Daytona To The MAXX Recreating?

[myPinballs]

Came across this old 'upgrade' for Daytona which peaked my interest. A 3 rom upgrade and then some extra security pic that plugs in the 4th rom socket.

Hmm interesting. The update looks decent with lots of nice added features to the original Daytona, including something i think sounds great . Ghost car for your previously best lap. So you can see how far behind the PB you are etc. Turbo options, rear view and some other stuff i probably havent seen yet.

So anyone remember this upgrade? Seems to be from 20 years back or so. Doesn't seem possible to get hold of the original kit etc anymore so i thought i’d see if i could remake this security chip etc.

Got the first 3 game roms ok obviously and now setting about trying to remake this extra rom board.



So i took a look in MAME and there is some code for what this security PIC chip does, Looks to be a response pattern that the program checks from a 32byte address range access in one of the upper rom locations.

So i've been creating a new pic chip based on this info and then a new ic socket adapter to mount this pic chip on



Hoping that this will get me to the MAXX! ha. If anyone has any insight into this and other info please share . Cheers

If i can get it to work again on real hardware i'll make some kits available etc

Cheers
Jim

 

[AndyGeezer]

Ah the work by legendary Kyle Hodgetts - guy is a bit of a genius, and a cowboy at the same time.

Considering he did this work on M2 boards without any documentation and such is mind blowing. He also did a kit for Rally 1 as well, also did various other games/projects and also responsible for some serious hacking (FBI person of interest at one point).

https://kylehodgetts.com/

 

[myPinballs]

Yeah, as there's no real options around any longer to play this on original hardware, i 'd thought i'd take stab at it. Considering the protection is already documented in MAME, it should be possible with some effort and new pcb rom adapters. Game upgrade looks excellent to and like you say considering the era when this was done, very impressive.

 

[myPinballs]

First rev of the security board. Gonna have the nice turned pins for the bottom socket side

 

[myPinballs]

 

[myPinballs]

Got the boards finished up and they fit in to the pcb nice, but the pic program isnt working yet. So theres more work to do. I must have missed something with the security stuff , though i thought i had recreated everything thats in mame.. Currently just boots to the first config screen then hangs

 

[myPinballs]

Well, i'm stuck... I can't get this to work. I understand what is happening in mame, but i cannot fathom out how the pic in slot u15 is accessed. As it only has a small number of pins so the address range its exposed to can only be small. Mame doesnt lend itself easily to seeing how real rom slots are accessed unless i am missing something.

Doing my nut in.. I need a xmas holiday lol

 

[2huwman]

I've got the original kit somewhere I think. I remember something about big wheels (on the car)? I've been meaning to give it another try recently as I've been playing a lot of Daytona. Let me know if there's any info from the original kit that would be helpful.

 

[myPinballs]

I've got the original kit somewhere I think. I remember something about big wheels (on the car)? I've been meaning to give it another try recently as I've been playing a lot of Daytona. Let me know if there's any info from the original kit that would be helpful.

Excellent. It would be great to see pics of the original kit, especially the security board. Potentially if i could borrow it to trace the connections between the socket and the pic chip etc that would give me a known good point. I thought i could work it all out form MAME but mame does things alot differently memory wise it seems

Jim

 

[yoganuggy]

Might also be worth asking Matthew on github - https://github.com/gm-matthew
He has done all the Model 2 MAME improvements over the past few months and would be most familiar with the driver.

 

[myPinballs]

Ok after some set backs and lots of head scratching, we may have a way forward.🥳 I have found a couple of old original kits in france! Vive la France! Absolute miracle find!! And big thanks to the seller. Here's some pics of the kits, so hopefully this gives me more of an idea as to what was created. I can plug this chip into a breadboard and then check every address line input and see what is outputted on the data bus. (brute force) . Check if its the same as what i expect and what my own board is doing.

Its weird that my new pal chip doesn't work, as i thought i had got it nailed down from the mame source etc.

However looking at the pics it looks as though there is another address line being used..

The photo looks like pins into U15 socket for what i expected. VCC, VPP & VSS(x2), !OE and !CE, D0,D1,D2, A0,A1,A2,A3 but then it also looks like A9 . hmmmm

This is weird because according to the mame source and other info the only address access to U15 is in the range 0x00 to 0x1F so i assumed A0-A4. Looking at mame debug further the only accesses during this boot check are to offsets 0x02 & 0x06 so why have A9 added? D0-D2 makes sense and maps to what i expected as the only outputs from U15 are 0x00, 0x04 or 0x07 so we only need 3 data pins for this.

I guess it will become clear once i get the original parts. Exciting times

 

[myPinballs]

Ok 1 step forward 2 back lol

Here are some pics of the protection board for info



Works in my upright cab in terms of booting to the main screen saying waiting for network, BUT when i change the settings to single upright etc, then it freezes... Damn. So i am not sure if this kit only works with networked games? cant believe this would be the case, or if theres something else i am missing here.

Also the ram test doesn't pass wit the max kit installed but does with original roms. Checking in mame this is the same, except MAXX expects the standard roms at U6 & U7 not the special edition ones i have in my upright cabinet (std though in upright game i think) . I guess they never bothered to update or fix the checksums for U12 & U13

 

[myPinballs]

On a positive note i do now have a full wiring diagram of how the original protection board is constructed and how each pin on the original PIC links to the socket.
There are alot less pins in use than first thought

 

[Alpha1]

Looking forward to see how you progress.

 

[myPinballs]

Well, thought this little trick was going to solve it, but no cigar. Frikin game is going in the skip in a minute..
to the MAXX.. nope no MAXX..

 

[AndyGeezer]

The Maxx should work in single and linked mode (and loop back master), so I suspect the kit you have is duff.

From memory the kit was flakey as f**k though, and operators struggled to put the security one in the socket correctly. heck I think Jeff/vektorlogic was knocking them out at £30 each, the Rally pro was a bit better because that was just two eproms. Still hand it to Kyle, he probably made some $$ from these - as this was before the likes of youtube etc - which he would have been slated.

 

[myPinballs]

The Maxx should work in single and linked mode (and loop back master), so I suspect the kit you have is duff.

From memory the kit was flakey as f**k though, and operators struggled to put the security one in the socket correctly. heck I think Jeff/vektorlogic was knocking them out at £30 each, the Rally pro was a bit better because that was just two eproms. Still hand it to Kyle, he probably made some $$ from these - as this was before the likes of youtube etc - which he would have been slated.

Thanks for this, Knowing more about the history is useful. I wish there was more info on what the likely causes of a non start could be, as based on my mame testing the actual security check is working and the roms are all ok. (verified to match mame ones).

 

[myPinballs]

Ok after thinking about these results last night, i think some things were learnt. Obviously it's now apparent as mentioned above that the kit should work on any configuration so thats is good to confirm, but i am meeting a road block/crash after the initial startup, before or as it loads the main attract screen and animations.

Using the master option with a loop connection is actually useful, because it shows the network check code runs and passes and also you can enter test settings fine before the main screens are loaded. From mame i checked when the security chip is accessed and that is before the network check , ie at the very start, so that does seem to be working.

I just don't understand why it doesn't do what mame does and load the attract screen though. Maybe there is something still wrong with the security board, but i cant see it currently

 

[myPinballs]

Right Then!!!

The phoenix will rise ... TO THE MAXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX!


Firstly, please Ignore the bad picture, i have no blue currently (i know , i need to take the blooming monitor chassis out again and inspect the nasty smd video amp ha,) but the original kit is now working So we have something to compare against finally!!

It turns out i already saw the issue here but i didn't twig the fault. The TO THE MAXX kit is built on top of the original daytona roms set NOT the SE rom set, so the problem with IC6 and IC7 being different stops the MAXX game from starting...

Took awhile to work this out in mame, but i confirmed it did the same thing first, burned some new roms and bingo!. So the original MAXX kit really should have been supplied with 5 roms and the security pic, not 3 roms. Its super hard to work this stuff out when there is literally zero info about ha

What a relief!

Now back to updating the new security board with the earlier findings. And i am now certain the security board is only accessed at the very start of the boot process, before the network check (on a master/slave) system etc

 

[jaygroh]

Hey! I just found this. I have been working on wanting to recreate the security board for many years. Since about 2009. I got to the point of figuring out the schematic and even bought a small cheap scope to try to determin what each pin does. Even bought some of the chips and a programmer that was said to be able to glitch the chip to extract the code. Needless to say that the glitch trick did not work on it as I believe the PIC controller was a newer revision. Anyway with AI helping me out with just about everything I figured AI could help either rewrite the code or build something like you are working on. I originally had 2 kits but wanted to try to replicate it to the point where I could have a spare set or even make it available to people that want to run it on real hardware. I have a lot of projects I'm working on but I would be glad to help out where I can. If we can get this security chip figured out on real hardware that would be great!