Keatah Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 Did they ever use early x86 chips in arcade machines? I know the 8086 was used, and even the 8035 but what about the likes of 286, 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium-Pro? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rex Dart Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 Sure, Hydro Thunder used some iteration of the Intel-compatible Quicksilver platform. Several others did too, I'm sure. The two most well known uses of a Quicksilver II system is in Midways Hydro Thunder and Offroad Thunder arcade consoles. As used in those two applications Quicksilver II was configured with a Celeron 333, 64 MB of ram, an Obsidian2 90-2440 (which is a Voodoo II with 10 MB of ram, a network card and either a custom version of Win95 or an imbedded version of Windows 2000. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevEng Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 For lesser values of "early", the Sega Chihiro arcade platform was based on the original Xbox, and ran on a Pentium III. If you take a look at that same page, other Sega arcade platforms that followed Chihiro are based on the Pentium line. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Usotsuki Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 Q*bert. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 8080 was a forerunner of the x86 series and used in some earlier machines - Z80 was upward compatible with 8080 code and developed by some of the same team so in a way is a forked development but essentially the 8086 and later CPUs bear little relation to it. I can't think of anything off hand that used x86. The thing is that the x86 CPUs of "current generation" were usually very expensive in comparison to the competition. Think hundreds of dollars vs tens for the like of Z80 and 6502. It was just cheaper to use multiples of the other or custom ICs as assistants than to use an x86. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carlsson Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 I found this blog entry, which draws a thin line for 8086 to 80386 meaning there must've been a few such games: http://jasoneckert.triosdevblog01.ca/blog/Entries/2012/9/2_Arcade_game_CPU_timeline.html At the end of the 1980's, the 68000 seems to have been plentiful in arcade games. I don't know if the 8086/8088 still were much more expensive, or perhaps Intel and the second sourcing manufacturers at that day mainly delivered chips to computer manufacturers. When it comes to arcade games, I suppose one doesn't need a more powerful CPU than there exists graphics hardware etc to feed. After researching the International Arcade Museum, System-16, Wikipedia and a few more, I reached the MAME DB which of course only lists games that MAME will emulate, but I suppose that list contains most of the earlier games. http://www.mamedb.com/search.php I counted the entries for 8086, 8088, 80186 and 80188 and reached to a total number of some 50-60 unique games plus variants and clones. For 386 and 486, I estimate some 40 games of which the majority origin from Russia or China. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 8086 is somewhat weak compared to 68000 - essentially the 68000 machines would match or beat a '286 at double the clock speed. 68000 also easy to program for in Assembler compared to many CPUs. And I imagine a good deal less expensive as well. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carlsson Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 Yes, it seems common to match the 68000 to a 80286, or even an i386SX in some cases although I think the latter has more advanced math functions even without a FPU. When it comes to games, I suppose something calculating a 3D world to be plotted by the graphics system (before there were GPU's that would do the calculations themselves) may be the most demanding. I didn't check the various Russian games, but for what it is worth, those may be clone PC's with a more or less regular motherboard featuring a 386 or 486 CPU and some graphics subsystem. In that case, it is kind of a philosophic question what an arcade game is, if you put a PC inside a cabinet and attach controllers to it, from the outside it will look like any other arcade game but on the inside it runs on the same hardware that any business owner or home user who could afford a PC already got. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrMaddog Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 I know that Sega used the NEC V60 which was an Intel clone that was used for their 32-bit arcade games as well as Model 1. System 16 has more information... http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=709 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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