Porchy

Air Buster, Klax and Midnight Resistance PALs

 PAL Updates  Comments Off on Air Buster, Klax and Midnight Resistance PALs
Aug 302011
 

Today has been a good day for new PALs.
This morning channelmaniac uploaded his Air Buster GAL dump, then Dieter, who has tested out my Block Block PALs confirmed that at least one of them works on his Super Pang board AND he also sent me his working dumps for Klax.
On top of all that I found that my Midnight Resistance PALs were unprotected so they have all been converted to GAL format and added. Thanks to VectorGlow for originally testing the Midnight Resistance ones I had and found they didn’t work.

Big thanks to everyone who has helped so far.

 Posted by at 4:36 pm

(Super) Bobble Bobble Bootleg PALs

 PAL Updates  Comments Off on (Super) Bobble Bobble Bootleg PALs
Aug 282011
 

I got around to testing the Bobble Bobble PALs I had, they didnt work.
Tested the ones that are in MAME, they didnt work for me either.
Decided to see if I could read mine back in my programmer, they were unprotected!

I dumped the following:
PAL16R4 @ IC12
PAL16L8 @ IC43
PAL16L8 @ IC49

Converted them to GAL format using PALTOGAL and tested they work.

Maybe worth noting that when I converted the MAME version of the PAL16R4 to GAL and tested it, I got the title screen then an “IC43 fault” error message.
There are many different version of the Bobble Bobble hardware floating about so maybe those were from a different version.

 Posted by at 3:49 pm

Block Block repair log

 PCB Repair Logs, Repair Logs  Comments Off on Block Block repair log
Aug 282011
 

Had this board for ages and never bothered with it.
A guy recently asked me to check out the PAL dumps for Block Block but due to my board being broken Ive never been able to test so I thought id try and repair mine.

As you can see, the board looks a state

There is a suicide battery on these boards that is certainly dead. I removed this and went over to The Dead Battery Society and downloaded the desuicided ROMs.
After burning the two 27c020’s and a 27c512 and following the guide steps I got nothing but a black screen.
I removed the Kabuki CPU and replaced it with a standard Z80.
Now I get the RAM tests and they all pass OK then goes to a blank screen.

After a bit of head stratching I relised that the 27c020 is JEDEC compliant yet the 27c301’s that the board expects are not.
Time for a bit of modding.

I lifted pins 2, 24 and 30 on both 020’s and pins 1 and 22 on the 27c512.
I ran a link from pin 21 of the Z80 pin 24 of both 020’s and pin 22 of the 512. This is the /OE line.
I ran a link from pin 60 of the DL-020F-108U custom IC to pin 2 of both 020’s. This is the A16 line.
Link pin 30 from both 020’s to pin 1 of the 512 then link them all to pin 27 of the Z80 CPU. This is the A17 line.

That should not be complete and the game should boot.
I was able to test both the PAL dumps I have made now and they both work.

There is no sound on my board and it looks as though most of the sound circuit is rotton so wont be trying to repair that. Its a nice game but I have no interest in it at all.

 Posted by at 11:27 am

Block Block PALs

 PAL Updates  Comments Off on Block Block PALs
Aug 272011
 

A guy emailed me to let me know the Block Block PALs I had didnt actually work.
I do however have a non working board so I spent the day repairing it and then dumped mine and tested. These now work fine for me.
They are labelled
CHR-CW
CW-P

Repair log to follow

 Posted by at 4:15 pm