I loved the old WinROMident program for its quick usage but unfortunately it hasnt been updated in a long time.
Ive made a new drag and drop program that uses Romcenter .DAT files
It doesn’t yet support zip files, only single files.
As with everything I make it requires .NET (v4.5) installed on your computer and it probably has a load of bugs too.
Its minimal and quick which is exactly what I need.
Can be found in the Downloads/Software section
Today I added a PAL dump from a 64k memory expansion module for the Amstrad CPC. I dumped this a long time ago but it never got added so I cannot really recall the details. I *think* it was a Datel device.
Yves M has converted the tw PAL dumps for Rastan that were in PAL16L8 format into GAL16V8 format and tested them successfully on his PCB.
Thanks to him
Another board from my friend Alexander.It’s time for an original Gun. Smoke PCB:
Board booted fine but had a graphical fault where backgrounds were totally wrong (MAME screenshot on the right) :
In absence of schematics, MAME source is always a great help.Looking at it I was able to identify the ROM cointaining the backgrounds data:
ROM_REGION( 0x8000, “gfx4”, 0 ) /* background tilemaps */
ROM_LOAD( “gs14.11c”, 0x00000, 0x8000, CRC(0af4f7eb) SHA1(24a98fdeedeeaf1035b4af52d5a8dd5e47a5e62d) )
I dumped it and it matched the one in the MAME ROM set.So, problem had to lie in the external circuitry.Tracing back connection from this ROM I figured out the its address lines were connected to outputs of some 74LS283 whose inputs were tied to some 74LS273.So, I started to test them in-circuit using my HP10529A and BK Precision 560A.All was fine until my equipment reported a problem on the 74LS273 @8D:
Piggybacking this cleared the issue:
IC failed when tested out of circuit reporting trouble on PIN2:
Fitted a new IC fixed the board completely.
Got this original Namco Rolling Thunder from my friend Alexander for a repair :
Board didn’t boot up but got stuck on this screen which repeated itself in a endless loop sign that the watchdog circuit was active :
My friend Alexander gave me an hint to troubleshoot this fault pointing me to a bad custom ‘130’
As I swapped in a know good one from a board of mine, game successfully booted but showed a strange graphical fault where the main character didn’t disappear when entering in a door:
As usually I started my troubleshooting with a visual inspection and found a deep scratch on the solder side and after checking with a multimeter I could notice that involved trace was severed:
After consulting the schematics I was sure that the broken trace was indeed in the sprites circuitry :
Restored the trace cleared the sprite issue.Job done.
Today I dumped one PAL from a Major Title 2 PCB (M92 hardware) which has been converted into Undercover Cops.PALs on CPU board (M92-A-B) are the same for all M92 games but the ones on ROM board are specific by game with some exceptions though.In particular this Major Title 2 ROM board (M92-B-F) has two PAL16L8.The one labeled ‘MT2_B-2L-‘ can be found also on Gunforce (and maybe others) under different label but same equations, the other one ‘M72-B-7H.D’ was undumped until now.Dump has been tested as working in a GAL16V8 targeting device.