[Techokami]

Hello!
So I recently won an auction on eBay for one EZ Games Video Game System unit. It's a special Mega Drive variant made for hotels in the United States. It contains a lot of specialized hardware, including:

• A 6-cart game switcher (takes retail carts)
  
• A credit card reader (to purchase play time)
  
• A modem (to process credit card charges)

It's not yet fully documented (the wiki article at the time of writing is mainly photos and information from the auction page), but I did take a ton of super high quality photographs! The archive is quite large, over 350MB, so I politely ask for lots of mirrors of the archive.
Here's my photo archive (mirrored by GerbilSoft!) (original) And here's some observations I've made while doing the photos:

• Model number is EG-1 (EZ Games)
  
• It was made by 3E Incorporated, located in Seattle, WA.
  
• Looks like they hacked on some long cables with PC-style connectors for the controllers. They plug into the MD motherboard inside.
  
• Modem hardware is by Cermetek. Did they make the actual modem part of the Mega Modem?
  
• There's a small board that connects two cart slots together: one on the Mega Drive motherboard itself, and one on a connector underneath the EZ Games board. Interesting way to interface!

Yes, I am aware there is an EPROM on the top board. That contains the firmware for the thing, and I will be getting it dumped and uploaded ASAP. I just... don't entirely have access to a dumper. I know a guy that does, however.

This post has been edited by Techokami: 12 July 2014 - 09:00 PM

[Oerg866]

The effort made to document things in this community is astounding. Big fucking applause, really.

[Tanks]

Forgot to ask earlier. Any hints as to which carts were in use for that or was it at the hotel owner's discretion?

[Techokami]

The console takes retail carts (which is what was in this thing when I got it), so it doesn't matter... much. Obviously you can't use the bigger carts that EA used, and stuff like Sonic & Knuckles would be a no-go. But still, the owner could use nearly anything, which was a lot more lenient than Nintendo's Famicom Box/Super Famicom Box, which require special carts.

[GerbilSoft]

An observation from #retro: The main system board is an MD1 VA7. File:PC BD M5 USA VA7.jpg

CN10's wires are cut (headphone jack), but that's fairly easy to remedy. Waiting for the download to complete so I can examine it further to see if there's any other differences.

EDIT: Mirrored the photos on my server: http://gerbilsoft.so...EZGames_JPEG.7z

EDIT 2: IMG_0014.JPG - in the bottom left corner, there's an Intel 80C32. This is a ROM-less MCS-51 microcontroller. There has to be another chip on the board containing ROM code for the MCU.

EDIT 3: That image also shows a TMS9118... which is a TMS9918 variant. (The main difference is the 9118 uses 16Kx4 DRAMs, whereas the 9918 uses 16Kx1 DRAMs.) It's entirely possible that the MD isn't used for the onscreen menu at all, and that it's all handled by the microcontroller.

This post has been edited by GerbilSoft: 12 July 2014 - 09:19 PM
Reason for edit: +TMS9118

[Black Squirrel]

I don't have time to sift through hundreds of megabyte downloads right now but these two photos - I can't imagine this thing differs at all from the standard Auto RF Switchbox, I.e. it's not really unique of this system.

...now I don't feel so terrible for making pages on RF switches.

[GerbilSoft]

Black Squirrel, on 13 July 2014 - 08:06 AM, said:

I don't have time to sift through hundreds of megabyte downloads right now but these two photos - I can't imagine this thing differs at all from the standard Auto RF Switchbox, I.e. it's not really unique of this system.

...now I don't feel so terrible for making pages on RF switches.

It's a standard MK-1603A. Nothing special.

Remember that the entire main system board is just a plain old MD1 VA7. The important part is the EZ-Games board, which plugs into the cartridge slot.

[Techokami]

Sorry about the file size, Squirrel. These are 5k x 3k photos taken with my dad's Canon EOS 7D. I didn't want to screw around when it came to photographing this thing.

[Black Squirrel]

Oh by all means - high resolution photographs are good.

But they're even better on the wiki. The last post was code for "someone else should sort through and upload them".

[MathUser]

Yes, it'll be good to have this stuff on the wiki. Good find and thanks for sharing.

[The Game Collector]

A list of what carts came in the unit would still be pretty cool just to use as a reference for the hotel owner's tastes or opinion on what they would think the public would have liked to pay to play. It's somewhat historical information. It would basically serve as an example of what was popular to use. Or are the carts shown in the Sega Retro picture the ones it came with?

This post has been edited by The Game Collector: 13 July 2014 - 12:31 PM

[Techokami]

The Game Collector, on 13 July 2014 - 12:29 PM, said:

A list of what carts came in the unit would still be pretty cool just to use as a reference for the hotel owner's tastes or opinion on what they would think the public would have liked to pay to play. It's somewhat historical information. It would basically serve as an example of what was popular to use.

I refer you to File:Ez games 4.JPG, which is an image from the original auction of the games that came with the unit.
Sonic 1, Strider, Shadowrun, Mortal Kombat.