Porchy

Champion Wrestler & Exciting Hour PALs added

 PAL Updates  Comments Off on Champion Wrestler & Exciting Hour PALs added
Mar 182015
 

Muddymusic has dumped some PALs from his Champion Wrestler and Exciting Hour PCB’s.
They are untested but look good.
There were two more from Exciting Hour but I think they were registered and the dumps were not usable.

Thanks to Muddymusic

 Posted by at 2:50 pm

Taito F3 PALs confusion

 General, Technical Info  Comments Off on Taito F3 PALs confusion
Mar 142015
 

Back in January there was a discussion going on over on the Jamma+ forums regarding the D77-14 and D77-15 PAL dumps.
After a lot of help from various people and testing by myself here is the conclusion I have come to regarding this issue.

D77-14 is used when the main CPU ROM’s are 27c2001 (0x40000).
D77-15 is used when the main CPU ROM’s are 27c4001 (0x80000).

On a 27c2001 EPROM, pin 31 is the programming pin. It is active low so once the chip is programmed we want to keep this held high when in use. That’s exactly what the D77-14 PAL is doing. Pin 19 of this PAL is fixed HIGH and is connected to pin 31 of the 27c2001 EPROM.

On a 27c4001 EPROM, pin 31 not the programming pin but it is the upper most address bit and that’s why with a D77-15 pin 19 is able to toggle which allows for double sized EPROM’s to be used.

This is where the confusion comes in.
On many converted boards out there in the wild (and there is a lot of them) we have found there to be D77-14 stamped PAL chips with the same code as what we have found in D77-15 PAL chips and vice versa. Assuming the PAL chips themselves are the original ones from Taito (and I have no reason to see why they wouldn’t be) then my theory is, as they are all PALCE16V8 chips, which are reprogrammable, they have simply been reprogrammed by the bootlegger/converter to use whatever version they needed. This would keep it looking that little bit more authentic and also cuts down on the cost of buying a GAL16V8.

If you check in the MAME source too, every game that has program ROM’s of size 0x40000 uses the D77-14 PAL and every game that has program ROM’s of size 0x80000 uses a D77-15 PAL.

Hopefully that will clear up a bit of the confusion surrounding this.

Mar 142015
 

Shoestring has joined the site so welcome to him.
He has also added his Gyruss test ROM which can be found in the downloads section.

Once again, welcome to Shoestring

 Posted by at 10:09 am

Fluke 68000 POD ROM revisions

 General, Technical Info  Comments Off on Fluke 68000 POD ROM revisions
Mar 072015
 

Yesterday I received an email (and it was also posted on the UK-VAC forum) with some information on the 68000 POD firmware version.
Here is the info:

Fluke 68000 pod ROMS

U4.bin : 0x2361d749
U5.bin : 0xa6f59007
version 2.0

U4.bin : 0xa8859970
U5.bin : 0x486343c7
version 5.0 (this version is in https://www.jammarcade.net/fluke-pods/)

The version of a Fluke 68000 pod can be obtained by:

-Put the ribbon cable of the 68000 pod in the self test socket
-Press setup on the 9010a and check the following, changing if necessary:
SET-TRAP BAD POWER SUPPLY? YES
SET-TRAP ILLEGAL ADDRESS? YES
SET-TRAP ACTIVE INTERRUPT? NO
SET-TRAP ACTIVE FORCE LINE? NO
SET-TRAP CTL ERR? YES
SET-TRAP ADDR ERR? YES
SET-TRAP DATA ERR? YES
SET-ENABLE HALT? NO
SET-ENABLE BR/ACK? NO
SET-ENABLE INTR? NO

First disable the self-test performing WRITE @ F000 0028 = BF
and then do a READ of address F0000012, you get the value 0020 for version 2.0
and 0050 for version 5.0, this is explained in the 9000A-68000 Interface Pod manual in chapter 6-7.
If you get version 6.0 please let me know, this version has Quick Ramp, Quick Fill, Quick Verify
and the pattern verification option of Quick RAM.
PAL of version 2.0 pod is the same as of version 5.0 pod

If you want to re-enable the self-test, you can cycle pod power off and then on or do a WRITE @ F000 0028 = FF

Guddler had dumped his ROM’s some time ago when he was troubleshooting his pod and they didn’t match mine.
Based on the above information it would appear he has version 2 of the firmware and I have version 5.
I’ve amended the downloads section accordingly and also added Guddler’s dumps too for completeness.

If anyone has any other versions then it would be nice to get these too, especially the version 6 mentioned in the text above.

Updating a Chipmaster digital IC tester

 General  Comments Off on Updating a Chipmaster digital IC tester
Feb 272015
 

Ive always wanted to update the software on my ABI Chipmaster as it was outdated when I originally got it. The issue is ABI like to try and extract every last penny from people that own any of their equipment and in order to do any updating then you have to buy their software and that costs A LOT!

Today I opened this thing up and found a 29LV040 chip in there which I obviously was the thing I was after. The device is in a 32 pin PLCC package and is soldered directly to the PCB.
I fired up the how air rework station and removed that chip.
IMAG1194

After fitting a socket I downloaded the latest software from the ABI website and reflashed the ROM

BEFORE:
IMAG1196

AFTER:
IMAG1202

Now I have the software file Im going to pull this thing to bits in IDA Pro and see what interesting things I can find, maybe its even possible to fix the Z80 testing function that ABI cant be bothered to fix themselves.