26th January, 2010
Today is Australia Day. Yay! 
As you can see from the flag it's pretty windy here right now. It's a national holiday and I'm just sitting on my ass not doing a whole lot ;-)
Well sitting in front of the air conditioner anyway sipping scotch and coke, it's HOT (~38 degrees C).
So, some stuff arrived a few days ago.....
These are 'Logic Pro Adventure' by Tecmo on TPS/ZN1 hardware with sec chip MG07 and an STV cart titled 'Print Club Pokemon B'
Thanks to Smitdogg and his various supporters for donations. I'll have these dumped sometime soon.
Also arrived from a person who wishes to remain anonymous is another NAOMI cart called Crackin' DJ. I fired it up quickly and it looks like
you play the role of a big music executive come late-night disc jockey getting high on cocaine (crack) whilst recruiting hundreds of one-hit
wonders (pimping) and trying to pass off as many sub-standard music tracks at high prices as you can (dealing) while simultaneously fending
off hoards of angry music buyers (in Virtua Cop-style) who are sick of the B.S going-ons in the music industry. Sounds like a fun game!!
It's now dumped, should be in MAME soon though obviously won't be working due to the cart security :-)
5th January, 2010
In line with what Luca is doing, here's some more screen shots of Espgaluda II which runs on the same hardware as Ibara. These are very preliminary at the moment, the video is too bright caused by some protection issues. Thanks to Luca for the early WIP shots.
Watch Luca's site for more updates on this once he fixes many of the issues.
21st November, 2009
All done. If anyone has related items to loan out please contact me. I'm moving onto the next pile
of stuff now :-)
Not a lot arrived over the past couple of months (I think).
Thanks to a member of Team Japump for sending out these items....
Konami network unit with 10G 2.5" HDD (for use with System 573, used on Drum Mania 7th to 10th and Guitar Freaks 8th to 11th)
Fire Trap PCB (original Japanese version with MCU for decapping)
A bunch of System 573 protection carts
A Sega Tetris NAOMI cart that I bought for my arcade cab (which I dumped and was added to MAME a short itme ago)
Oh err, hang-on. I did get some stuff from Smitdogg. Some of it was dumped several weeks ago....
Merit Trivia security brick
Tekken 4 security cart / alt rev
Ninja Assault
Hammer (Andamiro)
HOTD2
A broken Strikers 1945 for decapping the PIC16C57. I repaired this so I'm going to play it a while first ;-D
Midway Athens main board for decapping. This has been stripped of all chips including the PIC16C57 so it's not all that useful :-(
Fisherman's Bait security cart
Oh, my memory is coming back! I also got hold of a Konami Warzaid cart and figured out how to clone it so it works on a real Konami Viper
PCB. Still can't image it yet for MAME since CHDMAN can't copy some of the hidden data that the hardware looks for (the existing .CHD copy
in MAME is bad and won't work on real hardware). But it's secured anyway.
Thanks to Brian Troha for a Japanese version of KOF Neowave
In other news I dumped the DTV2 that Lord Nightmare sent some time ago (it's a C64 on a single 3" x 3" PCB with games in a joystick housing) and also dumped all of
the Super Cassette Vision carts that Ranger Lennier also sent some time ago. Unfortunately some of them were not readable due to bad ROMs.
Update: I figured out the SCV carts and they are all dumped now. Strange ROM types....
15th August, 2009
A H-U-G-E amount of stuff arrived over the last few weeks. I don't have a list handy ATM, but I can tell you some of the stuff
that's already been dumped including a couple of Atomiswave carts (Extreme Hunting and Extreme Hunting 2 thanks to DevoDave for the loan). Some of the other stuff you
probably already know about since it's in MAME now, including a new dump of Outrun, redumping all of the Konami Viper games, redumping VF3TB,
dumping the 8751 MCU from Ninja Spirit, a new revision of Winding Heat, a MAME rip-off 48-in-1 PCB and dumping a couple of djmain HDDs (Pop n' Music 2 and beatmania
ClubMIX, thanks to a member of Team Japump for sending them out). A 60-in-1 has just arrived too from a local friend which I'll be getting to next.
There's also a ton of stuff that Smitdogg has been casually buying up and some of that is here waiting patiently in boxes too. The backlog of
stuff to get through is quite large. I'm busy busy busy!
For your entertainment I've also uploaded a new video to my youtube page for a
NAOMI game
called 'Gun Survivor 2 Biohazard Code : Veronica'
Update: The reason there hasn't been an update here for a while is because the majority of my spare time is tied up repairing arcade
PCBs now... mostly Daytona and Sega Rally, and it doesn't look like that work will slow down anytime soon. That's not an entirely bad thing because many of the recent dumps have come from PCBs that came in for repair :-D
Because of the complexity of the Model 2 hardware most of the faults are VERY nasty, including failure of major custom ICs. I have at least 30 Daytona's piled up here. Some of them
are damaged beyond repair because of MEGA-corrosion (the fans and PCBs are seriously in the wrong location under the pedals with no protection from
water and spillage). I suggest if you own a working Daytona you get rid of it R-E-A-L F-A-S-T before it totally stuffs up and
isn't worth Jack ;-)
It's a pity Sega didn't develop a few new Daytona updates on newer hardware to keep the 'killer-app' going and cash in big-time on the success
of Daytona. Well, they did Daytona 2 on Model 3 but that didn't really catch on as well as the original. Then there was Nascar Racing on Hikaru.
Quite a nice game and very well done, but OH! what a total screw-up that hardware was. THE Most Unreliable Hardware On This Planet (I heard rumors it's also unreliable on Venus, Mars, Jupiter
and Saturn). Sega... if you're reading this, make a Daytona EVERY year on the current hardware. Don't change the game just keep the original
legend going! Dayyyyyyyyyyytonaaaaaaaaaa!
Hmmm, well, it looks like Sega lost. The new big money earner is Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 3 (by Namco/Bandai). It's surpassed Daytona earnings by 3X at least according to what I've seen and read and it doesn't look like stopping anytime soon.
</rant>
Update Update: Ok here's a copy/paste of most of the other stuff.
From Korea thanks to gp-lee...
Quiz Punch 1988 Space Computer
Super Game 3 1996 Top Industry
LA Girl 1993 Ta Ta Electronics (Play Girls clone)
Shin Ib Sa Won - Seok Dol I 1984 Konami (Mikie's Korean bootleg)
Ddang Dda Meok Gi 1990 Inter Trading (Gals Panic clone)
Dark Edge 1992 Sega with 317-0204 FD1149
Final Tetris 1993 Jeil Computer System
Last Mission 1986 Data East USA with 8751 MCU
TumblePop 1991 Data East bootleg
From Japan from my Japanese contact (all of the backlog and probably the final package from him due to changed jobs although we can still buy items if required and given funds which we don't have any of)....
Konami Viper board x 4 (This is the final remaining 4 PCBs that we bought as a lot of 8 many years ago. I traded most of the previous ones for some other good stuff including Tokyo Wars)
Arcana Heart PCB + ver. 1.5 Flash ROM update
Netchuu Pro Yakyuu 2002
Guiter Freaks 9 and Drum Mania 8 CDROM and security carts
Mahjong Nenrikishu (IGS)
Mahjong Ryukobou
Mahjong Gekisha
Mahjong Seiryu Densetsu
Mahjong Yarou
The last few mahjong games are thanks to Dyq.
Another package from Japan thanks to Team Japump....
Hacha Mecha Fighter (to decap MCU)
NB1413M3 (Nichibutsu mahjong MCU to decap)
Winning Eleven 2003 (Pyson PCB box and CF card and dongle)
Winning Eleven (different version CF card only, no dongle required to run)
Attack Pla-Rail (Namco System 12)
Danchi de Quiz (ST-V cart)
beatmania clubMIX (HDD, dumped)
Pop'n Music 2 (ROMs and HDD, dumped)
Kinnikuman Muscle Grand Prix
Sukusuku Inufuku 2
Kidou Senshi Z Gundam A.E.U.G vs. Titans
Kidou Senshi Z Gundam A.E.U.G vs. Titans DX
Tekken 5 ver 5.1
and a couple of top secret items that I can't mention yet ;-)
Dirt Dash, thanks to R. Belmont. This is the final Namco Super System 22 game that is not dumped. Now the SS22 sets in MAME are finally
complete. I'm proud to have exclusively dumped every SS22 game :-D
Yes, I know there's still one remaining game (Armadillo Racing) but they are not common so we'll just forget about that one for now :-)
From Smitdogg/The Dumping Union....
World Series '99
Mahjong Tycoon
Final Furlong
MK4
Print Club 2 Vol.3
Print Club 2
Protection chip from High Impact
8751 MCU from Wrestle War
Protection chips from Fighter's History
14-in-1 CPS1 bootleg
I think my head just exploded! Errr, that's it for arrivals? Maybe something else will turn up in my pile of boxes ;-)
Also, those who are observant will notice more chips added to the decap page and some of them are flagged as 'posted' :-D
Note that actually decapping these will require funds. Posted <> Decapped. Funds + Posted = Decapped).
8th June, 2009
Arrived and dumped....
Ranger Mission (2004, Sammy Atomiswave cart)
Sports Shooting USA (2003 Sammy Atomiswave cart)
Thanks to Brian Troha
Chips for decapping from Chase HQ, Fighter's History, Super High Impact, Renegade (68705P5), Double Axle and Narc
Fighting Mania (Konami System 573, not working). This is a no-CD version, the program runs from on-board flash
so getting a correct and complete dump might not be possible because the game won't boot up (meaning the program/flash is bad). I've dumped the on-board flash ROMs, we'll have
to wait and see what RB or smf says about it.
Thanks to Smitdogg
Magicball Fighting (1994 Semicom, for MCU decapping)
Domino block ver 2 (1996 Wonwoo System)
Gondomania (1987 Data East, for 8751 MCU decapping)
Ninja Baseball Batman (1993 Irem)
Raiga / Strato Fighter (1991 Tecmo, for MCU decapping)
Super Mario Bros 3 (bootleg)
TNKIII (1985 SNK bootleg joystick version)
Shadow Force version 3 (1993 Technos)
Stadium Hero (1988 Data East)
Thanks to gp-lee
26th May, 2009
I'm doing some more wiring up today. This time something a lot easier.
Pic 1 shows the security slot taken from the beatmania IIDX PCB that arrived recently and wired up to a DIP8 socket.
Pic 2 shows 2 security cards opened up. The card on the left is the newer type using a ST24W02 TSSOP8 EEPROM (it's physical size is about 2mm x 3mm). The right card is the
older type with an epoxy blob.
Pic 3 shows what the security cards look like untouched.
Pic 4 shows the main PCB with security slot at the front.
Pic 5 is a reminder of what arrived a few years ago :-)
The general idea is to just plug in an untouched security card and dump it out in 1 second. So far the theory worked for one card (left)
but not the epoxy blob one so I guess the older ones are different somehow and more research is needed. But at least we now have one
of them dumped :-)
UPDATE:
Of course, I've also dumped the other required pieces like the CD's and HDD.
Haraharharhar!!!!!!!!
Thanks to RB we have a nice POST screen for beatmania IIDX. No promises when more might happen but it could be a good idea to watch
RB's site for an update :-D
I just dumped the security card for beatmania IIDX 4th Style too, plus the CD's. It's one of the newer types. It appears the
older security cards (i.e. possibly all the games from 1999) can't be dumped (yet). There are many missing pieces still required... CD's, HDDs and security cards.
We still need the following things....
If you can help, please let me know! :-)
24th May, 2009
I've been doing a bit of work today wiring up the mask ROMs from Led Storm Rally 2011.
After 2 1/2 hours we have this....
OMG!! ;-)
2 dumped, 2 more to go. Not today though.
22nd May, 2009
Here's a technical update about the MCU's #106/#107. Most of this will go over your head. I'm hoping some of it will stick with some people
and we'll have a nice solution.
There's some discussion on the mameworld forums that perhaps we can get further with the Heavy Unit and DJ Boy MCU decoding with the help of many typing monkies :-)
First of all, if you know nothing and don't know what this is for, DO NOT download this **just in case**!
I'm providing FULL sized images of #106/#107.
It looks identical to the below pic, just **A LOT** bigger. The code to do the automatic image bit identification is kindly provided by
Mooglyguy. Please remember that this is not a flawless one-off process and some of the bits in the image can't be positively identified as
0 or 1 without manual intervention and decoding/assembly of the code to determine 'good' code. This is specifically tailored for #106.
It will not work with #107 without modifying it. Unless you know how to program in C this will not be useful to you, so do not download it
either.
Code/program to identify the image bits is here.
The two large MCU images of Heavy Unit mask ROM and DJ Boy mask ROM are on an external free hosting site (not any more, check the 'typing monkies' link for alternative locations)
These will be available for a limited time only (possibly 1-2 days). If you want to provide them for download somewhere else,
that's fine. But don't use the mameworld.info server!
For decoding, you must read it ACROSS the image not up/down. The data-bus columns are left to right 0..7 as marked on the image of #106.
It's possible the first instruction is most likely "75 xx xx" or maybe "02 xx xx" or maybe "80 xx".
Most likely every 4 bits is an address location. The MCU is an Intel 80C51 so someone knowing that language should be able to check the code
to make sure it's valid once it is decoded.
If you do have the required skills and want to help, feel free to grab the files. I look forward to seeing at
least a text file of the verified 0's and 1's appearing somewhere soon.
And to all the typing monkeys, thanks for your assistance!
Please help to support this very worthy cause with either chips or donations. See my Decapping Project page for more info.
20th May, 2009
This is the ROM image of Heavy Unit (#107) which has just been decapped. You can clearly see a large part of the lower section of the ROM is unused.
I've also added many wanted chips to the Decapping Project page. Please help to support this very worthy cause with either chips or donations.
See my Decapping Project page for update info.
The Dr. is kind of busy now so the update will show up there later.
9th May, 2009
The following chips have just been decapped and dumped....
#106
#179
#181
#182
#183
#184
This is the ROM image of DJ Boy (#106)
You can see the full chip image over at Dr. Decapitator's Page. Of
course, us devs are really only interested in the ROM ^_^
The small red marks at the top of the image (view it full size to see them) are the databus outputs (0-7 horizontally from left to right)
Please help to support this very worthy cause. See my Decapping Project page for update info.
In other news, I also dumped the remaining G-Net cards that arrived here recently (Otenami Haiken & Shanghai Sangokuhai Tougi) so
they should be included in the next version of MAME. The G-Net Status Page has also been updated.
6th May, 2009
The following chips have just been decapped and dumped....
#28
#29
#30
#48
#49
#93
#185
#187
Please help to support this very worthy cause. See my Decapping Project page for update info.
28th April, 2009
I'm moving onto something good now. Thanks to RB for the initial WIP screen shots :-D
These are a little trickier because the 80-pin plastic connector has to be removed first. And of course there's a ton of ROMs on the ROM PCB too.
Anyway, that completes the dumping of the remaining Namco Super System 22 PCBs that I have here.
25th April, 2009
Today is a VERY good day indeed! In more ways than one! Lots of interesting things happening...
The recently decapped MCU code from Hyper Pacman has been added to MAME and that will be in the next release.
Many of you will know I have been dumping ROMs for ~10 years. In that time I've tried to keep the flow constant but I've been getting
banked up with too much work lately and not enough free time so I've enlisted the help of Smitdogg to take care of the easier stuff and
the Doggster is slowly tooling up for it with my assistance. But there's still lots of complicated stuff to get through here. So 3 weeks ago
I decided to take a month off work because I have over 800 hours of leave owing to me. You kind of get that when you've worked for a company
for 20 years. Not that I'm complaining, I've been able to enjoy life to the fullest because of it. Just remember boys and girls, even though
you may have a job, listen to what your parents taught you. Spend in moderation and within your means. If you don't have a job, don't go
buying expensive toys and getting into activities that require large sums of money or you'll end up with egg on your face....
The recent results you see here are not an effort to release stuff on a daily frenzied schedule like some kiddie warez group that hoards
tons of stuff and feeds it slowly to the public to improve their image. There are no secret items in the back room, everything is listed
here openly and there is no dark motivation to slowly release it. I am a dedicated and VERY busy member of Mamedev in for the long haul.
Merely the timing is right (with the recent NAOMI MAME activity) and the time is now available and I'm using my holidays to get some
serious dumping done. However as a side-effect of that, it also helps to cut off issues where someone else gets hold of the same item I have here
(using infomation being published on my site for a long time) and dumps it, thus making the item I bought useless and stabbing all of the donators in the
back at the same time. Very nice. NOT! :-/
So I've headed most of it off at the chicane. I'm going to try to avoid buying this type of warez-kiddie attracting stuff in the future
because it will probably turn up somewhere mysteriously dumped one day. Not here, but somewhere.
Hmmm....
With that said, I know someone unknown wrote a program running on a PS2 + a BIOS mod that allows dumping of the Namco System 246
security carts using a PS2. Yes, we know 'who' bragged about dumping some of them, but I also know it was not that person who wrote the program
and BIOS mod. I urge the 'real' skilled person to contact me and help me to dump them for the good of the emulation community and the
preservation of the data and games that ran on that hardware. To not share is to not care....
In other emulation news, I'm still in a mass-dumping mood, and I've finally got around to dumping the remaining Hyper Neo Geo 64 carts.
This is the aftermath of it all.
This includes the recently purchased Samurai Shodown 64 HNG64 cart that Smitdogg got for us on eBay and the other HNG64 carts that were
waiting to be dumped.
Note that all 7 HNG64 games are now dumped. Yes that's right, just 7, including the following games...
Beast Busters 2nd Nightmare
Buriki One
Fatal Fury: Wild Ambition / Garou Densetsu 64: Wild Ambition
Roads Edge / Round Trip RV
Samurai Spirits 64 / Samurai Shodown 64
Samurai Spirits II: Asura Zanmaden / Samurai Shodown: Warrior's Rage
Xtreme Rally / Offbeat Racer
Not 12. Just 7! While doing this I discovered that the HNG64 games that have alternative
titles are not different carts. I have some here and the ROMs were all the same even though the cart had a different name. So that means
the region setting must be on the mainboard or part of the I/O MCU (which will be decapped and extracted at
some point in the future). Hopefully we will see all of those games in the next MAME release. But don't get too excited, none of them will
be working. It's not a simple thing to emulate that hardware so we must wait patiently to see these games in all their glory.
I'm not quite sure that SNK games can be seen as glorious, but anyway, let's just say nicely emulated and leave it at that.
Now for some wants. While all HNG64 carts are dumped, it was pointed out that 2 of them have revision B program ROMs. That means there could
be an alternative revision A of Buriki One and Roads Edge / Round Trip floating around somewhere. If you have any of these carts lying around,
please grab your cart, open it up and check the program ROMs at locations 81 & 82. If the printing on the ROMs says (for example) 001-PR01A
or 007-PR01A then it means you have something undumped lying around that you didn't know you had, and you should arrange to get that over to
old Guru ASAP! :-)
24th April, 2009
More decapping progress!
This is [a section of] the dump. Click the little arrows in the pic once it opens to see it full size.
Note that this chip is EPROM-based ^_^
Please help to support this very worthy cause. See my Decapping Project page for more info.
20th April, 2009
A small update to the Makaron info below. This is straight from the horses mouth ;-)
Thanks to some info from Deunan Knute (author of Makaron) I was able to get the ROM cart for Virtua NBA that I just dumped working in-game!
The emulation crashes pretty early though, might be emulation or protection issues causing that. But this is pretty amazing considering
this game was not dumped when the emulator was written. Thanks again to Deunan Knute for the info!
Just bear in mind that there was no special magic involved here. The ROM loading just needs to be correct. As I said below, the ROM carts will not
work in Makaron if the security chip is present, and currently only 3 games don't use it. There's no point trying to get the other games working
because they will not work unless the security is either emulated or patched out and neither of those are done by the current version of Makaron. YMMV
20th April, 2009
Now we'll look at something a little bit harder......
The last pic shows the real size of the ROMs (maximize the pic to see it). These are not particularly any more difficult to dump but they
are a lot more fragile and require more work to prepare before reading (roughly 4-6 times longer). The actual ROM reading part takes between 30 seconds and 1 minute.
I've been messing around with Makaron again and ROM carts. While checking some things I realised what was going on. It seems it's not all that
difficult to get a NAOMI ROM cart to boot but there's one big factor involved. The cart must not have the 317-xxxx security chip in it. Unfortunately only 3
NAOMI carts I know of documented on my NAOMI page don't use the security chip. They are Sega Marine Fishing, Virtua NBA and Typing Of The Dead.
It's a HUGE credit to the Makaron author that the emulator is so versatile, even in this early stage of development.
To get a cart running simply do a binary copy of all of the ROMs and make one big file, starting at IC22 and then IC1, IC2, IC3 etc
And here's a few pics of some carts I dumped to show that it's possible. They don't go in-game yet. However they will go into TEST mode.
In other news, I'm still steadily going through the NAOMI ROM carts here and dumping a few more each day.
Today's dumps include....
Quiz Ah My Goddess
Giantgram 2000
Dynamite Baseball NAOMI
Dynamite Baseball 99
Derby Owner's Club
Death Crimson OX
Ferrari F355
The Sega NAOMI Dump Status Page is also updated too. LOTS of green there now :-D
18th April, 2009
Here's a little inside info into what is required to dump a NAOMI ROM cart. See the pic below....
Click the little arrows in the pic once it opens to maximize it.
So here we have an EPROM programmer/reader (a quite expensive one but fast as hell ;-)
A SOP44 adapter (the small blue/black thing sitting on top in the programmer's ZIF socket). This holds the SOP44 chip in place while
reading it.
A NAOMI cart or 2 (or 40)
A bunch of SOP44 MASKROMs (on the front right of the pic) taken off the NAOMI board shown at the back.
All that is required is to place them in the SOP44 adapter and select the correct settings in the EPROM Programmer software and then read it
and save the binary file. It's pretty simple even a Dogg could do it.
The main issue is the ROMs usually come off with crap on them so they need some preparing or you get a bad read. This
is what actually takes most of the time. The actual ROM reading takes 6 seconds per chip and a few more seconds
to click a couple of buttons and save it. The other big issue is you have to repeat the process for each ROM. On this cart that I'm doing now
there's 21 ROMs (20 on the desk and 1 in the SOP44 adapter). That's a time consuming task even though with my methods it only takes me around
1/2 an hour total per cart (incl. removal, prep and read/save). But there's a whole pile of stuff to get through (around 40 carts or so although
many I've done already) so it can get a bit boring actually and I'm easily distracted by other stuff ;-)
I guess the other problem is when you mass-dump a lot of stuff it tends to pile up and become scrap. Well, I will probably put all the ROMs
back onto the carts eventually but to put them back takes at least 4X longer than the reading process for a complete cart dump so I'm not
enthusiastic about re-attaching around 400+ ROMs. Especially the weird stuff that no one would buy anyway. Of course the good stuff has
already been re-assembled and is either ready for sale or is sold.
Speaking of weird stuff, I always wanted to see what Idol Janshi Su Chi Pai 3 looked like but I
couldn't get it to load on my NAOMI unit. It turned out I needed to use a different I/O board. So I re-attached the ROMs and booted it up
and got it running. I did a quick video and put that up on my YouTube channel. Watch
closely for the naughty bits ;-)
In other dumping news, I've dumped a few more NAOMI carts including...
Guilty Gear X
Virtua NBA
Shangri-La
Giant Gram All Japan Pro Wrestling 2
17th April, 2009
I had a spare couple of hours today so I dumped a couple more of the NAOMI titles that were waiting patiently...
Marvel Vs Capcom 2 (thanks to Heywood Floyd for the cart)
Zombie Revenge (thanks to Olivier Galibert for the cart... many, many years ago :-)
Virtua Striker 4 Japan (Triforce GDROM GDT-0013E)
I have been trying to get Makaron working for some time and finally figured out the missing pieces and got it booted (multiple cryptic
Microsoft errors caused by missing MSVC 2008 runtime libraries!), but couldn't get the ROM cart part of it working (since there doesn't seem to be any info around about exactly how to get
the ROM carts working!!!) :-/
I would really appreciate it if someone could shed some light on that as it would be good to test the new
dumps in Makaron to make sure they are good.
So I decided to look at the GDROM based games. I picked GDL-0007A that I dumped some time ago. You should all know that is 'Capcom Vs SNK 2
Millionaire Fighting 2001' right? Well I thought so too.
After hacking out track 3 from the CHD by using CHDMAN then BIN2ISO then ISOBUSTER (OMG come on guys this is 2009 now, can't we just support
the official CHD and be done with all the hacking??), decrypting it (using a program that comes with Makaron) and then running it in
Makaron it seems we have a new game!
Or do we? See the pics....
It seems if you run it with a Revision D Japanese BIOS (EPR-21576D) it comes up as 'Mark Of The Millennium' and with Revision G Japanese BIOS
(EPR-21576G) it comes up as 'Millionaire Fighting'. It's funny that no one realised :-D
The rest of the game is identical, of course. I wonder if any other games come up with
alternative titles when run with a BIOS of the same region but different revision?
Anyway, the end result is 'Capcom Vs SNK 2 Mark Of The Millennium 2001' is dumped and GDL-0008 is now unknown?
Update: It turned out that the rev. D BIOS I was using was named wrong (it came from an old archive I got somewhere on the net). The BIOS was
actually the Export version. So you can get the same results shown above by using EPR-21578
16th April, 2009
The first of the decapped chips arrived today. They were successfully decapped and the data extracted from the chips.
The chips numbers have been updated on my Decapping Project page
Updated chips are 31, 32, 75, 76, 178, 180.
This is [a part of] one of the NAOMI protection keys....
To continue will require many, many donations. Please help to support this very worthy cause. See my Decapping Project page for more info.
10th April, 2009
A few more items arrived via Smitdogg and a few kind donations from a few people.
Samurai Showdown 64 (Hyper Neo Geo 64 cart)
Konami System 573 scrap motherboard for decapping
Confidential Mission w/different PIC (unfortunately we bought this _just_ before the other dump was available! PIC seems to be the same as is already dumped?)
C/Flash cards (for some Konami Viper-related Work-In-Progress)
The System 573 motherboard is quite interesting. Here's the original pic from the auction...
Looks like shit doesn't it! OMFG, some idiots thought they could fix it by removing the BIOS ROM and replacing the socket!
Unfortunately they have the brain of a retarded beetle and broke a track on the board UNDER the socket when removing the old socket. Essentially they killed the board dead right there at that point!
Then subsequentially put another socket in there
and poorly soldered it in, then damaged that socket too. Then they removed and [poorly] resoldered the M48T58Y Timekeeper NVRAM. There's a whole
mess of other user-created faults too!
What a joke, they are so far away from the [real] fault it's HILARIOUS!
So for a bit of fun I decided I'd have a look at fixing it.
First thing was to clean it up a bit, there's a lot of corrosion on many chips. I pulled off the
beat-up DIP32 socket and had a look what was going on under it. Sure enough poor repair work caused a broken track from pin 7 of the bootROM
to pin 6 of the M48T58Y. I repaired the broken track and replaced the socket, then burned a new 4M EPROM and also removed, checked and replaced the NVRAM.
On power-up now it's trying to boot, shows some garbage on screen for 1/2 a second then resets.
I compared the PCB with one of my working System 573 boards and noticed a 16M TSOP48 ROM is missing and there's corrosion around one near it.
I started to clean up the corrosion on the ROM and then it fell off! So I cleaned it up properly then replaced both 16M flashROMs. Booted
it again but still no changes.
I checked the large QFP208 Sony chips and found more corrosion on them so I cleaned those too and while inspecting them found the original fault...
four loose legs on the GTE chip were loose! So I soldered those back in place
That might look easy but bear in mind the image is blown up 20X and those legs are 0.5mm apart... that's 0.019" for you imperial people.
Fired it up and the board booted perfectly, but then reset again!! Hmmm, what's going on here?
I checked the boot screen again and it said '18E BAD'
Comparing against my other working board I found that the chip at 18E is missing! It's the H8/3644 microcontroller! Argghh!! That's the whole
reason we bought this piece of shit in the first place... and now you tell me it's missing???!!! AAARRRGGGHHHH!!!!
Initially I thought those S.O.B's that damaged it had stolen the MCU off it. But talking to my friend from Jomac, he says some of those
boards didn't have that chip present on the board. So it seems there's another BIOS that doesn't test that location because the regular
700A01 BIOS tests the MCU. So we need a dump of the other BIOS (we've actually known about it for many years but now we have proof it exists).
This PCB turned out to be from Dancing Maniax.
Oh well, you win some, you lose some. So, it works with the regular BIOS apart from a missing chip. I bet it would work perfectly with the proper one :-/
Here's a super-sized version of the mainboard. Browse around and you might actually learn something....
In other news I just dumped the following NAOMI carts....
Release #24 - Power Stone - dedicated to Lord Thierry
Release #25 - Power Stone 2 - dedicated to Lord Coy
Release #26 - Heavy Metal Geomatrix - Dedicated to Lord Belmont
Release #27 - Samba De Amigo - dedicated to Lord Gin
Release #28 - Outtrigger - dedicated to Lord Taucher
Release #29 - Spawn - dedicated to Lord Pelle
Release #30 - Gunspike - dedicated to Lord Galibert
Release #31 - Typing Of The Dead (redumped one bad ROM) - dedicated to Lord Giles
uh-hum. Can you guess which site I'm taking the piss out of? ;-)
Each one took about 15 - 30 minutes to dump.
7th April, 2009
More stuff from Japan just arrived today!
Otenami Haiken (G-Net card)
Shanghai Sangokuhai Tougi (G-Net card)
Plus some other items...
Hana Jingi PCB (to decap/trojan CPU internal ROM)
Mahjong Cafe Doll CPU (to decap/trojan internal ROM)
Legend of Hero Tonma 8751 MCU and PAL
Pound for Pound M85 PALs and BPROMs
Great Sluggers '94 C369 KEYCUS
Thanks to a member of Team Japump for helping to locate the G-Net cards and sending the other chips for decapping. Also thanks to
Tokrot for buying my Taito G-Net Super Puzzle Bobble card so that we actually had enough money to buy the two G-Net items.
Also, here's a pic of the last Japanese haul...
I forgot to mention a couple of items in the news below. In this lot were also two Konami boards that were not working that we
obtained for free, Cows Boys of Moo Mesa and Mystic Warriors. It turns out that Mystic Warriors is the JAA version which is not
dumped so we have a nice bonus!
The last item I want to mention is at the very top left. I purchased a Sega NAOMI Virtua Golf panel to fit my Sega Astro City cab. There's an extra I/O board under the panel
containing a ROM that is currently not dumped. That should help some way towards getting it booting in MAME.
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