Dav

That's my design. I'm glad you like it. BTW I talked to Mike today (that's his web page) He says he's been getting a lot of requests to add catepillar back in. So I'm thinking of supporting 2 versions. I would add an upright version that replaces mr and mrs pac with catepillar. He also wants to replace cookie mon with piranha, I'm not as convinced on that one, but I'll probably do it if that's what he wants. Dave

BTW if anyone's wondering where I'm at on projects. The multi exidy is beta testing, the multi qbert betas will ship when I write the installation instructions. What I'm considering for the next project: 1 playchoice 10. Either new carts or NES adapters. Leaning towards the former as sourcing edge connectors are a problem. 2 something that will run ice cream factory. 3 colecovision compact flash. I never did find a solution to the case problem. May just release what I have in a cheap stripped down version as a dev kit. 4 wonderboy sega system 1 multigame. I have an almost completed proto for this. 5 multi scramble 6 multi moppet That's the approximate order they are on my interest list. Things can jump higher or lower pretty quickly though.

Whoa whoa whoa... Sega had a floppy disk based arcade system? Now this I've gotta see... Tempest 1025668[/snapback] system 24 http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=708 I have crackdown and hotrod. The worst thing about them is they are medium res. I have a japanese cab that's suppose to be switchable but after about 5 minutes of medium res it quits working so i haven't really played them.

As I mentioned earlier, the tape is just one of the problems. To play each game you still need the appropriate security dongle and those have a habit of going bad as well. In fact one of my games (Explorer) doesn't work for that very reason. Tempest 1025288[/snapback] It's not as big a problem as you think. The dongles modify the tape data while it's loading. I don't think they are used after. The approach I would take would be a plug in to the bios cpu and replace the bios. The new bios would load data from a CF card. The data is easily availble by using the dump command in MAME after the game has loaded. Like I said, I don't think there's enough demand to make it worth while so I haven't made it a priority. Really? Can you expand on this? I've always wondered specifically what the dongles do. Is each dongle different or are there only a few different 'families'? Do they use EPROMs inside? The reason I ask is that I think my Explorer Dongle is bad, not the tape (although I could be wrong). I'd VERY much like to see some sort of multigame mode for the DCS, but I'd still collect for it anyway. Part of the fun is actually finidng the games. I'd be more interested in a way to fix my dead or dying tapes/dongles. Tempest 1025602[/snapback] Iirc there are 4 or 5 families that work the same just different prom data. The obvious solution to that problem is larger roms with bankswitching to do multiple games with the same prom. My knowledge is all theoritcal on the dongles, someone was supposed to send me a system to work on and never did. They could be potted I don't know. The tapes are a bigger problem than the proms although if you did a microprocessor board that attached to the tape interface you could probably get around it. That still leaves the third problem, the horrible wait for it to boot. That would require a bios hack to fix anyway so you're back to my plan of a bios plugin board. I like to know I'm going to sell 25 of something before I do it and I'm not sure there's even a base of 25 people that still have decocassettes much less would buy a kit. Then I thought of porting them to run on a burgertime board but it has a potted soldered cpu module so that's out. I'm planning on looking at the possiblity if bump n jump is close enough to running it but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I'm finishing up the multi qbert now so I'll be looking at what's next on the project list real soon. 1025622[/snapback] Well I don't have an extra system, but if you need dead tapes, dongles or a cassette interface board, let me know. I'd like to see some work done on preserving this unique system. It could be worse though, it could have run off 8-tracks! Tempest 1025654[/snapback] Thanks, I don't think I'll need any dongles as the plan if I do it is to bypass that stage alltogether. I need to email the person that owes me a board again and see if I can wake him up. Sega's floppy system is worse too, since it runs the floppy all the time instead of just loading it once like deco does. And the dongle system for that is harder to work around too.

As I mentioned earlier, the tape is just one of the problems. To play each game you still need the appropriate security dongle and those have a habit of going bad as well. In fact one of my games (Explorer) doesn't work for that very reason. Tempest 1025288[/snapback] It's not as big a problem as you think. The dongles modify the tape data while it's loading. I don't think they are used after. The approach I would take would be a plug in to the bios cpu and replace the bios. The new bios would load data from a CF card. The data is easily availble by using the dump command in MAME after the game has loaded. Like I said, I don't think there's enough demand to make it worth while so I haven't made it a priority. Really? Can you expand on this? I've always wondered specifically what the dongles do. Is each dongle different or are there only a few different 'families'? Do they use EPROMs inside? The reason I ask is that I think my Explorer Dongle is bad, not the tape (although I could be wrong). I'd VERY much like to see some sort of multigame mode for the DCS, but I'd still collect for it anyway. Part of the fun is actually finidng the games. I'd be more interested in a way to fix my dead or dying tapes/dongles. Tempest 1025602[/snapback] Iirc there are 4 or 5 families that work the same just different prom data. The obvious solution to that problem is larger roms with bankswitching to do multiple games with the same prom. My knowledge is all theoritcal on the dongles, someone was supposed to send me a system to work on and never did. They could be potted I don't know. The tapes are a bigger problem than the proms although if you did a microprocessor board that attached to the tape interface you could probably get around it. That still leaves the third problem, the horrible wait for it to boot. That would require a bios hack to fix anyway so you're back to my plan of a bios plugin board. I like to know I'm going to sell 25 of something before I do it and I'm not sure there's even a base of 25 people that still have decocassettes much less would buy a kit. Then I thought of porting them to run on a burgertime board but it has a potted soldered cpu module so that's out. I'm planning on looking at the possiblity if bump n jump is close enough to running it but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I'm finishing up the multi qbert now so I'll be looking at what's next on the project list real soon.

As I mentioned earlier, the tape is just one of the problems. To play each game you still need the appropriate security dongle and those have a habit of going bad as well. In fact one of my games (Explorer) doesn't work for that very reason. Tempest 1025288[/snapback] It's not as big a problem as you think. The dongles modify the tape data while it's loading. I don't think they are used after. The approach I would take would be a plug in to the bios cpu and replace the bios. The new bios would load data from a CF card. The data is easily availble by using the dump command in MAME after the game has loaded. Like I said, I don't think there's enough demand to make it worth while so I haven't made it a priority. BTW there's a flyer for hamburger. http://www.burgertime.info/html/btimearcade3.html I've never seen it on any lists. I know it existed as I have a bootleg of it.

The other thing to remember is there are 2 plug in daughterboards that are usually missing if you buy a stripped board. Iirc they run around $50 for the pair. I sell them for half that but only in bulk. Also there are 2 color proms that aren't usually sold with the eprom set that will set you back plenty too. There is one way around the price if you know what you are doing. You can convert Make Trax or Eyes boards to Pacman. They have the falcon pinout though instead of pacman.

If they were ever used in anything else no one has discovered what it was yet.

Very nice. Some sort of solid state tape replacement is on my list of things to do, I just never seem to have enough time and I don't think there's a lot of interest. It's too bad there weren't more great games for it. The only thing really compelling I've noticed is Ice Cream Factory. I have ported that over to a Cook's Race board, so I might do some kind of multigame with Hamburger and Ice Cream factory. There's a couple of other games on that hardware that are interesting too.

There is no functional difference between a so-called "vector CRT" and a "raster CRT." What makes a CRT vector or raster is the deflection yoke and deflection circuitry. The CRT itself doesn't care what sort of deflection it gets... So it seems that someone somewhere would have found a suitable monochrome raster monitor and simply swapped yokes and adapted the CRT neck connectors, or at least tried to, so the CRT shortage would no longer exist? For that matter, I'd imagine that some CRT neck pinouts on vector and raster are the same, making things easier. 1020688[/snapback] I believe the only thing lacking for making new monitors is the yokes. There was someone who wound his own a while back, and was looking at making a run of montiors but that fell through I think.

This has been discussed many times on RGVAC, you can search there for technical details. The answer is no for any reasonable amount of money. It's theoretically possible to make a device that stores the vectors in ram and outputs them a video screen. It would be cheaper to build a new color vector monitor. And the results would look a whole lot better.

How complex were the encryptions on those things? Any possibility of reverse-engineering them? 1018155[/snapback] Sega had a wide range. The first encypted z80's were had as few as 6 different encryptions that were controlled by the address bits. The "encryption" was a simple bitswap of the data bits with a XOR on top. And not even all 8, usually just 3. The only complicating factor was the fact that data and opcodes use different encryptions thereby preventing decrypted roms from easily being made. These were easily beaten looking for known text, IE "CREDITS" "GAME OVER" etc. I'm pretty good at reading z80 binary too, so I can find patterns in code as well as in text. They gradually increased until they had 64 different encryptions on games like gardia. That one had me stumped, I was able to get the first half decrypted but the second half had a lot of sound data I think. I wrote a program to compare the roms to the other sega roms assuming they reused some code. Turns out they did, which helped me get as far as I did. Nicola was able to finish it though Iirc by finding patterns in the encryption tables itself. After that they moved to the epoxy potted NEC cpu. Iirc it has 256 different encryptions. Iirc the encryptions are no longer just a simple product of the address bits, it's a look up table. There's enough complexity you could probably make a decryption algorythym to turn a rom into about any game you wanted. I can defeat that by a device I built that emulates a circuit board and observes how the z80 reacts to different commands, but I have to have the cpu. It's been a couple of years since I looked at that stuff, but I seem to remember someone saying that they must have 2k of ram embedded in it for the lookup table. The fd1089 is the same system but extended for the 68000 cpu. I believe that made it a little easier. The FD1094 is much worse. The NEC device had 2 states opcodes and data. This device has multiple states, that are called on command. I don't know a lot about them, but Charles Macdonald found a way to break them. But he also has to have the cpu. You could put multiple state roms back into one rom but you could never be 100% sure you've done it correctly, and you'd have to patch the rom checks etc. Doing it in hardware with a cpld and a prom would be a much better solution imo. And for system 22 which uses floppy disks it's the only solution, since no one as of yet has been able to copy a floppy much less modify the data. The main games I'm worried about are system E, which used the NEC for the main cpu. Most of the other systems used the NEC for the sound cpu only and later versions of the boards came out with decrypted roms so it's not a big deal to fix those.

I've offered to create replacement parts for the sega batteries on the leopardcats page, but as of yet there's not been enough interest to justify it. I need the originals for the NEC series processors though and as of yet we've not been able to find some of them. Hopefully they'll be found before they all die, although it's entirely possible that they are all gone for certain boards. The fact that we've been looking for working examples of certain boards for over 5 years w/o any luck doesn't bode well.

Yes, but some have the battery and essential components encased in epoxy.

Back then they had no idea anyone would be interested in a 5 year old game. During the height of the video game era a game was only good for 3 months and then it was more profitable to put something else in.

That's a really interesting story on how that bug came about. It was the result of copy protection that got out of hand.

It's pretty rare, they changed the name to desert gun before they made too many. Of course black & white games aren't really worth that much no matter how rare unless they're death race or something.

pengoman is pacman with pengo for pacman and the snowbees for ghosts. Thanks for the compliment on alien armada, that's 100% original code and not bad for only having 6 sprites to work with The blue mazes was a cost issue, adding 2 color proms to the kit would have bumped the cost up $30 or so and we felt very few would want it. I have done a custom kit for people with the extra color proms if they were willing to pay for my time. You might be interested in the mad pac, it's a new kit that adds color proms so that the pac plus problem is solved and I added make trax, beastie feasie, jumpshot, atlantic city action and a few other games that needed color proms too. It took me 2 years to get Pengo to run on a Pacman board without hardware tricks, that's one of the things I'm proudest of about this project.

There's no real links I'm not pushing it, I'm sick of pacman. But if you look in mike's directory for pics that start with mad you'll see some pics. It's a much larger pcb so it takes longer for him to build them so he's not pushing them either. http://www.members.aol.com/kilkeeslps/ What I'm working on now is finishing up the multi exidy and get it out the door. I don't want to look at another pac for a long time. http://www.widel.com/ That link didn't come up for me, but all the really big multi's are just mame on a pcb, it's cheaper to do your own.

No crush roller on the 96 in 1, it needs different color proms However the 96in1 will run on that piranha board By popular request though I've removed Piranha from the current software version and added a super pacman hack instead. Mike's webpage is a little out of date. To run the 96in1 on a piranha board you will need a new 4a color prom and the normal kit but with the graphics rom encrypted. Piranha is encrypted so any roms put on that board have to be encrypted to match. 977253[/snapback] 977454[/snapback] No, he mostly sells by word of mouth. That first one is a version of clay's 24 in 1 multipac. The second one is mame on a board. There's also a step up for the 96in1 called the mad pac. It includes everything in the 96in1 plus make trax which is the version of crush roller by Williams plus my favorite beastie feastie. There is some other stuff too, like some original games I wrote and some games like naughty mouse and jumpshot.

Kansas City. There's 2 different companies run auctions here and des moines and st louis are within driving range. Although I quit going to des moines because of the $5 bidder fee. I don't like it because it can't do anything except lower the prices I get.

No crush roller on the 96 in 1, it needs different color proms However the 96in1 will run on that piranha board By popular request though I've removed Piranha from the current software version and added a super pacman hack instead. Mike's webpage is a little out of date. To run the 96in1 on a piranha board you will need a new 4a color prom and the normal kit but with the graphics rom encrypted. Piranha is encrypted so any roms put on that board have to be encrypted to match.

$10 for a bidders number! I know I wouldn't be back, but then we have several auctions here to choose from and only 1 charges a bidder fee. I could see charging admission to try to keep the kids down, but why would you discourage people from bidding by making them pay for a number?

I'm not a big fan as it's kind of annoying playing w/o the maze, but it's definately worth $70 and you can convert it to pacman or hangly man if you want with just a rom swap. The board itself is very similar to a Rockola eyes board which is just a redesign of the pacman board. It has the falcon pinout which a lot of boards use, but with no fire button you will be limited to what games you can play. I've made a list of Falcon games at http://www.widel.com

Uggh... I would persoanlly hope that whomever bought that machine, fixes/ restores it to it's original beauty. It makes me sad to see all the hacked up classic MAME machines out there. Folks if you want a MAME machine, why not find a cabinet that was already converted? 974917[/snapback] Because they can't be fixed. There are just not enough good boards for all the cabs around. I can see your point if we're talking about dig dug or other classics, but there's just no other option for most of the Omega Race owners. Pole Position does have some hope, supposedly someone is working on a replacement PCB this winter. Before there were nvram chips they used to use cmos ram and back it up with a battery to save scores and/or bookkeeping statistics, pretty much like computer motherboards do with the watch battery. Except they used more like AA sized batteries and they were often soldered in. If they were used continuosly the batteries would have been replaced, but for a long time these games were considered pretty much worthless and just sat in old warehouses rotting.