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Does it still need the wire patch on the backside of the PCB?
Just in case it's not obvious from the pictures, you also need to cut a trace:
single_board_dead-connection-conversion.jpg
 
So I was was looking through the MAME Driver for Taito F2 earlier and I noticed that there's a slightly different machine configuration for the World Release of Dead Connection and the Japanese release of Dead Connection.

Previously I had modified my 2-board version of Hattrick Hero (see my post above: Can I convert Football Champ (Taito F1) into something else?) but it refused to boot... however I was using the World region ROMs.

I dusted off the PCB and swapped d28-12.5 (world region) for d28-07.5 (jp region) and it BOOTS! My modifications were correct all along.
So apparently there are some differences in the hardware that prevent the single-board World ROMs from working on the 2-board JP hardware. Of course running the JP ROMs now the game is in Japanese :-/


Comparing the ROMs there is literally only 2 BITS different on the last two words of the file
World version ends in 10 03
JP version ends in 00 01

This to me says that both versions of the game are on the same ROM and it's just checking the last byte. Working on the Assumption that one byte is to set the hardware version and the other byte is to set the region... super easy to test in MAME.

running deadconxj in MAME
bits set to 00 01 is the default JP 2-board version in MAME
bits set to 10 03 (just like world version) the game boots in English but the graphics are wrong (sprites out of place)
bits set to 10 01 the game boots in Japanese and the graphics are wrong
bits set to 00 03 the game boots in English and the graphics are correct.

so the second to last word 00 = 2-board version, 10 = single board version
the last word 01 = JP region, 03 = World region.

now I can make a custom 2-board world ROM! but wait... maybe I can make it work for other regions that don't exist?


changing the last word to 00 = USA, Canada, and Mexico region without the winners don't use drugs message
changing the last word to 02 = USA, Canada, and Mexico Region with "Winners Don't Use Drugs" message :D

I didn't bother playing further than that. But I'm excited that I not only do I now have a working 2-board conversion but that my conversions are now USA region!

UPDATE:
I think the USA Version was never meant to be, the game crashes on me when using that region. works fine with JP or World regions though.
 
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Nice , I gotta attempt this at some point, excellent work guys, thanks for sharing!!
 
so i got some spare time so i thought that i could make the football champ board live with the ROMS from the "dead" dead connection board.

i cut the trace on the FC board, hooked up connections accordingly to the picture posted by @mypinballs, transfered the EPROMS and MASKROMS and......nothing.

I dumped the ROMset and it is the WORLD version, deadconx Dead Connection (World)

EDIT
No i missed the pinout :)
now the game boots, but with faulty sprites
 
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Yes ive dumped all roms and they verify as ok.

Here’s how it looks
270F5D1A-C3DA-4E31-9D50-CE2F27EF740C.jpeg

I believe that this is sprite ram, is A13 really supposed to be held low?
1A7CAF3F-235E-4461-8A33-0B9C6451897E.jpeg


EDIT again!
No I did not dump all ROMS :cursing:

but now I have and 01 was bad. I had one 27c800 left so i could burn the rom file and now it looks pretty!
Thanks
 
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Nice work fellow arcade enthusiastics!

I have a Euro Champ '92 - does or should this work too?
 
Thanks man! :thumbsup:

Ninja Kids should also work in theory?

The perfect conversion would be a Metal Black for this... :love:
 
The perfect conversion would be a Metal Black for this..
I've looked at it.
There's a different IO chip, assuming you can make that work, (at minimum you'd have to remap controls, worst case it's a deal breaker). You'd need to increase ROM space like we did here but then you'd need to modify the program ROM to remap everything from address 0x200000 through 0xa00003, basically everything except for the main ROM and RAM space. This includes remapping sprite ram and pallet ram which is a huge amount of work and a huge pain in the ass.

football champ uses a sprite banking feature that metal black doesn't so, that would need to be disabled

Audio CPU also requires a larger ROM, so that would have to be fixed on the hardware as well.

On a whole this conversion would be quite similar to my Koshien to Gun Frontier but with a an extra month worth of mame debugging work to fix the address map. Assuming it even works due to the different IO chip.
 
I tried so far to replace the 27c800 for u9 & u10 with others (i doubled the files and writed on 27c160’s)
that's a trick to get by if you don't have the correct sized ROMs, yous should always try to use the correct size if you have them.

If I start with this
1. verify every ROM using your programmer they should match against the WORLD version: "deadconx"
2. double check that they're all in the correct locations (the ROM names are not the correct location names) the mapping for single board is at the bottom here: https://www.arcade-projects.com/thr...-into-something-else.11225/page-2#post-197733
 
I want to ask if PuLiRuLa can be made too with Eurochamp '92/Football Champ F1 boards.

EDIT: I have seen the I/O custom is different in Pulirula board, so the game Drift Out would be the perfect donor.
 
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I don't believe Football Champ would be a donor. Metal Black is probably the next most likely conversion target for Football Champ, though would require extensive memory remapping. You are correct that the customs on Drift Out are the same as PuLiRuLa, though if you look at the memory map in MAME you'll see that it's quite different and PuLiRuLa has additional Sprite Expansion RAM.

Drift Out has similar map to Cameltry, and indeed I found a DriftOut Prototype PCB that started life as an original Cameltry, but with MANY MANY factory wire modifications.
 
Different hardware, but I am curious... Is there any chance of an F2 multi? Or are the ROM boards just too different? I always have hope that everything with a common motherboard/ROM board will eventually have a multi 👍:D
 
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