I've already asked Caius on Twitter about my TH Strokes Back, which is freezing suddenly on the second stage, always in the same spot, and he said this could mean partial suicide and suggested I go along with the revival procedure. However, since I'm too much of a noob, I need some pointers. I dug up a post by Apocalypse, in which he discussed the World Rally fix. Is the pinout for TH Strikes Back the same?
- 1 (closest to the printed 0) = VCC
- 2 = TXD
- 3 = RXD
- 4 = /PROG
- 5 = GND
Since only GND/TXD/RXD are used, will
this cable suffice to connect the board to the PC?
According to Apocalypse's post on Neo Geo:
The port settings are 2400b/s, 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit and XON/XOFF flux control. With hyperterminal (or any other serial communication software) send a carrier return. The game should answer "DS5002 LOADER VERSION 0.1..." Then send U, the game should answer "UNLOCKED". Send L, the game waits for a file to load. Transfer is quite long (between 5 and 10mn?). When finished type Z to lock the DS5002.
Now, I assume the program you're supposed to send is the contents of the thoop2_ds5002fp.bin [CRC32 6881384D] file, just rename it to hex. It's 32 bytes. I'm asking for some guidance, because it's the only TH SB board I have, and Gaelco games are really dear to me, so I wouldn't want to screw anything up.
Also, I have already asked this on Twitter, but got no reply. This method will still rely on the battery being alive and well. You just return the board to its original, non-suicided state. Is there a way to get rid of the battery altogether? Specifically, would a Infinikey type device be possible in this scenario? Remove the battery, and have a small circuit connected to the communication pins that will perform the desuicide on boot-up?