Today sees the release of a new C64 game. A fantastic conversion of Prince of Persia.
The game looks and plays just like the original versions across various other platforms.
This game requires an EasyFlash (or compatible) device to run. Naturally it also runs on VICE and most likely other C64 emulators, it also works on a C128.
Swoop on over to CSDb to download it
I recently won a Commodore 128 on eBay. It had no power supply and was therefore “untested”. In eBay terms this means its broken.
I know I shouldn’t have tried but in my haste I attempted to use my C64 supply. This resulted in one dead C64 power supply.
As the original C64 supply is pretty poor and a C128 supply is impossible to find for a decent price I thought I would build my own.
For a total cost of around £35 I bought a 5v power supply and a 9VAC transformer. Both of these are massively overspecced compared to the original and they will both fit into the case of my old “lightweight” Amiga power supply case.
I used the old Amiga lead as the connector for the C128 and reused the C64 lead from my newly burnt out supply to give me 2 separate outputs and it is capable of running both at the same time with room to spare.
Received a New Astro City cab yesterday. Its in pretty decent condition, the monitor looks really nice and the price was right.
After checking and adjusting the voltages at the edge connector I fired up Puzzle Bobble 2 on the Taito F3 platform and had a few games.
There are a few problems to start with. Both the start buttons didn’t work. This ended up being some dodgy micro switches but was quickly sorted with a dose of WD40.
After a few games I decided to check out the inner workings of this thing. What a shock I had.
Looks like the good people of Hong Kong arent too fussy about safe wiring practices.
After making the loom safe for use I decided to check out the rest of the wiring.
First of all, this cab was originally designed for 110v supply but a step down transformer is fitted to convert 220v to 110v. I checked the voltage coming out the noise filter, 143v! Turns out the step down transformer was for a 200v input to get 100v output.
I removed this and fitted a proper 240v one. The output is now 108v, much better.
I also replaced the power supply wiring as this was 22AWG for something more substantial.
I decided to check the incoming wiring on the back panel, more dodgyness.
These are actually the supply wires.
I also found a set of redundant RGB-S wires in the loom, these have been removed too.
Found this over at the Neo Geo forums here courtesy of Mitsurugi-w
GAME —————————– PAL REV.
SSF2X ——————————B
MSH———————————-F
MVC———————————-G
SFZ2———————————F or D (mostly D)
DD: TOD—————————–B
XMEN: COTA————————F
SSF———————————–1ST REV. (NO LETTER, JUST BGS-B3)
VH————————————-F
SFZ————————————E
MVS———————————–G
SFZ2A———————————D (assume F may work also)
SPF————————————B
DIMAHOO—————————–G
SGemF———————————G
M!PNG———————————F
BATLCIRC—————————–D
VS————————————–G
DKSTKRS——————————-D
CSC————————————-F
XVS————————————–F
GIGWNG——————————–G
SFZ3————————————-G
AVP—————————————B
1944————————————-G
MRZMTRX——————————–G
RM2:PF———————————-E
DD:SOM———————————F
SF2:HA———————————-G
VS2————————————–G
PROGEAR——————————-G
19XX————————————-E
Using the program that can be found here, I have successfully managed to dump a protected combinational PAL chip. The chip was one from a Street Fighter 2 C board and although it is already in the MAME set I wanted to test it againt something I knew was working.
To get this working a terminal emulator program is needed to capture the serial data. I used the free PuTTY program.
Once you have captured all the data and converted it using the PD.EXE program found in the link above, you can use WinCUPL to output a .JED file that can be used to create a functional GAL.
All credits goes to Charles MacDonald and Macro.