DECO Cassette System

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The DECO Cassette System was the first standardized arcade system board for arcade machines . It was developed in 1980 by the US company Data East . DECO is short for D ata E ast Co rporation.

description

The arcade games were stored digitally and encrypted on small audio cassettes that were slightly larger than micro-cassettes . The operator of arcade machines had to connect a security dongle in addition to the cassette . That was revolutionary at the time and an early form of digital rights management .

The game had to be loaded and copied into memory, which took about 2-3 minutes. A counter display was shown on the monitor. There have been many complaints, however, as the cartridges and hardware were not very reliable. In addition, most of the games were relatively unpopular.

The purpose and advantage of the system was the quick exchange of games. Up to the appearance of the DECO Cassette System, changing the arcade game on a machine was not possible or useful, because the arcade machines were specially painted ("dedicated") or had special input elements. Furthermore, the large circuit boards / PCBs had to be replaced. The JAMMA standard was only introduced later , which at least made it easier to replace the circuit boards.

hardware

3 PCBs were used. Two MOS Technology 6502s were used as processors (with clock frequencies of 750 and 500 kHz) and an Intel 8x41 (@ 500 kHz). There were two AY-3-8910 (@ 1.5 MHz) as sound chips .

The graphic resolution was 240 × 240 pixels , the color palette consisted of 32 colors.

Arcade case shapes were standard and mini. The screen border ("bezel") was identical for all games.

The game cartridges, including dongle and instructions, were delivered in orange cardboard cases. The labels on the cassette, dongle and box had different colors.

emulation

Like most arcade games, these can also be played with the M.AME emulator .

It is now possible to read out the data without destroying the original dongle.

Games

About 47 games had been produced by 1985. The first game was Highway Chase (12/1980).

(listed by game number)

Due to the vulnerability of the system, only about two thirds of the games have been preserved.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Mini-cabinet on coinopspace.com
  2. ^ Mame forum
  3. ↑ widel.com ( Memento from August 28, 2008 in the Internet Archive )

Web links