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!