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

Thanks, obviously no bit behind the smudge then, it looked suspicious on the lower-res scan. =)
Yeah, it's cool how all traces are visible on the back of the VFD panel. kevtris has made loads of photos of them.

So, these games are Gakken made, as you mentioned before it's labeled on the PCBs. I can find the Japanese Poker game on Google, but not the other one.

to process a VFD, here is how I do it:

First, I solder all the pins together with a fine wire (single strand of a stranded wire) except the heater connections. Then I hook the heater up to the usual place on the board and ground the fine wire. this will light all segments up.

Next I take a picture for vectoring, using a high rez cam on a tripod head on. I usually take 5-10 pics at different exposures so that I can get the zinc sulfide ones without blooming since they are by far brighter than the rest.

After that, I vector it, and then desolder the wire while still leaving the heater hooked up, and finally I use a micro hook clip lead + a wire to do the pinout. connecting plate 0 (left most one) to ground, then touching the grids to see where it connects. This is repeated with each plate connection until all of them are traced out. It doesn't take a terribly long time to do even though it sounds like it.

Lots better than squinting at traces on the VFD which can sometimes not tell the whole truth. See the back side of bambino boxing. the traces go along the top, but there's connections down to the plates.

Thanks, I'll try that out. It was easy to figure out the grids and the normal segments for the poker VFD, since they were connected to the TMS correctly, but I wasn't sure how the extra segment and the suits were connected. The traces on the VFD showed me the suit pins, and through the process of elimination I figured out the extra segment.

yeah grids is easy- you can see where they come out at but plates can be trickier. though on that particular VFD it looks really simple since it's a calculator style display with a few minor additions.

good job on all those TMS games btw. I might send you this cosmic fire away CPU to fry open if I can't electrically dump it. It's a 40 pin TMS-something or another.

Yet another game done. I have 3 or 4 left it looks.

http://blog.kevtris.org/blogfiles/Handhelds/CGL%20Earth%20Invaders/

emulated since last update:
- Bambino Boxing
- Bambino Soccer
- Bambino Safari
- Epoch Invader From Space
- Epoch Football
- Epoch Galaxy II (Astro Wars)
- Mego Breakfree
- Tomy Cosmic Combat
- Gakken Heiankyo Alien (CGL Earth Invaders)
- Gakken Crazy Kong (CGL Super Kong) - random lockups
- Gakken Dig Dug
- Coleco Galaxian - was already added, but fixed bugs, works now

necessary artwork is at OG's site when he uploads them: http://dspnet.fr/~galibert/artwork/

Ooo... I love this site. Gotta do another compile.

I have the missing Bambino games (among many others...), I'll put those on the list to send out in the next batch or two.

Done. We really need to move that to mess.org.

OG.

I posted Master Merlin info: www.seanriddle.com/tms1400.html

And a video for timing: www.seanriddle.com/mastermerlin.mp4

The chip is a TMS1400, but with the TMS1100 pinout. The die says 1400CR and the die revision marking on the package is DCRS.

Oliver, can also add them to my page?