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I have 2 F355 Challenge Deluxes. Wanting to convert them to use F355 2. As for stretching, it doesn't work like that.

The Deluxe models use a board stack. You have a 2 naomi's on the bottom. Then each has an interconnect board ontop of that. These interconnect boards join together. There is another Naomi ontop of that. Then, on the left side you have a comm board, and finally the rom board. One naomi runs the game logic. Then each of the remaining 3 runs a separate monitor. I have seen instances where it will boot the game with one or two monitors not receiving signal, but the game usually complains that it is set to the wrong type.


@dung in theory - yes, + crack game protection
Any suggestions about how to research cracking the game protection? Goal is to add at least 1 pair of the twin f355's and tracking down 3 f355 2 carts is highly unlikely.
 
Thanks @MetalliC :thumbsup:
@dung when you have your binary ready can you post it? I'll copy it into the right section so others can enjoy.

Thanks.
 
@Darksoft I don't think it may be much useful here. patch above only disable protection check, so its only useful for person who converting some other game cart to F355 2. its useless in other cases, because game still require multiboard setup with special bios and not supports netboot.
 
@dung
epr-23399.ic22 patch:
00032889: from 89 to A0
have fun ;)
Gonna have to do a bit of figuring out just to know how to do that. Opening up that rom in a hex editor isn't quite enough lol
yeah it is. Just go to that offset and change those two hex values.
I am guessing I have the settings wrong before opening the file. Only reason I have a hex editor installed was for playing around with alvin g roms and don't remember what all I did there.


edited it for you
Thank you kindly!
 
Made another cart for someone. I just wanted to say those 5v to 3.3v modules that @invzim used work great and provide enough filtering that I don't have to put 100nf caps on every eeprom to avoid sound issues. Pretty much my second go at this and I'm still not sure how I want to wire these things, I'm still cutting the trace to the vcc pad but one slip and you can easily cut an extremely small trace which can be a pain to repair.

q2DWfiS.jpg
 
Made another cart for someone. I just wanted to say those 5v to 3.3v modules that @invzim used work great and provide enough filtering that I don't have to put 100nf caps on every eeprom to avoid sound issues. Pretty much my second go at this and I'm still not sure how I want to wire these things, I'm still cutting the trace to the vcc pad but one slip and you can easily cut an extremely small trace which can be a pain to repair.

q2DWfiS.jpg
Very net work. Thumbs up! Are you offering conversions to people for a price?
 
Not quite yet, I said I was going to make this cart for this person months ago. If it survives shipment and nothing bad happens I'll consider doing more. I still want to improve the way I make these and to speed it up a bit, I might look into grabbing an ssop stencil and using solder paste.

If I were to price it'd probably be like like $100-$120 for a cart (or less if it's a smaller game that doesn't use a lot of eeproms, I'll basically adjust that according to how much I paid for each eeprom) or if a donor cart was provided I can take like $25 off since that's how much it costs for me to get a donor off YAJ. If I can speed up my workflow I can easily do it for $100

I guess I could also just program the roms and send them off as well if someone wants to make their own cart
 
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If you decide to do more cards, I'll take you some F355-2, cause I'm looking for some for a long time (me too). I only have one for my 4 players (2 twins) F335 setup.
 
Hah, I just messaged without reading the whole thread, but I am also looking for a pair of F355 Challenge 2's for my deluxes.
 
@pzlate looks like you got some demand....
I think@'Mitsurugi-w' was also looking into it. Not sure how far he got.
 
Haha yeah I do, I'll look into alibaba pricing on these eeproms after I finish the carts I promised for friends.
 
So I was trying to see if I could convert the TSOP48 128M 171-8132B carts, but I'm not sure if I chose the wrong TSOP package. I was going through the 128M TSOP48s my programmer can do and settled on LH28F128BFHED-PWTL90. I just changed one TSOP48 to see if the first two checksums would check good, but they don't, so I'm not sure if it's worth going all the way on.

I assumed this would speed up making conversons, but there's actually a lot more labor to wire up 3.3v to the eeproms and wouldn't save any time in the long run, unless I drilled out vias.
 
@MetalliC @rtw

Sorry to bother you but I'm making a crazy taxi cart for someone here. Do the Crazy Taxi carts have anything special about them, like maybe they need a specific bios? Or is the cart it uses unique? I finished the conversion, the rom test passes. But on my naomi it will stay stuck on "Loading Crazy Taxi (31K)"

Even looking up this error, I've found several posts where people get the same thing on real carts with no real solutions.

e: Interestingly enough, I tried CF booting Crazy Taxi and it can get past the loading screen, but then freezes on the warning screen. Maybe my Naomi is at fault. Just tried on free play/multibios set to US and it also freezes, this time a few frames into the sega logo animation on start up.
 
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