Irem M84 Conversions

[Apocalypse]

@Apocalypse so from All these MXX boards which one is in your opinion the preferred. I mean the one that could accomodate more games because of the amount of RAM and availabilty? M82?

There's no simple answer, especially since I don't own the hardware (except R-Type II M84).
For instance I've been able to convert Pound For Pound (only M85 game) to R-Type in MAME. However MAME also states most inputs on Pound For Pound aren't wired on the JAMMA edge connector cause the game use trackballs only. I wonder if it's possible to add jumper wires for the missing input connection and make it run like a M84 board?
I'd say M82/M84 are the most compatible boards but need extensive code modification to support M72/M81 games (or crazy wire mod).

M81 is a good alternative to M72, way cheaper and supports all M72 games with few modifications in code (to circumvent the MCU protection chip and accommodate different RAM offsets).

 

[Darksoft]

Got it! Thanks for clarification.

 

[NEON_Arcade]

As a recent owner of an M84 Hammerin' Harry set, is there any info currently out there on successfully converting them? The Paul Swan conversion guide link appears to be no more and if I recall was using a M82 Major Title.

I swear at some point years ago I recall seeing a process for M84 Hammerin' Harry to R-Type II somewhere, but I can't seem to find it, or am remembering something else entirely?

 

[Asure]

Swan's guide can still be found with the wayback machine:

http://web.archive.org/web/20160314144503/http://paulswan.me/arcade/arcade.htm

 

[RealMFnG]

As a recent owner of an M84 Hammerin' Harry set, is there any info currently out there on successfully converting them? The Paul Swan conversion guide link appears to be no more and if I recall was using a M82 Major Title.

I swear at some point years ago I recall seeing a process for M84 Hammerin' Harry to R-Type II somewhere, but I can't seem to find it, or am remembering something else entirely?

I never pulled it off myself. Some of the PROM's I got from Buy IC were bunk. Didn't even get past the programming stage. Fables are out there mentioning people that pulled it off. Of course, there is no documentation stating how they did it. There is a lot more mention of folks following Paul Swan's guide using Hammerin' Harry M84 instead of Major Title where the attempt has been unsuccessful. Doesn't mean it is not possible and Apocalypse says it may be possible. But I don't think he has explored it yet. I'll definitely buy the bin's from him if he ever does!

Personally, I am going to sit on my Hammerin' Harry M84 and cross my fingers that a mulit is made for the M84. So MAME emulation is going to have to do for now.

Also, the conversions you may have seen are for M92 conversion to R-Type Leo, not R-Type II. I did that myself over here. None of this however stops you from trying.

 

[Hammy]

There is nothing for the m84 right now only the stock game that comes on the board you get.
The top boards vary so there's not much chance until someone understands why the HH board won't boot with anything other than it's original setup.
R type 2 m84 i think may be convertible to other games with the usual techniques but it's not worth messing with.

 

[NEON_Arcade]

Cool, that's what I thought. I'm currently up to my ears in projects, but once I get Forgotten Worlds wrapped up I might give thew M84 platform some attention and see if I can help.

 

[Apocalypse]

I never pulled it off myself. Some of the PROM's I got from Buy IC were bunk. Didn't even get past the programming stage. Fables are out there mentioning people that pulled it off. Of course, there is no documentation stating how they did it. There is a lot more mention of folks following Paul Swan's guide using Hammerin' Harry M84 instead of Major Title where the attempt has been unsuccessful. Doesn't mean it is not possible and Apocalypse says it may be possible. But I don't think he has explored it yet. I'll definitely buy the bin's from him if he ever does!
Personally, I am going to sit on my Hammerin' Harry M84 and cross my fingers that a mulit is made for the M84. So MAME emulation is going to have to do for now.

Also, the conversions you may have seen are for M92 conversion to R-Type Leo, not R-Type II. I did that myself over here. None of this however stops you from trying.

I don't see why it wouldn't be possible and I think the only hurdle is handcrafting a new PAL (not really a problem once you have the pinout of the OG one).

 

[RealMFnG]

Cool, that's what I thought. I'm currently up to my ears in projects, but once I get Forgotten Worlds wrapped up I might give thew M84 platform some attention and see if I can help.

Same. Same. Man, when Darksoft and Mitsurgi-w decided to name this site Arcade-Projects.com, they must have not realized the implication the "s" has on our lives. They should have named this site Arcade-in-Working-Order.com. Would have saved many many man hours.

I don't see why it wouldn't be possible and I think the only hurdle is handcrafting a new PAL (not really a problem once you have the pinout of the OG one).

No rush sir. As you can see, all of us are knee deep working on all the goodies that you produce for us. Wouldn't mind seeing an M84 multi from an HH board. Short of that, let us know if you are able to pull off a conversion. I'll definitely buy the bins from you.

 

[Apocalypse]

As said I need to step back from the scene a bit for a while.
Also I don't have any M84 boardset and don't plan to buy one for now.
And nothing to pay for, if I release anything it will be free.

 

[kuze]

I never pulled it off myself. Some of the PROM's I got from Buy IC were bunk. Didn't even get past the programming stage. Fables are out there mentioning people that pulled it off. Of course, there is no documentation stating how they did it. There is a lot more mention of folks following Paul Swan's guide using Hammerin' Harry M84 instead of Major Title where the attempt has been unsuccessful. Doesn't mean it is not possible and Apocalypse says it may be possible. But I don't think he has explored it yet. I'll definitely buy the bin's from him if he ever does!
Personally, I am going to sit on my Hammerin' Harry M84 and cross my fingers that a mulit is made for the M84. So MAME emulation is going to have to do for now.

Also, the conversions you may have seen are for M92 conversion to R-Type Leo, not R-Type II. I did that myself over here. None of this however stops you from trying.

I don't see why it wouldn't be possible and I think the only hurdle is handcrafting a new PAL (not really a problem once you have the pinout of the OG one).

If that's the case, then the ever helpful http://www.jammarcade.net/pal-dumps/ may be useful here.

From that page if you search for 'r-type', this shows up in the results:

Irem M84
(Cosmic Cop, Hammerin' Harry, Ken-Go, Major Title, R-Type 2) Untested Unknown source
frsj8112 reported that the one named 'm84-c-3a_ic8.jed' is the correct one Hammerin' Harry and it's unique to this game.
The one name 'm84-a-2h_ic5.jed' is the same over all different M84 games.The ones @5L and 7D should be different from game to game. GAL16V8 Irem M84

They have an attached 'm84.zip' file for download with the files referenced.

I might give it a try going from Hammerin' Harry to R-Type 2, but first need to socket the board and order EPROMs.

 

[Hammy]

They have an attached 'm84.zip' file for download with the files referenced.
I might give it a try going from Hammerin' Harry to R-Type 2, but first need to socket the board and order EPROMs.

Tried it with original r type 2 gal and top board & original roms, did not work. Also tried various other configurations. In the end it was easier to fix the r type 2 motherboard and call it a day with 2 working pcb's.

As i said above more to it than than a gal + rom swap, there must be a jumper or something stopping the cpu from booting / reading the roms correctly.

 

[kuze]

They have an attached 'm84.zip' file for download with the files referenced.
I might give it a try going from Hammerin' Harry to R-Type 2, but first need to socket the board and order EPROMs.

Tried it with original r type 2 gal and top board & original roms, did not work. Also tried various other configurations. In the end it was easier to fix the r type 2 motherboard and call it a day with 2 working pcb's.
As i said above more to it than than a gal + rom swap, there must be a jumper or something stopping the cpu from booting / reading the roms correctly.

You mean something on the bottom board that would need to be changed? Maybe another pal, or yeah maybe a jumper.

 

[Hammy]

All pals replaced with original & working ones made no difference. There's something else stopping it booting.
I sat for many hours looking at the 2 pcb's side by side there was one capacitor 'jumper' that allowed the jap romset to run by changing it's position but did not allow r-type to do anything.

It's also impossible to port r-t 2 to the harry pal setup because it uses larger program roms than harry.
Still waiting for the cosmic cop pal dump for the full range for the m84 encrypted, always worth shouting that out

 

[NEON_Arcade]

The top boards vary

I wonder if part of the issue here is that there seems to be multiple top boards around for M84 boardsets.

For example, in this recent sale thread on KLOV by Kebrank I noticed that his top R-T2 board at least looks identical in layout to my M84 HH. I have seen others that aren't. Different pals perhaps?

https://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=438986&highlight=R-Type

 

[kuze]

The top boards vary

I wonder if part of the issue here is that there seems to be multiple top boards around for M84 boardsets.
For example, in this recent sale thread on KLOV by Kebrank I noticed that his top R-T2 board at least looks identical in layout to my M84 HH. I have seen others that aren't. Different pals perhaps?

https://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=438986&highlight=R-Type

Interesting that there may be some compatible HH boards and others that aren't. My Hammerin' Harry top board is a M84-C-A as opposed to the M84-B-A in that picture of R-Type II.

The boards are pretty similar but the chips at IC7 and IC30 (looking at your R-Type II / M84-B-A pic) are clearly different from the QFP chip that is marked IC20 on my M84-C-A.

Further, looking at the mame m72.cpp file they note a variety of differences between the top board types:

M84 - 2 PCB stack
functionally same as M82 but without the extra sprite hw??
M84-A-A (bottom board) (most games)
supports
4 program roms
8 tile roms
1 snd prg, 1 voice rom
CPUs and some customs etc.
M84-D-B (bottom board) (found on lightning swords / kengo)
redesigned version of above but
for V35 CPU? (seems to lack the UPD71059C interrupt
controller which isn't needed when with the V35)
M84-C-A (top board) (listed as for Hammering Harry)
4 sprite roms (in a row)
6 larger chips with detail removed
etc.
M84-B-A (top board) (found on rytpe 2)
M84-B-B (top board) (lightning swords / kengo)
these both look very similar, if not the same
4 sprite roms (in a square)
various NANAO marked customs
KNA70H016(12) NANAO 0201
KNA65005 17 NANAO 9048KS
KNA71H010(15) NANAO 0X2002
KNA72H010(14) NANAO 0Z2001
KNA71H009(13) NANAO 122001
KNA70H015(11) NANAO 092002
KNA91H014 NANAO 0Z2001V
etc.

I would venture to guess that if your M84 HH is indeed a M84-B-A top board then it probably uses altered program ROMs that aren't in MAME.

Dumping them may shed light on the situation regarding how the top boards are different. If HH can exist on both top boards, then R-Type 2 can probably be modified to work on one.

Then again it may just be a matter of getting the ROM placements right, swapping the PALs and maybe setting a jumper or two to assign the right ROM sizes?

 

[Apocalypse]

I would venture to guess that if your M84 HH is indeed a M84-B-A top board then it probably uses altered program ROMs that aren't in MAME.

Dumping them may shed light on the situation regarding how the top boards are different. If HH can exist on both top boards, then R-Type 2 can probably be modified to work on one.

Then again it may just be a matter of getting the ROM placements right, swapping the PALs and maybe setting a jumper or two to assign the right ROM sizes?

I'd like to believe but I don't think so. Porting games from/to M72/M81/M82/M84/M85 has only required the memory map to be changed (either by software with patched program ROMs or hardware with handcrafted PAL) for the converted game to boot. Then there's more work to patch IRQs, ports, flip & priority bits, etc.
I doubt the graphic or sound part can prevent the game from booting if the memory map is correct.

Has anyone tried the conversion in MAME?

[EDIT]
I had missed that @Hammy:

It's also impossible to port r-t 2 to the harry pal setup because it uses larger program roms than harry.

Only the h1/l1 ROMs are smaller. I don't have a M84 boardset handy so can't check but I wonder if there's any jumper allowing you to set a different size between h0/l0 and h1/l1.
If not then the conversion might be possible.

 

[Hammy]

There's no jumper it's controlled by the pal.

I have not tried to convert it in mame, only in real hardware.

The way to know for sure is to disassemble the PAL's and see what's going on.
Not sure how to dissemble them but i'm sure it's not too much trouble.

 

[Apocalypse]

There's no jumper it's controlled by the pal.

I have not tried to convert it in mame, only in real hardware.

The way to know for sure is to disassemble the PAL's and see what's going on.
Not sure how to dissemble them but i'm sure it's not too much trouble.

I meant converting R-Type II to work with HH memory map (defined by one of the PAL chips).
No need to disassemble anything, just probe pins of the desired PAL, you should have address lines on one side and on the other side either /CE signals or multiplexed /CE signals for RAMs/ROMs.
Then from the memory map in MAME you can deduct equations, I've done it many times.

I was asking the question regarding the jumpers cause restricting h1/l1 ROMs to a smaller size than h0/l0 requires more address lines coming to the PAL and I'm not sure Irem went this route given my observations on M72/M85.

 

[Hammy]

I meant converting R-Type II to work with HH memory map (defined by one of the PAL chips).No need to disassemble anything, just probe pins of the desired PAL, you should have address lines on one side and on the other side either /CE signals or multiplexed /CE signals for RAMs/ROMs.
Then from the memory map in MAME you can deduct equations, I've done it many times.

I was asking the question regarding the jumpers cause restricting h1/l1 ROMs to a smaller size than h0/l0 requires more address lines coming to the PAL and I'm not sure Irem went this route given my observations on M72/M85.

That's it! won't work due to some unknown thing like a jumper. If attempting to port to hammering harry pal you would be looking at the h1 roms issue on top of the original issue.
After hours of looking at the board could not see anything.
If it was still here you would have a diagram right now, Sadly the H.H ended up going back to his owner a little experimenting.