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Asure

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Edit: Job done: See post #2 for the attachment, it's tested & working by Dbstallman :)


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I took a closer look at DBZVRVS today, and I did not see any big roadblocks.

The custom fd1149 seems to set up a mirror range. When writes to an address occur, they appear at another place in fd1149 ram automatically.

Dbstallman reported that the game will boot with a dead custom. Not without it. This is probably because the game will then hang on writes. There is no shared ram to write to.

With a dead custom several gfx areas are just black. This would happen since the main cpu expects to read back a value from shared ram. The value is always 0 with a dead custom.

I need to look at the game a little bit closer to see where these writes and reads occur. It might be possible to map them to the same address to allow the game to function again with a dead module. Or map them to normal ram to get rid of the fd1149 completely.
 
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Seems to be a single read only:

8060C movz.hw C8[R25], R0 ( 1D 20 39 C8 00 )

R25 holds 208000 and the read is from 0x2080C8, but on dead battery there is no data there.
The data sits at 0x200044 however. (the game put the data at 0x200044 earlier, waiting for a magic copy by the FD1149 to 2080C8, which never took place.)
Also R20 holds 0x200000 at this point.. so..how about:

8060C movz.hw 44[R20], R0 ( 1D 20 34 44 00 )
(read from R20 + 0x44 instead..)

Now all we need is a dead battery victim to test the attached rom :) ===> click to download ==> View attachment 16542a.zip

Please test:
1. With FD1149 in place
2. Without FD1149 in place (there might be a second case which checks for a (any?) fd1149 in the socket..)
 
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Give me about half an hour. I'll test it out.

Thanks Asure, you're awesome!
 
Great :)

Should drop this into a 27C040 i'd think. Needs intensive testing, credit feeding and game completion. :)

Note: If i kill the fixes in MAME source, and use original roms, the game "works", but you can never press start, and only insert coins & hear coinup sound.

If real hw boots with sprites, a small video would be cool as well ;)
 
I've got to go to my niece's birthday party in about 30 mins, but I've burned a replacement and given it a quick test.

The game will boot with the standard territory warning if the FD1149 is present on the board, but then just goes to a black screen.

If the FD1149 is removed the game boots and plays normally. I played a couple of games with no problem (didn't get past the first fight but everything seems to be fine on a quick check) and I'm going to leave it in attract mode with "sound in attract" turned on while I'm gone.

I'll give it a full playthrough this evening.

Thanks again,

Brian.
 
thanks for the quick test!
Looking forward to a credit feed, I think I nabbed all the protection but there may be more. Sega seems to have been lazy with this one as well. :)
 
It has been running without error for about 8 hours now.

I've coined it up to max credits (9) and played 2 player games with my son for about half an hour.

He has played it all the way though with Goku and finished it in about 35 credits. We finally had to look up the character cards online to figure out how to do moves effectively and beat the final boss.

It hasn't exhibited any issues at this point. I'm confident in giving it a thumbs up, but I will still attempt to play all the way through with each character.

We have tried all the characters several times.

Great work, man. Any thoughts on trying Dark Edge? I don't have a Dark Edge board (the ROM board I thougt was is actually another DBZ V.R.V.S.), but I could easily convert the spare DBZ V.R.V.S. ROM board over to a Dark Edge to test it out for you. ;p

Brian.
 
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Do you have those moves cards? I've never been able to figure out many of the moves.
 
Dark Edge seems to do (a little) bit more magic things in shared ram but nothing too fancy.
Just need to translate how this works out on real hw, and look at Mame's ram viewer when it's doing its thing.
If we are going for 'Quick wins' then Arabian fight is a much more likely candidate at this point.

It's just that i have too little free time. Busy at work, busy at life :)

System32 pcb price raise in 3..2..1..

Also:
vrvskit.jpg
 
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too late - system32 pcbs have already shot up in price. I dropped a few bids over the last 2 weeks and even suicides ones are going for silly money on yaj and the winners have been proxy agents..
 
is it time for a multi?
You would also need to design a multi I/O board. The little board near the front of the PCB, to the side of the JAMMA connector, comes in at least two different types. There is one for the standard fighting games and a different one for the racing games.

If there is going to be a multi, it should include all the games on the system.

Brian.
 
Agreed,

If there is going to be a multi, it should include all the games on the system.
Agreed.

There's not too much special stuff for this platform. Sega was already eyeing other hardware, and games feel like a 'testcase' (Arabian Fight) and rushed/botched protection (Golden Axe 2).
Even the non-protected game(s) like Spiderman were not bootlegged, either because of quality or a declining interest of the public in arcades.

A multi will be worthwhile once board prices go insane. I think anything €150+ for a Sys32 board is already insane. (or even the 120UKP for a single rom board.)

But looking at recent sales on Ebay, it seems pretty normal to me. And someone is buying those rom boards to create Golden Axe's from already (which was to be expected, with the pcb at ebay price €250-350)
 
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