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caius

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Some time ago I had for repair an original Bogey Manor PCB by Technos (but running on Data East hardware).I was able to fix the board but I had to replace the custom IC marked 'VSC30 with a same one taken from a donor board, you can read the whole story in my repair log :

Bogey Manor repair log

After some time I sent the board back to the owner I thought it would have been a good thing to reproduce this custom IC as well.The part come in a DIP40 .600 mil package :



Its pinout can be found in schematics of different Data east games like Express Raider, Last Mission and Gondomania :



It seems the part is involved in tilemap/background generation performing some kind of clock dividing.With this info and looking at how the same functions were achieved on previous hardware I came to a couple of designs using simple TTL gates ( I even used DIP ones because of low number needed)




I used as testing platform my original Express Raider PCB which carries one 'VSC30' on bottom VIDEO board :




The replacement worked great :



As far as I know the 'VSC30' is present on these PCBs :


  • Bogey Manor
  • Breywood
  • Express Raider
  • Gondomania
  • Last Mission
  • Shoot Out
  • The Real Ghostbusters

And perhaps some others running on similar Data East hardware of same era (see 'dec8.ccp' driver in MAME source) so feel free to send your findings.Also, it could be that few boards, like Bogey Manor, make use of extended features of this custom IC so, please, contact me if you are willing to test my replacement on your board.
 
Great work @caius. I got rid of that type of hardware because of the high failure rate I experienced with those custom chips.
Happy to see that preservation effort.
 
Thanks.Yes, I think it's a good thing anyway to have a replacement even if these games are not really common and perhaps nobody, except me, will ever encounter a bad custom IC :)
 
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I have an Express Raider cabinet in my collection. I love that game.
 
Yes, a funny game but a bit underrated IMHO.
 
For some reason I love the horse riding levels so much.
 
I have an Express Raider that just boots to a garbled graphics screen and that's it (no movement or sound). Would this possible fix that issue? I know it is hard to say, but sometimes these faults are "likely" although not perfect.

Also, @caius, thank you for your tip on Pyros!
 
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