I would be interested in doing this as well.

I am currently working at setting up a space nucore machine. Just to be sure to have a spare at hand before my current one breaks
buying parts at the moment and setting up virtual machines to see which version of Ubuntu to use.
I want to try the instructions from the bigguys forum for using ubuntu 18.04

/edit
I have succesfully installed nucore on an i5 cpu with pcie parallel port. It runs superfast

For the ones who like pinball 2000, I am working on a driver in mame.
This is what I have so far (see pictures )

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Good job. Are the sounds still working too?

DCS is work in progress. Pretty hard to get that figured out without documentation of some proprietary chips.

network card works?
more ram then stock systems?

does updates load in?

There is more ram in the machine then can ever be used by the current prism card and with a mame driver you can modify it yourself and recompile it
The NIC detection process works. I started writing my own driver and stopped at the moment that it was recognized correctly. The rest of the logic still needs to be finished.
Yes updates works, however the "normal" flash process does not work yet. However the updates are in nvram which is a file. Just update that with the version you want and it works. Also the 8Mb experimental update version (2.30) of applejuice works fine.
DCS does not work, commands are being send to either the midway IC or the other custom programmed cpld. I cannot find anything about those so looking at other drivers which uses the same 2104 adsp.

can it emu an full flash prism card?

You mean the prism which is completely built up with flash memory? No it cannot. Why would you want that?
With mame you can always add or change the roms yourself.
The biggest problem on Mame is to make connection to the emulator itself. I am not able to write to mame however I can connect a terminal session.
Still figuring out that problem. When that is fixed it might be possible to change the rom files to nvram files and then it should theoretically work.
It would be better to rewrite everything in qemu as that is much faster. However I like the debug option in Mame which makes it easy to develop everything so it works. That is the main goal for the moment. Optimizations can be done in a later stage

DCS is now working. The sound roms for RFM which are found on the internet are not correct. Luckily I had already dumped my own roms.
In mame I had to really underclock the mediaGX to get the emulation to run on 100% otherwise the ADSP (sound CPU) is not getting enough cycles so it will not really work. The downside is that the graphics are not as smooth as they should be.
Really need a better emulation system to get some performance.
So I will have a look and try to get things working in qemu just like nucore did. Can't be that hard with already a working mame version

DCS roms are part of the update area

The sound data for P2K is stored in 2 4Mbyte chips called u9 and u10.
DCS data is stored in eeprom of 1mbyte and can indeed be updated however the sound data cannot be updated as those are in the masked roms ...

the rfm_u109.bin and rfm_u110.bin are not correct. Nucore is not using sound roms as they managed to extract the sound in a different way and then included them (I believe but am not sure) as mp3 files or so in their package. The original mame version was using the wrong ones but that implementation did not do anything so ...

I hope to add my code into the mame repository soon. Need to create a pull request. More people can then optimize my code. I am very certain that improvements can be made. However my main goal was to get things working

and can the updates be added to the rom list? work on getting flash working?

Updates already work. Just make a binary file in the right order and copy it as the correct nvram file and it works.
I can also supply files if needed. So no worries

I have to re write some of the DCS code. I modified the current DCS2 code in a new file however I cannot compile all sources. I was working with only pin2k driver. Which is much quicker than compiling the complete source everytime. When that is finished I Will commit my code and let you know in this thread.

I just created a pull request in mame with my code. Gift for the coming new year
Hope this can contribute to something in the community.
https://github.com/mamedev/mame/pull/9072

or just add it to pinmame

After a year not working on this at all, I now started on getting it to work in QEMU.
Started a week ago and making good progress already
When there is something to show I will post some pictures.
Also want to make a DCS 2 emulator at least to extract sounds but maybe incorporate it in the emulator if it is quick enough

will that be able to read to the sound update data in the update flash zone?

Cant promise anything but it is the goal

Would be neat if this would make it easier to switch out playfields (no more ROM/PRISM cards to swap) and possibly make it more feasible for people to do homebrew playfields for the platform. I mean, theoretically the latter was already possible, but not in a practical way.

Nucore/Pinbox already makes it easy to switch playfields.

Only for RFM and SWE
Not if you want to play with WB or something else.
Nucore is a nice addon (have bought one long ago) however having it open source has much more opportunities.
Working my way now in the various memory areas of the prism card. It boots already however no graphics yet and still missing some small bits and pieces.

Aren't those no longer easily available, though? I had a RFM for a little while and looked into getting one or the other.

What's WB?

Wizard Blocks

Graphics now work, not as fast as I would like. Need to rework this. Switching between machines is pretty easy by modifying a text file at the moment.
No DCS (yet). Console access works nicely.
I have a new pcie LPT adapter on my desk now with an extra cable. Also an LPT usb cable. Lets see if that would be possible. Would be need to just plug in the usb in the computer and db25 in the driver board.
I have a couple of spare driver boards to play with at home

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rfm qemu (resized).png

This is fantastic erikie!

I would still have my RFM today if Nucor would have hung around…I was just to nervous holding on the machine with the risk it would become a paperweight. Hopefully another option comes into existence. Looks like headway is being made.

This was a major reason I sold mine. I would like to have another some day.

I read somewhere that the parallel port has to allow two way communication (I'm assuming to be able to send switch matrix state to the CPU) and that complicates finding an adapter for this application that works with a modern PC. I'm curious what exact adapter/cable you have.

I already have a working setup with nucore and a pcie lpt Port … but want to experiment with more hardware like usb to parallel Port cable

does networking and flash updates work?

Damn. On Windows the whole thing is slow. Need to create a Linux environment to start developing on and see if the kvm acceleration works.
Whpx acceleration on Windows is not working on my code
First want to see how quick it can run with Graphics before I start fixing stuff.

Just forget Windows when developing. It is a great system for everyday usage - browsers, email and office applications but for developing, Linux is way ahead. All tools are available, and it just works! If you need something extra, it its just a quick "apt install" or whatever in your distribution.

If you want to keep your main PC in Windows, install VMware or Virtualbox, and run Linux in that. You might then need some adjustments to run accelerated apps in virtual Linux.

Will try that. Makes developing a but harder because of Daily Windows usage..
In the end it will need to run on Linux anyway

As a developer who has been forced to develop on Windows his whole professional career - I agree with every word of this.

Any way to request/ask/beg for Nucore/pinbox source files? If nobody is updating SWEP1, let us try! I've virtualized SWEP1 on a old Dell computer and working a USB-parallel interface so we can use any computer with USB as well as HDMI connections instead of VGA.

Is there a software program to intercept parallel communications and save the results?

I think it needs to be an full parallel port and not an cut down one that some USB ones are.

There is no problem to use a modern computer. Just plug in an PCIE parallel port card and you can use nucore / pinbox. Easy todo, nucore accepts different IO addresses for this.

Made good progress on graphics speed on my QEMU version for pinball 2000. Need to see if this also helps for my linux development pc. Which is way slower than my windows one when I run my code.

next step is to get the DCS code working in QEMU.
I managed to get DCS working in a console application in windows. I can play any music / sound effect from all the pinball 2000 roms

Finally running full speed in qemu
Created a special machine for pinball 2000
Left out all unnecessary stuff. Running really smooth next steps are real DCS emulation
And hooking up the parallel Port and connect my game to this code