Aristocrat MK5 bypass self test/win limits

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Heihachi_73
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Aristocrat MK5 bypass self test/win limits

Post by Heihachi_73 »

Now that the slot machines in aristmk5.cpp are playable (despite the NOT_WORKING flag, most games are fully playable except for the bad dumps, although some NSW (New South Wales) and the Venezuelan games will hang after a while and require a reboot via the F3 key), is there any chance that the self tests could be bypassed to speed up the boot process? The machines perform a basic code checksum throughout four sections of ROM (program code at POST, and then the same program code again + graphics data + sound data all separately after the POST e.g. after "System Startup Code Entered" is displayed) but this takes around ten seconds before the machines can boot.

Another good cheat would be if the hard coded win limits could be bypassed, as the US machines will automatically cashout all wins if the machine credits + current win is >$1199.99 - this also causes a lot of early games (e.g. wnpost, swhr2u) to lock up and become completely unusable due to incomplete emulation, so it would be good to avoid this somehow. On the NSW games (and Venezuela) the win limit per spin is $10000, which can already be reached on a high denomination game where the wins are already high on maximum bet (e.g. indrema5, in 2 cent mode the maximum possible win is more than $24000 but it is still capped at $10000). Meanwhile, New Zealand games have a paltry $500 win limit, and that includes the entire free game feature e.g. even if you had 4 free games left and reached the cap, the remaining free games are voided and feature ends immediately upon reaching the maximum win; on NSW games if the $10000 win cap is reached during the free games, the next free game commences as normal (the limit only applies to a single spin, not the entire feature).

If anyone needs help setting up a game from scratch prior to going on a cheating binge just leave a message in this request topic, as staring at a screen which reads Memory Error doesn't do anyone any good. Setup instructions for most machine types are documented in the aristmk5.cpp source code, however the setup instructions for the US set chip-based games hasn't been done yet, as they are a bit tricky and most of them are different to each other, unlike non-US games where the setup is almost identical every time.

Update: The US games which use set chips can also have their region changed to a handful of non-US locations. Changing to a non-US region will change the win limit (tax limit) from $1200 to $999999.99 (the Uruguay region has the least restrictions e.g. allows double up and Hyperlink to be enabled).
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Pugsy
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Re: Aristocrat MK5 bypass self test/win limits

Post by Pugsy »

Can you bypass all the setup instructions with nvram etc taken from one already setup?

Tried a few weeks ago, but it's a painful experience just to get one working - and I only have limited time so I quickly lost all interest.

Issue might be as it's a gambling game the code might be more security centric so may well be a major pita to bypass the checks ( just don't know)
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Heihachi_73
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Re: Aristocrat MK5 bypass self test/win limits

Post by Heihachi_73 »

Each game uses different locations in NVRAM unfortunately, however I can upload NVRAM images if need be.

The only games which cannot be played without modifying the MAME source or changing the BIOS ROMs are jungjuic, penpir2 and goldpyrb as the BIOS they use requires a comms system called QCOM which isn't emulated yet, however a different casino BIOS can be used in order to make them playable (specifically, swap u7 and u11 with those from qnilebr, which has a unique BIOS which doesn't use comms). These are the only four games which use any sort of BIOS, every other game is standalone (the "BIOS" in the US games - and non-US by mistake - is not a BIOS, but a "cheap hack" which allows easy ROM swapping between the set chips - otherwise these games would have to be set up similar to using peset038 in peplus.cpp, requiring MAME to be closed, the game's NVRAM copied over to peset038 (or aristmk5 in this case), set up, and then copied back to the game of choice, which is really time consuming, especially if you get the setup wrong and have to do it over and over). The games from Queensland also cannot be played as they need the same comms system (basically, the machines phone home to an external server and if the server doesn't respond or the polling times out, they disable the gameplay portion of the machine until it connects again).

I made a few RAM cheats for adonis weeks ago as a test and it seems to be happy to take some cheats such as the coin/credit settings and changing setup code to unsupported settings (but still in the game code) without causing a memory error, yet other things such as modifying the bet multiplier causes it to fail a RAM checksum after one spin (a ROM cheat on the other hand would most likely allow higher bets than the common 5 or 10 credit multiplier that most games have).
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