Question about Taito F-series arcade boards

[MikeB]

Can anyone enlighten me on this?

The F3 system is advertised on Taito's arcade flyers of the period as the 'first 32-bit arcade system', but I thought the previous F2 hardware used the same board architecture and CPU.

Also what happened to F1? All Taito flyers for supposed 'F1' games like Cameltry and Dead Connection list them as 'F2' titles, although System16.com makes the distinction between F1 and F2 arcade hardware I can't seem to find any reference to F1 ever existing as far as Taito is concerned.

Mike

[Stefan_L]

System16.com uses MAME's definition of the hardware and not Taito's.

I dont' know what this F2 and F1 really means but i know "Thunder Fox" PCB has F1 printed on it (see pic at system16.com) so i would guess it's the single PCB versions of the F2 games thats called F1?
Cameltry (ym2203+m6295 version) is only called "F system"?

[undamned]

I don't know anything about F1, but I do know that F2 and F3 are the successors (F1<F2<F3). Both F2 and F3 had games that were modular (mother + daughter) and single board games. F3 had about 4 different HW configurations (this is from personal observation, not just hearsay).
-ud

[MikeB]

It's all very confusing really.

Dead Connection, for example, is listed on System 16 as F1 but check out the Japanese flyer

http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=thumb ... odb&id=290

Same goes for Metal Black

http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=thumb ... db&id=5160

[undamned]

System16 has a lot of good info and is a good place to start when looking into a particular arcade hardware platform, but it is far from definitive. They slowly clean up some of their wrong info, but for the most part it bugs me when they are seen as gospel. I guess that's the danger of the internet, you have to take most things with a grain of salt (or sometimes a truckload).

In short, who are you going to listen to: official Taito documentation or some fan site? The arcade flyer craze has been wonderful for keeping track of stuff like this.

-ud

[Stefan_L]

I'll take back what i said about MAME earlier, actually MAME is listing all F2 games correctly and System16 is wrong.

I still think "F1" is something Taito was gonna call the single PCB version of the games but only used it so far for (what i know) Thunder Fox. They could have abondoned it because it could confuse people that F1-games would be inferior to F2-games.
And for Cameltry they just used "F-system" for the non-japanese versions as they actually was not full F2-system games.. the hardware were changed too much i guess.

What i have written here is mostly speculation so don't belive it too much now

[MikeB]

Re Thunderfox and F1, that's backed up by the listing I came across here

http://iep.ath.cx/cad/index_systems.htm

Which only lists Thunder Fox as F1..

[Stefan_L]

Look at the Thunder Fox PCB picture at system16.com it is possible actually read "F1 system" on the PCB printed by Taito.
I can't say for sure but almost... that i have seen a F2 Thunder Fox gameboard on a Yahoo Japan auction.

[MikeB]

Is it possible to list board type in Mame? Can't seem to work out how..

[Stefan_L]

You can list them at MAWS... click the following link and then on "driver source taito_f2.c"
http://www.mameworld.net/maws/romset/megabj

[MikeB]

Thanks!

by the way your eyes must be better than mine.. I can just about register F 'splodge' system but it certainly could be a figure '1'

[Stefan_L]

BTW even if Taito do not marketing them as F2-system games they might be F2 games anyway if you look how the PCB are marked. A good example could be early F3 game wich Taito did not afaik market as "F3 games" but the PCB's was still called "F3 main PCB" on the PCB's, it was not until the F3 games was released in cartridge format that Taito started marketing them as "Taito F3 package system games" if you go by the flyers.

[MikeB]

I guess the only way to be sure would be to personally get hold of all the game boards and check them one-by-one..

[undamned]

You can list them at MAWS... click the following link and then on "driver source taito_f2.c"
http://www.mameworld.net/maws/romset/megabj

Good call. This was how I began organizing my Taito hardware list.

I guess the only way to be sure would be to personally get hold of all the game boards and check them one-by-one..

Pretty much. I've been doing this with F3 stuff for a while
-ud

[AWJ]

Can anyone enlighten me on this?

The F3 system is advertised on Taito's arcade flyers of the period as the 'first 32-bit arcade system', but I thought the previous F2 hardware used the same board architecture and CPU.

No, F3 is completely different and much more powerful than F2; it has a 68EC020 main CPU (hence the "32-bit" marketing, even though the CPU bus width has nothing to do with a board's graphic capabilities), it can handle sprites and tiles up to 6bpp (64 colors), alpha blending ("transparency"), wavetable-based sound by Ensoniq, etc. One or two F2 games were ported to F3 (so they could be sold in cartridge form I guess) but that doesn't mean the hardware was compatible or even similar.

Also, F2 isn't really a "system" in the sense that F3 is (or CPS2, or Neo-Geo, or any other interchangeable-cartridge-based arcade hardware you care to name). F2 boards aren't identical boards with different ROMs on them, but rather have different hardware per-game depending on what capabilities (layers, rotation, scaling) each game needs. F2 is more of a "meta-system" like Sega's System 16: a set of hardware components designed to work together that could be mixed and matched in various combinations.

[MikeB]

No, F3 is completely different and much more powerful than F2; it has a 68EC020 main CPU (hence the "32-bit" marketing,.

Yeah, I've since realised my error, the 68EC020 being the same CPU as the Amiga1200..

I think I was slightly confused as the M68000 in F2 is also a 32-bit CPU, but I guess there are data-bus issues relegating the boards to 16-bit status

[AWJ]

I think I was slightly confused as the M68000 in F2 is also a 32-bit CPU, but I guess there are data-bus issues relegating the boards to 16-bit status

The 68000 is considered a 16-bit processor, even though the registers are 32 bits wide. The ALU is still only 16-bit; long word arithmetic operations take twice as many cycles as word operations. A Z80 can do some operations on words, but nobody calls it a 16-bit processor...

Incidentally, pretty much every "16-bit" personal computer from the 1980s other than the IBM PC and its clones was based on the 68000--the original Mac, Amiga, Atari ST, Sharp X68000, etc. One of the rare exceptions was the Apple IIGS, which used the 65816, a 16-bit derivative of the 6502 that had a 6502 emulation mode (which, along with hardware emulation of the original Apple II video hardware, allowed the IIGS to run most 8-bit Apple II software) I think the only mass-marketed machines to use the 65816 were the IIGS, the SNES, and an expansion cartridge for the Commodore 64.