Home Page Forums MAME MAME TMS-09xx/1xxx thread (was New Dumps)

Is there active interest in trying to decap and either dump, or 'manually dump', a lot of the Tiger LCD games? I was in a conversation with someone that apparently has a _lot_ of these, and he wants to preserve the games, originally by simulation, but he seems interesting in donating them for the cause if someone is up to the task of working on them.

I'm going to point him to Sean's site, so you may hear from him anyway...

BTW, has anyone tried X-raying chips to see if the ROM code can be read that way? I've seen X-rays of microchips, but never in high enough resolution to even attempt to identify anything on them, but I'm not sure it's even possible to get a 'readable' image that way...

Sean Riddle has looked at the Tiger R-Zone some. I think that work is still in progress.

http://www.seanriddle.com/rzone.html

The older Tiger LCD games might use some similar technology.

Yeah, this might be a slow process, especially since there's literally 100s of Tiger games (not to mention all the other manufacturers)... But at the very least, get the LCD photographed, and the chip decapped and photographed so when it's convenient for anyone that wants to help, ROM code can be 'dumped' and possible emulation worked on...

I'm curious how easy it is to remove the epoxy blobs with Decap? That would be something I'd be all for playing with myself...

Anyone owns a ColorVision? Just got one game for it and seems something interesting to try to dump and emulate.
The cart seems to basically consist of the LCD to plug into the console.

ColorVision seems to be one of those systems where the cart connector wiring selects between games programmed into the main unit. The blob in the main unit would need to be decapped and analysed. Carts are needed to image LCDs, obviously.

Yeah, the ColorVision carts are just an LCD screen and a pinout to trigger the game to play. You can see the inside of a cart and the system here:
http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Romtec/Colorvision.htm

It's that blob near the cartridge part we are interested in... I think I have a couple of them, I may be able to sacrifice one to the cause...

Yeah that's pretty much it. Carts aren't an issue it's just a matter of tracing the connections and convert the LCD images, that blob will definitely need a decap. Do you have any idea of what's hiding behind the blob?

If you are willing to sacrifice one that would be great Rik, all I have is 1 cart (Submarine). How many of the games do you own? Beasts Planet seems to be kinda rare.

I have these 3 for sure:
Horror House
Jungle Boy
Monster Chase

I might have another loose one with one of the consoles, but I think it's just a duplicate of Monster Chase...

That would leave only Beasts Planet missing then as I own Submarine. Never saw that one for sale, although truth to be told never really looked carefully into these until very recently.

I'm finally back! I've done nothing hobby-related for the past couple of months, so I'm trying to figure out where I'm at with everything. I was working on dumping the Sharp SM series electronically and driving LCDs for digitizing, Hap sent me a G&W, Mr Challenger, Spelling Bee and Little Professor LCD, Lord Nightmare sent me Compact Speak and Spell, and incog sent a bunch of boards, including a G&W. I did continue buying stuff off ebay, so I've also got G&W Cement Factory, Blackjack, Bomb Sweeper and Boxing, Mattel Dungeons and Dragons board game and LCD game, Computron notebook, Coleco Zodiac, Mattel Gin Rummy, Tomy Electronic Pinball, Tandy Basketball, Tandy Electronic Golf, VTech Mini Wizard, Mattel Mind Boggler, Mattel Gravity, Mattel Horoscope Computer, Scrabble Lexor, a bunch of Konami games (Blades of Steel, Gradius, Marble Madness, Contra, Star Trek 25th), several Tiger handhelds, many newer LCDs, and a ton of calculators. Whew!