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Reverse engineering 161 in 1 cartridge to change Rom games

leonk said:
Well Poop. It's a Windows 10+ only binary. I have Windows XP and 7 in a VM running on OSX. I also have multiple releases of Linux running on servers, Pi's etc. But no Windows 10. Pretty much all programmer software to this day works on 7.

I guess applying your fixes and releasing an exe (like other github project do using the Releases feature) is not an option?w
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It's true most software does work on Windows 7 but Windows 10 is almost a decade old.

It might be time to add a new VM to your setup.

Microsoft might even have free Windows VMs and possibly even a container. I don't know how a Windows container would work but leave it to MS to not want to be left out. I just recall reading something about it.
 
Has anyone been able to get Hypernoid to run on this? The ROM provided on the Patreon comes in DS format, but I’m not sure how it would be added
 
GeorgeSpinner said:
It's true most software does work on Windows 7 but Windows 10 is almost a decade old.

It might be time to add a new VM to your setup.

Microsoft might even have free Windows VMs and possibly even a container. I don't know how a Windows container would work but leave it to MS to not want to be left out. I just recall reading something about it.
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I don't mind upgrading to Windows 10, but surprisingly, a lot of the software I use on retro computers, programmers for old EPROMs, FPGAs, CPLDs, etc. works best in Windows 7. Look at programming the FPGA's for this projects; Quartus II 13.1 from 2013? My Windows XP VM has Quartus 13.1, my 7 VM has 18.1. There's many other flash and eprom programmers that I use which are ancient by today's standard but are what the industry used when these ICs were new and work best on Windows 7 and older.

For anything modern (Pi, Arduino, newer FPGAs found on accelerator boards, etc) all the modern apps have OSX releases or I switch to using OpenOCD running on the Pi. So I never had the urge to have a dedication Windows machine for development purposes (not since about 2006).

to install Windows 10, to run Delphi IDE, only to compile an EXE file is a bit of a stretch. Imagine you had to do that for every free open source application you find on the Internet.
 
leonk said:
I don't mind upgrading to Windows 10, but surprisingly, a lot of the software I use on retro computers, programmers for old EPROMs, FPGAs, CPLDs, etc. works best in Windows 7. Look at programming the FPGA's for this projects; Quartus II 13.1 from 2013? My Windows XP VM has Quartus 13.1, my 7 VM has 18.1. There's many other flash and eprom programmers that I use which are ancient by today's standard but are what the industry used when these ICs were new and work best on Windows 7 and older.

For anything modern (Pi, Arduino, newer FPGAs found on accelerator boards, etc) all the modern apps have OSX releases or I switch to using OpenOCD running on the Pi. So I never had the urge to have a dedication Windows machine for development purposes (not since about 2006).

to install Windows 10, to run Delphi IDE, only to compile an EXE file is a bit of a stretch. Imagine you had to do that for every free open source application you find on the Internet.
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It looks like someone chose to work with what they like and is easily available to them.

There comes a point when it's time to upgrade.

This is the first instance you've seen where Windows 10 is required. It will not be the last.

Of course, you can always port the code or develop it work in an environment you are comfortable with
 
Pascal ... that is a name I haven't heard for a long time. I used to write nearly all my software in Turbo Pascal (and assembler), until I switched to C...
There doesn't seem to be much to it, would it help if I ported it to Python? Is this the latest code? https://github.com/xvortex/VTXCart/blob/main/Compiler/src/VTXCart.dpr
It looks clean and well written, so shouldn't be a problem.
 
Fluffy said:
Pascal ... that is a name I haven't heard for a long time. I used to write nearly all my software in Turbo Pascal (and assembler), until I switched to C...
There doesn't seem to be much to it, would it help if I ported it to Python? Is this the latest code? https://github.com/xvortex/VTXCart/blob/main/Compiler/src/VTXCart.dpr
It looks clean and well written, so shouldn't be a problem.
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That would be AWESOME. The Python code will run basically on every known architecture. That is the correct source, there's a couple of PR's waiting to be approved, but getting those updates into your port should be pretty trivial.
 
xodaraP said:
Have you found a source for the additional F0095H0 or did you sacrifice another 161 for that?
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What package are these? I see QFN packages available (maybe that should be in quotes) on alibaba.
 
I have no idea - but looking at the daughterboard they’re on and the lack of exposed pins my assumption was BGA
 
Thank you for the adapter ack. Trying to order at jlcpcb.com, but when importing the zip it says not able to detect in the gerber viewer. Tried uploading "neogeo-161in1-dual-daughterboard-main.zip and then zipping the directory 'hardware' into a zip, but neither seems to work. It appears this is in a different format than gerber.
 
Rom1 said:
Would it be easy to add jumper solder points to allow programming of either second or first chip ?
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It wouldn't be easy and not sure it would be possible with the space constraints. Multiple signals would need jumpers, likely 3 way (normal operation, U1 only, U2 only). Depending on the signal, the chip you don't want to interact with may require having a pull up/down resistor to that pin.

With the only source of those flash chips being the 161in1 carts, they should already be in a programmable state when you remove the daughterboard they are on from the cart.
 
Questions: For my cartridge where my prom is one large stilt chip, how can i combine the 3 files into 1?

Also, why hasn't anyone tried updating the flash chips over JTAG boundary scan? (besides the 2-3 day long wait times for 1gb) I'm going to try it that way with a few games as a test
 
Hey guys, what's holding us from creating custom prog and char pcbs at this moment?
If I understand it correctly, the flash ICs, which are only available on a 161-in-1 have no drop-in-replacement, right?
Did anybody try any other flash along with the current cpld logic?
For the pcb outlines, I need to seach my drives but I'm certain that I already created these a long time ago in eagle with the help of my stripclub scans:
http://stripclub.arcade-tv.de/ (folder SNK/...)

Anyways, I'm following the progress with interest and I'd like to thank y'all for time and motivation.
If there is a way to donate something for carts, equipment or hardware, pls let us know!
 
Alex said:
Hey guys, what's holding us from creating custom prog and char pcbs at this moment?
If I understand it correctly, the flash ICs, which are only available on a 161-in-1 have no drop-in-replacement, right?
Did anybody try any other flash along with the current cpld logic?
For the pcb outlines, I need to seach my drives but I'm certain that I already created these a long time ago in eagle with the help of my stripclub scans:
http://stripclub.arcade-tv.de/ (folder SNK/...)

Anyways, I'm following the progress with interest and I'd like to thank y'all for time and motivation.
If there is a way to donate something for carts, equipment or hardware, pls let us know!
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My understanding is that there are 3 FPGA's on this cart. The code is not available (I don't believe it was even dumped, or can be dumped). So understanding how this works, and shoehorning a different flash chip is more difficult than just creating a new flash cart from scratch.

The reason why there's so much focus on this cart is cost. You're getting a lot of good ICs for less than cost of material of making your own.
 
ack said:
what other available ICs though? The carts use parallel NOR based flash chips, which allow random access.
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I wish I knew, but that is beyond my knowledge about these things.
I remembered that the Fujitsu MSP55LV100S is not stocked anywhere, so I wanted to know what's your opinion about creating custom pcbs with connectors that make the programming process easier than de- and re-soldering (and also eliminate the need for sacrifice carts).
If that's not an option, please ignore this n00b question.
 
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