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CPS3 booting issues

bartre

bartre

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Hey all,

Recently got my hands on a 2nd CPS3 setup and i'm running into some hiccups.

So I got it all put together and the game itself runs fine (currently set to Jojo)
but I noticed something odd, I don't get the "now checking CD-ROM" page when I boot, it's just straight to the region select.
If I hold start on boot, I get to the expected darksoft menu where i should be able to program in a new game, but when i select it, regardless of what option I pick, it just boots the already programmed game.
I swapped the CD drive with the one I use in my known working setup and I get the same result.
If I swap the cart, but not the CD drive, it tells me the CD drive isn't connected properly, so I tried using my known working cables with no change
If i swap the cart and cd drive, I get the expected behavior where I can reprogram games, browse the CD files, etc.

I will note that the version of JoJo seems to be the No CD version regardless of region or anything that I select on boot.

My CD drive is an NEC CD-3010A, I've found a manual here- https://fccid.io/A3DCD-3010A/User-Manual/Users-Manual-17699
currently all jumpers are open, but when I first started, 1 & 3 were closed, is there a specific SCSI ID the CPS3 uses?

I'm wanting to upgrade to a SCSI2SD solution eventually anyway, so i'm not terribly concerned about the disc drive, but why wouldn't the cart check the CD drive even when I'm trying to program?
 
I wasn't aware there were different versions.
The Simms are standard, I don't really know how to answer your question regarding the cart or disc image
 
bartre said:
I wasn't aware there were different versions.
The Simms are standard, I don't really know how to answer your question regarding the cart or disc image
Click to expand...
I was in the same place a while back - is confusing AF. let me dig out my notes and post them
 
hatmoose said:
I was in the same place a while back - is confusing AF. let me dig out my notes and post them
Click to expand...
Have a read of this thread - everything is in there
https://www.arcade-projects.com/threads/cps-iii-bios-and-cd-releases.36/

Basic summary

Thing the first
There are two versions of the SH2 security chip
1) Custom (this is what ships with a OEM CPS3 cart)
2) Standard (this is what you can buy aftermarket)

thing the second
Depending on what version of the SH2 you have, there are two different releases of the BIOS
If you have a Custom SH2 chip then you need the custom bios
if you have a Standard SH2 chip then you need the standard bios

thing the third
Depending on how you want the BIOS to behave you can use a CD bios or a NOCD bios
CD bios will attempt to read from an attached CD drive, load the selected game to the SIMMS (if its not already loaded), then boot the game
NOCD bios will not attempt to read from an attached CD drive, boot whatever is on the SIMMS - this is desirable if you have ultrasimms because they can hold all the games

So from what you described I think you may have a NOCD bios (mainly designed for use with Ultrasimms) and are using it with standard SIMMS (which need to be reprogrammed with data read from the CD drive if you want to swap games)

Expected behaviour in that case would be to ignore the CD check, present the game select menu, boot whatever game it finds on the SIMMS - which in your case sounds like it's Jojos.
That matches the behaviour you are experiencing

If I'm right and that is the problem then expected fixes could be
1) Use the existing NOCD cart and buy some ultrasimms, get them programmed, then no need for the SD2SCSI
2) replace the cart with a CD version, retain the existing Simms, load the games from CD then eventually replace the CD with SD2SCSI

Hoping someone can confirm my guess...
 
Okay, so after a bunch of reading and a few headaches I think you're right.
I believe my SH2 chip is the factory one, which means custom?
regardless, it's stamped with the capcom logo then
"DL-3229
SCU
6D1 Japan"

If I wanted to swap BIOS, that's the chip at U5 inside the cart, right?
Just desolder it, program a new chip with the BIOS that needs CD, and solder it in?
 
Sounds like it, yes.

Be aware that there are FOUR versions of the Bios in the bios zip file.

For your use case (SH2=Custom, want to read from CD drive) you'll be wanting the one called
UltraBIOS_for_custom_SH2_AUTOSELECT_v1.0_CD.u2

And of course you will need to burn the "custom SH2" version of the CD as well
http://www.mediafire.com/download/p8eieg5zz47rmk6/UniCD-CPS3_for_custom_SH2_V5.7z

When I burned the CD on my Mac it just plain refused to work. No nothing, dead. When I burned the exact same CD using my PC it worked perfectly first time. Weird.

You sound extremely confident soldering and desoldering - the BIOS chip (TSOP48) is the finest leg-pitch that they ever made - after this it's BGA. If you can hand-solder that BIOS chip you hand-solder anything that can be hand soldered :-)

Once you have it reliably working with a physical CD we dan get to work on replacing the CD drive with an SD2SCSI or similar

Oh, also last random thought that popped into my head- in order for the Untrabios to work you will need a full set of 2 x 64 and 4 x 128 SIMMS. Even if the game you want to load does not need all those sims, the Ultrabios still needs to see them to even try
 
Hey all, a follow up on this thread.
Reprogrammed the Simms today to test out some spares, went to 3rd strike and now it won't actually boot.

Everything loads up as expected, but once I select a region it just freezes.
Any ideas?
 
Things I have checked so far-
Voltage - slightly above 5.0v, hits 5.0 after I select game
CD drive - issue persists using scsi2sd or original drive. Both tested and working using other motherboard
Cart - pulled cart and replaced with known working, moved cart to different motherboard, 2nd setup working fine
Reprogrammed game - no change
Pulled and reseated Simms - no change
 
Last edited:
Can you run the memory check on the Simms, or does it crash before you can get to the test menu? Can you test the current Simms on the known working board and the Simms from the known working board on this board?
 
I can get into the darksoft menu just fine, read the data off the disc, check memory contents, etc just fine.
Game writing functions as it should.
Everything boots like it should, I just can't get past the region select screen.

I'm writing vanilla SF3 to see if one of the other Simms is bad, then I'll one by one swap Simms to see if there's a bad one in the bunch
 
Okay, so the rewrite changed nothing.
I then pulled and cleaned each simm individually and inspected the slots. No change.

Swapped the Simms from the working board over and it now works.
Swapped the Simms from the non working board and it does not work.

Unfortunately they're not written for the same game, so next I'm going to rewrite again and swap Simms one at a time to see about tracking down the culprit
 
Awesome! Sounds like you're getting close. I had an issue where one of the Simms wasn't detected, it didn't show up on the Flash Memory check screen. Cleaning its pins with q-tips and alcohol a few times didn't fix it, but a pencil eraser did.
 
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