MESS Dumping Project ?

So in the last week there have been a few threads have hinted at the need for a MESS dumping project.

What if we create a wiki where people can post information on wants and needs? Sort of a running wish list. The more details the better (ebay link ftw).

I know I'd be willing to help out and fund a purchase here and there if I actually knew what to buy. Also we could potentially track what people have if it is needed at a later date. e.g. I have a collection of channelf carts that if they are ever needed again, no point in buying them...

The new svn deal looks like it has a wiki section http://messdev.fdns.net:8000/tractest/wiki , But I admit I have not logged in yet or know if that is the best place for such thing. Unless someone is willing to be a cash collector/lead purchaser this might be the best first step.

Any thoughts?

ht

Please use The Official MESS Wiki

I know this isn't linked anywhere on the main site yet, we are waiting to see if it gets abused by kiddies first (which I seriously doubt will happen, but mamedevs promise me it will).

It will - the MAME entry on Wikipedia gets vandalized on a pretty regular basis.

Chris - Is that MESS only or MAME/MESS like the title says? I thought mamedev was using http://www.mamedev.org/devwiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Either way I'll take a look later and add a page for a MESS dumping page. Seems like a good place.

That MAME/MESS is in the title because we want to add a complete reference to all internal MESS functions, and a lot of those come from MAME.

Also it was actually created before the MAMEDev one (though not public).

While working on several drivers I've also been buying hardware and software to dump here and there.

I whipped up some basic intro text to put into MESS wiki.

But...

I don't have permission to create the page. Chris or Duke can you help? You can see link on the start page. If you create it I will toss in my first draft in there and we can edit from there...

Thanks.

my error when I try to save page...

I can provide any necessary FTP space and then some in order to provide a centralized location for newly-dumped or other unMESSed ROMs, you'd just have to bear with an upload cap of 80 kilobytes a second. Since that can quickly get into nebulous legal territory, however, contact me in private on IRC about it. I'm probably going to be at work through the night tonight, but I'll check my messages at around 10PM EST tomorrow.

ht1848: Not sure what went wrong there. I have created a page at http://redump.emubase.de/dev/dumping:info for you. Subpages should be under as dumping:<page> then.

The "reference" namespace should be reserved for info about the internal MAME/MESS workings.

EDIT: There was something wrong with the permissions, it's fixed now.

That's not an error per se, it just means that somebody didn't set it up right. I just registered as MooglyGuy, logged in, and tried to create an initial Lorem ipsum version of the page, and it didn't save any of the changes when I clicked "Save".

FYI, this Wiki software really sucks compared to MediaWiki. Would it have killed you guys to take a cue from the MAMEdev wiki? If the issue is setting it up, I'm sure one of you could've talked to Aaron, so I'd really love some justification for not using the same software.

It sucks because it doesn't use the same syntax as MediaWiki? Do you have any real problems? FYI, I like DokuWiki much more than MediaWiki. And I don't need any justification, if you don't like it don't use it.

Pretty much, yes.



Apart from the already-noted issue where it seems that neither I nor the person before me can create new pages, only edit existing ones? And the fact that the syntax is markedly more baroque? No, none at all.



Will do.

I already posted that this issue with creating new pages is fixed.

In that case, yes, my only issue lies with its baroque syntactical styles. I'll make an effort to try to learn it, but it's just that it's enough of a pain in the ass to have to know two different formats of Wiki markup while I'm at work, let alone a third one when I'm at home.

That's a good start with the dumping project page. For some we'll need to clear up just what needs to be dumped. I know some FM Towns Marty games have been dumped and can be played in emulators, but does the entry means the real BIOS haven't been dumped? I'll try to add some more systems and more information when I get a chance.

Lately, I've been working on a list of undumped Japanese systems, with the intention of tracking some of these down with the help of Guru's Japanese contact. At least a couple of people have mentioned wanting to donate for MESS dumping, so this could be a good opportunity.

I'll start out with a list of completely undumped consoles/portables released only in Japan. In most cases, we'd probably need to find these to know how difficult dumping would be. (The 64DD is an exception, since no ones knows how to dump it, but I'll include it for completeness.)

My plan is to first run the list by the people here, in case it turns out something actually has been dumped, or something is missing. Then I can update the Wiki and send a list to Guru. Some of these have already been mentioned on the Wiki, but I've got at least a bit more information. Later, the effort can be expanded to partially dumped systems, i.e. figuring out what games still need to be dumped.

Bandai Supervision 8000 -- first cartridge-based original Japanese system, from 1979, not related to the Watara Supervision
http://darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com/console/supervision.htm

Epoch Cassette Vision -- 1981, Ian Knowles posted about having one, is it available for dumping? This was also updated as the Cassette Vision Jr. in 1983. A follow-on, the Super Cassette Vision, has been emulated.
http://darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com/console/epoch.htm

My Vision -- 1983 by Nichibutsu
http://darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com/console/myvision.htm

Casio PV-1000 -- 1983
http://darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com/console/pv1000.htm

Gakken Compact Vision (TV Boy) -- 1983
http://darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com/console/gakken.htm

Nintendo 64DD -- 1999, disk add-on for the Nintendo 64. Any idea how to dump these?
http://64dd.emedian.eu/64dd.net/modules/news/

Casio Loopy "My Seal Computer" -- 1995
http://darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com/console/loopy.htm

Pasago -- portable by Koei with carts based on famous Go tournaments, hard to find much info on this, not even sure about the year of release:
http://assemblergames.com/wiki/dogatemysnes/pmwiki.php?n=Topics.KoeiPasago
http://ultimateconsoledatabase.com/portables/pasago_go.htm

Bandai Telebiko -- obscure VHS-based system, not sure about the year:
http://ultimateconsoledatabase.com/Morinfo/bandai_telebiko.htm

Dumping page is looking good. Still need to think about how to rally the supporters if something available comes up or how to get them dumped (Is the default answer send to Guru?).

http://cgi.ebay.com/BANDAI-PLAYDIA-MINT-...1QQcmdZViewItem

Bandai playdia system on ebay right now. no bids yet. Not sure how rare it is...so can't say it is worth it or not. Anyone know?

Games for this system are hard to find but the consoles often come up on ebay, its not worth buying without any games bundled with it imho. This is a strange case of a edutainment console for kids being turned into a hentai games machine... most of the games on it are "idol" games filled with anime schoolgirl porn. Not that is a bad thing.

It is also horribly hard to find any decent software/games for the Pippin, I wish I would of held out until a console bundled with games showed its head on eBay. The 6 cd's that came with mine are all crap (they are the ones that came bundled with the system originally 4 or 5 of them need the pippins internet connection to work and one of them is a software catalouge. Nothing playable other than some paint programme.

Well, that's definitely an option to consider. Guru's said that he'll dump anything. Of course this involves shipping to Australia and he probably won't reverse engineer any unique hardware. I sent him a Tiger R-Zone and some games and he's not sure what to do with them (the carts use something like an epoxy block, I think).

Ideally we should have a group of volunteers in different regions for various duties, like buying things on eBay and dumping different types of hardware. I've been planning to update the Wiki over the weekend, so I'll try to get something started in this regard.

Oh, cool, an R-Zone.

There's just so many stuff out there that's still not dumped..

Wow I havn't been here for a long time this is great news to come back to. I bought a Yeno (Super? will check next time im home) Cassette vision and some microvision cartridges awhile back in view of working myself up to dumping them but I havn't had time with Uni. If they need dumping still I'll happily make them available, I doubt i'd be able to handle the microvision cartridges anyway what little I read on them said they each contain a processor with no shielding and touching the contacts is enough to fry the thing

As for the wiki I wouldn't worry much about vandalism, I admin a small wiki at Wikia.com and its not really a problem. I don't know much about Dokuwiki but for a small Mediawiki wiki watching for vandalism is trivial.

I also have some crappy thing from china, its a modern knock-off of a NES probably of little interest but mame includes pirate machines so maybe its wanted. and a Philips Videopac G7000 (European Odyssey¬?). I'm not sure how different the videopac is internally from any other Odyssey¬? but its available if anyone wants to check

http://stores.ebay.com/hisashi110321

Has 3 systems up now...
Casio Loopy sv-100
NEC PC-FX
Bandai Pladia with 2 games

Watch the +$40 Shipping charge if you bid! I am not.

That's kinda cool, I'd never heard of the Casio Loopy before.

It was a console designed for young girls. Fashion games, stickers, and lots of pink. :-)

http://darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com/console/loopy.htm

Yeah, definitely check on the Cassette Vision when you get the chance. The first version is completely undumped as far as I can tell. Some dumping has been done for the Super Cassette Vision, but I'm not yet sure how complete it is.

As for Microvision dumping, hopefully Lord Nightmare will have good news to report soon, as I take it he's working on the Speak & Spell, which uses a similar microprocessor.

I've added a Wiki section to volunteer for purchasing and dumping responsibilities. Please check it out and add your name if you're able to help.

I had a quick check at some pictures online its the super and a few games. I don't think the original ever hit Europe.

does the wiki not have talk pages? I can't see any. Normally i'd be happy to help with eBay purchases but my ISP have been screwing with my connection and eBay is one of the few sites I can never reach, if the situation changes I can make purchases within the UK/Europe.

Just create a new page in the dumping namespace, maybe dumping:talk or dumping:discussion or dumping:chat. This can be linked from the main page then.

ranger_lennier: Great work with the page, maybe we should split the page though? Maybe the systems people own and the systems that need dumping should have their own page.

Yes, the Super Cassette Vision was released by Epoch in Japan and by Yeno in France. The Cassette Vision and Cassette Vision Jr. is Japan-only.

I found a page with a Super Cassette Vision and Casio PV-1000 emulator, so at least some games for these systems have been dumped. I'm not sure if anything's missing, though. Maybe I need to up my Poke-ROM skilz. :-)

http://www1.interq.or.jp/~t-takeda/top.html

I don't have a problem with splitting it up some, especially as the page grows.

The R-Zone is actually pretty crappy. The games are like Tiger's LCD games, except with cartridges. Someone will probably need to look at the hardware in some detail to figure out how to dump it.

And speaking of LCD games and undumped games, there are a huge number of dedicated portable games out there which could be dumped and emulated. But that would be a huge task.

Yeah, I know. And most of them are also pretty crappy.

I've actually also been thinking about game & watch, but those will be incredibly hard or expensive to get dumped.

VERY expensive, i've seen game & watch games go for £200 each

I played a Zelda Game & Watch once at a game convention and it was better than I expected.

Do you know what kind of hardware the Game & Watch uses?

I think the price varies widely depending upon the game, so maybe we could get a few cheaper ones to start with. If they can be dumped non-destructively, we could save a lot of money by reselling them afterwards.

Zelda at least uses a single ASIC. Here is a page with more details: http://18minutes.net/kennchen/zelda.html

my internet problems have been sorted so I can help with UK purchasing now

Page is looking pretty solid. I even bid (and lost) on a old system from the page this week. Next time it comes up...

I admit I don't love the wiki software, just a couple of things bug me. Probably the biggest is recent change page only shows last change of any particular page. You have to go to the specific page and look at old revisions. Also diffs can only be done vs. current page not any version vs any other version. Change page has much less info than mediawiki.

The whole domain:page structure thing seems a little too formal for my taste. I suppose I am missing something here...maybe for a huge project it would help keep things organized.

I do like what they have done with mamedev.org and mamewiki. Looks nice.

Can we get a link to the the wiki from mess.org? Same with the svn tracker?

My only issue with the tracker is the bug # link to the svn ticket number not bugzilla. That was a nice feature of the old Wip page. Is that a fixable option?

Alright end of complaining. I appreciate those who took the time to set it up. sorry. I woke up on the wrong side of DST this week. arrrgh. MG post another wip update!

It's good to have a European volunteer (and we could use more). I've actually been watching a French eBay auction for four Gamate games (Item #130086019392). I could buy it, but the seller wants to charge 15 EUR to ship to the U.S. Maybe shipping to the U.K. would be cheaper, though obviously France would be ideal. Let me know if you're interested.

One thing you might watch for is undumped Supervision games, as I've seen those come up for sale in the U.K. before. I already have some undumped ones, but some of the ones I sent Guru seem to not be fully working. If you find anything I can let you know the current status of it.

not being able to see all recent changes will make patrolling for vandalism a bit tedious. You'd have to check backwards through the diffs each time you saw a page was changed to be absolutely certain none had crept in.

Well I just changed it to show all diffs and not combine them.

I've asked the seller how much it would be to ship to the UK. Is there anyone who can dump these in the UK though? I also should have mentioned as its nearing the end of semester and i'm a student I won't be able to make any purchases with my own money until after easter in the last week of april. Until then I can only make purchases for others to be shipped outside of europe.

thanks for the change duke

Crap, that means the ebay alert I set for gamate games isn't working

I've also put the object on my watch list, I'm also in Europe.

hes asking 13 EUR to ship to the UK

anyone purchasing should probably put their ebay IDs on the dumping page to avoid bidding against each other. Unless you've all got the same ebay IDs as your forum name here and its just me that needs to add mine.

he's asking 12 euro for shipping secured to the netherlands

Is it just me or is he trying to rip us off on international shipping? I know I've paid a lot less for shipping from Europe, even reasonably fast shipping. But oh well, I guess it's not all that expensive. I've got a few Gamate games now--Cube-Up and Bomb Blaster, with Treasure Hunter and Kung-Fu Fighter on the way (still no system). But really I'm not the ideal person to collect these since they never came out in the U.S. I'm also not sure who could ultimately dump them.

I always snipe eBay auctions, so communication beforehand would probably be best to avoid bidding wars. I'd be inclined to go with judge on the Gamate, since he's expressed interest in the system, and is at least on the right continent. What do you think?

Yeah, i'll be bidding on that auction.

Cool. If you figure out how to dump them I can send the few games I have.

Price went a bit too high on those gamate games.

Well, from what I've seen that's a pretty typical price. I paid $18.50 and $14.95 (US) for the last two games I bought, so your auction was actually a bit cheaper per game. They don't come up very often, so I hate to see some passed by. Maybe in the future we can coordinate about funding.

For some good news, I just got a package from Spain with two more Gamate games--Treasure Hunter and Kung-Fu Fighter. And the boxes have some great Chinglish. "The Chinese Boxing Tournament, which is held every ten years, has been a great event in this year. Among all the competitors, Beard Guy, Hook Hand, Corpse Face, Black Shadow, and Hot Leg are the top players. Victory or defeat, it depends on how you are going to beat them." I just wish I had a system to play these!

Psion Palmtops, anyone?

http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?t=13549

Does anybody know if this is an original console or just a licenced or maybe unauthorized supervision.

http://ultimateconsoledatabase.com/portables/gamemaster.htm

I would like to think its another original obscure handheld pushed into early retirement by the gameboy but that cart looks familiar.

It sounds original to me. You can find more information on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartung_Game_Master

I was going to say this would be a good thing to look for, but it seems there's already an emulator.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/5127/

I don't know details about the dumping status.

I'm not sure I'd say there's "already an emulator" when it's closed source binary-only for MS-DOS with VGA. You have to have an emulator (DOSBox) to run that thing nowadays.

Well, it indicates that something from the system has already been dumped, at least. But certainly MESS support would be a good thing.

I just won this auction

I did not know that "genuine" was a condition that a console could be in, like "mint", "very good", or "poor".

heh.

In other news...
I just recieved a MB Microvision with a few games.
Bowling
Star Trek Phaser Strike
Block Buster
Pinball
Connect Four

Anyone interested in working on this system? I thought I read ranger_lennier has a few games too. I'll update messwiki so we can see if we have a complete set (12?).

I have some at home, although I think it's those 5. I'll have a look when I'm back this weekend.

If I may slightly hijack the topic...

As we know, MAME has a companion to the Dumping Project, namely the Decapping project. The question for the more knowledgable MESSDevs is this: for a very select number of console games, would a similar decapping project be effective (though possibly not worthwhile in most cases)?

I know that in theory, the SNES DSP-1, for example, is decappable. (There have been failed attempts by ametuers) You could read the original program ROM and emulate the chip, rather than the bit-perfect-except-for-one-operation simulation in use today. (Since the other DSP-X chips are the same, it would work for all of them).

It's debatable, given how accurate the simulations are, whether it is worth sacrificing the original chips and spending the money at this time.

I don't know enough about decapping to know whether it only works for reading ROMs, or whether, for example, it would be possible to fully emulate, say, the SPC7110 memory mapper and decompression chip. So I'm asking people who know, because as long as MAME has the connections, MESS should at least have enough of a discussion to spell out what decapping can and cannot help before someone makes claims that aren't true.

Experts only, please!

I don't know that decapping would help the SPC7110. It's most successful at getting ROM contents out of a chip (a la the DSP-1). It's much less applicable to trying to figure out a chip (unless the 7110 is an MCU with an internal ROM, of course).

Well, we know Epson fabbed the SPC7110 for Hudson, and it uses something like a range of 0x30 bytes as a register bank. The interesting parts are almost certainly not MCU-like (compression, some ungodly complex control registers for reading data from the data ROMs)

Like I said, I don't know what can and can't be done with decapping.


The only real mystery chips then are the OBC-1 and Cx4. The OBC-1 is mostly sprite setup, so I'd bet it was developed as an anti-piracy measure more than a necessary co-processor. No idea what that would indicate, anyway. The Cx4 is well-simulated already, but the fact that all commands are sent to a particular address sounds a lot like a CPU polling a particular address

It would be reasonable to expect that the entire DSP series and all three of Seta's custom coprocessors use an internal ROM. (The ST-010 and ST-011 are virtually identical, from part number to pin count to shape, while the ST-0018 is known to be a RISC processor, which would need to have some code to execute.) Of these, the ST-011 and ST-018 are most interesting, in that they're "damn hard" to simulate because they are used in Shougi games. The ST-010 was used in a racing game, which makes the operations fairly easy to decode and simulate, all things considered

I have at least one copy of every released Microvision game. As for the three games that were released on both the TMS1100 and the Intel 8021, I don't know which version I have. I believe that judge is working on a TMS1100 CPU core and Lord Nightmare is working on how to dump the TMS1000, which would hopefully carry over to the TMS1100.

Decapping is most useful for chips with internal ROM that is visually distinguishable, such as maskROM (but not EEPROM). The drawbacks are of course that the chip is damaged in the process and it's expensive, I believe Guru said about $330 US. You would need to know some details about a particular chip to know if it would be helpful. Actually, Microvision games are an example of something that could be decapped, though hopefully there's a better way.

Heretical_one: I added all the dsp-x chips, plus the s-dsp (which is also an mcu), the Cx4 (definitely an MCU, it even can checksum its own rom using a command), and the playstation APU to the mess decapping list. The spc7110 MIGHT be an mcu but I sort of doubt it. It certainly COULD be, but I don't think it'd run fast enough unless it ran at 14mhz... OBC1 is also possibly an MCU.

Lord Nightmare

P.s. ksmr, LJdmcnqz. any new stories?

I kind of doubt the SPC7110 is anything but an ASIC, honestly. I just don't see a way to break the interesting part, and had to ask about the limits of decapping. I suspect the data decompression falls outside those limits, and that's the single most important facet of the chip. There's plenty of oddities to it (why are the ROM addresses in the decompression table all big-endian? Aren't there a lot of registers for one?), there's probably no point to decapping the chip with what we can currently glean from images.

There are some new ones, but I'm in another slow revision cycle, teaching myself to improve the descriptive level of the writing a bit. I don't even recall when you last were up-to-date to begin with...

Why the PlayStation APU? It's clearly not an MCU.

because its predecessor, the snes s-dsp, clearly IS an mcu, based on recent experiments by blargg and byuu.
Therefore I'm working on the assumption that the playstation APU chip is too. Also, the playstation APU allows you to upload short bits of dsp code to do reverb effects and stuff. I believe the dsp mcu runs this code in a sort of sandbox of some sort. You can ask Neill Corlett/ilparatz0 for more information, but when I contacted him about this he didn't respond.

Lord Nightmare

Corlett's unlikely to talk to anyone who's anywhere in the vicinity of MAME/MESS. Such is life.

It's for the better, I suppose. Ghastly hacks, ghastly hacks.

Just won this auction

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=016&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWN%3AIT&viewitem=&item=260099339208&rd=1&rd=1

Hahaha, that's awesome I remember the commercials for that thing.

another auction won, http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=002&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWN%3AIT&viewitem=&item=120101646787&rd=1&rd=1

UK version of the Channel F

I was scanning ebay for some broken consoles for dumping and found this auction:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Sony-PlayStation-P...1QQcmdZViewItem

For those who don't want to click:



AAAAAAA++++ for honesty...lol

Just received another obscure game system that uses vhs tapes, the Bandai Video Challenger. Cant find much info on this, came with 2 vhs tapes Sky Wars and Space Challenge. The latter came bundled with the console.

Neat! It must be a version of the Bandai Telebiko. I figured that was only released in Japan.

Yeah it looks like a european Telebiko, on another note I've been looking for other vhs based consoles and found this very obscure gem http://cgi.ebay.com/View-Master-Interact...2QQcmdZViewItem

Only ships in America though

No worry, I've set up a snipe for it. It should go nicely with my Action Max. :-) I've also been thinking about picking up some Captain Power toys and videos. The toys had an infrared sensor so you could shoot at the screen. I don't think emulation would be quite the same, but perhaps something could be done.

Have you tried to open yours up yet? When I cracked mine open to have a peek at its guts I noticed the knobs on the front panel hold the pcb in place, and most of the insides are held together with fragile wires and tape. I couldnt get a good enough look at what (if any) cpu it uses. I was also told that all the action max systems were ntsc too, but mine and the tape it came with are pal and a line in the manual is blacked out with marker pen... who knows maybe what I have is a pal prototype or they just cut corners making this thing.

I only just noticed this but the sticker on the Sonic Fury tape even has the FBI warning and the fine for copying it is in dollars.

Pretty odd for a pal console

I guess sniping was unnecessary, as I won the View Master Interactive Vision for $0.99.

As for the Action Max, I've never opened it up. I did notice that it said NTSC on the bottom. Does your's say PAL?

Yup, well... on a sticker

I spoke to Fredric Bl?•holtz awhile ago and to his knowledge there is no difference between the different regional releases of the channel f, apart from the Luxor bios which I submitted. While he hasn't seen any grandstand units all the SABA, ITT, units he's come across use the standard bios. Should I delete the Luxor, SABA, and ITT from the wanted list? Or add a note? Conversation with Fredric is here: http://www.freelists.org/archives/channelf/05-2006/msg00000.html

Given his confirmation, I'd remove them yeah.

maybe it would be good to mention this in the source too!

I have a Grandstand channel-f, still havent opened it up

its probably using the standard bios would it take you long to open it up and have a look at the chip numbers?. the only difference between the standard bios and the luxor is a bit or two allowing horizontal movement in the pack-in pong game, don't know if i've mentioned that before or not. is sysinfo.dat still being used or should I write this up on the wiki?

It was a bit of a fight to get the case off heh

Please use the wiki, new sysinfo.dats will probably be generated from it.

this is a bad news... i'm working on a good update of it to submit to ht1848... oh well, infos can always be copied and pasted to wiki and then sysinfo can be generated from the wiki :P

Probably easier if you just update the wiki yourself

well thats proved me wrong the standard chips are SL31253 and SL31254, the Luxor replaced SL31253 with SL90025. You've got SL31291 and something else? I've ordered a cheapy (£55 in p&p) ROM programmer recently it should be here in a couple of weeks (from hong kong) so I could attempt to dump it. I havn't dumped anything before but from what I understand it's just a matter of desoldering those 40-pin DIP packages plugging them in the programmer and running the software.

EDIT - There may have been something about checking the pin assignments of the packages, I'll experiment on my master system before I touch anything rarer. willing to let me try incog?

Sure

edit: I also have some ngage and a tapwave zodiac game, the are all on SD card and I have an SD card reader, are there any special steps I have to go through to get complete dumps from these or is it just a matter of copy and pasting? I like to dump games/consoles that were commerical failures before they get rare.

Cool, I'll let you know when my programmers arrived and i've had at my master system.

If the SD card has a secure area its probably a similar process to dumping NDS? Don't know whos clued up on that. Didn't really find anything on google although i'm too tired right now to thoroughly search things.

I've seen Zodiac dumps floating around in the wild, so I assume there's nothing special about it.

anyone know much about the coleco telstar arcade? according to wikipedia its cartridges have small programs stored in ROM but also custom logic circuits http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleco_Telstar . Is this something that could eventually be included if dumped?

Are pages like http://redump.emubase.de/dev/mess:drivers:channelf:channelf on the wiki generated from the source? It looks like it. If I want to put up some useful links for channel f and a brief history where do I put it?

I think it should be still added to the sysinfo.dat, since the process of generating sysinfo from wiki (and-or viceversa is still in the process)

so probably, sending those to hobie is still the easier option (and check your pm, i added bits of info already so we can join our strenghts )...

since we are talking about channelf, i found a bug/wrong info on the way buttons are labelled!

from the source:



the correct one should be



Notice the reversed order of the names of the inputs. you can verify this with any channelf picture (it is clearly show that 1 is TIME and not START, etc.) or checking that to start a game you have to press IPT_BUTTON7 (C key by default)

on the other hand the number are correctly assigned since you select the game 1=TENNIS with IPT_START

i'm not sure if the input should be changed accordingly to have start back on IPT_START, but I think we can continue to use these inputs, simply saying what is mapped to what

anyway, channelf inputs are a big headache to setup. e.g. the joypad had a bunch of unusual movements PUSH DOWN, PULL UP, MOVE CLOCKWISE, MOVE COUNTERCLOCKWISE which are mapped to the first 4 IPT_BUTTONs... not a bad choice, but you start to have a lot of inputs...

Yes, those driver pages are generated. Please put any additional info you have into the sysinfo pages, for channelf that would be http://redump.emubase.de/dev/sysinfo:channelf

well I found a telstar arcade cartridge on ebay http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200108952915 , i'm going to pick it up out of curiosity.

another interesting system seems to be the comquest, a kid computer.

there is a testdriver for it in MESS, but the cpu is unknown (a note in the driver actually states that emulation should be fairly easy if we find out which cpu uses). I've seen many of those sold for few bucks on US ebay [1], but I live in Europe so it's not convenient for me to bid on it.

[1] e.g. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170098795159

How do we have a driver without knowing the CPU?

ETA: Ok, I see there's a ROM dump, just no idea what the ROM does :-)

I found a few history items for sysinfo, but no sepcifications.

Team concepts wins the Consumer Product Design Award in the Hong Kong Awards for Industry 1993, for their comquest PC
http://www.hkindustryaward.org/winners/1993winners_content.html

US release of comquest plus in march 1996 at $149.99, 'PC link accessory' $39.99
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb4360/is_199603/ai_n15246424

Same prices different source dec 1996
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1365/is_n5_v27/ai_18918647/pg_3

Comquest smartstation, not sure but possibly the next model after the plus?

http://cgi.ebay.com/KID-COMQUEST-SMART-S...1QQcmdZViewItem

an original comquest

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Computers/Vintage/photos/a-99683568/p-40880908.htm

Lord_Nightmare - This Seller has a few speak and spell modules that are on the wanted list. Out of my price/value range, but just wanted to post just in case you were a speak and spell fanatic and/or rich...Zero feedback though so maybe price drop if they don't sell or a combo opportunity.

theres a sharp MZ-80A for 99p here http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Sharp-MZ-80A-Compu...1QQcmdZViewItem
if anyones near enough to yorkshire to pick it up...incog or anyone else?

How old is the system? I should be able to figure it out in fairly short order just by looking at the ROM.

beginning of the 90s... in the driver (src/mess/drivers/comquest.c) there are comments about which CPU it cannot be and why (iirc)

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/EPOCH-CASETTE-VISI...1QQcmdZViewItem

A cassette vision junior for $144 inc worldwide shipping. Its japan only and fairly rare. I can just about stretch myself to buying it unless someone else wants to pick it up or thinks the price is unreasonable?

This is needed and it doesn't strike me as an unreasonable price, though I've never actually seen one for sale before. If you're interested, I'd say go for it.

I updated the Wiki with a list of my undumped systems and games. Wow, I've sure collected a bunch of obscure stuff! Anything sound interesting? I've noted if I've already sent something to Guru.

http://redump.emubase.de/dev/dumping:info#in_ranger_lenniers_s_possession

I could also add some updates to the wanted list, but that will have to wait for another day.

Nice collection. I just bought the same telstar arcade cartridge, oops. Would be great if we could get a hold of the other 3?. Theyre over 30 years old and really need some attention.

The first cart's pretty common, it seems. The other three show up on eBay every now and then, but I've been waiting for a nice collection with a working system. I have one that shows some graphics, but isn't actually playable.

One of my first machines, apart from the Atari 2600 Jr, was a miniature Galaxian arcade machine by Coleco or Midway. I don't think this would make it in MESS though since it had a VFD screen.

The only thing I remember about it, is it was a 2 player game and there was also a switch on it which would turn it into a Space Invaders game. IIRC it used C size batteries. Unfortunately it got run over by a car (don't ask how!) and the screen was destroyed!

I don't see any reason MESS couldn't do this. MESS/MAME handles all sorts of displays--lamps, LED's, dot matrix, etc. I think the real problem with dedicated systems like this is that there's so many of them, and most of them aren't that good, so I don't know if people will want to put a lot of time into them.

We had the Pacman Coleco VFD mini-machine when I was a kid. It had a problem where the voltage regulator (a stock 7805 I think) didn't have a heatsink so over time it would actually unsolder itself. (This is more amusing now than it was then, given that the Xbox360 "Red Ring of Death" is caused by the CPU unsoldering itself via a similar mechanism).

I bought the cassettevision jr. I've also picked up a few vtech consoles/laptops from the list. I'll put a list on the wiki once a few more auctions finish and I check some things at home.

I think that we will need another emulator, MEHGE: Multiple Electronic Handheld Games Emulator (or, a name that start with M and hass 4 letters).

Did these VFD machines have a CPU?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300103085103&ssPageName=ADME:B:WNA:UK:76

a rowtron and 12 games. I can't afford it, if anyone else wants it its £100.

Confirmed my old Galaxian was branded Coleco and not Midway which I was originally looking for on the net:

http://www.videogamecritic.net/cp.htm

In other news, I just spotted one on eBay. Others here

I had no idea these things survived to this day!

Is anyone setup to dump PlayStation bios? I found a missing one from 1997. I need to track down some cables to see if the unit actually works.

pm me if you are able

BTW, one thing I've noticed - Mac desktop ROMs are relatively easy to find, but nobody's dumped the Portable or the PowerBooks. (In particular the Portable and PB100 are 68000-based and very similar to the SE except with different ADB). Out of those 2 we only need 1 dump - they use the same ROM but have a region of I/O space that reads back a magic model ID to differentiate the 2 :-)

I have a powerbook 170 here, I'd completely forgotten about it. I should add it to my 'owned hardware list'
Problem is that its dead as a doornail. Totally toast.
Person I got it from used the wrong power wart on it and deep fried the power supply parts inside. Probably needs quite a bit of rework before it will work again.

I have no clue where the roms are hiding inside it though, and they're almost certainly surface mount.

LN

I dunno - Apple used socketed DIPs at least as far as the PowerMacs, so there's a good chance they're that way in a 170.

I took apart my colecovision expansion module 1 to find nothing dumpable. I probably should have realised that as the Atari 2600 has no bios it was unlikely this would contain one. Anyway for anyone interested it uses the same 6507 processor and 6532 RIOT chip as the 2600. U3 I couldn't find any info on but I guess its converting things before passing them on to the coleco?

More likely it's just halting the CV's processor and overriding it's audio and video with it's own - that's more or less how the Inty System Changer worked.

That'd make a lot more sense. U3 is just audio/video output then like the atari's TIA chip? Making it an almost standalone 2600 clone, I was going to look into it a little more but I guess its not particularly worth it. Effectively in emulation it'd just be an atari 2600 running on the coleco driver with the coleco idling in the background? Sorry if these questions are stupid but i've only just finished the second year of my electronics degree so I'm pretty clueless about hardware still.

U3 is almost certainly a TIA clone, yup.

VideoBrain on ebay.

I tossed in an early bid, but I think it will be out of my price range by the sniping time. Anyone else? Apparently it uses same chip as channelf which would be interesting to see against the MESS implementation.

Interesting. I could probably bid more than the current $76, but I'm not sure just how much these go for. Has anything been dumped from it? I found an old discussion about dumping it here.

I noticed the PlayStation part in MESS, that the SCPH7500 BIOS is listed as a nodump.

I have an SCPH7500 machine sitting here doing nothing right now; it works perfectly but is currently missing a CD-ROM drive and power supply (repaired a wrecked SCPH5502 with it). The 5502's old power supply in it makes a buzzing noise from the large transformer.

The strange thing is, it has what looks like Korean (Hangal) on the base of it rather than Japanese. I'm not Asian so I have no idea!

I've always wanted to know this though. When I run it through the TV, the BIOS screen is yellow instead of blue. Is this just the difference between an NTSC-J signal or something else? It also does this through a video capture card, even when set to NTSC-J.

Luckily, I have one solitary Japanese game to test it on - Tekken 1 (disc swap also works with this, so I can also swap over to my PAL games!). Everything on screen is still yellow though.

Edit: I don't have anything to dump it with (Caetla??), but if I could send it to someone around Melbourne that would be OK.

You shouldn't care about the PSX nodumps. smf has a lot of dumps in his personal tree, that aren't even listed yet, but he hasn't submitted it by now.

I have not seen many (if any) on ebay. Not really sure what it might go for. If you are interested I'll pitch in $50 if you win.

Thanks for the help! I've set up a snipe for it, so we'll see how it goes.

Time to resurrect the never-ending Dumping Project thread. Anyway, I won the VideoBrain auction, and it's now arrived safely. Big thanks to ht1848 and Lord Nightmare for pitching in!

I have to say, the machine looks fantastic, especially considering it's almost 30 years old. It started up with no problems too. I've tried out some built-in programs, and they're pretty simple, though I'm happy to report the clock is Y2K compliant, even if it lacks a battery-backed memory. I've tried two carts that worked fine. Gladiator is kind of like Combat but with different variations--an ancient gladiator fight, a football scrimmage, and a space battle. I don't like how loose the joystick is--I guess this is how it was originally. There's also an educational word-building game. I still need to try three more cartridges. The only issue I've noticed so far is that the "Master Control" button doesn't reset a program like the instructions indicate. Either it's broken of I'm doing something wrong.

I need to update the Wiki with this and a few other things I've picked up. I've still got some things on loan to Guru that will hopefully be dumped sometime (some of the hardware is rather obscure), but there doesn't seem to have been much activity lately with actually dumping things. Is there anyone who can work on the VideoBrain or anything else listed? I believe Frank Palazzolo asked about the VideoBrain some time ago. Do you still follow these boards, Frank?

There have been some changes submitted.

Anyone who has a playstation ( there must be a few ) should at least try to identify the bios & then dump it if it's not listed in mess now.

If you can boot cdr's then it's easy, I wrote a program last year which can display the version details, crc & then zip the rom and transfer it to a set of memory cards ( then you need a way of transferring the memory cards over to your pc ). It's the only way to transfer the bios from scph-900x/scph-10x anyway.

I need to dig it out, tidy it up a bit & then I'll release it.

If you have a bios version that is dumped, but mess doesn't list that model in the description of that version then you should let me know too.

smf

I've updated the Wiki with my recent acquisitions. In addition to the VideoBrain previously discussed, there are several new R-Zone games, some new Gamate cards, a Game Master and games, a Team Concepts laptop I forgot to list earlier (there was a question about what process it used, and this might well be a different version than what's now dumped), an interactive Captain Power music video tape, and a surprisingly decent pirate Game Boy Color fighter.

http://mess.toseciso.org/dumping:info#in_ranger_lenniers_s_possession

I've got a rather large collection of games, most of which suck. Any dumping volunteers?

heh, its like some unwritten law of the universe that all the rarer games always suck, great collection ranger_lennier. I'm also finding it difficult to locate somebody who can dump my stuff... especially the vhs tapes, I mean ripping those losslessly is going to be a ballache

keep up the great work

One thing for the wiki: NEC PC-FX is dumped and working in Mednafen.

updated and noted

Especially the R-Zone. I seriously nominate this as the worst videogame system ever made. The display (at least for the head-strap version) is an almost unusable gimmick, and the gameplay is straight out of 1980's LCD handhelds, even though it's from 1995.

I've wondered what to do about the VHS tapes as well. I could record them to a video card easily enough, but there must be a higher quality solution. Maybe whoever Aaron's got working on laserdics could do something with them.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Sega-SC-3000-SC300...VQQcmdZViewItem

This is the Sega SC-3000H, Originally sold for ¥33,800, was an upgraded version of the SC-3000 (already in MESS) with more RAM and an upgraded keyboard (the original keyboard was of the low-end membrane type).

Is there any real tech documentation on the PC-FX?

Then again, I should probably "not ask", given the pace of my efforts...

Mednafen got, and I have, all the official programmer manuals and SDK. However, they're in Japanese and intended for a really old (Windows 3.1 16-bit!) version of Windows Write or somesuch. I got them to open in a recent version of Word with some fighting, but I don't read Japanese =)

great news. Japanese isn't "really" a problem for me, but willpower is, so I'm glad a more capable dev has the materials needed

I'd like to get my hands on a set of disks/images for the Fairlight CMI IIx. There's ROMs and schematics floating around at least.

embarrassingly won these auctions:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=290154099421&ssPageName=STRK:MEWN:IT&ih=019

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=170144855515&ssPageName=STRK:MEWN:IT&ih=007

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=120155529646&ssPageName=STRK:MEWN:IT&ih=002

I also updated the wiki and added PCB scans of everything i can currently crack open (waiting on secure torx and tri-wing bits). Please post if you can dump any of these

http://mess.toseciso.org/dumping:info#in_incog_s_possession

A quick run down your list:

On the VTech Precomputer, the "LH532" with the Vtech copyrights is a standard mask ROM, but it's soldered in which makes it a bit trickier.

Acetronic MPU1000: I don't think there's any ROM on that main PCB unless it's inside the i8039 CPU. More likely the ROMs are on the carts for that though.

Action Max: the HD401010 is the CPU, but since it also has WOW copyrights I'd strongly suspect an internal ROM that would need decapping. Probably not worth it.

APF Mathmagician: TMS1100, same as the APF M-1000 carts.

BBC Bridge: the main PCB and the carts both appear to have socketed normal EPROMs so pretty much anyone with a reader could dump them.

Bible Search: epoxy blob, pretty much hopeless.

N-Joypad: appears to have SMT Flash ROMs, Guru could handle those if those are the ROMs and not the 2 epoxy blobs.

Sudoku: epoxy blob, as above.

Sega Lock-On: I couldn't see any intelligence on either PCB. Probably just dumb discrete logic.

N-pad epoxy blobs are either a clone ppu and cpu, or a nes-on-a-chip and a mapper chip (more likely). The two smt flash chips are just that, flash chips.

i8039 is a romless version of the I8049 (But if you decap it chances are it has an unused rom on die and I8049 markings. why? The i8039 was basically an i8049 with the EA pin permanently enabled and not connected to a pin, to permanently force it into external rom mode. Intel would make dozens of i8049s every day with all sorts of odd mask roms on them, and when one would fail QC (have an incorrect bit in the mask rom or a problem with the mask rom address decoder but otherwise work) then they'd permanently connect EA, call it an i8039, and sell it as that, to cut losses.)

LN

P.S. Assuming you have a microscope, you can decap epoxy blobs with a blowtorch. They certainly won't work after that though.

P.P.S. We still need to find someone who can wrap their head around the schematic and figure out the tms1xxx rom test mode based on the speak&spell patent US 4,209,844, since it has a full logic schematic of the tms1003 or whatnot.

APF M-1000 carts use a Motorola ROM chip. Maybe you're thinking of the Microvision.

I'm UK-based (Herts area) and can assist with dumping. I should be able to handle any DIP/PLCC devices from this list:

http://ftp.dataio.com/device_lists/unisite.txt

Thanks Phil

also, 2 more scans added

Bandai Video Challenger and Pokeball LCD Game

COP420 CPU, no visible ROMs and epoxy blob, respectively.

My secure torx bits came today and I finally cracked open the Pippin. I broke the drive tray doing it though

Here are the scans:

Rom Board
PCB
PCB back

ROM board is SMT mask ROMs, that'd have to go to Guru. I don't see any ROMs on the main board, which is in keeping with how Macs were designed at that time.

Thanks RB

I've just dug out a static proof bag and I'll send the rom board off to the guru.

also added these

Pippin memory card
Game & Watch Mario Bros. PCB

http://cgi.ebay.com/Sega-Teradrive-PC-PC...oQQcmdZViewItem

Help needed, I can put £100 towards this.

edit:

just got the casio loopy cart today, here is a scan.

Just received a Bandai Playdia and 2 CD's for it.

This has to be one of the worst consoles of all time, I hooked it up and started i up... no boot screen just an empty shade of blue, not deterred I put one of the games that came with it in and it started. Its not so much of a console really, more of an interactive VCD player. I also tried out a normal audio CD, played fine but just a blue screen.

I'll dump the CD's to CHD in a moment.

LOL. Can't wait to see a PCB scan.

Thats harder than it sounds, I've already lost my best security bit to it (it has odd tamper proof screw holes that are tapered off at the bottom meaning all screw bits become lodged and stuck) and it took a chunk of out my thumb.

Im probably just gonna have to drill the screws out, im not bothered about ruining the case not after it bit my thumb :|

I won an auction for a Telstar Arcade with all four carts. Is this MESS-able? It's basically a Pong system, but the carts have an MPS-7600 chip, which is a custom microcontroller with 512-word internal ROM. Pong Story has a page on it including a picture of the inside of the cart. This page has the most information I found on the chip:

"Thanks to several articles forwarded to me by Lee Rayner, the architecture of the TV Game systems is finally revealed. The actual core is the MOS Technologies "MPS" 7600 (or 7601), yet another iteration of the ubiquitous 'Pong-on-a-chip' primitive game CPUs that emerged in the late 1970s in competition with General Instruments, National Semiconductors and even Commodore's old arch enemy Texas Instruments; the 7600/1 was the last of MOS's Pong-chip line, which started with the 5601. However, innovation was what set the 7600 and 7601 apart: unlike most other Pong devices that had the game hard-coded into the system's logic, the 7600/1s were actually true if crude microprocessors that read game instructions from a special 512-word (mask?) ROM which appears to be internal to the chip.

"The catch, however, is that graphics and sound are also generated directly by the 7600/1 and are hardwired into the chip logic, meaning that special variants had to be created if a special display was required for an arbitrary application. Thus, the 7601-001 in the TV Game series, while being programmable in a crude sense, is hardwired to generate the graphics for the TV Game series' internal games only and cannot be coerced into drawing other kinds of shapes. This distinction is important because the MOS 7600/1's application was not just in the TV Game series but also in the Coleco Telstar Arcade, released in the United States in 1977, where it lurked in its plug-in cartridges and was Coleco's attempt to distinguish itself from the me-too Pong craze. Coleco's Telstar is an unusual triangular console with a light gun, driving controller, and knob panels on each of the three legs of the triangle. The Telstar's multi-game cartridges also have the same triangular form factor and drop in the top of the unit; one came with the machine, and three others were eventually released. Inside each Telstar cartridge is an NTSC MOS 7600, each localized for its particular graphics requirements. Variant -002, for example, is in Telstar Arcade cartridge #1 and plays "road race, tennis and quick draw" while cartridge #2 contains "hockey, tennis, handball and target [practise]," and because this sounds suspiciously like the games in the TV Game, this probably contains the same TVG variant -001. Cartridge #3 contains "bonus pinball, shooting gallery, shoot the bear and deluxe pinball" and cartridge #4 contains "naval battle, speed ball and blast away." It is unclear which 7600 variant is in these other two cartridges, although there appear to be only four 7600 variants known. The internals of cartridge #1 on David Winter's site above show a 7600-002 with a fabrication date of 25th week 1977; this coincides well with an expected release of the TV Game systems somewhere around 1976, assuming that Commodore released the first commercial application of these chips (seems logical as the MOS acquisition had been consummated completely by this time). "

I don't think there's any way to dump the ROMs on those.

Well, assuming the second page's suggestion that they use maskROM is correct, there's decapping if nothing else.

True. Then the problem is that they're an unknown custom CPU :-) (Well, that and paying US$300+ to play a Pong game).

That reminds me...
I was given a Amstrad MegaPC some years ago, is there anything useful for dumping inside ? The PC-side works, not idea about the Megadrive card, I didn't bother to find a cartridge for testing...

http://www.uk.playright.dk/raretitel.php?id=13883

Unknown custom CPU? Where's your sense of adventure? This is the ultimate evolution of Pong systems. Three games--pong, racing, and shooting--each with their own controls, and carts to change the style of the games!

thats great mevi

I've been looking for one of those and the last one I bidded on was sniped in the dying seconds

The amstrad pc will have its own bios and the megadrive side of it will likely have a bootstrap like the consoles. Although im not a master in this area and could be wrong.

http://mess.toseciso.org/dumping:dump_bios_using_debug?s=dump

This might be helpful in dumping the pc bios.

Hmmm... I'll see if I can chase down a data book, there's one for the GI AY-3-8500 to AY-3-8760, so there must be one for the MOS chips out there. I think I might hit up a notable in the industry for this one, see if any engineers out there were pack rats. *adds to to-do list*

I dunno if LN is reading this, but MOS Technology was based outta Norristown, and they became Commodore Semiconductor.

- Stiletto

Awesome! It seems that few of the pong systems were completely analog, and a lot used the same chips or variations of them. So, maybe these could be emulated. And I do seem to love collecting crappy unemulated systems.

Dark Watcher's Console History--Pong Madness

Pong Story--Pong In A Chip

Finally got around to drilling the screws out of the playdia, those are some serious tamperproffed screws, the screwheads collapse in on themselves so your drillbit is just left spinning.

Anyway, just scanned the PCB... I have doubts about this ever working again without some tender loving care. Which its not getting from me. Bitch bit my thumb :|

PCB Scan (1mb, 56k deathtrap)

Thats a lot of pongs, also confirms that my Adman Grandstand is a pong console too.

Alright. TA2035 is a CD focus controller, TC9263 is a CD drive controller, TMP87C800 is an 8-bit MCU (TLCS-870 series, and the C in the middle seems to indicate mask ROM rather than PROM or EPROM) with 8 or 16k of internal ROM, and LC89515 is a CD-ROM interface. No luck on the NEC D78214 or the Asahi Kasei AK8000 but I gather those are video related.

http://assemblergames.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-13302.html
Came across this useful info just now, might be already known.
The last post in that page seems to detail the parts pretty well.

Also, the RU version of Wikipedia has Specs the English version does not: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playdia

http://www.necel.com/en/faq/mi78k/_category.html
Appears that this is main CPU.. info will help.

Tafoid

Ahh, so two CPUs with internal ROMs. Although given that it boots to a blank screen before the CD loads I can't imagine there are any serious BIOS services so it could be possible to emulate without dumping either CPU.

I'm dumping the 2 playdia discs I have to CHD. Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon S-Quiz Taiketsu! Sailor Power Ketsushuu!! and Newton Museum - Dinosaurs Encyclopedia.

Hi ranger_lennier, just cracked open my cart for the Adman Grandstand Cartridge TV Game Console (pong system with a very long name)

Cart Scan

On a side note, Im scanning all the boxart, carts, console boxes, inserts, manuals and crap... Does anybody know of a site/project that would be interested in all these? Some of them are pretty interesting.

Insert from the Adman Grandstand (UK Channel F varient)

The AY-3-8610 is a 'Pong in a Chip' IC and not dumpable as such.

By co-incidence, I was reading this page last night:

http://www.pong-story.com/gi.htm

My Casio Loopy and 4 carts just arrived, time to take it apart

Edit: PCB Scan

SH-1 CPU @ 20 MHz with 32k internal ROM and 1k internal RAM. That's surprisingly powerful for a "toy" console =)

Wow, I put it back together and it actually works... there is a first for everything.

Casio Loopy Cart - has a battery on the back

Hi
I am the founder of redump.org, a CD/DVD dumping project with almost 1500 dumps from different systems, mostly PSX. I think that working together would be a nice idea Since I don't know what dumping method and format for storing data you are going to use, I advise you to read our dumping guide (it has been written for PSX, but also is right for other CD-based systems). I hope you'll make the right choice (No-Intro has already made), then our database could serve as source for hashfiles for your emulator.
Thank you and good luck!

I have a metric assload of orginal ps2/ps1/psp titles.

(pic was taken a year ago my collection is far bigger now)

I'm currently dumping cd's using the gurus method and converting them to the chd format.

The Gurus method doesn't use offset correction, so audio tracks will be different on every drive, also some data in the beginning or in the end will be missing. Moreover, it's nearly impossible to make perfect copy of subchannel data (there is no redundant data, therefore no C2 error correction is performed), so direct subchannels copying from CD doesn't make sense, because every dump will have different checksums, even if made on the same drive.
If you wish to help our project with PlayStation dumps, I would be grateful, but please read the guide carefully.

I still think offset correction is a scheme invented by desperate audio pirates who wanted to maintain their elite status in the face of easy consumer ripping programs. I've yet to see anyone cough up scientific proof of this "phenomena", and everything related to it is conveniently closed source so it can't be independently verified.

Further proof: the industry's most strict perfectionist, Steve Jobs, ships a ripper that doesn't do it.

There are some very interesting threads over at CDFreaks, but mainly you need to read this thread:

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=111913

All you ever wanted to know about this offset business.

So the cartridge does have a chip on it. Many of the pong systems that used cartridges actually had all the games on the main console, and the cart basically just pushed a switch to select the game.

I'm not sure where the scans should go. I've also got a lot of material like that. Getting high quality scans of this stuff does seem like an important facet of videogame preservation.

Duke: that's fascinating stuff, thanks. I think the important takeaway is that EAC/AccurateRip's offset value is off by 30 samples, so all the people piously using it to rip CDs are actually off by more than if I use CDRDAO on my "EAC +6" LiteOn LH-20A1L.

Would these be considered a CPU, or are they more like TTL shrunk down?

I did some searching and found a scanned book from GI about their game chips:

ftp://ftp.eskimo.com/u/m/mzenier/GI-Games-1978.pdf

Some of the later chips discussed do have ROM.

Don't forget that there is also write offset, which should be corrected too. If you don't correct it, you'll miss data or have garbage in the end or in the beginning of audio tracks. Also there are some discs which differ only in write offset (for example, Doom). Other discs (like European and US editions of MKT) have the same audio tracks only if you correct both offsets.

Sure, and after you do that you (and TOSEC, for that matter) still have an entire database of bad rips that are 30 samples off. Luckily for you most PSX games didn't use redbook audio.

I'm also a bit curious about what the offset of the PSX's drive is now. Given that all emulators pretend it's perfect maybe the rips should be deliberately bad in some direction or another? Then again, it's unlikely the offset is the same across the many revisions of that console.

You are right about tosec, but our dumps are made using combined (drive read + disc write) offset correction, so they are perfect. Actually our dumps don't depend on drive read offset, the only thing you need to know is the amount of garbage (which in fact is non-descrambled data from data track).

In the process of writing my reply I seem to have almost completely blanked the earlier discussion from memory . Sorry about that. That explains why I was reading the Pong page!

For that particular IC, I expect it's a hard logic implementation.

Both disc write offset and drive read offset should be emulated If dump is made only with drive read offset correction and only drive read offset is emulated, some data will be missed due to disc write offset.

I normally don't argue with religious fanatics, but I fail to see how correcting for all those offsets helps when the offsets are inherantly wrong.

The offsets are not religion - it has already been proven many times that our method is bulletproof - it doesn't matter whether EAC's or PerfectRip's reference offset correction is correct. You don't even need to know drive offset. I'll try to explain how do we came to this method.
The data is written to the disc continuously, so the audio track starts exactly where the data track ends. Unfortunately, initial (Red Book) compact disc structure doesn't allow us to tell where exactly the track (or sector) starts. Data tracks (which were introduced by Yellow Book format) have sync and header fields in each sector. Sync is used to find the beginning of the sector, and header to tell us which sector it is. As sync value (00 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF 00) can appear in other data fields, all the data except for sync and header is scrambled, that is, 2336 bytes of each data sector will consist of pseudo-random data. Only data sectors are scrambled before writing to the disc and descrambled after reading.
If the sum of disc writing offset and drive reading offset is positive, the beginning of audio track will have some data from data track. Because the sector is being read as audio sector, data is not passed to the descrambler. The last sectors of data track always consists of zeroes, and as the data is scrambled, you'll see non-zero values. The amount of these bytes is combined offset and should be used in EAC or PerfectRip as offset correction value.
I hope now you understand our offset searching method

What is meant with disc write offset?

If you got a correct way to correctly dump the exact contents of a disc (using drive read offset or what now) then where does the disc write offset come into play?

Interesting info in this thread so far, btw

Disc write offset is write offset of the drive where the master disc has been burned.

You don't really need to know/use both offsets to dump disc properly - it's only additional info for preservation. To calculate disc write offset, simply subtract drive read offset from the amount of garbage (scrambled data)

I've now read the redump.org guide and IMO your method for determining the offset is completely bogus. Developers write out full sectors on the data track, so just looking where the zeros are in the last sector is completely inconclusive. I think you'd be ahead just using the detected EAC offset minus 30.

I'm willing to support ISO+WAV rips in chdman, but I want to be sure it's done right first.

It seems you haven't understood our method at all. Please read my previous posts again carefully several times until you understand it. Even IpseDixit, who has found EAC-30 offset, supports our method and has already added write offset input field to beta version of his PerfectRip dumping tool.
ISO+WAV format is a wrong choice too - everything must be in RAW (2352 bytes/sector instead of 2048 for data track and audio tracks shouldn't contain unneeded header which wasn't present on the disc).

I understand your method fine. You are assuming that there are never zeros naturally occuring in the last sector of the data track, and that's simply not true.

Also, your format is what is normally called "ISO+WAV". .ISOs can be full raw sectors.

That's true. Four zeros will never appear in a row in a scrambled data, because descrambled data consists purely of zeros, and after scrambling every byte will change its value. Please read ECMA-130 to understand how the scrambler works.
So far we have found only 5 PSX write offsets, and they are completely different - do you still think there can be errors in combined offset detection?

RAW (2352-byte) sector reads on the data track contain the descrambled 2048 bytes of data plus a header and footer. There is nothing preventing there being 4 zeros in a row in the descrambled part of the sector, and at that point your method fails.

It seems you don't know structure of the sector. I advise you to read ECMA-130.

Yes, you are completely right. But the first audio sector contains scrambled data, because drive doesn't passes sectors with audio to descrambler.

Do you have a technical document that explains your method? The step-by-step is apparently confusing me fatally. I want to be convinced, but at this point I'm equally ready to call TOSEC's rips "official" even though I *know* they suck.

I don't have any docs, all the info is in my posts, mostly here. If you don't understand something, please ask, I'll explain.

Maybe this image will help you

Yup, discovered that data book several months to a year ago.

- Stiletto
- preemptive pwnage since 2000.

Two more pics with comments made by Vigi:
Disc with positive combined offset
Disc with negative combined offset (read using audio trap disc method)

Just arrived today:

Amstrad GX4000 PCB Scan
Amstrad GX4000 Cart

Main PCB looks ROMless. I can't tell from the angle the cart pic's at - is it soldered or socketed?

soldered, and I think it has already been dumped

Edit: Removed Amstrad GX4000 from dumping project as it has nothing to dump. Added to drivers needed.

The GX4000 is basically a CPC Plus without a keyboard, cassette deck or disk drive. CPC Plus carts can be used with the GX4000 as well, which MESS already supports, so adding a GX4000 driver shouldn't be too much of a hassle.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=170153517586&ssPageName=STRK:MEBI:IT&ih=007

Bandai Pippin with bios 1.2

I am the current highest bidder but I dont think I will win. Bios ver 1.0 is aleady with the guru ready to be dumped.

Hi, a new user of MESS here! I notice that in the current release of MESS there is an appeal for Sinclair QL ROMS for IC33, IC34 and the co-processor. I have these 3 chips (32k, 32k and 2k respectively) already dumped out from a few years ago when I took backups of many of the EPROMs in systems I have here. They are raw binary files of the chip content. Would these be useful? If so, who should I send them to?

Mike.

Yes, absolutely. PM me and we can work out how to get them transfered.

Maybe you have other files we need as well? Here is the list of bad and missing files in MESS: http://mess.toseciso.org/dumping:badmissing

And here is the dumping project page, which lists systems where we need dumps: http://mess.toseciso.org/dumping:info

Sadly not, I did look down that list just in case there was anything else.

Mike.

But maybe you have some rarities never dumped before? Can you post a list of your dumps?

Well, If you insist ...

Some ROMS from an old Future FX30 computer (early PC compatible)

Apple II Europlus keyboard decoder ROM, Fast Noxy (Serial?) card ROM, Konan disk controller,

ASMON V1.0 for Enterprise computer (cartridge)
EXDOS, EXOS 2.0 and 2.1 (Enterprise DISK and 2 versions of OS)
IS Basic 2.0 and 2.1 (for Enterprise, cartridge), the rom in a Spectrum Emulator (hardware addon) for Enterprise,

AT286 PC Phoenix Bios Chip from 1987!

Various printer OS ROMS, Philips? Copy 80, Epson MX80, HP 82906A, Facit plotter, Esprint Dot Matrix.... (printer emulators anyone?)

Oric CUMANA Disk interface ROM, ORIC BASIC 4.0 by Rayzorsoft, Oric Cassette System 2.0 by Rayzorsoft, Oric v1.0 and 1.1 (Atmos) ROMS ...

ICL System 25 terminal unit ROMS

ICL One Per Desk ROMS, somewhere, maybe not dumped yet. There's one MESS doesn't support. Like a QL with a fancy wig on, and a built in telephony module (phone and modem).

And some other equipment that's around from years ago, but not computer or games consoles.

Nice to have it added to the PC driver...



All the keyboard decoders of the Apple II need to be dumped, so it's nice to have at least the Europlus at hand... and the external device ROMs are to be emulated too



If the Enterprise driver gets a revamp those will be needed too...



Maybe this one has already been dumped...



Printer emulation will be someday attempted in MESS: having a collection of printer BIOSes already available will be a plus.



Needed as well...



Hmm, I don't know this



Oh, I remember this... one of the strangest pieces of equipment I've ever seen! It would be funny to have it emulated...

You could arrange with Bletch or RBelmont a way to have these ROMs stored on the FTP archive.

Hmmm, in which case I've also discovered some 2716 chips that were used with D780C CPU based fruit machines (or similar arcade games).

No, I have NO idea which games at this stage, but the boards they were on were sold as "stripper" PCBs, and the ROMS were dumped just because ... they were there! Some might be decoder ROMS as they only have sparse bits set.

Others have no intelligible content beyond "DDKIGE RPNLSQOM". But one mentions MACKY PIN-Y and MICKY OIKAKE URCHIN MACHIBUSE ROMP AOSUKE MUCKY G-ZUTA MOCKY KIMAGURE STYLIST OTOB-KE CRYBABY in the dumped ASCII. I have no idea what that little lot is, but maybe some hard-core gamer will recognise it

List seems to be outdated, compare PSX wanted bios list with the latest MESS - most of them are not wanted anymore.

AFAIK, Atari 1200 XL and Atari XE GS roms are also dumped - http://f1reb4ll.dremora.com/osroms.txt

Updated using psx.c notes

Well, "OIKAKE", "MACHIBUSE", "AOSUKE", "GUZUTA", and "OTOBOKE" are names and nicknames of ghosts from the Japanese release of Puckman....

stolen from http://www.kibo.com/rawdata/1999/1999-02-15.txt

Ah, I thought someone would know them

Also I think there's some Grundy Systems "Newbrain" ROMS here somewhere, not dumped. Searching ...

I can't see any reference to this FTP archive using the MESS forum search, is it publicly available, or only to MESS developers?

MESS developers

Just got an Amstrad Mega PC 386SX though the post! (suprised it got here through the postal strike)

This is the amstrad thats compatible with megadrive carts.

3.5" floppy drive
40mb seagate hdd
Motherboard PCB Scan
Sega Megadrive ISA card PCB Scan

As you can see there is extensive damage tot he top right hand corner of the motherboard (it was sold as broken so i wasnt suprised) so I cant boot it up and dump the bios through debug mode.

There's 3 socketed EPROMs on the board (probably 2 for BIOS, 1 for video BIOS) so pretty much anyone can dump it. In the UK your closest name-brand dumpers are probably the Belgian Dump Team.

One is the keyboard controller, these look easy so i think i'll buy a cheap eprom programmer myself. That said if anybody from the UK already has an eprom programmer I would be more than glad to have it sent.

Should I make an image of the hdd? And do you have the contact details for the Belgian Dump Team?

Don't forget dumping character ROMs, if any...

Im still waiting on parcels to arrive due to a postal strike. I've also started a blog so I wont pollute this thread as much

http://incog-inblog.blogspot.com/

Incog: eeew. that mb is a mess. first thing to do before anything else is cut that 3.4v VARTA nicad off with some cutters, or bend it side to side until it breaks off the board. Then toss it and wash your hands.
Next, take detailed pictures of that corner of the board.
Next, take a toothbrush, and mix a teaspoon of vinegar (or citric acid, if you have it) in a half cup of water, dip the toothbrush in it, and scrub as much of the blue corrosion crap off of the board as possible. Some traces are completely destroyed and this will sort of 'erase' the corroded remains, which is why you took the pictures before. Once you're done scrubbing (if you want to you can mix dish soap into the scrubbing mixture too, it may work better), rinse the whole board off thoroughly using deionized or distilled water. Then take more pictures of the damaged area. It looks like it will need a reasonably extensive repair job, but it isn't as bad as the Prototype moon war board I got. Literally 75% of the back and 35% of the front of the board traces were eaten off!

Once we know the extent of the damage and have neutralized the nicad electrolyte (potassium hydroxide, a very strong base), we can figure out if its fixable or only good for parts.

LN

You have not learned yet, grasshopper...

There is no such thing as a MAMEDEV- or MESSDEV-controlled FTP server. There is no such thing as a MAMEDEV or MESSDEV mailing list.

It all exists in a vacuum. Sourcecode spontaneously emerges and glomms onto the WIP source tree.

MAMEDEV and MESSDEV do not know this Guru or others of his ilk, and are not aware of his activities.

Neither is Guru or others of his ilk aware of how the dumps they make of games and systems find their way into the wild, since they are only creating dumps for personal backup purposes.

The ability to play games is merely a nice side effect.

There is also no spoon...

Just hugely updated the dumping list on the Wiki, now it contains everyhing from old-computers.com that isnt currently in MESS, check it out...

http://mess.toseciso.org/dumping:info

Turns out my Amstrad Mega PC 386SX was an Amstrad Mega PC Plus, the bios roms are now dumped and im working on dumping the keyboard controller

if anybody is interested give me an email incog88@gmail.com

Samsung 3DO should be probably added along with AT&T's one.

http://darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com/console/other3do.htm

And there's also a Developer's 3DO console, which BIOS, IIRC, was dumped by FreeDO crew and being hoarded.

FreeDO? Hoarding? There's a shocker.

FreeDO was really quite a disappointment. It was originally supposed to be a multi-platform GPLed emulator, then it was closed source due to 'legal concerns' (who they were concerned about was never stated), then platforms started dropping off until only three (Windows, Mac OS X, PocketPC) were left (and all releases were for Windows anyway), and now it's dead.

My feeling that it's actually more practical and sensible for an emulator to be open rather than closed source is starting to become confirmed.

Won a few auctions:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=120175713758&ssPageName=STRK:MEWN:IT&ih=002
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=290172389793&ssPageName=STRK:MEWN:IT&ih=019

Also 2 more Playdia discs arrived today, strange considering its sunday. Dumping them to CHD now.

If anybody is interested in emulating the Playdia I now have 4 CHD dumps for you to look at

on a similar topic: did anyone tried to start a project to dump to CHD the CDROM for PCE and/or CDTV (both system should be working now in MESS)?

I know that there were quite large communities which managed to release proper cue+bin images for both systems, so it would be nice to find someone in contact with them to produce good CHD images!

Actually AFAIK no community has produced completely proper images - TOSEC was going by the EAC detected offset which we now know is wrong, and I've not yet seen good technical proof that the weird hexeditor method someone was arguing for here a month ago is actually any better. I'd love to so we can lock up CDs once and for all and maybe get some of the arcade ones redumped while they're still available, but there's a general unwillingness for people to work together on this stuff.

Have you seen my recent posts?

could you elaborate a bit more?

It's better, because you can get the same checksums for same audiotracks on different CDs (different pressings or different CDs - like PSX Euro Demo CD's with the same games on different volumes) - already proofed by Redump.org. And you'll never get the same checksums using the TOSEC's method - except for dummy tracks.

C'mon, make your OWN data+audio image, burn it and try to rip it using both metods, than compare checksums with the source. Guess, you won't have any questions after that.



People don't want to work with you or you don't want to work with people?

http://www.digital-inn.de/118309-post13.html

Dreamora: I've seen them, and they were not satisfying. You obviously have better data around to have convinced the people you did, so please present me with the better. It's that easy.

Fireball: I'd love to work with people, but I have high standards. Most CD rippers are far more interested in eliteness than preservation.

I am convinced that it would have not always been that way. You can PM me for more details, but information exchange was... decent in the early days of FreeDO.

They clammed up.
At the other end, interest waned, the ball was dropped.

These days, I hear SDKs and other interesting docs are available to the interested dev.

The SDK is useless - it's all high-level OS calls. It's like trying to use Win32 docs to reverse-engineer a PC.

Ernesto figured out FreeDO isn't even an emulator in the MAME/MESS sense - it's a stack of hacks that manages to run a lot of games for all the wrong reasons basically. Now do you understand what they were trying to hide?

If FreeDo is dead they should release the source code, maybe then somebody will improve upon it.

I don't think you understand - having it unavailable is the best way to ensure improvement. It does not emulate any of the custom chips, it emulates the 3do's OS calls (the same way N64 game-emulators [don't] work). Having the source would tell us nothing and could potentially lead to another console lost in a flood of bad HLE emulators until Ville saves the day ;-)

In an ideal world I have no doubt that would work in 10 out of 10 examples. Sadly a driver with clean emulation but limited success at it means little interest for working into it, the most "explosive" driver developments in MAME have been achieved when a driver shows good (even if it is hacky) advancement, then interest grows and many people give it a little polish here and there. I doubt there would be lots of clones of freedo if the source is released simply because it is not a popular machine. But hey, this is my opinion, YMMV, I would be gladly surprised if someone out of the blue does all the hard work required for a clean emulation of the 3DO, since it is probably even harder than the Neo·Geo 64.

There are currently more important things to work on: fix some regressions, getting rid of duplicated chip emulation between mame and mess, clean up/fix some of the older drivers, etc.

This why I'm not actively working on the 3do drivers at the moment. If you feel like contributing, be my guest, information on parts of the entire system is out there. Whatever is in subversion is the most current version of the driver.

NG64 is fairly conventional for 3D hardware of that era. 3D0 is just weird :-)

and add skeleton drivers for old systems
hopefully at a certain point we'll see also a neo geo pocket preliminary driver

anyway, whatever you decide to work on, thanks for all the work you're doing on MESS

Dear Ville,
Stop playing WoW! I miss you.
Love,
MESS

Back on topic - Nice clean up on the Dumping wiki page. Looks good.
Do we need to organize a mass shipping drive?

What's so odd about the 3D0?

Back on topic, browsing thru Coleco Adam sources (in particular drivers/adam.c), I've read about the AdamNet architecture, used to connect the Adam to its peripherals: in short the master unit and the peripherals communicate via M6801 microcontrollers, so it all boils down to dumping the following M6801s:

Master (on Adam PCB)
Tape (on Adam PCB)
Keyboard (on Adam PCB)
Printer
Disk drive
Gateway (?)
Serial/parallel board (just one prototype in existence, good luck!)

The first four should be easy enough to find, since the Adam without a printer is dead as a brick - the drive shouldn't be a problem. Last two... hmm don't hold the breath!

The 6801s are masked, and the disk drives boards use also socketed EPROMs besides the 6801.

H_O: rather than sprites or tilemaps or polygons it used a cel compositing engine. In practice it's not too dissimilar to the Saturn's distorted sprites, but it's definitely unusual.

I recieved a Toshiba T2000SX Laptop today, the one I won for £1

PCB Scan
PCB Scan Continued
PCB Back

And I've now dumped it

In the "not to be emulated in MESS in the near future" category, does anyone know if the SPCH-79001 PS2s have a newer BIOS than the SPCH-77001?

The former appear to be new since the last time I saw full cases (and it's slightly possible that they haven't been released into the wild just yet)

Recieved 2 parcels today, one was a Amstrad PPC 640 and the other was a collection of Acetronic carts.

I think all the Acetronic carts I own are already dumped but curiosity got the better of me again so I cracked one open.

SBB2616 is a 2kB mask ROM. Shouldn't be too tricky to dump - if you can desolder it!

Amstrad PPC 640 PCB Scans:

http://aycu24.webshots.com/image/30063/2001402173724261147_rs.jpg
http://aycu13.webshots.com/image/30732/2001400037549640541_rs.jpg
http://aycu22.webshots.com/image/33501/2001451124110104899_rs.jpg

Someone should buy this, as there are currently no Newton dumps, let alone one of the eMate: http://cgi.ebay.com/Apple-emate-300-Newt...1QQcmdZViewItem

I'd buy it, but I'm understandably tapped out after having spent $450 for the sake of getting Star Wars Pod Racer in order to have it dumped.

Does this look like it would have anything dumpable? http://cgi.ebay.com/National-Semiconduct...1QQcmdZViewItem

I'm almost positive there are Newton dumps - there's at least one working emulator and it supports models up to eMate.

I've never heard of it and I've never seen an eMate dump. If I knew there was one, I'd have already tried adding the sucker to MESS.

Emulator is here, it's open-source, and the Mac version at least can remotely dump a Newton's ROM.

I have a MessagePad 2100, and yes, there are a number of utilities that can dump its ROM.

It don't see why that STARPLEX system wouldn't have any dumpable stuff. I believe it's 8080/Z80 based.

Here's one in its full glory:
http://www.1000bit.net/lista/dati/n/national_semiconductor/startplex_ad.jpg

Fair enough, but if the ROMs are floating around, I'd prefer to not have to shell out money (or for anyone else to have to do so) on a Newton or eMate just to do redundant dumping.

Well, even if they aren't Vas can certainly get us his MP's ROM

Recently spotted 2 very interesting items:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Nintendo-Super-Fam...oQQcmdZViewItem
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Nintendo-Super-Fam...oQQcmdZViewItem

and this store has some very cheap PC Engine CDs

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/DREAM-STARS-JAPAN_PC-ENGINE-CD_W0QQcolZ2QQdirZ1QQfsubZ3QQftidZ2QQtZkm

Currently bidding on 2 undumped BBC Bridge Companion carts.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=300166154882&ssPageName=STRK:MEBI:IT&ih=020
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=300166157215&ssPageName=STRK:MEBI:IT&ih=020

Ooooh, fingers crossed!

The driver will be finished in time for the dumps, honest

These are considered Wanted Dumps for MAME, actually. The Super Famicom Box was a pay-for-play system used in Japanese hotels. I've passed it along to Guru.

Hmm.. Color me interested.

*looks*

Okay, that emulator is a bit of a cheat, per MAME/MESS's way of doing things. They've effectively bypassed attempting to emulate the undocumented Cirrus CL-PS7010/20/30 chipset by writing their own drivers for other memory controllers, etc, and hooking them in to replace the originals. Or something like that.

Now, on the other hand, obtaining docs on said chipset? I smell a challenge!

Datasheets/documentation available:
Apple Newton MessagePad 1x0 series chips (approx.):
VY86C610/P610ARM - VLSI or GEC Plessey/ARM - CPU
Z85C30 - Zilog - RS422 Serial
28F008SA - Intel - Flash memory
AD7880AR - Analog Devices - A/D Converter
LT1271CQ - Linear Tech - Switching Reg.
Likely any other RAM

Apple Newton "N2" Platform (M2x00/emate 300) series chips (approx.):
SA-110S - Digital Equip. (DEC) - CPU (M2x00)
VLSI VY86C710A - VLSI/ARM - CPU (emate)
LH28F016SUT-70 - Sharp - Flash RAM
CS8130 - Cirrus Logic - Infrared Transceiver
TC51V4260DFTS-60 - Toshiba - DRAM - or
HM51W4260CLTT7 - Hitachi - DRAM - or
HM51W16165LTT6 - Hitachi - DRAM
LTC1323CG - Linear Tech - RS422 AppleTalk chip
MAX1771 - Maxim - Voltage converter

Datasheets/documentation unavailable:
Apple Newton MessagePad 1x0 series chips (approx.):
"RUNT" (LIC 7645) - Apple - Chipset (DRAM Control, Memory management, DMA, RTC, video interface, audio, PCMCIA)
LTC902CS - Linear Tech - Driver/Receiver for Z85C30
Whatever ROM chips storing the OS

Apple Newton "N2" Platform (M2x00/emate 300) series chips (approx.):
CL-PS7010 - Cirrus Logic - CPU Subsystem Controller
CL-PS7020 - Cirrus Logic - Analog Controller
CL-PS7030 - Cirrus Logic - PCMCIA Controller
LHME5BT3 - Sharp - ROM
LHME5BT4 - Sharp - ROM

Woohoo, sounds like fun. Damned if I know how we'd do it without leaked documentation. Decapping might help some, but we'd actually need an electron microscope, and they're likely multi-layer chips.

One thing no one in the Newton scene has commented on publicly that I can see: The Cirrus Logic CL-PS70x0 were developed in combination with Apple, yes, but there's a follow-up chipset called the CL-PS7110. It's actually a SoC "System-On-a-Chip" that effectively combines the CL-PS70x0 features with an ARM7100 core onto one chip - a PDA on a chip. It came out after the CL-PS70x0, obviously, but there's actually some documentation on it out there. While Apple-proprietary tech. wouldn't be in it, maybe there's enough similarities in features to start looking at it.

Bonus: The CL-PS7110 series was used in the Epoc Psion5.

Actually, decapping wouldn't really help at all; it's only useful for giving very general descriptions of the surface features of a chipset. Decapping companies being able to reconstruct a map of registers and their functions is still a long way off.

I dunno, I don't think Apple's done anything scary in custom logic ever, with the possible exception of the later-generation floppy controllers (and even then I think the lack of support for them in Linux/BSD is more a matter of their general lack of usefulness once you have an HDD and Ethernet going than anything else). It should be possible to work out what's going on

...who is somewhat interested, but has no money for it. Anyone want to chip in?

do we just donate though the usual way?

edit: btw I won the 2 BBC Bridge Companion Carts, Im counting up all my spare change to see what I can donate to the guru

Well, to donate for a particular item, we'd need to raise enough money to buy it and either make arrangements with him or just buy it ourselves and send it to him. Obviously he'd appreciate any donations, but just sending some spare change, there's no guarantee what it will be used for. Any idea what these are actually worth? If we can get them for $100 a-piece, it's probably doable, but I'm not sure if that's realistic or not.

You under estimate how much spare change I had, haha.

£46 in total but I'll round it up to £50, going by the current exhange rate thats a little more than $100.

Well I've never seen a snes version of a hotel system before and had no idea that MAMEDev is interested in these systems but it does makes sense considering they are coin operated. I don't know how many other carts for this system exist... the only info ive found is here http://www.tv-gamekan.com/famcmbox.htm

The photo shows carts that are identical to the ones in the auction.

My earlier research indicated that those two carts are the only ones. If you can cover one at the opening bid, I can take care of the other. If we want to deal with competition, someone else will have to contribute.

Thats fine with me do you want me to paypal you the $100? I'll throw in a bit extra too to go towards shipping to the guru.

I have no problem doing that. I just asked Guru if he'd rather I bid on them or if he wanted to do it himself.

I updated the Dumping Project page with a few more games, plus a TV-Link for the Supervision. There's one more R-Zone game, some Supervision games (particularly extras of ones Guru's had trouble dumping), all the Telstar Arcade carts, and in a new appearance, a cart for the Entex Select-A-Game. I still haven't managed to find a system, though.

http://mess.toseciso.org/dumping:info#in_ranger_lenniers_s_possession

Guru preferred we take care of the bidding ourselves, and send them to him if we wanted. I went ahead and placed the minimum bid for each cart. If someone else wants to add in, I can set up a snipe for a higher bid in case someone else bids on it.

What is the best place to send these for dumping? I'm not sure whether or not they can be dumped just like Super Famicom carts.

The connectors definitely aren't the same as SFC carts - it's possible if you open the big shell that there are 3 SFC carts inside or something, but it's unknown right now.

Now im dying to see one cracked open!

If we win we should probably ship it direct to the guru, Japan is much closer to Austrailia than any of us heh.

Once they are fully dumped and documented I dont mind if they are sold on to fund the mame dumping project.

Same seller also offers Nintendo Sharp Famicom Box carts (which are cheaper).

Another method was recently discovered (same idea, same results, just another approach), which proves that redump's method is correct) - http://forum.redump.org/viewtopic.php?id=2057

These arrived today while I was at work, they are now dumped

So I suppose my Amstrad Mega PC 386SX BIOS is still needed, according to the wiki ? I really should move my lazy ass and dig it from the basement. It's not in mint condition but the motherboard is in good shape and it booted last time I tried. The floppy died in front of me though, with some smoke. Can do some pics if needed.

I could dump the HDD but it's probably not in it's original state. Is there something else to dump except the BIOS via debug ? I'm in Belgium so the Belgian Dump Team could probably help as I have no equipment.

Yep, the Amstrad Mega PC 386SX BIOS is still needed. Mine said Mega PC 386SX on the casing but the insides were Mega PC Plus.

I dumped the BIOS from mine using a cheap eprom programmer but I dont know of any other way to dump them.

R.Belmont might have info for the belgian dump team

I won the auctions for the Super Famicom Box carts and they should be on their way to Guru. Thanks to incog for helping out!

Nice

I consider Freedo to be a failure in some respects. It's taking too darned long! As a result, I'm interested in doing some 3do emulator development. I'm attempting to figure out the basics of the direction on the concept. I'm afraid I don't exactly know what MESS is, but I like the idea of an all-encompassing emulator, and I'm not opposed to simply creating a 3do portion for it. Could someone message me and provide me with some direction?

There is already a (very very prelimary) 3DO component in MESS, see drivers/3do.c. As for help on MESS, there isn't really that much I'm afraid, some useful content is in the MESS DevWiki. I suggest you get the lastest source from SVN and train to understand some easier drivers.

There were a few Mattel Aquarius that was sell with a BIOS prior to the BIOS that it's in MAME, one can tell the difference because the new BIOS displays "S2" top right and the original doesn't do this, how can we add this to the dumping project?

Some information that its necessary to make a new driver or to modify it, it's schematics of the machine, technical info about the chips, technical info about the computer/console, memory maps, interrupt lists. Not all of this is necessary but could be helpful.

The Aquarius needs a redump of the character ROM too.

BTW there's an Aquarius community on Yahoo Groups: they have dumped schematics, manuals and cartridges - maybe some of them would be kind to help the dumping project.

Another update the the Dumping Project page. I'm the master of crappy portable video game collecting, with one more R-Zone game and one more Supervision game. And in the "How the hell are we supposed to emulate this?" category, I now have all five interactive Captain Power toys.

http://mess.toseciso.org/dumping:info#in_ranger_lenniers_s_possession

Got another R-Zone game--Virtua Cop. Tiger did at least get some good licenses. I wonder why no one sells huge lots of R-Zone games. I've got 21 games now, but I think it's taken about a dozen auctions to get that much together. At least they tend to go cheap.

If someone is still interested in obtaining a Mattel Aquarius for dumping purposes, this one goes cheap.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Mattel-Aquarius-1983...1QQcmdZViewItem

This guy has also a lot of older console which need redumping (Arcadia 2001, ADAM, etc) and are cheap too.

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQfgtpZ1QQfrppZ25QQsassZpetrobark

I'm bidding on some coleco stuff thats ending today and tomorrow, but I can help bid on some of the auctions above.

I won a few auctions of coleco stuff, i'll update the dumping list but I'll have everything thats listed as needed for them

C'mon, don't tease us... what have you won?

Quiz Wiz, Quiz Wiz Challenger, and Coleco Gemini (atari 2600 clone)

The Super Famicom Box carts made it to Guru safely. They seem to have one ROM chip for each game. So, that's seven chips, of which six are definitely dumpable, and one of the chips in the four-game cart Guru's not sure about right now. It's possible they'll just be the same as existing Super Famicom dumps, but we should know soon one way or the other. And, as Guru points out, we don't have a system to dump any BIOS it might have. I'm not sure whether or not this will prevent emulation.

Fantasic news!

Glad to hear that they arrived safely

The Coleco Gemini has these two ICs, how would I get them dumped for mess?

U2 = R12010 A8407 0291755 F810928
U3 = VTI 73192 E4002 8412

both are dip package, I can provide pictures if needed

(U1 is a voltage regulator)

Thanks

The R-Zone sage continues. I picked up six unopened games on eBay. There was only one I didn't already have, Area 51, but luckily they only cost $1.06 plus shipping.

I don't fully understand the project, but is MESS not compatible with HLE-type of emulation? Is it mainly to support real, hard emulation of the hardware?

I ask because I intend to make an HLE 3DO emulator, even though to immortalize the system I think the old-fashioned way is certainly more appropriate for this.

We strongly prefer real hardware emulation, yes.

Why on Earth would anyone want to make an HLE 3DO emulator at this point in time? Haven't we reached the point where the average PC can quite easily handle LLE 3DO?

Yeah, it's a 12 MHz system - that's slower than a Gameboy Advance

I guess the attraction of HLE for the 3DO is that it avoids the need to reverse engineer various parts of the console (graphics etc)

Yeah, god forbid someone should put a little effort into making a quality emulator.

@incog, ranger_lennier & others members of dumping project: when you buy rare systems, would you mind to take pictures also of the system itself in addition to the ones of its silicon guts?

sometimes it's not possible to find info around the web...

e.g. I cannot describe in any way the BBC Bridge Companion for sysinfo, because I have no idea of how it looks like (I only found that it was a computer device to play bridge... due to its name and its mention in a book about card games )

a picture could help!

thanks in advance

p.s. of course, even if time consuming, also scans of systems/games manual/boxes would be very cool

That's still in my possession; I'll provide you with a photo.

ok, thanks

it would be cool, anyway, to put some pictures of the unemulated systems on the mess wiki (in the dumping page, as a start)

http://aycu06.webshots.com/image/38445/2000173340596940559_rs.jpg

Front page of the manual, I have the entire manual scanned but its somewhere around 55mb (only around 12 pages but 300dpi png)

edit: the back of the manual has a better unobstructed view, http://aycu38.webshots.com/image/36917/2002581135533896108_rs.jpg

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Nintendo-Famicom-V...oQQcmdZViewItem

Very interesting, anybody know anything about it?

3 bids already, Im willing to donate towards it if anybody is interested, I'll donate up to £100.

I doubt theres anything to dump, it just switches the games based on the location of the knob in front.

I have thought about making good pictures/scans of some of my rare stuff. (Already have in a few cases.) Would the wiki be an appropriate place for large-scale scan collections, or are you looking for just small snapshots? Where would they go, and what quality is wanted? I'd be willing to make a lot of high-res pictures and scans of systems, boxes, games, and instructions as a long-term project, provided that they have a good home.

http://www.japan-games.com/eBayPictures/VideoMate_1C.jpg

There are the games, im assuming they are different from the plain cart dumps but then again I know nothing about it.

He also says you can install other games, which probably means that they are not modified.

ranger_lennier: The Wiki is fine by me for pictures if you want to add them. A gallery plugin is already installed (currently used for screenshots).

Thanks duke, i'll just save the cash for the next interesting item

Should they just go with the system info? I guess we could make a section there for unemulated systems as well. I plan to make high quality scans for myself (300 dpi, PNG). But the file sizes can add up. Is that OK, or do I need to convert to JPEG or something for the Wiki? What about multi-page items like instruction booklets--a collection of scans or compile into a single document (and how)? Also, I can do basic stuff like clipping, but I'd be open to someone doing more image cleaning if they're interested. It could take a little thought to get this right...

Maybe create pages like sysinfo:unemulated:systemname? In that way, we can easily move them to the regular sysinfo pages once added to MESS.

Space is not really an issue, theres lots of it on the server. Multi-page items would probably be best in PDF format.

these unMESSed pages sounds quite interesting to me... I'll take a look to add a few...

btw what is exactly this 'tag' mania that you passed to ht1848 and how do those tags work exactly?

Those tags allow me to automatically generate the list of systems on the sysinfo front page. So whenever a new system is added or deleted, the list is automatically changed.

then i'll help to complete the tagging (and good to know that I don't have to add links by hand anymore )

ok created a sysinfo:unemulated page and a gba test page... would an 'unemulated' tag work to generate automatically the system list for this subpage? can you take a look at it?

if it's working, I'll add a few more pages

Please tag them with both "sysinfo" and "unemulated", its easy to create the list then.

I'm not really comfortable with copying the whole Wikipedia article by the way. Their content is not public domain but licensed under the GFDL which states for example that you must have a copy of the license and a list of main authors. Maybe we can shorten that a bit and link to it instead? I know this won't work for the sysinfo.dat file, but then again, MESS doesn't want any source files to just appear somewhere else without license either.

ooops... I didn't know about that. I will shorten down all the entries of sysinfo coming from wikipedia soon, then (most of the console entries come from there).

thanks for letting me know (I read their terms a looooong time ago, and forgot the details... at the point I was almost sure it was ok to copy those)

being on the topic: is it still ok to copy old-computers.com entries (I'm almost sure we had their agreement, but I'd like to be sure)?

I'm pretty sure the old-computers.com stuff is fine, but I don't know any details about the agreement. Maybe ht1848 can comment?

Thanks for help completing the tagging etabeta.

The old-computers.com stuff was done before I got involved in MESS (Chris Henry?). In fact much of my early changes were re-writing those enteries to not be based on any specific text from old-computers.com or other clearly plagiarized places. I don't really like the copy whole sections method, but at least the source reference gives some credit. sysinfo.dat has always had general format and content challenges and I am not sure we can solve them without a significant discussion...(in a different thread).

In conclusion...Dump more stuff.

Wikipedia is moving towards license compatibility with GNU and Creative Commons, though it looks like it's not quite finalized yet.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:License_update

To get back to the dumping topic, Guru updated his site with a list of all the stuff he has and hasn't dumped, a bunch of the console carts like RCA Studio II and APF M-1000 are listed as undumpable in any of his EPROM readers though

I sent Guru a link to an RCA Studio II dumping method, but he hasn't tried it yet.

http://studio2.classicgaming.gamespy.com/dump.htm

I talked to someone who said his ROM reader could support APF ROM chips, but I need to get more information.

I have no idea what to do with the R-Zone.

I talked to someone who thought he knew how to trojan the Epoch Game Pocket Computer bios, but it seems he and Guru haven't gotten in contact for whatever reason. I'll try to move that along.

Guru said he thought PeT, a MESS developer, had dumped all of the Supervision carts, which came as a surprise to me since I've been looking for the other ones listed as undumped in the hash file. The last this was discussed here, there were still many undumped carts. Does anyone know more? Who's PeT, anyway?

PeT is Peter Trauner.

The Coleco Triv Whiz only has a MC14077B (NOR chip) MC14069ub (hex inverter), and a co10816 (hex buffer IC). There might be something in the trivia cartridges thats dumpable, i'll have to check, but i would guess theres just a MUX, or jumpers

The Coleco Triv Whiz Challenger has a TMS1000NLL (the total control has a TMS1400), I'd like to find out how to get both dumped.

tms1xxx chips are evil. there supposedly IS a way to dump them, visible because the speak&spell patent has a full gate diagram of the tms1002, but we haven't figured out how to work it yet. Frank Palazzolo knows the most about it.
Unless we can figure out how to dump the chips that way, the only way to dump them is to decapsulate them.

LN

thanks for the reply, guess I'd better start reading that patent, looks like it has a lot of info

The speak&spell patent is us patent 4,209,836 which can be retrieved from http://www.pat2pdf.org/patents/pat4209836.pdf

sheets 34 and onward cover the TMS1002? MCU and TMS6100 'VSM' serial rom.
Sheets 1 thru 33 cover the TMS5100 LPC chip.

LN

a question: is the Sega Pico a possible emulation target? if yes, is it already dumped?

The eBay seller japan-games has an awesome set of imports up for sale now. This could really help move forward the emulation of obscure Japanese systems. I went ahead and bought an Epoch Game Pocket Computer with the last undumped game, Astro Bomber, for $139.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=ADME:B:EOIBSAA:US:11&Item=350010440844

I plan to ship it to Guru and eventually get it back myself. Can anyone help with funding for these items?

Gakken Compact Vision TV Boy, $99:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Gakken-Compact-Visio...oQQcmdZViewItem

Tsukuda Original (Sega) Othello Multivision (SG-1000 clone with built-in othello game), $0.99 opening bid, $99 buy it now

http://cgi.ebay.com/Tsukuda-Original-Seg...oQQcmdZViewItem

KOEI PasoGo Handheld Game System with three carts, $229

http://cgi.ebay.com/KOEI-PasoGo-Handheld...oQQcmdZViewItem

Casio Loopy with 4 carts, $59 -- incog has the system, are any of the games needed?

http://cgi.ebay.com/Casio-Loopy-4-Cart-G...oQQcmdZViewItem

Epoch Cassette Vision Battle Vader cart, $49 -- Ian Knowles has the system.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Epoch-Cassette-Visio...oQQcmdZViewItem

Just bought the casio loopy, had 2 needed games and was very cheap.

Very interested in the Othello Multivision and KOEI PasoGo, I thought the PasoGo only had one game made for it!

I cant find these on the gurus list... maybe I missed them, have they been dumped?

I couldn't find much information on the PasoGo, but the sources I read said either three or eight carts. I'm particularly interested in that and the Gakken TV Boy, which is a very obscure early console. The seller also told me he could include a game with it.

Thanks for picking up the Loopy games. Any more spare change?

I haven't actually heard anything more about them since they arrived. I'll have to check up on them sometime if he doesn't mention anything.

I decided to go ahead and buy the PasaGo. It and the Game Pocket Computer are the only early Japanese handhelds I know of, and I seem to have developed quite an obscure handheld collection in general.

The other console stuff I'm interested in seeing emulated, but I'm not sure I could even manage to play the systems without a Japanese TV. So if someone else wants to buy or contribute, speak up.

If the Gakken comes with a game I'll stump up £50, want me to paypal it to you so you can ship it direct to the guru?

The only reason I was holding back buying it is because games would be impossible to track down.

Japanese TVs are NTSC the same as American ones, except for a different skin-tone colour boost.

Yeah, the seller said he'd include one boxed game for the TV Boy. £50 should just about take care of it, so I went ahead and bought it, and will include it with the rest of the shipment to Guru. I'll let you know once the group of purchases is finalized and you can PayPal me then.

I should probably at least bid on the Othello Multivision, but probably not a lot unless someone else offers funding. The Cassette Vision cart might be kind of expensive for one game. Ian, are you interested in this? Have you looked into getting your system and game dumped?

Hmmm...the seller has a warning about the older Japanese systems being made for Japanese TV's only, though some people have had success tuning US TV's to channel 96.

I'm short of fundings at the moment. 20 euros (~30$) is the maximum I can send you for the othello to be purchased and sent to guru [1]...

[1] if we don't succeed in the auction I could send anyway the money when needed (especially after half january )

Sure, every bit helps.

I found a programmers reference manual for the TMS1000 series, it has the instruction set and a ton of logic blocks, and block diagrams. Does this have any new information?

http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ti/_dataBooks/TMS1000pgmRef_1975.pdf

That was posted here awhile back. You're right that it's very useful for emulation of the chip, though. But the dumping is still a challenge.

Yep, you must bring your "A" game around these here parts...

- Stiletto

Just received my second casio loopy and some carts, 2 were needed. I also recieved a Grandstand Game Player and 3 "carts".

Scan: http://aycu03.webshots.com/image/37802/2003282898618597290_rs.jpg
Cart Scan: http://aycu31.webshots.com/image/40670/2003248739962331489_rs.jpg

I was suprised on how empty the thing is and that the carts are nothing more than lcd screens and an edge connector.

I've also updated my wiki page.

I sniped but lost the Othello Multivision auction. I just sent payment for the Game Pocket Computer, Pasago, and Compact Vision. They should be on their way to Guru.

I also just won an Entex Select-A-Game with a Pinball cart. Wikipedia says the carts have a microcontroller, sort of like the Microvision. Dumping could be difficult.

With all the stuff I've got stockpiled now, I think for awhile I'm going to try concentrating on getting stuff dumped rather than buying more. We'll see how that goes.

Yeah, I keep telling myself that I shoulf focus on getting what I already have dumped but I still check ebay :|

Its like some strange addiction to obscure and obsolete hardware

ps. Sean Riddle just recieved my UK ChannelF but he needs a desoldering station before he can dump it.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Toshiba-Visicom-RC...oQQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Epoch-Super-Casset...oQQcmdZViewItem

I swear this guy is out to destroy my wallet D:

Just bought another Playdia disc: http://cgi.ebay.com/BANDAI-PLAYDIA-SD-GU...7QQcmdZViewItem

Cheap as chips

is there anything dumpable/MESSable in that system? I recently won something somehow similar

http://cgi.ebay.it/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190185269345

but the unit only give power to the "carts", consisting of a small LCD screen. when turned on, it is similar to a primitive (and annoyingly noisy) game&watch... so I doubt there's anything of use... anyway, I keep collecting discs to be converted in CHD and looking for systems that can be of use for the dumping project


on a different topic, was there any development about the 64DD dumping argument? I found this video (thanks to lostlevels)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFdB2p3CHWw

which makes the system even more interesting (if you like the warioware series )

I don't see anything dumpable in those little LCD-carts. Probably custom discrete logic or something.

This might be a long shot, but any chance of dumping the 1981 Milton Bradley's game, Dark Tower? I have an excellent working unit with complete board & pieces. I will pay shipping both ways, if it can get dumped with the hope that it can be integrated into MESS.

Interesting, I'd never heard of the game before.

http://well-of-souls.com/tower/

It's hard to imagine it being added to MESS right now because it has so many physical components. I don't think the artwork system's set up to handle that. But it would be cool to eventually expand the scope of the project. There is probably something to dump on it, and it certainly wouldn't hurt to do it. Does anyone know what electronics are used? It wouldn't surprise me if it uses a microcontroller, which might be difficult to dump.

If no one knows, could you open it up and take pictures?

I will definitely pursue your request on taking a peek inside as soon as I can.

After seeing some other handheld electronic games being emulated in MESS, I thought it might be possible within the project's scope. The Dark Tower unit is essentially (from top to bottom):

2-character LED display;

3 Lamps;

12-button keypad for input; and

a speaker for the monotone beeps to make sound effects and musical scores;

The lamps function like any other LED -- and LED backlit graphics have been emulated for other games. Their purpose in the Dark Tower unit is to backlight any 1 graphic on its rotating drum (arranged 3 rows by 8 columns, with 1 column empty for startup alignment and lamp test).

I would not suggest emulating the playing board -- just accurately executing its algorithms -- because the Java ports of the unit, IMHO, are reverse-engineered from playing experiences only.

The easy stuff, like the keypad, graphic tiles, and sound WAV files, are already available to integrate.

To quote from Well of Souls page:
'Triumph' was a prototype microprocessor-controlled board game invented by Alan Coleman and Roger Burten in 1979 that was, according to a successful lawsuit, the indirect ancestor of Dark Tower.

I see what you're saying. It's possible the electronic portion would be added. MAME at least has some games that aren't actually playable due to physical components, like Two Minute Drill, which required the player to throw a football.

I wouldn't be surprised if it used a TMS1100 like the Microvision, or another chip in that family. No one's figured out how to dump those yet, though it seems to be theoretically possible.

The Bandai Playdia game came today, SD Gundam Daizukan.

Freshly dumped to CHD

Nice. Guru dumped the Pippen BIOS over the weekend.

Awesome news! I have already dumped 9 Pippin CD's only 2 of them are games, 1 is a games catalog and the other are system discs or discs that require the pippins internet connection.

Finding software for the pippin is next to impossible.

Edit: I should have said ORIGINAL software, you can sometimes find pirate copies on ebay.

I had a reasonable hard time even finding decent screen shots.

This was about the best I could do on just a few minutes with google...

http://homepage.mac.com/markjjohnson/MacStuff/PhotoAlbum11.html

How good is MAME's PPC603 emulation?

Ernesto indicated that real OldWorld PowerMacs (and the Pippen is definitely pre-USB) use some unusual PPC feature that would be painful to emulate. I don't recall the details.

Sean Riddle just got back to me about dumping the UK Varient ChannelF I sent him, turns out the dump matches the one we currently have.

He also says "Do you have VideoBrain stuff? I’m pretty sure it was F8-based, too. If you want me to dump that stuff, just let me know." I thought I read about somebody having a VideoBrain.

Is there anything interesting for the dumping project on that list: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=34316 ?

Looks like nothing we need on that list.

Just got this email regarding the TMS-1000's

Hmmm, I see a major problem with the TMS-1000’s – the patent says you have to hold the KC input high to get into test mode (which allows you to dump the ROM), but that input isn’t present on any of the pinouts I’ve seen for the chips. Either they only tested before packaging, or there’s some alternate way to set that signal (like holding K1, K2, K4 and K8 high and resetting the chip, or something like that). If they only tested before packaging, then you’d have to decap the chip and try to set that input high without ruining the chip. At that point, you might as well just put it under a microscope and read the fuses directly.

Sean

That would be me. Frank Palazzolo expressed interest in this when I contacted him, but I was expecting to hear back from him by now about sending it out. I need to contact him again.

this reminds me of something I wanted to ask for a long time: is lynx bios a good dump? it seems it's never been dumped correctly (if possible at all)

My Entex Select-A-Game arrived. It's pretty neat--low resolution certainly, but it has both red and blue lights and interchangeable cartridges. I think it may be missing an overlay holder, though, because I can't figure out what to do with the Space Invaders 2 overlay. I wish I had an overlay for Pinball, because as it is I can't see where the bumpers are.

Just won this. I also got another update from Sean Riddle regarding the TMS-1000 chips.

"After a little more reading of patents and data sheets, I think the KC input mentioned in the patent was merged with the INIT (reset) input. So it looks like you hold the chip in reset, then serially input the address that you want to display the data from. I think I’m ready to start playing around with a chip and see what I can get going. I checked my miscellaneous parts box, but didn’t find any. I used to have a Microvision, but that was a long time ago and I’m not sure I still have any of the parts. I’ll probably buy a cart off ebay."

Cool! He shouldn't have any problems finding Microvision carts. Some are really cheap on eBay. However, some of the games were also released with an Intel 8021 chip. I haven't heard any ideas about how to dump these.

That Pinball overlay is definitely the right one. If we ever manage to dump these, we'll want high quality scans of all those overlays.

Incog: I think I can help. Email sent to you and Sean.

I also have a TMS1000, and a TMS1400 if those would help

I'm sure he'll want to experiment with something disposable first, like a Microvision Blockbuster cart, the really common pack-in game.

So the Pippin @world came today and I have a curse with these machines

Taking them apart is a nightmare, they screw the inside of the drivetray from the inside and all the other screws are on the outside, so to get the case off you either have to break it or have the ability to phase through matter

So yeah, £105 wasted... thats the 2nd pippin ive broken now in the same way... I didnt plan on it the plastic is just very brittle.

Anyway, this Pippin looks to have Bios ver 1.2 according to this.

Rom board scan

2 down, 3 to go

Strangely some good has come of me breaking the Pippin... I decided to investigate what was rattling around inside the cd drive and found something i wasnt expecting...

big-ass scan

A socketed eprom! (which i just dumped :D)

edit: just desoldered the apple pippin atmark cddrive and the dump is the same

hi, I noticed this auction

http://cgi.ebay.it/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300189341627

for a wanted item: it is a PC-9801 add-on to play PC-FX games. I can give around 70$ to buy this, but I cannot give more at this point of the month and it would be better to ship it directly to someone which would be able to dump it[1] and/or use it for tests (in view of a future inclusion in MESS)

therefore, I would like to have other opinions on the following:

1. is it worth the money (especially quite expensive shipping)?
2. is there any volunteer in receiving the item and filling in the money gap (mostly for shipping)?

otherwise, I'll keep looking for interesting stuff (I've probably won an Hartung Game Master, but I'll wait for the thing to arrive before telling it for sure... in that case I would be able to finally contribute to the MESS dumping project! )

[1] even if according to Arbee, it probably have not that much to be dumped...



EDIT: actually I saw that ranger_lennier has a Game Master as well, but the one I won is a French variant (by VideoJet) and the cart I will receive could be different by the ones he have...

nice to see the last lot of undumped mess stuff made it to he guru ok

http://www.mameworld.net/gurudumps/

Ah! So this is where all of you MESS wierdo's hang out who buy that rare console crap for me to dump and make my life hell. OK, I'm watching you :-D

Quick update on the recent console stuff...
The Gakken has nothing in it except a 6847, one 2k ram and some logic. The cart contains only 1 chip, a MC6801 microcontroller. It's the main CPU + ROM + RAM. I have no idea how to dump it or even if it's possible. It has 4k maskROM, but at $300 per chip decapping isn't feasible.

The Koei Pasago is definitely do-able. The main unit doesn't have much in it except a couple of RAMs and a Vadem VG230 (all-in-1 PC on a chip, V30/8086 compatible + extras). All surface mounted stuff. A very detailed 235 page pdf is available http://www.amphus.com/chips/pdf/230dm.pdf

The cart doesn't have much in it and is all surface mounted too. There's one smt ROM, and space for a 62256 SRAM and one other chip, but neither of those are populated. We've got 3 carts.
Someone may want to work on the Vadem VG230 because it will soon have some software to run on it :-)


Guru

Fyi, there is some work happening on the epoch game pocket computer front. The bios has recently been dumped. I'm tryiing to come up with a cpu core now.

is any of the BIOS of other epoch consoles available outside japan? takeda's emulators would have a bit more of worldwide success if those would surface...

Yes, that's us alright.

That's weird that the Gakken just uses microcontrollers in the carts. There are some old portables that do that, like the Microvision, but the closest thing to a console I knew of is the Telstar Arcade, and even that's just a souped up pong system.

It turns out the PasaGo is from 1996, which is more recent than I was expecting.

We got another Block Maze cart with the Game Pocket Computer rather than the needed Astro Bomber pictured with the auction. I'm contacting the seller about it.

I'm curious about his stuff as well. From the sceenshots, obviously he has some interesting dumps. Has anyone asked him about them? I could send an e-mail to see if he'll share. Maybe the offer of Game Pocket Computer dumps will encourage him.

Speaking about interesting dumps/collections. What about this?

http://users.rcn.com/slapdash/VidHaves.htm

I guess it's already known and it's mostly unreadable anyways.

Update: The seller admitted to the mistake with the carts, and Astro Bomber will hopefully be on the way soon.

Awesome! I've dealt with this seller before and he has always been very good.

in the meanwhile, I have secured a few carts for supervision, megaduck, game master & gamate (+ a gamate and a game master consoles)

around march/april I shall be able to post pics of these things, to contact f205v to see if he can manage to dump some of them and to create a list on mess wiki...

omg, gamate \o/

bloody expensive thing, btw, and absolutely not worth its value these days...

the unit I've just received could have some display minor problem (according to the seller), but I still have to test it and I'm not sure when I will.

same for the game master, but at least I was able to find carts (e.g. a Bubble Boy ranger_lennier didn't have) for a fifth of the price of the gamate one...

For all you Epoch Game Pocket Computer Fans, some WIP thingies:



For some reason the texts do not display properly yet

Neat! It reminds me just how low-res this thing is. (Though it's downright detailed compared to the Microvision.)

Awesome

Want me to scan the Epoch thingy? It could be nice to have that as artwork with the game playing in the middle :-)

Not sure if it's already done, but the same thing should be done for other handhelds that are easily scanned, like GB/GBA etc


Guru

There is a MESS artwork project, with scans of various Gameboys and TI things. I can't remember where it's located, though.

Welcome to the thread Guru.

There is some art work included in MESS but here is the rest at Mr.Do's site.

http://www.mameworld.net/mrdo/mess_artwork.html

One simple cpu core fix later:



Next target: get it to boot a cartridge..

fantastic!

really great work, judge! even if only 5 carts were produced, it's really nice to have it emulated before all consoles dies

That's gonna be a >700kb patch for the cpu core, btw. Hehehe.

was it missing that many features? its variations were used as sound CPU in many arcade systems already emulated MAME and there aren't lot of issues with those...

it's really amazing the way different systems can use in completely different ways a CPU

The instruction set layout is different, cycle counts are different, register set is different, some instructions are implemented differently.

Especially the instruction set and cycle count differences take up most of that patch.

Graphics bugs fixed, cartridge loading working. Only thing missing now seems to be sound

That thing *has* sound?

it's just bleeps and blips from memory, and maybe a simple tune or two made from bleeps and blips :-D

Indeed. MESS just did those bleeps too

Awesome

will this make mess the first emulator for this system?

great work!

to my knowledge yes. takeda only emulated the Super Cassette Vision (which could be MESSable as well with the new core I guess, if dumps would surface... before or later)

Just cracked open a Commodore 64 tv-game with 30 games on it.

PCB Scan

Interesting - the one chip might be a flash ROM, but the rest of it's blobs like you'd expect.

EDIT: Hey wait a second... Incog, is that an NTSC one or a PAL one? If its the PAL "DTV2/3" one, the "DTV1" description below is inaccurate for it, but the description below that should be correct.
EDIT2: Its an NTSC one, for sure.

That may be the NTSC "DTV1" which has a few bugs in the c64 timing, and doesn't properly handle a number of the 6510/6502 undocumented opcodes. It also has the LUMA DAC with the wrong value resistors and hence produces a way-too-dim picture unless you manually replace the resistors in the DAC, with the revision C64A1 (as opposed to revision C64A, which had 3 extra wires due to some inadvertently omitted traces which were corrected on revision C64A1) mainboard.

The large blob is the DTV1 ASIC (origianlly called 'JSTICK64'), designed by Jeri Ellisworth.
The small blob is a 2MB OKI-made mask rom, afaik it has not been fully dumped yet, and more than one version may exist. It can be dumped via IEC or being bit-banged out an I/O line, or even displayed to screen if you feel like retyping 2 megs of data. It requires a program to be written (in c64 basic) to bankswitch it and do the bit banging.
The TFP chip which looks like flash is actually 128K of SRAM.

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C64_Direct-to-TV
http://picobay.com/dtv_wiki/index.php?title=DTV_Version_1

We still need an unhacked/unreflashed DTV2/3 (PAL) to get a dump of the original flashrom too (The PAL DTV uses a flash rom as opposed to a mask rom). The NTSC mask rom and the PAL flash rom contents are quite different. The flashrom is a surface mounted AT47BV161T which is an older, buggier (byte write mode only SOMETIMES works), fewer-erases-until-errors-happen version of the AT49BV161T and AT49BV163A. The AT47BV161T was ONLY used on the DTV and a few other products, and was never released to the public, unlike the latter two products.
I'm sure Guru can handle it.
DTV2 (PAL) has a bug in the blitter which was fixed on DTV3 (PAL)

See:
http://picobay.com/dtv_wiki/index.php?title=DTV_Version_2/3

I have one of the 'Hummer' DTV units, unmodded, available for dumping. Uses an AT49BV163A flash chip. Again, Guru can handle these.

See:
http://picobay.com/dtv_wiki/index.php?title=Hummer

LN

Good news--all five Epoch Game Pocket Computer games have now been dumped! And for those interested, the system's also got a good website in development by Chris Covell, the guy who dumped the BIOS.

http://www.disgruntleddesigner.com/chrisc/GamePokekon/

Great news on the Epoch handheld

I just got a Videomaster Star Chess through the post.

PCB Scan


Check out the graphics on this baby.

The Emerson Arcadia 2001 star chess game rom is 4k, this console has 2 6801's @ 2k internal rom each so its probably safe to say that the game is stored in the 6801's. Does anybody have a method of dumping these?

6801S has 2k ROM
6801V has 4k ROM

They are code compatible with the 6800 series of CPUs. The 6801 is a ROM version of the 6803 from what I read.
A somewhat detailed datasheet is here....
http://www.mameworld.net/gurudumps/temp/hd6801v.pdf

Unfortunately there's no mention of the ROM and how to read/access it, or even if there's a protection bit.

The same 6801V's are used in the carts for the Gakken TV Boy handheld I have.




Guru

You need to go to guru's home page before pasting the link in your browser.

I looked in my Motorola 8-bit Microprocessor and Pheripheral Data Book, but for the 6801 I need to read the Microcomputer Data Book, which of course, I don't have.

It does list the 6803E though, in excrutiating detail - including the differences to the 6801.

Now, if only I had a scanner...

look at the scan: they're not 6801s, they're 6810s, 128*8 128 byte SRAM.

The cpu/MCU however, looks to be an mc680? (last digit is unclear but is either a 2 or a 3?)
Theres also a 40pin ?custom? at the right. The code is likely all on the MCU which means this is a target for decapping.
Unless it is a 6801U4 (or u3/u2/u1) in which case theres a known security hole for dumping it. Ask ogoun.

LN

Looks like the chip top left is an 8080? It says SC80801P??

But yeah, that pic sucks dog's balls. If it was a scan, you need to do some research on how to scan things properly :-D
i.e. Wipe the crap/dust off all of the chips, adjust threshold, color balance, brightness/contrast to make it clear, sharp and bright.

Please have a look at the DIP40 chips and tell us what the numbers are.





Guru

Guru's dumped one of the carts now. Is anyone able to check these? Guru says it should be DOS compatible, but I couldn't get it to run in DOSBOX. It could just be the display and such. Send a PM if you're interested.

I never said it would run on a PC in a DOS Box. That would be impossible. The image contains a BIOS too (check first 64k). It will need emulation of the Vadem VG230 chip with all of it's I/O and add-on peripherals to run. The chip is a (simple) all-in-one-PC-on-a-chip.





Guru

I didn't really expect it to work on a PC, but that's as much testing as I'm able to do.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/GAMATE-LCD-bit-cor...ksid=p1638.m124

Are these needed?

Yes, all three Gamate games are needed. I could bid on it, but if anyone closer is interested, speak up.

right now im bidding on this and this.

I also recently won this auction, http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=280205843229&ssPageName=STRK:MEWN:IT&ih=018

so feel free to fire a bid off at the gamate games, ive got my hands full here heh

ps. I hate it when they wont sell the games without the console... this will be my 3rd casio loopy

Just been on a Pippin shopping spree, its very rare these come up so i had to grab them.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=260218745067&ssPageName=STRK:MEWN:IT&ih=016
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=260218746602&ssPageName=STRK:MEWN:IT&ih=016
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=260218746609&ssPageName=STRK:MEWN:IT&ih=016
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=280205843229&ssPageName=STRK:MEWN:IT&ih=018
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=250223909232&ssPageName=STRK:MEWN:IT&ih=015

my poor wallet

I'm going to snipe the Gamate carts, with some help from etabeta78. I've got a pretty good collection of them now, and I haven't found much interesting lately. (I bought one more R-Zone cart...woo-hoo.) Does anyone know what's inside of a Gamate cart? It's cased in a thin plastic card that's melded together.

I noticed that PeT added a Hartung Game Master driver. Does MESSDev have access to ROM's for this? I'm wondering if any games still need to be dumped. I have several carts for the system.

incog, I feel your pain with multiple systems. I've got three Game Pocket Computers now, and don't get me started on the R-Zone. I think when I get some stuff back from Guru I may need to have a huge eBay sale.

MESSDEV has access to the following Game Master dumps:

bubble_boy.bin
continental_galaxy.bin
dungeon_adventure.bin
falling_block.bin
go_bang.bin
hyper_space.bin
kung_fu.bin
pin_ball.bin
space_castle.bin
tennis_master.bin
urban_champion.bin

OK, still some missing dumps according to this list:

http://www.pelikonepeijoonit.net/gamemstr.txt

But unfortunately we haven't already collected any of them.

Hartung Game Master removed from the wanted list!

I didnt win the auctions on the Amstrad Mega PC (I've already dumped the rarer upgraded Amstrad Mega Plus) or the Casio Loopy with the 2 needed carts, somebody sniped both of them off me, no worries though.

http://mess.toseciso.org/people:incog updated hugely

so, are we going to get an update on those chips?



Guru

Sorry, my scanner is very shit and some of the markings on the pcb look like somebody went at them with sandpaper (why would they do that?) so this will have to do:



It sure is hard trying to keep everything to scale in a monospace font.

Standard operating procedure for "protection".

74LS03 = quad 2 input nor gate (open collector)
74L02 = quad 2 input nor gate
MCM6810P = ?512 byte? SRAM
MC6802P = Processor with optional internal ram, no internal rom
SC80801P = ?video chip?
Ferranti zNA 2HO72E = asic, possibly contains the rom for the mc6802
Blank = possibly contains the rom for the 6802
RCA = ? (need the CDxxxx numbers for these two)
LM1889 = video modulator

LN

You mean, "RCA = RCA CDP1856D 653"?
*awaits the "D'oh!"*

BTW, SC80801P sounds like a challenge. Will possibly need a decap to provide more info, other than a possible manufacturer in Motorola (Google/pcb scan) or Philips/Signetics (going by chip prefix).

- Stiletto

Hehe



Or it could just be short for Star Chess and some year/date/version indication.

Ah, good. In that case, it could be "SC80"+"801P"
... and "801P" could be MC6801. Would work date wise, at least. And it goes along with the other chips. So, pre-programmed MC6801-based microcontroller or something?

Ah no, it's not a date. There's also a 7841 marked on that chip.

It looks like it's some kind of standard product from Motorola. You can find several references to stores selling that part, but no information on what it is

incog: that ascii diagram is exactly what we want. PCB scans are highly over-rated :-)

I did some research on SC and found it is used by a company called 'Silan Semiconductors'. They also go by Hangzhou Silan Microelectronics Company Ltd. Hangzhou, China
http://www.silan.com.cn/include/default.aspx
Probably not them though as it seems like its a relatively new company.

When searching 'SC80801P' it comes up as being manufactured by Motorola. And in fact, that chip comes up here....
http://old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=1116&st=2
for that same(?) chess thing as a co-processor. The info looks to have been put there by amateurs though because the CPU is clearly wrong (it's surely the 6802) and the RAM is listed as unknown, and it is definitely the 6810. The 6802/6810 combo was used in the early Bally/Stern and Williams pinball machines.

The kind of sites that come up listing the chip as available are also the kind of sites that sell scavenged chips from PCBs.

I've been thinking about it, and I think I'm going to be right.

It's another processor, and it's proprietary to games that play the "Star Chess" game. It _is_ 1979-1980 that we're talking about here. Just a few steps beyond Pong-on-a-chip.

There are a lot of versions of MC6801 though. MC6801P1 is from 83 or so according to the datasheets (take copyright date, subtract 1-2 years) and it's DIP40 like the chip in incog's PCB scan.

And yes, Guru, that's the only other site found that bothers talking about SC80801P.

I would say your prefix list is off the mark for the 70's-early 80's, Guru, try Sangmeister's: http://www.mydarc.de/dj7oh/startfrae.htm

But given all the other official Motorola chips, it's likely to be Motorola too. SC for Star Chess, I like it.

4 factory sealed fully boxed pippin discs landed on my doorstep today

http://cgi.ebay.com/MEMOREX-MD-2500-VIS-...0803020832a5761 - pretty cheap VIS system.

Yeah, I remember reading about this before. It would be good to get archived, but there doesn't seem to be much of anything included with it (I don't even see a controller). This site seems to have a lot of stuff available, though.

http://www.oldsoftware.com/VIS.html

cowering has one of these and some software, he's mess friendly too

Yes, it's untested, but the seller claims it powers up. This one is pretty cheap to be ruined for dumping.



And this one is just $9.99...

Hi!

I'm new here, so I'd like to ask a few questions.

I have dumped the Amstrad Notebook NC200 Rom, where or who should I send it to?

I've done also skins for the NC100 and for one of its clones, the Walther ES210 (german clone by Nakajima), the question is quite the same.

As soon as I can I'll get the rom of the ES210 dumped (essentially the machine is the same but the software quite different).

Can I declare the Es210 as clone of the nc100 or should I contact the driver author?

Thank you!

send to Nathan, his email is on the mess contact page.

Thank you very much!

You're right, it is pretty cheap. So, I went ahead and bought it. I may pick up some software separately later. I should see what Cowering already has.

The japan-games eBay seller has put up a bunch of items for auction, with starting prices of $.01. I think we should make a bid for some of this stuff--I find the Epoch Cassette Vision carts particularly interesting. There are also some Super Cassette Vision carts (apparently dumped but unavailable) and the Japanese version of the RCA Studio II. Does anyone else see something interesting?

http://myworld.ebay.com/japan-games

The cassette vision unit itself, afaik there's a bios in there somewhere

Ian Knowles has a Cassette Vision Jr., which is software compatible with the Cassette Vision. I'm not sure if the BIOS would be any different.

Eep! japan-games has his store set up so it always keeps user-ids private so just to let you know a few days ago i made a bid on ALL the pippin stuff and the bandia playdia bundled with discs, they had 9days and 10 hours to go so I made the bids high. (I hope you havent been bidding against me )

Also if you want to see something rare check these out:

http://cgi.ebay.com/RARE-ROMTEC-COLORVIS...7QQcmdZViewItem
http://cgi.ebay.com/RARE-ROMTEC-COLORVIS...7QQcmdZViewItem
http://cgi.ebay.com/RARE-ROMTEC-COLORVIS...7QQcmdZViewItem
http://cgi.ebay.com/RARE-ROMTEC-COLORVIS...7QQcmdZViewItem
http://cgi.ebay.com/RARE-ROMTEC-COLORVIS...7QQcmdZViewItem

No, I haven't placed any bids yet. (I almost always snipe anyway.)

I hadn't heard of the Colorvision before. It looks like there's nothing dumpable in the cartridges--they switch the connections within the console. The system itself might have something to dump.

http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Romtec/Colorvision.htm

The cartridges would be needed for scanning though.

The Grandstand Game Player has similar hardware, the carts are nothing more than lcd screens and contacts and all the main unit contains is an xtal and epoxy blob. Kind of a let down really.

Just bought up 3 more playdia discs and added a bunch of ascii art to go along with the pcb scans on the wiki, with lots of xtal and chip info

http://mess.toseciso.org/people:incog

Is this a CPS Changer on ebay?

Or is that arcade (ala MAME)? I don't know my CPS changer games but it looks like that is a MESS target. SSF2turbo is lonely.

Arcade. CPS Changer connects to TV, not JAMMA

damn. Has anyone even seen one for sale? The must be more rare than a cow.

It's very rare. Supposedly that one Japanese emulator dev has at least some of the remaining dumps, but he's not sharing.

If you see any, give me a bell... I'll be happy to chip in. Been looking for these for a while now.

The japan-games auctions are nearing an end. I've got my eye on the PasoGo (has different carts than I got), Cassette Vision, Super Cassette Vision, and Visicom auctions. I won't be placing any huge bids, though.

Does anyone know what FM Towns and PC-FX dumps are available? I haven't looked into these systems too closely.

Mednafen would know for sure, but I think all the known PC-FX games are dumped (there are maybe 15 or 20 total).

I thought the PC-FX had hundreds of games, all mostly porn.

AFAIK there are less than 25, all mostly porn.

~80, actually, mostly JRPGs (only a few hentai/pr0n games) - http://www.necstasy.net/

Guru asked me about the Famicom Box for sale on eBay. It's not the same as the Super Famicom Box we got carts for earlier, of course. We'd originally speculated that it just switched between standard Famicom carts and had no BIOS (unless I'm thinking about something different, couldn't find the post), but researching it, this does seem more interesting than that. It uses specially shaped carts, and must have some sort of BIOS to switch between the games. This page has great details:

http://www.tripoint.org/kevtris/mappers/famicombox/index.html

Here's the auction--ending in about 10 hours, I'm afraid.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Nintendo-Sharp-Famic...1QQcmdZViewItem

Shipping would be rather expensive. Is anyone willing to help pay for this? The other auctions I mentioned could be rather expensive for me if I win them.

The note on the nintendo dumping page on the wiki says "Famicom Box (AN-560 A) (Hotel Famicom system that fits up to 15 games) &#8592; kevtris has one of these and has dumped the rom, just ask him for it. it contains a menu program. The CICs on this unit have not been reverse engineered yet, and it uses a whole other CIC for coin timing alone!".

I'll ask kevtris about this now on irc, I no idea if the dump still exists or was lost.

Im in for £100 though, to be spent on anything. Give me a bell when you need it, ive got a few of my own auctions of babysit heh.

Edit, holy shit I just reread your other comment and you said the pasogo has even more carts? Jut last year I was convinced it only had 1 haha. Any Idea how many carts that thing has?

BTW, the "MESS Drivers Needed" lists a Bondwell BW2 - there's an uncredited[1] driver in SVN at least that boots and shows stuff, although it doesn't POST cleanly and I can't find a disk for it that the driver will accept (system floppies in 2 different formats are relatively easy to find for that system).

ETA: [1] Looks like Nathan and Curt Coder. Nice work guys.

Anyone working on the follow-on BW12/14? It seems generally similar except it uses an NEC765 disc controller and MC6845 CRTC for video.

Nathan was just committing it on behalf of Tomas Karlsson, who's credited in messnew.txt (although Curt Coder did do a bunch of work on it too).

Tomas is working on the BW 12/14 as well.

The initial driver is from Tomas Karlsson, Curt Coder added the LCD chip emulation (as written in messnew.txt).

Well, still nice work. Gorgeous code too.

Thanks for noticing that. I'd rather not deal with buying and shipping the Famicom Box if I can avoid it. It's rather large.

The donation will definitely help. I upped a few of my snipes. I'll know in about four hours what I won.

I'm not sure how many Pasago carts there are--at least six it would appear. One website I saw thought there might be eight carts, but I don't consider that particularly reliable.

And the results are in! I won the auctions for the PasoGo and Visicom. I also picked up a Super Cassette Vision cart and a collection of six Cassette Vision carts (amazingly, only $30 for the latter). I lost the auctions for the Cassette Vision and Super Cassette Vision systems, but I'm not overly concerned because Ian Knowles has a version of each of those (though I'd be interested to see if the bios are any different). I also went ahead and picked up one of those Pocket Dream systems that had been mentioned here. Guru said he figured it had some surface-mounted ROMs.

All in all, I'm pretty pleased. I hope we can make some progress on dumping the Epoch systems now. The Cassette Vision seems like one of the more important consoles that are still unemulated.

I bought a pocket dream as well (it's what I mentioned before ) hope you haven't paid too much...

anyway I'll make a wiki page with my possessions next week (finally back to italy to sort out my new gadgets :P )

Good work on the bidding.
Don't forget if there's something BIG that is bought only for dumping, to save on postage it can go to my Japanese contact and he can send just the relevant bits and pieces here via surface in a big box with other PCBs that are shipped to me (about once every 2-3 months, contact me for details when the time comes).
That goes for any of the regular contributors wanting to buy items in Japan for dumping. Of course, if you want the actual item in one piece afterwards, you'd better have it shipped to you first because I have a nasty habit of losing the bits once they're disassembled and dumped :-D
The spring-loaded cart eject mechanism on the Casio Loopy is kind of errrr, somewhere in my lounge room. Now it's a asoiC oopy ;-)

Regarding the PasoGo carts, I would say there are 10 at least. The ones I have here have numbers on the carts. I have KS-1004, KS-1009 & KS-1010. I've just dumped the remaining carts so I'll put them somewhere for downloading....



Guru

Haha, I bets that the same spring that flew over my shoulder and took me an age to find.

Today is a good day

I just won this auction (every known cart will now be dumped! :D) and 3 more playdia discs landed on my doormat this morning.

Not all that much (and it might be kind of cool to play around with). But yeah, it's good if we can keep track of what everyone has.

If anyone is interested, in donations, I have some system, I willing to give:

TI-74
Casio CFX9850-9950
Comquest Plus
PC-FX
Compaq Portable (luggable)
Compaq Plus

If this help you any let me know.

For the comquest plus we could use some nice pictures of the inside, the current driver code seems to have some guesses regarding the clock speed for instance.

Compaq Portable (luggable)
Compaq Plus

We need the bioses from these two dumped.
Also any bios setup diskettes if they used them. I know some later 286-based compaq machines used a special diskette for bios setup.

LN

I have BIOS ROM dumps from a Compaq Portable (BIOS revision C) and a Compaq Deskpro of similar vintage (BIOS revision E). I can also provide technical info on how the enhanced CGA on these computers works, and the other minor ways their hardware differs from a standard IBM XT.

One other remark: The character ROM for the PC1512 (version 1) was reconstructed with CGAFONT rather than imaged, because the character ROM in my version 1 PC1512 was soldered to the motherboard. I've just got round to desoldering it and imaging it, and the resulting image is identical to the one that MESS is already using. So the note on http://mess.toseciso.org/sysinfo:pc1512 saying that the character ROM dump is missing can go.

With regards to the Casio 9850, are calculators even on the radar screen for MESS?

Yes, several are already supported (the scope of MESS is really wide - basically we cover everything MAME doesn't).

All the known BBC Bridge Companion carts are now dumped

I was lucky as nearly all of them had checksum stickers on the eproms and every dump matched them. I like it when everything is easy.

Nice

I second the Nice!.

How about making a .hsi file while it is fresh in your memory or at least a good list with correct name and correct CRC.

Quite a few of the dumps are multiple files, as they have anything from 1 to 4 eproms in them... I dumped them and kept them seperate. MESS doesnt handle multiple file dumps yet and if you merge them MESS runs them fine. I can make a .hsi file of the carts that only used 1 eprom until a method/format is decided for the rest.

ah ok. That is too bad.

Someday someone will crack that whole multi-file/xml problem, but I think there is whole thread for that.

I'm glad to see a whole set captured.

There is a whole thread for that, and meanwhile NEStopia 1.38's out with a defined xml multi-file format for NES games. People got caught up in "perfect" on that thread and now "works" is here to win. Again.

Well sweet Jebediah! I didn't even notice 1.38.

I have System disks, and a few DOS disks for the Compaq Portable, but I dont know if they have System bios setup. I think Compaq Plus runs on the same System disks, if I remeber correctly.



I will do photos as soon as posible, maybe this Friday or some time nextweek.

Yes, we need images of all the system and OS disks. Do you have a modern machine with a 5.25 drive in it which can read them? be sure to put write protect stickers on the disks BEFORE imaging them, as even typing DIR in DOS can change disk contents otherwise! (it removes certain extraneous bits in the directory entry table which are important in some cases)

rawread or another disk imaging tool (or "dd if=/dev/fd0 of=disk.img" in linux) will work. A catweasel in linux will also work.
If you do not have a drive capable of reading the disks, you can send them to me, I have a computer set up for reading them.


We also need the bios images from the machines, which you can dump to blank, formatted diskettes using DEBUG in dos, instructions are available at:
http://mess.toseciso.org/dumping:dump_bios_using_debug

We need the F0000-F7FFF and F8000-FFFFF areas dumped (as the instructions there show) and also the C0000-C7FFF, C8000-Cffff areas to get the rom bios contents for any expansion cards.
The D0000-...-DFFFF, E0000-...-EFFFF areas would be nice too but are optional.

LN

japan-games has a Super Cassette Vision system with three carts up for auction on e-Bay. I'll probably hold off on this system for the moment, though. Guru has a cart coming his way, and I talked to Ian Knowles, who said his system was still available.

There's also a Casio PV-1000 system for sale. I'd like to see this supported, but no games are currently available.

Does anyone know if Nintendo's Color TV Game consoles use a CPU?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_TV_Game

I found this info.

Ahh, the AY-3-8500. Do we know if it's actually an MCU or just the discrete logic of the time boiled down to an IC?

I believe it's just a pong-in-a-chip IC. Some later General Instruments chips for dedicated consoles were actually MCU's, though. This book gives a great overview:

ftp://ftp.eskimo.com/u/m/mzenier/GI-Games-1978.pdf

Neat, that's the famous chip manual the Intellivision was "designed" from

Man, I've had that for AGES... I basically leeched all of his datasheets after reading all of pong-story.com and going searchin'.

He also had posted a copy of a theory for dumping a 68705P5 to Usenet once that was interesting, but IIRC Guru debunked it. Or maybe it turned out to only apply to 68705U5's, I can't remember.

You probably mean 68705P3. The U-something is a 40-pin chip.... I actually dumped one of them from a Pushman PCB. The 68705P5's are always protected. That is a main type that needs to be dumped / decapped and doing that will give us about a dozen nice Taito games.
If it was a 68705P5 I'd like to see that document :-)


This thread should be sticky'd, btw. I've purposely bumped it because there was W-A-Y too much fluff above this important thread :-D



Guru

I believe we've talked about it before, buddy. You remember this?
http://google.com/group/comp.arch.embedded/msg/4dbfbec34a616622
IIRC it was something like, someone posted generally about Motorola 68705P's and Mark accused them of implying that it worked on P5's.

He's had other posts on the P3 back in the day.
http://google.com/group/sci.electronics/browse_thread/thread/7b915a6f5fc4b089
http://google.com/group/sci.electronics/browse_thread/thread/21adf03b2a7f9020
http://google.com/group/sci.electronics/browse_thread/thread/b06226d031a6fb4c
http://google.com/group/sci.electronics/browse_thread/thread/360cd891030895ca

BTW - I'm good at regularly bringing this thread to a halt. Yay me!

- Stiletto

hmmm. putting it in test mode then writing a program to read out the data (presumably having it plugged into some kind of custom board hooked to the parallel port?) and adjusting the voltage at the exact right time to fool it, and some other mumbo jumbo. It's not really a _solution_ , at least not one that can be done easily.



Guru

Hmm, what he was describing on that board sounds like it would work, though its a variant brute force attack:
Basically, you set the protected chip into verify mode, which iterates comparing the external and internal memories to verify that the internal rom matches the external one. The security hole is, the verify program(on mask rom inside all 68705s) STOPS when it detects a mismatch between external and internal roms. so, what you do is this:
Have an external MCU (maybe an atmel avr) outside the 68705 which watches what the 68705 does. set the external ram (which the 68705 is comparing against) to all zeroes. Now, run the 68705 in verify mode. It will halt after the first byte read from 0x0000 (and this will be visible on its bus, probably by the address bus ceasing to increment, testing is required) if the first byte in the internal rom is NOT a zero. If this is true, the external MCU should change the first byte in the ram it is verifying against to a 01, and reset the 68705 and set it to verify mode again.
if it fails again, set it to 02. etc.
once the verify program PASSES the test it will read address 0x0001 and halt. the external mcu should repeat the increment-and-reset for byte 1. repeat for all bytes in the internal rom. this takes about 18 or more hours to finish.
But it really should work, assuming Motorola didn't change the internal rom to prevent this attack on some revisions.

LN

EDIT: one more important thing:
> Bootstrap program is always present in the address space, so you can
> program up a blank part and read it out. It's pretty strange and tight
> code that copies itself into the RAM and runs from there. But it's only
> 115 bytes.

This needs to be dumped and implemented in the 68705 cpu core.

Sorry for the dely, but these aren't the best photos. If they don't show on this post PM me, and I will send them.

Tough luck trying to link to photos from your local hard disk. You might wanna upload them somewhere, I suppose

comquest plus are here MESS Comquest Photos

Okay, wait a sec LN:

old private email:
"P3's can be read by trying to write them with vpp disabled, and seeing when the verify passes.

they fixed this on P5's"

I guess that means, no go!

@Guru: sorry to bump this old post of yours, but did you find a spare moment to scan the Game Pocket (and/or the other handhelds you have)? it would be great to have them around the release of MESS 0.125

Exist a good dump of the PCW Boot ROM (pcwboot.bin) ?
Just a question.

Jacob Nevins has a disassembly of the PCW8512 boot ROM, extracted by sticking a scope trace on the expansion port and recording what the processor fetched. It comes in two parts - an initialisation chunk which copies the 256-byte boot code into RAM, and the 256-byte loader itself.

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~jacobn/cpm/pcwboot.html

As he points out, the 256-byte loader has to be different for 9000-series PCWs because their boot sector checksum isn't the same (probably the INC A at address 0080h becomes a DEC A). Also, since the 256-byte loader is still in memory when a boot sector is launched, it should be possible to retrieve it using a custom boot sector.

He's already made a scan. incog, are you still handling the MESS artwork?

I guess everything should be sent to Mr.Do... very busy with MAME artwork, but yet...

damn! and it sounded like such a nice idea too...

could you take a detailed picture of the bottom part, so that it's possible to read which chips are there?

Sure, but im currently having to use a huge ass HDTV as my monitor because my real monitor died (backlight failure or something) so I have no idea what the output would look like in anything but a slightly blurry 1360 by 768.

There appear to be two PCW boot images - one for dot-matrix PCWs (8000,9256,10) and one for daisywheel PCWs (9512, 9512+). Note that in the rest of this post, I'm only covering the 256-byte boot image, not the initial instruction stream that copies it into RAM.

The 8000/9256/10 one can be built from the assembly listing at

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~jacobn/cpm/pcwboot.html

The 9512 one is the same except that the byte at offset 2Ch is 20h not 21h, and the byte at offset 7Eh is 3Dh not 3Ch. Note that the boot image loads at address 2, so in the listing these bytes appear at addresses 2Eh and 80h respectively.

If you want to be sure you've reconstructed them correctly, the 8000/9256/10 boot image has a CRC of 5EDC and the 9512 image has a CRC of 4A75, as calculated by the dump utility I wrote:

http://www.seasip.info/Misc/bootdump.zip

Usenet thread:

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/comp.sys.amstrad.8bit/browse_thread/thread/0343dbccb2c631df#

Hey!

I just dumped the Walther ES210 rom (an Amstrad nc100 clone with totally different software) and the Phillips MSX VG8000/10.

Whom should I send the roms?

Last time I was told to send it to Nathan, but it seems that his email address is no longer in his profile.

It's still Nathan, contact details are at http://www.mess.org/contacts.php

Thanks Justin!

I think yesterday I had my brain on holiday! XD

Better Comquest photos NOW MESS Comquest

What are the chances we could pick up one of these guys? http://cgi.ebay.com/NuBus-Ethernet-Card-...Q2em118Q2el1247

It appears to have a dumpable ROM on it, and assuming Macs ever make their way into MESS, having something with emulated ethernet might kick either Nathan or Aaron into gear to abstract a socket interface for MAME.

We've no shortage of things with emulatable ethernet already, so I don't think that in particular's gonna cause any movement

Name one.

Extremely interesting but out of my price range: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Bandai-Vectrex-Kou...oQQcmdZViewItem

Do you have these 3 PasoGo carts Ranger_lennier?
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/KOEI-PasoGo-Handhe...oQQcmdZViewItem

Currently I've not been able to find anything interesting enough and in my price range to buy, it would be very nice to have a list of items listed by priority that the devs want/need so im not just buying what I think needs saving.

So, a question for all devs, what is your most wanted dump?

yep, we have got all of those ones.
I just received a large 2-feet-square box of stuff that Ranger bought a while back. It was filled with millions of little foam pieces. I pulled out a large console thing by Toshiba(?), lots of carts for some old Epoch TV thing and 3 PasoGo carts (KS-1001, KS-1002, KS-1003) and some other stuff. I'll wait for Ranger to reply with the full list of what it's supposed to be and/or update his possessions on the mess wiki.

I have no idea what the names of the PasoGo carts are so here's a reference pic. If anyone sees others we don't have, let us know. This is a temp link so this pic should be updated to Ranger's have list in the wiki ASAP.
http://www.mameworld.net/gurudumps/temp/dscn5581.jpg
(click the link to go there then refresh it to show it, the site has off-site file linking disabled)