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penrhos

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I've picked up a pcb and puzz loop cart.

Cart has a white shell with a red triangle in the corner - which I thought was Japan region.

However underneath it's printed USA and the warning screen states it's for US only.

I now have two white carts in transit from japan.

How can I get them working without resorting to buying from arcademodbios.

Can I just burn a new Japanese bios using mame roms?
 
Cart has a white shell with a red triangle in the corner - which I thought was Japan region.
Sounds like your game has been switched to a different shell. Dark blue is USA.

A bunch of other users have changed their motherboards to region free by using the region free BIOS in MAME. I'll look for the link...

WTB: Gals Panic S/S2/S3 w/ mobo
 
You can certainly try the jp or region free bios, both are in the normal kaneko bios rom .zip

If you do please let us know how it goes :)
 
I'll see if I have any M27C4001 eproms in the bits box - i think the gq-4x can burn them.
 
So I never go around to trying to burn the region free bios because I'm having ROM burner issues again (windows decided to stop recognizing the top3000 driver).

Here's what I've seen

MAME has 5 bioses
sknsa1.u10 (asia)
sknse2.u10 (europe)
sknsj1.u10 (japan)
sknsk1.u10 (korea)
skneku1.u10 (usa)

I'm not sure if they're officially part of the mame rom set or just included but a lot of newer mame rom sets also include
supernova_modbios-japan.u10
and
supernova-modbios-korea.u10

the header on these modbios roms have "ARCADEMODBIOS" in them so there's no real question where they came from. comparing the korea modbios and the japan modbios there are only some very minor differences (4 bytes I believe). Comparing the japan modbios to the original japan bios there are many many differences so it's unclear exactly what was done.

I've also managed to pick up a Japanese PCB so I've taken some photos of the two of them and there are some differences.The korea PCB is missing 3 resistors below the capacitors, and the location of a chip to the right of the capacitors is different. I also find it interesting that the korean bios is labeled "GPS O/UB" while Japan uses "SKNSJ1". the sticker on the bottom has a different number on it as well.

On mine it looks like the two surface mount chips to the left of the unused BGA were replaced on the korean board. not sure if this is a "Fix" that was done or something that's common with korean PCBs.

korea: skns_korea.jpg
Japan: skns_japan.jpg
 
@twistedsymphony remember you have to disable driver signing on win10 if you've rebooted since you last used it.

27c4001? I can burn/ship you one if I have it in stock, which I'm pretty sure I do.
 
@twistedsymphony remember you have to disable driver signing on win10 if you've rebooted since you last used it.
yeah I did that, even revisited the instructions you gave me last time uninstalled everything and tried re-installing from scratch and it still wasn't having it.

I appreciate the offer to burn me one but I've got a bunch of projects lined up that I'll need a burner for, so I've got to get it sorted out either way.
 
@twistedsymphony remember you have to disable driver signing on win10 if you've rebooted since you last used it.
the only time I have to do that on windows 10 is after a major windows update, like a service pack. Otherwise once the driver is installed with driver signing disabled it works fine beyond reboots.
 
@twistedsymphony remember you have to disable driver signing on win10 if you've rebooted since you last used it.
the only time I have to do that on windows 10 is after a major windows update, like a service pack. Otherwise once the driver is installed with driver signing disabled it works fine beyond reboots.
hm. Mine works only when it's been rebooted in driver-signing-disabled mode. I wonder what the difference is.
 
none of that bullshit should be necessary... ever. we're dumping ones and zeros over a serial connection to a 25 year old chip; this shit should be well and fully worked out by now.
 
weird - mine gas a sticker on the bios "SKNSU1/U10".

I've not got any 4001's just 4096 & 4002 - guess I'll have to wait until the ones off eBay turn up to have a play....
 
well I couldn't get the Top3000 going so I dusted off the ol GQ4X4 and burned some bioses.

with the original bioses the JP board wouldn't load the korean carts (would show some garbage then the KANEKO logo screen then hang on the "not for resale outside of japan screen") and my korean board wouldn't load the JP carts (would actually display a region error).

using the AMB JP bios on the JP board it played both JP and korean carts, and similarly the Korean board after installing the AMB Korean bios it would play both JP and korean carts.

I don't have carts from any other region, nor did I try running different bioses on different PCBs but as of right now it appears that I have 2 multi-region SuperNova PCBS.

I got the files here: https://www.emuparadise.me/M.A.M.E....ator_ROMs/Super_Kaneko_Nova_System_BIOS/16647 of all places...
 
All those AMBs have been in MAME for quite some, always get the latest version from: http://mamedev.com

ROM_LOAD_BIOS( 5, "supernova_modbios-japan.u10", 0x000000, 0x080000, CRC(b8d3190c) SHA1(62c9a4a075fd944e89fe95c6b46046101eb6de1c) ) \
ROM_LOAD_BIOS( 6, "supernova-modbios-korea.u10", 0x000000, 0x080000, CRC(1d90517c) SHA1(463962ffe19880135f0d95a7beda79e27448e872) )
 
All those AMBs have been in MAME for quite some [time]...
I wasn't sure if they were officially in MAME or not since my somewhat-out-of-date rom set didn't have them. I should have checked source...

I'm curious to know what the reason was for including modified bios files. it seems out of character for MAME.
 
I'm curious to know what the reason was for including modified bios files. it seems out of character for MAME.
It's part of the documentation aspect.

The Universe-BIOS is also stored, quoting from: neogeo.cpp

The Universe bios roms are supported because they're now used on enough PCBs
to be considered 'in active arcade use' rather than just homebrew hacks.
 
Right my M27C4001's have arrived and I've burnt the Japan modbios from MAME roms to try in my USA motherboard.

The stock eprom on mine is a M27C040 - I've dumped it and compared it to the images in MAME and it looks like its the standard USA BIOS so as rewrite said it looks like the cart shell has been swapped from blue to white (or puzz loop is region free).
 
I started talking about this in the kaneko label thread here: Kaneko SuperNova Cart Labels anywhere??

but I figured it'd be better to move the conversation here into the region thread.
... while I had the carts out I tried something I've been meaning to test. the only difference between the different region variants of the games seems to be the socketed roms so I burned some new roms for my Korean Gal's Panic S and converted it to a European region. I might try the same with Saru Kani to convert it to Vs Block Breaker.
So you burned the other regions roms and worked without issues? Cool. Are you using a multi bios on the MB?
yes I'm using the multi bios.
so there are 2 socketed chips on every kaneko cart
on Rom-2-Boards it's u8 and u10 (1MB each)
on Rom-4-Boards it's u4 and u6 (512K each)


so some games came one R4 boards others came on R2 boards, some games could be on either.


my Gal's Panic S was on a R2 board so I used a couple of M27C801 to burn new u10 and u8 chips from MAME. Nothing special about it either, just burned them and threw them in.
So, I went through the mame source and pulled out the different potential CART region conversions:

ROM-2-Board
cyvern <-> cyvernj [M27C801 x2]
galpani4 <-> galpani4k <-> galpanidx (this one is odd as the "dx" version uses 1MB roms and the "4" versions use 512K)
galpanis <-> galpanise <-> galpanisj <-> galpanisk [M27C801 x2]
galpansu (R2) [other regions use R4 board]
galpans3 [no other regions]
panicstr [no other regions]
jjparads [no other regions]
teljan [no other regions]
ryouran <-> ryourano [M27C4001 x2]
vblokbrk <-> vblokbrka <-> sarukani [M27C4001 x2]


ROM-4-Board
galpans2 <-> galpans2j <-> galpans2a <-> galpansu (R4) [M27C801 x2]
gutsn [no other regions]
puzzloop <-> puzzloope <-> puzzloopj <-> puzzloopa <-> puzzloopk <-> puzzloopu [M27C4001 x2]
jjparad2 [no other regions]
sengekis <-> sengekisj [M27C4001 x2]
senknow [no other regions]

The only one I've tried is galpanisk -> galpanise
I plan on trying puzzloopj -> puzzloopu, sarukani->vblokbrk and maybe sengekisj -> sengekis

the only real odd-ball here is Gal's Panic SU, this is Gal's Panic S2 for the korean region but they used an R2 board while the rest used an R4. supposedly all the mask roms are the same so it might be convertible to S2.

If you were going to attempt a cart conversion you'd also want to stick to a donor cart of the same type. So a good donor for Cyvern would be Jan Jan Paridise, and a good donor for Sengeki Striker would be Puzz Loop.

The SU cart might be a key to converting board types though, as they're supposedly running an R4 game on an R2 board. looking at mine there is only 1 jumper wire and I don't see any other modifications (though there are some PALs that might be different)
 
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So my Gal's Panic SU cart actually used a Rom-4-Board, which is different than what is specified in mame source.

I was able to burn European S2 U4 and U6 to convert it to a European S2

I need to wait to get some new M27C4001 chips in before I can try Vs Block Breaker and Puzz Loop. At this point though I'm pretty confident I can convert them without much issue.
 
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I have a JP gals panic 4 and gals panic S extra

The gals panic 4 is on a board labelled ROM-BOARD with the socketed roms at U8/U10. U10 and U8 sockets are screen print marked for a 27c4001. I'm curious on this one to see if dx would work but I only have 27c4001 but no 27c801 on hand. I'll probably order some.

The gals panic S extra I probably won't mess with but the rom board is labelled ROM 3 BOARD. Roms at U4/U6. PCB screened for 27c4001.

I can take pics or dumps or whatever if any if this matters to anyone.
 
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