The TIA-MC-1 () — Телевизионный Игровой Автомат Многокадровый Цветной (pronounced ''Televizionniy Igrovoi Automat Mnogokadrovyi Tcvetnoi''; meaning ''Video Game Machine – Multiframe Colour'') was a Soviet

arcade machine An arcade cabinet, also known as an arcade machine or a coin-op cabinet or coin-op machine, is the housing within which an arcade game's electronic hardware resides. Most cabinets designed since the mid-1980s conform to the Japanese Amusement Ma ...

with replaceable game programs and was one of the most famous arcade machines from the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. The TIA-MC-1 was developed in

Vinnytsia Vinnytsia ( ; , ) is a city in west-central Ukraine, located on the banks of the Southern Bug. It serves as the administrative centre, administrative center of Vinnytsia Oblast. It is the largest city in the historic region of Podillia. It also s ...

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

by the ''Ekstrema-Ukraina'' company in the mid-1980s under the leadership of V.B. Gerasimov. The machine was manufactured by the 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 (''Istrebiteli'', Fighter Jet, Harrier) * Конёк-Горбунок (''Konek-Gorbunok'', The Humpbacked Horse by

Pyotr Pavlovich Yershov Pyotr Pavlovich Yershov (; – ) was a Russian poet and author of the fairy-tale poem ''The Little Humpbacked Horse'' (''Konyok-Gorbunok''). Biography Pyotr Yershov was born in the village of Bezrukovo, Tobolsk Governorate (currently Ishimsk ...

) * 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 ''Treasure Island'' (originally titled ''The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys''Hammond, J. R. 1984. "Treasure Island." In ''A Robert Louis Stevenson Companion'', Palgrave Macmillan Literary Companions. London: Palgrave Macmillan. .) is an adventure a ...

Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as ''Treasure Island'', ''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll ...

) * Снежная королева (''Snezhnaja koroleva'',

The Snow Queen "The Snow Queen" () is an 1844 original fairy tale by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. It was first published 21 December 1844 in ''New Fairy Tales. First Volume#New Fairy Tales. First Volume. Second Collection, New Fairy Tales. First Vo ...

Hans Christian Andersen Hans Christian Andersen ( , ; 2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogue (literature), travelogues, novels, and poems, he is best remembered for his literary fairy tales. Andersen's fai ...

) * S.O.S. The ''Konek-Gurbunok'' game is comparable to ''

The Legend of Zelda is a media franchise, video game series created by the Japanese game designers Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka. It is primarily developed and published by Nintendo; some portable installments and re-releases have been outsourced to Flags ...

'' and included environments such as forests and castles.

Technical specifications

The 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 The RGB color model is an additive color model in which the red, green, and blue primary colors of light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three ...

DAC; sound generation; coin-op and game controller interface * BEIA-101: video sync and background generation * BEIA-102: sprite generation * BEIA-103: game

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...

and main

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM most commonly refers to: * A male sheep * Random-access memory, computer memory * Ram Trucks, US, since 2009 ** List of vehicles named Dodge Ram, trucks and vans ** Ram Pickup, produced by Ram Trucks Ram, ram, or RAM may also ref ...

Games in a TIA-MC-1 arcade machine can be switched by replacing the BEIA-103 module, not unlike cartridges in video game consoles. Main system characteristics are as follows: *

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes instructions of a computer program, such as arithmetic, log ...

: КР580ВМ80А (clone of

Intel 8080 The Intel 8080 is Intel's second 8-bit computing, 8-bit microprocessor. Introduced in April 1974, the 8080 was an enhanced successor to the earlier Intel 8008 microprocessor, although without binary compatibility.'' Electronic News'' was a week ...

), 1.78 MHz * Video resolution: 256×256, 4 bits per pixel selectable from a palette of 256 colors ** Background: two video pages composed 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 The Intel 8253 and 8254 are programmable interval timers (PITs), which perform timing and counting functions using three 16-bit counters. The 825x family was primarily designed for the Intel 8080/ 8085-processors, but were later used in x86 ...

) driving a mono speaker. * Display: 20" (51 cm) TV screen * Main

— 8

KiB The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...

. * Character RAM — 8

. * Video RAM — 2

. * Sprite

— 32

. * ROM with game code and background graphics — up to 56

Emulation

For a long time the TIA-MC-1 hardware remained unemulated due to a 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 MAME (formerly an acronym of Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is a free and open-source emulator designed to emulate the hardware of arcade games, video game consoles, old computers and other systems in software on modern personal computers and ...

on August 21, 2006 (since version 0.108).{{cite web , title=What's new for MAME 0.108 , url=http://www.mamedev.org/releases/whatsnew_0108.txt , date=2006-08-20 , author=The

Development Team , accessdate=2014-03-18 By now, only five games (''Konek-Gorbunok'', ''S.O.S.'', ''Billiard'', ''Snezhnaja koroleva'', ''Kot-Rybolov'') are dumped and supported by emulators. An ongoing search for other games is in progress.

References

External links

Extreme-Ukraine site, short history of TIA-MC-1 in English
as of October 23, 2007, courtesy of the Wayback Machine.
The Alternate Universe of Soviet Arcade Games
(September 1, 2015. Kristin Winet.) Arcade system boards Computing in the Soviet Union Soviet brands Goods manufactured in the Soviet Union Arcade-only video games Arcade video games

Games

Technical specifications

Emulation

See also

References

External links