Today I dumped the only PAL present on my Fluke 9000A-Z80QT interface POD.Original device (a PAL16L8) was secured.Dump has been tested succesfully in a GAL16V8 targeting device.Just a technical note :’QT’ stands for ‘Quick Test’ since this POD can perform quicker RAM/ROM tests than normal Z80 one
Today I dumped the two PALs from a Konamy GX type 1 motherboad (running Lethal Enforcers II, repair log of this will follow later), both dumps are tested and working in a GAL16V8 targeting device.Just for reference, there are actually 2 revisions of GX motherboard, they are totally interchangable and the Version 2 motherboard is just smaller and runs cooler.Games that run on this system are :
I got this board always from Ebay sold as faulty:
When I first powered up it I got a solid black screen.Probing the CPU I noticed some strange activity on 68000 address/data lines and watchdog was indeed active.So I piggybacked the two 62256 work RAMs @U1 and U4 and I got this:
Despite the message error,this was a good sign of life so I desoldered the two RAMs and I found them really bad:
Replaced them but still black screen and watchdog active.So, I noticed there were other two RAMs connected to 68000 CPU but not directly but through two 74LS245 and enable pin of these were stuck high.I traced back it to an output of a 74HC4075 so I started to test it with logic probe and while I was probing it suddendly the PCB succesfully booted to title screen:
I can’t really explain this but now the PCB is now working perfectly every time I power it on and this is the most important thing.See you next repair!
Dumped and added the PAL chip from my Fluke 8086 POD.
The original is a PAL10L8 and has been converted and tested for a GAL16V8 device.
Recently I offered to help out someone wanting his Super Adventure Quests NES cartridge dumped.
I was quite surprised at first as I thought all NES carts had already been dumped but apparently not.
Here is the cartridge in question.
This is the same as the already dumped cartridge of Quattro Adventures. This was the NTSC release where as Super Adventure Quests was the PAL release.
The whole reason this dump in particular was wanted is because the NTSC release doesn’t work on a real PAL console using the Everdrive cartridge.
I got hold of this cart and decided the best and quickest way of dumping it was to desolder the ROM chip and read it out.
I looked online and the very small amount of information I could find suggested it was most likely a 23C2001 MASKROM pinout. As my programmer has support for this device it should have been good to go.
Well it didn’t work so after mapping out the connections on the PCB it looks like the pinout is the same as a 27C020.
This worked just fine.
Copying the iNES header from Quattro Adventures and prepending it onto my ROM allowed me to load it up in emulators to check it.
Job done. This has now been added to MESS.