Konami ‘007593’ & ‘007327’ reproduction

The ‘007593’ and ‘007327’ are two custom ICs found on some PCBs manufactured by Konami in end 80s.This should be a complete list:

‘007593’ on :

• Black Panther
• Fast Lane
• Contra / Gryzor
• Hyper Crash
• Salamander/Life Force
• City Bomber
• Kitten Kaboodle / Nyan Nyan Panic
• Labyrinth Runner/Trick Trap
• Vulcan Venture / Gradius 2

‘007327’ on :

• Combat School /Boot Camp
• Rock ‘n Rage
• Jackal/Top Gunner
• Flak Attack
• Devil World / Dark Adventure
• Double Dribble
• Rack ‘Em Up/The Hustler
• Haunted Castle
• Super Contra
• Battlantis
• Blades of Steel
• Ajax
• MX5000

Both ICs have strong similarities starting with how they appear:

Analogous package apart, they have same function as we can see from schematics:

But the ‘007593’ and ‘007327’ are not simple RGB DAC as  you can think of at first glance but they embed a complete palette color circuitry on a single chip.So not only RAMs but, as you can see, many other ICs in form of bare dies covered by coating as well passive parts :

Therefore, for this reproduction project I used a different approach.I studied previous Konami hardware figuring out how the color palette circuit was engineered without the use of the customs.After drawed my schematics I reproduced the ‘007593’ for first:

Once successful tested,  it was the turn of the similar ‘007327’ :

Testing on their respective boards:

The layout of both reproductions could be surely optimized (with consequent reduction of the size of the board) using moderm complex programmable logics but I’m happy enough with them since my primary goal was to study a working replacement for these two custom ICs which seems quite prone to failure making our beloved PCBs unusable.