- TIA-MC-1
TIA-MC-1 ( _ru. ТИА-МЦ-1) — Телевизионный Игровой Автомат Многокадровый Цветной (pronounced "Televizionniy Igrovoi Automat Mnogokadrovyi Tcvetnoi"; meaning "Video Game Machine – Multiframe Colour"), Russian arcade videogame hardware, with replaceable game programs, one of the most famous
Soviet Union arcade machines. Developed inVinnytsia ,Ukraine by "Extreme-Ukraine" company in the mid-1980s under the leadership of V.B. Gerasimov. The machine was manufactured by production association "Terminal" and some other factories.Games
Some of the TIA-MC-1 based games are:
* Автогонки ("Avtogonki", Autoracing)
* Биллиард (Billiard, a pool-like game)
* Звёздный рыцарь ("Zvezdnyi Rytsar", Star Knight)
* Истребитель ("Istrebitel", Fighter Jet, Harrier)
* Конёк-Горбунок ("Konek-Gorbunok", means: The Humpbacked Horse, name of fairy tale byPyotr Pavlovich Yershov )
* Кот-рыболов ("Kot-Rybolov", Cat the fisher)
* Котигорошко ("Kotigoroshko", title of a Russian fairy tale)
* Остров дракона ("Ostrov Drakona", Dragon Island)
* Остров сокровищ ("Ostrov Sokrovish",Treasure Island byRobert Louis Stevenson )
* Снежная королева ("Snezhnaya koroleva",The Snow Queen byHans Christian Andersen )
* S.O.S.Technical specifications
Arcade machine consists of several boards called BEIA (Russian:БЭИА, Блок Элементов Игрового Автомата, "Blok Elementov Igrovogo Automata"). The boards have the following purposes:
* BEIA-100: data processing;RGB DAC; sound generation; coin-op and game controller interface
* BEIA-101: video sync and background generation
* BEIA-102: sprite generation
* BEIA-103: game ROM and mainRAM Games in a TIA-MC-1 arcade machine can be switched by replacing BEIA-103 module, not unlike cartridges in video game consoles.
Main system characteristics are as follows:
*CPU : КР580ВМ80А (clone ofIntel 8080 ), 1.78 MHz
* Video resolution: 256×256, 4 bits per pixel selectable from a palette of 256 colors
** Background: two video pages comprised of 32×32 tiles, each tile is 8×8 pixels. Tile RAM can store 256 separate tiles.
** Sprites: up to 16 simultaneously displayed hardware-generated sprites; total of 256 sprites can be stored in sprite ROM. Sprites can be vertically and horizontally mirrored in hardware.
* Sound: two КР580ВИ53 interval timers (Intel 8253 ) driving a mono speaker.
* Display: 20” TV screen
* MainRAM — 8KiB .
* Character RAM — 8KiB .
* Video RAM — 2KiB .
* Sprite ROM — 32KiB .
* ROM with game code and background graphics — up to 56KiB .Emulation
For a long time TIA-MC-1 hardware remained unemulated due to lack of technical information and ROM dumps. Soon after the Russian emulation community obtained technical documentation and ROM dumps of one of the games, "Konek-Gorbunok", the first emulator named "TIA-MC Emulator" was released on July 27, 2006. A TIA-MC-1 driver was included in
MAME on August 21, 2006 (since version 0.108). By now, only two games ("Konek-Gorbunok" and "S.O.S.") are dumped and supported by emulators. An ongoing search for other games is in progress.See also
List of Soviet computer systems External links
* [http://www.extrema-ua.com/eng/About_eng.htm Extreme-Ukraine site, short history of TIA-MC-1 in English]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.