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What is TAP?
TAP (Touchscreen Arcade Preservation/Project, pun intended) is a community project to preserve the various Touchscreen-based Arcade Machines. From the most unknown like Presas Evolution to the most popular ones like Merit's Megatouch line of machines, every machine (as long as it’s not a gambling machine) has a place in TAPP.

The project was started on the 13th of August of 2023, after a friend of mine told me “Wouldn’t it be nice to run (Funworld's) Photoplay in a PC?”. After searching the web for a while, I noticed that there is an huge lack of available information on some of the machines, while others (notably Merit's Megatouch) are very well documented with Service Manuals, et al being available.

As most of the companies that created and sold these kinds of machines went under, were bought or simply disappeared, the availability of documentation and software\restore images was very limited and scattered amongst various different websites.

Not only that, but the majority of this machines are 20+ years old, so parts are starting to fail and getting replacements is either hard and\or expensive, so more common and cheaper alternatives are needed.

One great example, are the List of Megatouch Security Keys, normally a Dallas DS1991L-F5 which has a lifespan of 10 years. They can’t be (at least easily) cloned, and while most of them are already 20 something years old and still running (I have a couple of MAXX 2K Security Keys from 2000 that are still working!). As such, ways to be able to play without a fully working Security Dongle are needed if we would like the platforms to be preserved.

The project has 5 goals. They are going to be a continuous effort.


 * Document and research all the Machines and their software.
 * Archive software releases and utilities for all the Machines / Systems.
 * Find sources of original parts and research into compatible parts.
 * Find reasonable / cheaper ways for people to be able to experience the systems as most of them were only distributed on certain regions (while others were not).

Follow along (and contribute if you can) in this journey with us!

You can reach us @ tappgeneral (at) google’s-email-service.com (replace google’s-email-service with gmail).