yamaha_dx97 VS pyretro

I've been writing a lot of 8-bit assembler for the 6303, which is in the same processor family as the CPU in the TRS-80, which the author is writing code for (for this project in case anyone is wondering: https://github.com/ajxs/yamaha_dx97). I ran into the exact same issue. I wrote a MAME driver for the target platform, so I could test my builds on my development machine. Obviously that sped things up a lot. The MAME debugger isn't really a tool for unit testing, and can't really be easily instrumented, but I was able to write a lot of scripts for the debugger which would set up the breakpoints and system memory for an individual 'test'. Not quite unit testing, but as close as I could get cheaply.

I'm super impressed that someone has emulated the CZ-101's sound generation LSI!

Lots of people use MAME as an emulator to help reverse-engineering vintage synthesisers. I only recently discovered this too. Since most 80s synths were built mostly out of 'off the shelf' components, it's not too difficult to build a MAME driver which is capable of running the synth's firmware. The actual sound generation is another story though.

I wrote a MAME driver for the Yamaha DX9 while working on this project: https://github.com/ajxs/yamaha_dx97

I wrote a little bit about the project here in case anyone is interested: https://ajxs.me/blog/Hacking_the_Yamaha_DX9_To_Turn_It_Into_...

Very cool! I've been doing a lot of work reverse-engineering the firmware from Yamaha's 1980s synthesisers[0], all of which feature Hitachi 6303-series processors. The 6303 is Hitachi's second-source implementation of the Motorola 6803 architecture. I'd love to know how these devices were developed. I'm guessing a development platform like this would have been used by Yamaha. If anyone has any more information regarding development targeting the Hitachi 6300 series chips in the 1970s/1980s, I'd love to know!

[0] In case anyone is curious, my latest successful work is hacking the Yamaha DX9 to have the full DX7 feature set: https://github.com/ajxs/yamaha_dx97

If you don't mind swapping some chips, there's a project to bring out the full potential: https://github.com/ajxs/yamaha_dx97

About this, I have a old frontend for mame in python2 (and old pygame):

https://gitlab.com/tres-14159/pyretro

More or less in 2011 we made a arcade cabinet for a public social center and I was looking for a frontend for mame for public spaces (not home or private spaces), unsupervised. I did not find one. Well I thought "I am going make a new mame frontend" and yes, I made it (but now it need a lot of work for update to python3 an pygame3).

PyRetro has the next features:

- the users can not the config of frontend by the joystick or buttons. For example, in others frontends a naughty boys (or adult person) can delete games of the list or change something.

- you can manage the frontend (and other things of GNU/Linux) by webpanel. For example, there is a bad boy (or adult person) greedy playing and he does not let another person play to the arcade. You can force exit the game and return to frontend or restart all cabinet.

- it has as screensaver mode when nobody plays it.