TIA-MC-1


The TIA-MC-1 — Телевизионный Игровой Автомат Многокадровый Цветной was a Soviet arcade machine with replaceable game programs and was one of the most famous arcade machines from the Soviet Union. The TIA-MC-1 was developed in Vinnytsia, Ukraine 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
  • Биллиард
  • Звёздный рыцарь
  • Истребитель
  • Конёк-Горбунок
  • Кот-рыболов
  • Котигорошко
  • Остров дракона
  • Остров сокровищ
  • Снежная королева
  • S.O.S.
The Konek-Gurbunok game is comparable to The Legend of Zelda and included environments such as forests and castles.

Technical specifications

The arcade machine consists of several boards called BEIA.
The boards have the following purposes:BEIA-100: data processing; RGB DAC; sound generation; coin-op and game controller interfaceBEIA-101: video sync and background generationBEIA-102: sprite generationBEIA-103: game ROM and main RAM
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: КР580ВМ80А, 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 driving a mono speaker.
  • Display: 20" TV screen
  • Main RAM — 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 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 on August 21, 2006. By now, only five games are dumped and supported by emulators. An ongoing search for other games is in progress.