shut it down properly. I have a cheap media keyboard to do this similar to this... the signal to it's dongle works fine through the cabinets metal door too, plus it's useful for volume control.
     
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  7. IceKareem

    IceKareem Newbie Player

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    Ooo interesting! I still have the original drives for my Nu but since I changed a few things, Windows asks for the bitlocker password which idk if it means the keychip or another bitlocker password somewhere. Maybe I’ll follow this but with Win 10 so that I don’t have to bother patching anything for MM+ since that’s what I use nowadays.
     
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  8. N10248

    N10248 Advanced Player

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    I think the bitlocker issue is not easily fixed and would need the recovery key entered, something like that would never happen in normal use of the game unless the owner started poking around it.

    This won't stop it booting other drives though, which I thought it would otherwise I would have done ths ages ago.
     
  9. steelpuxnastik

    steelpuxnastik SHINSANWASWITCH is ready and working!

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    Low speed of that drive seems to be because it fully filled, because no space for cache left, maybe. But also it could be ordinary wear and tear.

    That's also because GPT is for UEFI motherboards and with so on addition settings in it for windows, if there is not - no needs to use GPT, as I know. Also, that's depends on how exactly you create flash drive for installing windows, for UEFI it needs FAT32 partition on drive to initiate that work, NTFS do not work for it (as I know from using WinSetupFromUSB, that says you about that differences).

    If I make something from this - this will make look my PC work like Nu?
     
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  10. N10248

    N10248 Advanced Player

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    I'll do a benchmark with it empty another day, I think it is just very slow at writing by design, the game loaded quickly but took ages to copy in on there from another SSD, both my other SSDs vere quite full and have had a lot of use too.

    It did work in GPT when I used a regular spinning hard disk at first to test, but only used this for a few minutes before starting again with an SSD.

    It would make the system bootup look the same as in my showcase video I made ages ago.

    On the real thing only the Windows spinning icon is displayed at boot, then it goes to the "Step" loading parts, then the Nu logo is displayed before the game starts.
     
  11. IceKareem

    IceKareem Newbie Player

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    #171 IceKareem, Sep 27, 2022
    Last edited: Sep 27, 2022
    I know this reply was very long ago at this point, but now I’ve been thinking about it. If I DID want to put a micro-ATX or ITX motherboard in it, would I be able to use some of the components from the original stuff like the PSU and GPU etc.? And what size PSU could I replace it with (if I ever get tired of the loud noise since for some reason I actually don’t mind it #\^{%{<|)

    I would also probably need to learn what unnecessary plates I could remove as well like the drive plates etc.
     
  12. N10248

    N10248 Advanced Player

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    I've never seen another PSU that size unfotunately. You should be able to use everything as it is now, just a different SSD if the original is too small for your needs.

    The metal drive holder is needed unless you use a board that has an M2 or NVME SSD etc, but it also has the keychip port attached so there would be a hole in the case where it was.
     
  13. IceKareem

    IceKareem Newbie Player

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    #173 IceKareem, Sep 28, 2022
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2022
    ohh, so for the PSU I’ll just keep it, it is pretty big and not in a usual size. Yeah I’m planning on using M.2 since I don’t think I can boot the main drive anymore plus I’m probably never gonna get a keychip so I’ll just tape that hole +]+{%}%}<|

    Since I’m on 1.1 I’ll have to find what NVIDIA driver is on the 750 Ti since I don’t think I can use the same one as the 650 Ti, I’ll probably resort to using the latest one or the one that PD Loader recommends
     
  14. N10248

    N10248 Advanced Player

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    You can use the original drive, just delete all the partitions and format it in Disk Management from another PC, the bitlocked parts will be gone. The same Nvidia drivers will work for the 750 but the newest will do just as well
     
  15. IceKareem

    IceKareem Newbie Player

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    Oh I know I can format it, but I was just hoping that I could preserve the original Nu BIOS stuff on it, but I guess it’s just inaccessible now since I already messed with booting from a different drive. Still I think I’ll use another one since you said the speeds on it were not that great.
     
  16. N10248

    N10248 Advanced Player

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    Without the bitlocker recovery key it's as good as gone.

    Interestingly the other regular HDD has an unencrypted partition "AMFS" that mentions the game name, mine was in fact Sonic & Mario in Tokyo Olympics. I'm unlikley to ever get one of those cabinets so don't feel bad about wiping any chance of getting it to work again.
     
  17. IceKareem

    IceKareem Newbie Player

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    Ohh, so then it’s probably best to just wipe it then.
    My Nu 1.1 ended up being one of the Chunithm games but since it’s been active since 2016 I’m pretty confident that the game and all the stuff of it is already dumped elsewhere so maybe I’ll wipe that too? But ok thank you for telling me
     

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