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DARKSOFT CPS1 Multi - Support thread

The traces were cut before to get the C Board to work without a battery, and the solder was later added to reverse the mod so that it would work correctly with the Multi. If you have a multimeter, check that all three of the soldered pins are reading continuity to Ground - you can see that the cut traces connected those pins to ground originally.

Here‘s a similar one that I just reverse-modded in the same way - it works great with the Multi.

2F02B913-F026-4434-84B8-222881A4669C.jpeg
 
TravistyOJ said:
So I’m pretty stumped, I can’t seem to get this thing working at all. Followed directions, triple checked everything, verified my A board works 100%, tried multiple C 92641C-1 boards that I unmodified according to the directions ( disconnected bodge wire from +5, soldered to ground ) and here’s what I get. Board comes up, lcd screen fires up, I can scroll through and select game, it erases and flashes (while flashing left side of screen fills with green lines ) then just a dead black screen, not even sound or garbled graphics, like the cpu instantly crashes. Dips all off, same result on every game. Any ideas?
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When I had this problem, I had replaced the wrong PAL. In my excitement, I hadn't looked at the picture in the manual. I replaced the PAL on the C board instead of the A board.
 
@obitus1990 @dos after ten sessions on SF2:CE (J 920803), I haven't had the sound issue you describe. I will come back to talk about it here, if I meet it later.
 
Im using a 89626A-4 CPS1 motherboard with 92641C-1 C board feom sheep nova (battery has been removed) all works fine with my Ghouls Ghosts original B board. Setup up the multi, plugged in the C board, changed the Pal chip, changed switch on multi to on , soldered the wires, setup up the sd card with roms from archive.org (using a PC not Mac), games directory on the root with rom files inside and qsound rom, all dips on A board to off. Multi switches on fine and flashes and erases games fine but only get a black screen except vertical lines on the left of the screen when erasing. Reseated boards, rewritten sd card on three different cards, checked voltages but still nothing. Is there anything obvious I might be missing (photos attached).
 

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I downloaded the romset (a load of zip files, one for each game) from archive.org. My question is- how should the files be arranged on the SD card? Does the SD card have to be formatted FAT32?
 
The card should be formatted as FAT32. Just extract the zip contents to the SD card - you'll see a "games" folder in the root of the SD card, and all of the game files will be inside of that.
 
Pinball said:
I downloaded the romset (a load of zip files, one for each game) from archive.org. My question is- how should the files be arranged on the SD card? Does the SD card have to be formatted FAT32?
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If you downloaded a general mame set you have the wrong files, look for the prepared multipacks. Same overall data just arranged and concatenated to work, plus extra files to control the lcd, dash and qsound functions
 
ekorz said:
If you downloaded a general mame set you have the wrong files
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While true it also begs the question... How hard would it have been/be to support the MAME set AS-IS?
I mean the CPS2/F3/CPS1/MVS multis all have processors inside them, couldn't the instructions to arrange the MAME ROM files be internal to the multi firmware itself?

Take for example the PSIO vs the XStation... XStation clearly has the edge in one area, it WORKS with the Redump Archive without ANY modifications.
The PSIO needs you to convert CUE files to CU2 files (for games that use CDDA) and that process even being well documented is a pain.

Or how about DS flash carts for example... Some of the older carts (R4 comes to mind) needed you to patch the security out of the ARM7 binary with a PC.
While later carts (Acekart 2i) keep an internal record of games that need patching (identified by CRC) and apply the required patch upon load, 100% seamless to the end user.

This is what DS should have targeted for support, he may say its not possible but I believe the truth is it would be downright painful to implement at this point (but NOT impossible).
Loading times would likely increase because temp files would need to be generated on the SD, however this data could be retained saving time when loading the same game again at a future point.
 
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@jassin000 it would be non-trivial to support the MAME set as it is. There are several challenges but the biggest is memory in the MCU. I don't know if you've looked inside the folders but there is additional information for each set which is not included in the MAME ROM set. For example the DASH file and the configuration of the CPS1 chip. This metadata does not exist in the standard MAME zip which means that we have to use mapping tables to store it. If we can use a simpler CPU onboard and aggregate the data to map to the HW it simplifies the HW design considerably.

And my plan is to release the generator so you can just point it at your MAME sets :D
 
Hi all, hope this isnt a silly question but I definitely feel like Im doing something silly! I have my CPS1 multi board and it works perfect except for one problem - the dip switches dont seem to work? Continue isnt enabled for pretty much any game I tried - checking online manuals for the games (like SF2 which Ive been testing) says its supposed to be Dip Switch C, number 7? I set this to "onN" alongside Dip B 1 & 2 (to try and up the difficulty) but the changes arent taking effect. Here's a pic:
52183216592_d7bcceb49b_c.jpg


So basically - what am I missing? Do I need to change something else as well to enable them? Thanks for any help in advance :)
 
gouki16 said:
checking online manuals for the games (like SF2 which Ive been testing) says its supposed to be Dip Switch C, number 7? I set this to "onN" alongside Dip B 1 & 2 (to try and up the difficulty) but the changes arent taking effect.
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You can go to the test menu to check if the position of the dips is detected.
 
Roch said:
You can go to the test menu to check if the position of the dips is detected.
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How do I get into the test menu out of interest? As most dip switch manuals online say its Dip C, switch 8, but that doesnt work either. Basically it doesnt seem like any dip switch changes I make are reflected in the game.
 
gouki16 said:
How do I get into the test menu out of interest? As most dip switch manuals online say its Dip C, switch 8, but that doesnt work either. Basically it doesnt seem like any dip switch changes I make are reflected in the game.
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Yes, it's C8 or use the TEST button on your cab.
 
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