The Guru is proudly supported by....

3rd April, 2009 Another one of the wanted System 246 games arrived today..... Time Crisis 3. DVD, security cart and I/O board :-) Big thanks to DevoDave for loaning this out from his working cab. 23rd March, 2009 Some more arrivals from Japan..... Naomi 2 + Dimm board (dead cheap, but unfortunately, also DEAD DEAD.. it doesn't work) Beatmania II DX PCB + HDD (Konami, 1999) ZunZun Block (Taito, 1979) Kono e Tako (Mitchell, 2003, on Namco System 10) Moeru Casinyo (NAOMI GDROM) Usagi 2 Yamashiro Mahjong hen (NAOMI GDROM) Chaos Field (NAOMI GDROM) Virtua Striker 4 (Triforce GDROM) La Keyboard (NAOMI GDROM) Typing of the Dead (NAOMI ROM cart) Shikigami no Shiro (G-Net card) Taiko no Tatsujin 9 (System 246 disc + dongle) Taiko no Tatsujin 10 (System 246 disc + dongle) 12th March, 2009 Some more arrivals..... Technos Double Dragon PCB for decapping 63701 MCU Wild Riders Naomi 2 cart Bad Dudes for decapping 8751 MCU Virtua Tennis Naomi GD-ROM Crisis Zone alternative rev Status Super Triv III for documenting and measurements Ameridarts for decapping TMS320E15 MCU Nascar rom board (Sega Hikaru) Black Jack/Poker (by Kramer, dump is currently incomplete) Soul Calibur 2 English language Magic Gate security dongle Brave Firefighters (Sega Hikaru) Thanks to Smitdogg, Gerald, Heywood Floyd, tokrot and krick for donations and a few other anonymous donations From Japan.... Flip Maze (Taito G-Net card) Space Invaders Anniversary (Taito G-Net card) Capcom Fighting Jam Magic Gate security dongle Namco Dragon Chronicles Magic Gate security dongle Special thanks to my Japanese contact for loaning the G-Net cards from his personal collection :-) 4th March, 2009 Hahahahaharrrr!!!! Check the metadata in the .png, then pinch yourself just so you're *sure* you're awake. Then look again. Then set it as your desktop wallpaper :-D 2nd March, 2009 A few more NAOMI GDROM titles just got dumped. Psyvariar 2 - The Will To Fabricate Puyo Puyo Fever Under Defeat Trigger Heart Excelica Border Down Thanks to tokrot I'm mentioning this now because there's a few more not-common (and related) items currently available but of course we have no funds to snap them up. Unfortunately several items have been missed partly because the previous call for funds on 24th February was completely ignored, but I'll forgive you because of the (unreachable) ZTNet domain issue. But there's no excuses now :-D If you can assist with funds please visit my donations page. Thanks! 28th February, 2009 I decided to have a look at the Zoar custom CPU that Smitdogg sent a short time ago. Here's a few pics of the process... This was more of an academic exercise than anything else, since the game works fine in MAME. The inside of the plastic housing had segments in it that actually made it *a lot* easier to remove the epoxy as it broke off in quite large pieces. Inside we can clearly see a 6502 CPU and a few logic chips, pretty simple stuff really. At least now we know the devs got it right :-) But unfortunately now the PCB is not working, so alas, the Zoar is no more :-( UPDATE: One of the devs put in a request for a schem, and since there may be others who are wondering what the CPU module circuit looks like, here it is... Revision 1.0 Don't try this at home though boys and girls, this thing only has 10 chips and it took 6 hours to draw! OMG! 27th February, 2009 OK, well, problem solved. All G-Net carts dumped and page updated. I wonder what we should look at next. Maybe something a bit harder next time ;-) 26th February, 2009 I think everyone on the ZTNet server pretty much concurs that we're all getting a bit sick and tired of all the BS going on with expiring domians etc. constantly happening every year. So the time has come to give ZTNet the big F-L-I-C-K! Welcome to the new domain http://guru.mameworld.info Please update your bookmarks! Also, a little bit more info on the G-Net situation. Seems no one realised..... G-Net came out on ZN2 hardware in 1998 or something. ZN2 is emulated quite well, but do you see any G-Net dumps out there? No..... for 10 years, nothing. Why? The protection on the cards. They look like a regular PCMCIA card but if you insert it into a laptop (etc) the card is not seen and you can't access anything on it. Just like CPS2 etc, the manufacturer succeeded in protecting it's IP to sell their product.. and rightly so! But it's now obsolete so the time has come to crack some heads together and figure it out It's now partly understood and thus, some of the cards are dumped. There's some really nice shooters on G-Net :-D 24th February, 2009 Just a small update, that's all. There's a few (unrelated but noteworthy) items popping up at various places. If you can assist with funds please visit my donations page. Thanks! A'hem. In case you didn't realise, the G-Net dumping mentioned above is one of the biggest breakthroughs in emulation dumping history! 4th February, 2009 More arrivals!! GAHAHA Ippatsu-dou (Namco System 10) Arcana Heart FULL (Atrativa 2007) Midnight Run (Konami ZR107 h/w) Thanks to M.F. for the donations 3rd February, 2009 Received another H-U-G-E box today. OMG it's big! Inside is... Teraburst complete Konami Hornet PCB in metal box with all wiring (no this isn't the one Randy bought 4th April 2005, that particular board never actually made the trip to .au and I'm not even sure it was ever dumped or where it is now) Mocap Golf complete Viper PCB with I/O board, CF card and full wiring harness Thanks to M.F. for the donations 2nd February, 2009 There's a lot of activity happening right now. We just picked up the following items... Bad Dudes (for 8751 microcontroller) Crisis Zone (complete with I/O board) Dangerous Dungeons (it's a conversion on a Double Dragon PCB with 63701 MCU wanted for decapping) NAOMI Virtua Tennis GDROM NAOMI Wild Riders ROM cart Sega Brave Fire Fighters (Hikaru hardware) Super Heli (rare Super Cobra clone) Sega Water Ski (Model 2C-CRX for a redump) Update: Removed a few NAOMI titles, Smitdogg was doing the buying and I mixed up a woof woof with a ruff ruff. They were of interest but we didn't win. There's several more really good and not-common items we have our eye on but we're tapped out again. Unfortunately there's not much time left so there's some urgency to secure the items before someone else does! If you can assist with funds please visit my donations page. Thanks! Update: Update: We didn't have enough money to cover them so we lost all those items :-( 23rd January, 2009 Now for a bit of NAOMI WIP news. This is of course directly related to my activities too.... NAOMI emulation is getting better so there's more focus to get more of the games dumped. Particularly the ROM carts. However there's a couple of issues. Some carts use strange ROMs that are not dumpable and all of them will take serious time to dump the normal way (remove surface mount ROMs and read, then put back etc) due to the large amount of ROMs on the boards. After discussing this problem with ElSemi, he's come up with a solution which allows dumping the carts while they are plugged into a NAOMI unit using a custom PIC-based NAOMI JVS adapter linked to a PC via USB that he developed. Initial tests proved positive but more tests are required and a custom NAOMI BIOS needs to be created and extensively tested. Now the main problem.... ElSemi no longer has access to an EPROM programmer due to changing jobs so he's in need of one to continue his WIP work on creating a modified NAOMI BIOS to get the JVS USB adapter working. If anyone can help out with a few bucks to go towards purchasing a cheaper Willem programmer and 42 pin adapter I'm sure that would speed up his work which will lead to more NAOMI ROM carts getting dumped :-) Please visit my donations page if you can help out so we can get one purchased and sent to Elsemi ASAP! Thanks! :-) Here's a few pics of ElSemi's WIP to wet your appetite.... Update: Thanks to everyone who assisted, we now have a solution for the above problem. 13th January, 2009 A few packages arrived yesterday... From Japan we have: --Mahjong-- Cafe Paradise (Thanks to Dyq) Hanagokou Bangaihen SP (Thanks to Dyq) Gorgeous Night --Free Junk PCBs-- (documentation/testing/parts) World Stadium '96 Run & Gun (broken) GI-Joe (broken) --System 246 DVDROM with Magic Gate Security Cart-- Kinnikuman Muscle Grandprix Soul Calibur II Ver D Soul Calibur III --Naomi GDROM-- Initial D ver.2 (JP) Virtua Fighter 4 (just a spare one) Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution Virtua Fighter 4 Final Tuned Beach Spikers (GD Only, I have PIC here dumped already) Trizeal --System Unit etc.-- Triforce (later square model) with in-built 512k SDRAM & GDROM controller Namco System 246 Rack Ver.C + DVD drive Namco System 256 + DVD drive Thanks to all who donated towards the above including postage costs. Some of you may think it's a bit too early to secure the later System 246/256 units but it's better to grab these while we can, especially when they're free. Yes that's right, you may find it difficult to believe, but almost all of the above was free apart from postage costs. We haven't won the lottery (not yet anyway) Thanks to Brian Troha for... Raiden Fighter Jet 2000 (single board version) Bloody Roar 2 Asia P's Attack Thanks to Smitdogg for... Panic Park (Namco System 23, Special Thanks to Aaron!) Greyhound Super Poker Black Tiger (Seems nobody except me noticed MAME is missing the 8751 MCU!) Bloody Roar 2 USA Zoar Also snapped up was the last of the 'achievable' Namco Super System 22 games called 'Dirt Dash'. That was picked up by R.Belmont and is currently being hoarded held until it's shipped over for dumping later on. Also a big general thanks to all the recent donators who made some of the above possible. 11th January, 2009 Some of you may recognise this.... Yes of course, it's the Toshiba Visicom that arrived some months ago for dumping. Most of you will not recognise the following pics though.... If you look closely you can see there's a chip missing. That's because it's here, suspended in the air on little wires.... This ROM is a strange beast, made by Toshiba with part number TMM331AP and there's almost no info about it on the net. I made a quick schematic of the ROM connections and got most of the pinout fairly quickly.... However there were some unknown pins. After consulting with Dox, he found an obscure reference to it in a Japanese pdf, no pinout, just that it was mentioned. Gridle kindly translated it for us (yeah he's still alive!) and we got confirmation that it is 2k, meaning that it has storage capacity equivalent to a 2716 EPROM. Dox made a few more suggestions and after some small re-wiring changes I had something reading properly on my EPROM reader. I sent that to the MESS Team and from a preliminary inspection it looks like the dump is good. So the score is Guru: 1, Toshiba: 0. Good game though Toshiba, you went down fighting like a man. Maybe you'll have better luck next time. Something still wasn't right though. All along while I was doing this, I noticed hairs growing on the back on my hands and I had a strange urge to howl like a wolf. It was only when I looked out the window that I realised what was going on.... Maybe I should dump more things when there's a full moon, for good luck ;-) Anyway, that's another job out of the way! 4th January, 2009 Want to know how to dump Sega GDROM discs for MAME? This might be your lucky day. Click 'Guru Misc.' in the main menu above and from the tutorials list, select 'How To Dump Sega GDROMs'. Here's a direct link for all you lazy asses :-D 1st January, 2009 Have you ever wanted to see the back room of an arcade in Japan? All that junk that is really treasure to us? Well, I just happened to come across these pics in my archives while looking for something else which show the arcade back room where my Japanese contact works, so now it's time for a Guru-Treat. Behold 'El Dorado The Lost City Of Gold' (well sort-of, we call it 'the junkpit.jp' ;-) Unfortunately all of that stuff is gone now, but we did get our share of it over the years so don't worry :-) Now a couple of pics of one of the Japanese shops that sell PCBs. Just LOOK at all that stuff! While we're on treats, I was visiting my old buddy Rusty (from ex Filtek Australia / arcadegames.net) just a couple of days ago, and I came across another pile of stuff that I've had my eye on for about 7 years. Of course I just HAD to borrow it for a while. Most of it looks like instructions for cocktail machines but there's plenty of variety in there. I've hit the jackpot for game cabinet instructions, it doesn't get much better than this :-D OK Mr Do, relax, go change your shorts and come back in a while and I'll have a few scans for you :-)