Arcade Rom Patcher (V15)
- Thread starter GadgetFreak
- Start date
GadgetFreak
Active member
The Eprom type was a typo, if you check your Pang 3 board you will notice the sockets are labeled 27C301 and the eproms are mostly 27c1000. If you use the standard 27c1001 or 27c010 you will be missing some samples.
GadgetFreak
Active member
Bit busy at the moment, Mame source code is always handy when looking at rom swaps. It will be a few days before I get to look myself.
I think something might be wrong with the Nemo world conversion. A friend and myself have both done the chips/board parts necessary for pang 3 and it appears to be working fine however there's a problem when the last boss shows up and corrupt graphics show up everywhere.
Once you beat the boss the end and credits play fine
Once you beat the boss the end and credits play fine
GadgetFreak
Active member
Had a quick look, will need to revise GAL equations and probably move to 27C322's as it looks like Capcom have done their usual and dumped out of bounds layer gfx on the display. Trouble with the Pang 3 board is I don't have the smaller address lines to refine the gfx areas hence the larger eproms.
rockbottom
User
GadgetFreak said:
I played around with some Pang3 boards a while back and found an easy fix for that: just add the extra lines
GadgetFreak
Active member
Actually all those pins are connected on the mitchel boards I have. Pin 11 connects to JP3 and 17-19 connect to the CE's on GFX roms. I guess you could either cut tracks or lift pins to make the connections but it starts to get messy. You would still have to use 27c160/27c322 eproms anyway as that's what the sockets are wired for.rockbottom said:I played around with some Pang3 boards a while back and found an easy fix for that: just add the extra linesThere's 4 unused pins (11, 17-19), I just wired a13-a16 to those, then your free to do whatever... and no need to use oversized eproms. I know it's hassle but I guess people are soldering wires anyway to patch out the mach, so while the irons hot... what's a few more?
I did originally start the conversions by encrypting the program roms and adding the keep alive strobe. Ghosts'n'Ghouls worked fine but Strider kept crashing even with sub 100ns eproms as it is very sensitive to slow rom access. So in the end I decided it was easy enough to just bridge the 8 connections and it could easily be reversed if required as no tracks were cut.
rockbottom
User
I went deeply into all this a while back, sadly most is now forgotten, I guess I should keep better notes of this stuff
Yes they go to unused stuff, there's actually not many pins you actually need (1-6, 9, 13-14) the rest can be used for extra address lines, rom oe outputs, whatever... yes of course it does mean cutting tracks, wires etc. They were just bootlegs I was messing with (1 single-board, 1 "exact-copy" b clone) so not fussed, I wouldn't hack up a genuine board.
For eproms, 27c800(8Mbit), 27c400(4Mbit), 27c2100(2Mbit, rare) are all compatible. I was using 2x 27c800 for the 2MB gfx games (ffight, msword, cawing etc.) 2x 27c160 for 4MB gfx games (ghouls, 3wonders, strider etc.) 2x 27c322 for largest 6/8MB gfx games (sf2, sfz, megaman etc.)
The smaller chips are useful if you want to replicate the original game arrangements, eg. ghouls using 8x 4Mbit chips or whatever. To me using 2x 27c322's for 2MB data is just insane, but each to their own
My modded pal pinout was:
16V8
a22 - 1 I VCC 20 - vcc
a21 - 2 I IO 19 - a13
a20 - 3 I IO 18 - a14
a19 - 4 I IO 17 - a15
a18 - 5 I IO 16 - rom ce
a17 - 6 I IO 15 - rom oe
b.7 - 7 I IO 14 - rom a20
74.5 - 8 I IO 13 - rom a19
b.108 - 9 I IO 12 - rom a18
gnd - 10 GND I 11 - a16
That was just using a single pair of roms, if memory serves, I cut the a18 line to the roms and controlled it from the pal (extra output pin 12)
At this point i'd learnt enough about cps1 that I went on to design my own pcb for a 16 game b-multi, with a old 5v cpld doing the mappers, a PIC auto-writing the b-chip config keys to the c-board (no rom hacking required
) and various old 5v smd flash chips instead of eproms for most game data. It was a complete success, so basically no need mess with single game conversions any more
GadgetFreak said:
Yes they go to unused stuff, there's actually not many pins you actually need (1-6, 9, 13-14) the rest can be used for extra address lines, rom oe outputs, whatever... yes of course it does mean cutting tracks, wires etc. They were just bootlegs I was messing with (1 single-board, 1 "exact-copy" b clone) so not fussed, I wouldn't hack up a genuine board.
For eproms, 27c800(8Mbit), 27c400(4Mbit), 27c2100(2Mbit, rare) are all compatible. I was using 2x 27c800 for the 2MB gfx games (ffight, msword, cawing etc.) 2x 27c160 for 4MB gfx games (ghouls, 3wonders, strider etc.) 2x 27c322 for largest 6/8MB gfx games (sf2, sfz, megaman etc.)
The smaller chips are useful if you want to replicate the original game arrangements, eg. ghouls using 8x 4Mbit chips or whatever. To me using 2x 27c322's for 2MB data is just insane, but each to their own
My modded pal pinout was:
16V8
a22 - 1 I VCC 20 - vcc
a21 - 2 I IO 19 - a13
a20 - 3 I IO 18 - a14
a19 - 4 I IO 17 - a15
a18 - 5 I IO 16 - rom ce
a17 - 6 I IO 15 - rom oe
b.7 - 7 I IO 14 - rom a20
74.5 - 8 I IO 13 - rom a19
b.108 - 9 I IO 12 - rom a18
gnd - 10 GND I 11 - a16
That was just using a single pair of roms, if memory serves, I cut the a18 line to the roms and controlled it from the pal (extra output pin 12)
At this point i'd learnt enough about cps1 that I went on to design my own pcb for a 16 game b-multi, with a old 5v cpld doing the mappers, a PIC auto-writing the b-chip config keys to the c-board (no rom hacking required
GadgetFreak
Active member
Well, 27c160's & 27c322's are available from China for 60p, yes they are used but still work perfectly well and much kinder to the environment to reuse rather than landfill. The 2/4/8mbit eproms are usually more expensive.
As for rom hacking, it doesn't bother me as the games a conversion anyway and as such has limited value.
It's a shame you didn't post all this knowledge at the time or make your multi available to the community
As for rom hacking, it doesn't bother me as the games a conversion anyway and as such has limited value.
It's a shame you didn't post all this knowledge at the time or make your multi available to the community
rockbottom
User
Personally I gave up on the "recovered" junk from China, I never seem to have much luck with it
I still have a small stash of genuine uk stock of 27c322 from way back when, I guess that's why I see them as precious
I've mostly moved to flash-on-adapters whereby I recover old 5v flash chips myself from all kinds of scrap electronics and have small batches of adapter pcbs made up, it's a lot hassle but 100% success rate so far
Indeed one of my many faults, I'm not one for big write-ups of stuff I do (never seem to find the time). But that's why I posted here, in the hope I might help with the pal, better late then never I thought
But if you're happy with the minimum modding, big eprom approach then that's fine, just a suggestion, each to their own
As for the multi, i've nothing against releasing the design, it was just intended as a one-off using parts I already had, the cpld and flashes are long obsolete 5v parts which people will struggle to get, what good's a pcb if you can't get the chips and then can't program them even if you do?
I would like to redesign it with modern on-the-shelf parts (would mean level-shifting, multiple supplies etc. all that faff, but what else can you do?) perhaps on-board programming from files on sd card or something.
But if I was to do that, and release it, I would be making some enemies, it would afterall be a free alternative to a certain other upcoming cps1 multi...
GadgetFreak said:It's a shame you didn't post all this knowledge at the time or make your multi available to the community
Indeed one of my many faults, I'm not one for big write-ups of stuff I do (never seem to find the time). But that's why I posted here, in the hope I might help with the pal, better late then never I thought
But if you're happy with the minimum modding, big eprom approach then that's fine, just a suggestion, each to their own
As for the multi, i've nothing against releasing the design, it was just intended as a one-off using parts I already had, the cpld and flashes are long obsolete 5v parts which people will struggle to get, what good's a pcb if you can't get the chips and then can't program them even if you do?
I would like to redesign it with modern on-the-shelf parts (would mean level-shifting, multiple supplies etc. all that faff, but what else can you do?) perhaps on-board programming from files on sd card or something.
But if I was to do that, and release it, I would be making some enemies, it would afterall be a free alternative to a certain other upcoming cps1 multi...
GadgetFreak
Active member
You just have to be careful who you buy from, the 16/32Mbit chips I have a stash of all came out of sewing machines. Probably only programmed once. You can get burned on Ali but they are quite good with refunds.
I'm not so good on write ups either, usually once I've finished the technical bit I'm already onto the next thing!
Hence my Rom Patcher which provided an easy way for me to push out my various patches. I only have to do minimal documentation and the patcher itself generates it's own patche source code.
Shame you didn't release your multi at the time, I would have bought one
I've never worried about making enemies, especially when people charge silly money for decrypted rom sets. I do however sell my tester and multis as these have hardware costs associated with them.
Personally I hate the SD card route for multis. I prefer on screen menus and zero load time rather than a small LCD and fiddly buttons to change games
I'm not so good on write ups either, usually once I've finished the technical bit I'm already onto the next thing!
Hence my Rom Patcher which provided an easy way for me to push out my various patches. I only have to do minimal documentation and the patcher itself generates it's own patche source code.
Shame you didn't release your multi at the time, I would have bought one
I've never worried about making enemies, especially when people charge silly money for decrypted rom sets. I do however sell my tester and multis as these have hardware costs associated with them.
Personally I hate the SD card route for multis. I prefer on screen menus and zero load time rather than a small LCD and fiddly buttons to change games
rockbottom
User
Well the sd card idea was just if I ever redesign it as a way to initially program the chips (which would be soldered smd chips I suppose).
The current design just has a 16-position rotary dipswitch to select game
It was really just a proof-of-concept, everything kept absolutely barebones, simple as possible. I wasn't really expecting it to actually work properly first time, so didn't really put in much thought about user interface etc.
If you're interested, i've got 4 spare pcb's here, guess I could spare a cpld too
The current design just has a 16-position rotary dipswitch to select game
It was really just a proof-of-concept, everything kept absolutely barebones, simple as possible. I wasn't really expecting it to actually work properly first time, so didn't really put in much thought about user interface etc.
If you're interested, i've got 4 spare pcb's here, guess I could spare a cpld too
GadgetFreak
Active member
That makes sense.rockbottom said:
My original Atari Sys1 Multi had a rotary switch as well before I developed the on screen menu and switching.rockbottom said:The current design just has a 16-position rotary dipswitch to select game
I might well but at the moment I have way too many projects on the go to get sidetracked with yet another onerockbottom said:It was really just a proof-of-concept, everything kept absolutely barebones, simple as possible. I wasn't really expecting it to actually work properly first time, so didn't really put in much thought about user interface etc.
If you're interested, i've got 4 spare pcb's here, guess I could spare a cpld too
Many thanksValtric59 said:
GadgetFreak
Active member
Sorry no, not had a chance yet. Always too many projects on the go!patzik said: