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mypinballs

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Hi,

After the success of the football champ conversion to dead connection i am now wondering if i can convert my F3 single layer Taito 'Cup Finals' PCB Part number K1100743A to something else? Dungeon Magic looks cool as does Rayforce. Are there different flavours of single board, or it is the same for all games on this hardware? Or did they only make certain game on single layer format?

Interested to know.

My board looks like this

taito cup finals F3 motherboard .jpg





Cheers

Jim
 
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While i wish I could help I didn’t even realize f3 had single board revisions. That said your photo above is of your football champ board!
Doh!, oops uploaded the wrong pic! Ammended my post now.

These single board do seem alittle harder to find. I wonder why they made 2 different versions of F3??
 
While i wish I could help I didn’t even realize f3 had single board revisions. That said your photo above is of your football champ board!

MAME only seems to have one pcb listed in the driver, different part but it might be similar enough, for light-bringer https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blo...63a011954/src/mame/drivers/taito_f3.cpp#L1670


Good luck and if it doesn’t work out darksoft did build a multi for the cart version of f3: Taito F3. Sales Open. Get your cart here
Yes, there is single PCB version of some games. I own Arabian Magic single PCB, I like it haha
 
https://www.ebay.es/itm/Taito-Top-Ranking-Stars-Original-Jamma-Pcb-Arcade-Coinop-Boxe-/324032222664

Top ranking stars was a factory conversion from this football board, it's cheap enough not to bother.
Thanks for the reply and info :) So it that the only candidate for this board, or are their others?? I'm assuming some of the single boards hardware was changed between games etc, ie its not just a 1 fits all single board? (minus pals and roms)

I think a conversion to anything other than football is worth it to me :) Cant stand football or footy games!!
 
https://www.ebay.es/itm/Taito-Top-Ranking-Stars-Original-Jamma-Pcb-Arcade-Coinop-Boxe-/324032222664

Top ranking stars was a factory conversion from this football board, it's cheap enough not to bother.
Thanks for the reply and info :) So it that the only candidate for this board, or are their others?? I'm assuming some of the single boards hardware was changed between games etc, ie its not just a 1 fits all single board? (minus pals and roms)
I think a conversion to anything other than football is worth it to me :) Cant stand football or footy games!!
No idea, it should be a direct conversion and a good place to start as it's known to work.

F. Champ is easy as all the roms are in sockets already, with this it's half a day's work just on unsoldering....
If you do the work then try and get top ranking stars running first, after that can start experimenting with other romsets.
 
Believe it or not, there is a variant of Ray Force on the single-board White IC PCB. I don't know if the componentry changed at all, because I don't own a copy (I have Orange board with subboard).

I have a listing of all single-board White variant PCBs at home for the Taito F3, I can post it later. I would be very interested if conversion to other games for the same board version were possible!

Dungeon Magic is an Orange variant board with an Expansion subboard, not sure how practical that one will be.
 
Okay, sorry - I forgot to respond to this yesterday with more details.

F3 HARDWARE

From what I'm aware, there are 3 different Taito F3 boards - with 2 possible expansions for one variant board (I'm not counting sub-boards as variants - but if the mainboard itself is different these may be variants; I need time to analyze). There is also one interesting case which might be a variant, but needs more testing to see...

The three variants are: ORANGE, WHITE, and MOTHER.

ORANGE is named such since it has distinctive orange beads at the front of the PCB (nearest to the JAMMA edge connector). I believe these are related to noise reduction on signals coming in and going out of the mainboard (ferrite beads? can anyone confirm this? I'm still pretty much a newb at EE). Regardless, it's a neat feature that is quite distinctive, so it's one way of identifying one version of the F3 boards. First sold in 1992 (Based on earliest game's build date - Arabian Magic; would love a sales sheet for MSRP).

WHITE is named such since it has distinctive white ICs at the front of the PCB (nearest to the JAMMA edge connector). You'll find the orange beads are gone, I believe this is because these ICs replace the functionality of the orange components with what seems to be a more optimal version of the same function (again, I'm reaching here, I'd love an engineer's analysis, but that's how I see these). First sold in 1993 (Based on earliest game's build date - Hattrick Hero '93; would love a sales sheet for MSRP).

MOTHER is named since it has a sticker saying "F3 MOTHER PCB", this is the mainboard of the classic "Taito F3 Package System". After the MOTHER PCB was released, basically all of the games released afterwards were released as carts for this PCB. I informally call the whole product (plastic casing + ROM PCB) a "ROM CART", however the only official terminology I've seen thus far is "ROM PCB" which is printed on the PCB inside the ROM CART. First sold in 1994 (Based on earliest game's build date - Hattrick Hero '94; would love a sales sheet for MSRP).

The two expansion boards are both only found on the ORANGE board, and are: ROM17, and EXPAND.

ROM17 is named such since it has markings which say "ROM17 PCB" on the PCB. This is a smaller expansion board which was used only on one PCB (to my knowledge). It adds fewer ROMs than EXPAND PCB. I don't know much more about this one, so I plan on doing some investigation later. First seen in 1992 (Based on earliest game's build date - Grid Seeker: Project Storm Hammer; would love a sales sheet for MSRP).

EXPAND is named such since it has markings which say "EXPAND PCB" on the PCB. This is used on a few ORANGE PCBs to add more ROMs to the board. I don't know much more about this one, so I plan on doing some investigation later. First seen in 1993 (Based on earliest game's build date - Super Cup Finals; would love a sales sheet for MSRP).

About that other possible variant... It's called: NEW MOTHER.

NEW MOTHER is named such since it has a sticker saying "F3 MOTHER PCB (NEW)", this looks like just a regular MOTHER PCB, so I have no idea what makes this "NEW". I'd love to investigate this board, I just need time to do it... Regardless, it has to be relatively compatible with regular MOTHER PCBs, because you don't require a specific MOTHER PCB to play specific games. But I figured it was interesting and perhaps worth mentioning.

SINGLE-BOARD GAMES

I have information on almost all the carts and boards, but for now I'll just list the single-board games since that's what we're talking about. I plan on sharing the rest - but I'd rather send that out with more information at a later date. This is information as I understand it, I have physically seen all of these, but not handled all of them, so please correct me if any of you feel this is wrong.
  • Arabian Magic (ORANGE)
  • Ring Rage (ORANGE)
  • Riding Fight (ORANGE)
  • Grid Seeker: Project Storm Hammer (ORANGE + ROM17)
  • Hattrick Hero '93 / Taito Cup Final (WHITE)
  • Prime Time Fighter / Top Ranking Stars (WHITE)
  • Super Cup Finals (ORANGE + EXPAND)
  • Ray Force / Gunlock (ORANGE + EXPAND && WHITE)
  • Light Bringer / Dungeon Magic (ORANGE + EXPAND)
SINGLE-BOARD HISTORY

It's worth mentioning that at the beginning of the lifespan of the F3, games were primarily ORANGE variant. Eventually a few games released with the WHITE variant PCB, but it wasn't really a clean-cut. It wasn't like ORANGE was dominant, and then WHITE became dominant in the market. I have no idea what to claim about this, but being that the white ICs from the WHITE board survived to the MOTHER PCB, I'd wager the WHITE board was newer. However, as mentioned, still a lot of ORANGE boards released during that last year before 1994 when the F3 Package System dropped (Package System being the name of the MOTHER PCB + ROM CART combo).

Since we have an example of a game releasing across the WHITE/ORANGE boundary (Ray Force), my guess is that the WHITE board supports higher-capacity ROMs. So with some messing about, one could theoretically change a WHITE PCB to support any of the ORANGE variant games. I have no idea if this is true! I have the boards to do the analysis, I just haven't gotten to it yet...

In general, I have no idea about which conversions are possible for these single-board PCBs. I've only seen conversions to ROM CARTS for the F3 Package System. If you succeed, I would love to document this!

I hope any of this was interesting to anyone!
 
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my guess is that the WHITE board supports higher-capacity ROMs. So with some messing about, one could theoretically change a WHITE PCB to support any of the ORANGE variant games. I have no idea if this is true! I have the boards to do the analysis, I just haven't gotten to it yet...
That's controlled by JP1 on the single layers :)

Good info, there's more single boards out there than your list, top ranking stars shown above is one.
 
Ah, sorry - Top Ranking Stars is another name for Prime Time Fighter - I did not list alternate names. Allow me to edit the post.

Anyhow - thanks for the tip! I'm doing continuity checks on different parts of the hardware this month. I just finished identifying where the ROM CART pins go on the ROM PCB. I might need some double-checking there... 96x4 pins are a lot of pins (luckily, at least a column of each of them are either PWR or GND).

I'll be moving on to the MOTHER PCB after I'm done with the ROM PCB. This is for another thread though - I don't want to hijack this one. ;) (Just wanted to add some quick context for where I was in analysis.)
 
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Ah, sorry - Top Ranking Stars is another name for Prime Time Fighter - I did not list alternate names. Allow me to edit the post.

Anyhow - thanks for the tip! I'm doing continuity checks on different parts of the hardware this month. I just finished identifying where the ROM CART pins go on the ROM PCB. I might need some double-checking there... 96x4 pins are a lot of pins (luckily, at least a column of each of them are either PWR or GND).

I'll be moving on to the MOTHER PCB after I'm done with the ROM PCB. This is for another thread though - I don't want to hijack this one. ;) (Just wanted to add some quick context for where I was in analysis.)
Nice, if we can get standard rom boards working with the single layer board that would be cool and save modding the pcb for each game.
This taito pcb is hard work on the desoldering, using new connector spots and bypassing the on board mask roms would also be nice :)
 
Okay, sorry - I forgot to respond to this yesterday with more details.

....

In general, I have no idea about which conversions are possible for these single-board PCBs. I've only seen conversions to ROM CARTS for the F3 Package System. If you succeed, I would love to document this!

I hope any of this was interesting to anyone!
Great info, thanks very much :)
 
Here's an interesting discovery. Just downloaded a set of roms for gunlock. The rom numbering of the files for the game roms (or what i think is the game roms, - the currently socketed roms , 6 x 27c020 size ) matches exactly with the silkscreen ic numbers on the board!

In fact it matches better than how the cup final roms are labelled!!!

More than a co-incidence??

Lets find out :)
 
The rom numbering of the files for the game roms (or what i think is the game roms, - the currently socketed roms , 6 x 27c020 size ) matches exactly with the silkscreen ic numbers on the board!
That's how every rom in Mame should be named. Unfortunately, I guess there wasn't any standard for naming roms when most of these games were dumped, which is why the names can be anything.

I have both Grid Seeker and Gun Lock if anyone is interested in hires pics of them.
 
That's how every rom in Mame should be named. Unfortunately, I guess there wasn't any standard for naming roms when most of these games were dumped, which is why the names can be anything.

I have both Grid Seeker and Gun Lock if anyone is interested in hires pics of them.
I'd be very interested in pic of the single layer gun lock pcb if you have that version to compare against my cup finals one?

The rom naming from the mame dumps does make sense as it follows whatever the board labelling and ic names were on the board used.

ie TaitoBoardVersionID-RomLabel.ICNumber

What i was meaning above is the dump used for the gun lock roms matches my original cup finals single layer board, therefore meaning there must be a version of gun lock that has the same board layout or at the very least the same game and sound rom layout.
 
Some progress :)

Burnt the 6 socketed roms that were socketed to see what happened. 4 for the Game code and 2 for sound code. As was mentioning before the game rom dump laebelling matched the boards silkscreen exactly

gun lock conversion - 1.jpg


And was presented with an nice encouraging message...

gun lock conversion - 2.jpg

Then..

gun lock conversion - 3.jpg


gun lock conversion - 4.jpg


and then took me into a settings menu..

gun lock conversion - 5.jpg


gun lock conversion - 8.jpg

Exited out of this after some tests

gun lock conversion - 7.jpg

and..

Could play a game! Obviously all the sprites and tiles are wrong, but i could move a blob around the screen and shoot stuff!

No sound though yet. I wonder if there's a 2mb pin30 issue again, as the sound roms are twice the size as cup finals. Though the board silkscreen does clearly say 27c1001/27c2001 next to each one. Interestingly the games rom ones just say 27c2001 near them though and cup finals uses 4 x 27c1001 game roms!

gun lock conversion - 9.jpg
gun lock conversion - 11.jpg
gun lock conversion - 12.jpg

So pretty happy with this.

What does everyone think?

Next to swap the soldered sprite and tile roms
 
This is awesome, thanks for sharing! :)

I would wait on sound assessments though. Sound code probably pulls from other ROMs for sound data, so probably sound could be working, but the data is all messed up (as would make sense in this scenario).

Please keep us posted! (And thanks for the pics)
 
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