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I recall the same thing, it was a guy on EBay bringing Asia 3rd Strikes back to life for $50, any cart would be flashed as Asian with voices missing.
 
A contact would be nice, maybe he still can do it.

The ebay listing is obviously long gone but in the thread, someone had put the address of where the guy resides. I remember wanting to try to send an inquiry via lettermail to see if I would get a response but when I looked the address up, it seems like the home had been sold back in 2011.
 
A person in Ontario, probably sending carts to Capcom Asia for reprogramming... my spidey sense tells me it was probably Yaton.

In fact I seem to remember Yaton's Canadian era shipping from Ontario...

If there's anyone enterprising enough, I suspect home ownership records in Canada may be accessible at local government buildings like they are in the US. Can pro bably verify it was Yaton or not.
 
A person in Ontario, probably sending carts to Capcom Asia for reprogramming... my spidey sense tells me it was probably Yaton.

That doesn't sound economical or logistically feasible though to forward twice, once to Canada, and then another to Asia.

That area of Ontario has a lot of south-east asian immigrants, so it's possible that someone who was working as a Capcom technician and kept the hardware and keys, immigrated to Canada and was offering the service.
 
Amazing how little to nothing we still know about this CPS3 key writing system. It’s like the last Holy Grail of Capcom reencryption.

Would LOVE to see the ability to reprogram a CPS3 cart someday like how it’s done with CPS2. My gut tells me that the early Revision 2 motherboards that had a white JST-type port populated on them (near the lower front right of the board adjacent to the white battery cover) was used to do the deed.
 
Would LOVE to see the ability to reprogram a CPS3 cart someday like how it’s done with CPS2. My gut tells me that the early Revision 2 motherboards that had a white JST-type port populated on them (near the lower front right of the board adjacent to the white battery cover) was used to do the deed.

I may be wrong, but IIRC those JST connectors were there to allow for debugging purposes on the early PCBs; you only see them on the boards with the SRAM and the backup battery under the white cap.

Reprogramming most likely happens on a separate interface connected to a computer, similar to what aje cooked up to reprogram CPS3 carts with Darksoft BIOS through a chip burner without needing any soldering.

That doesn't sound economical or logistically feasible though to forward twice, once to Canada, and then another to Asia.

That area of Ontario has a lot of south-east asian immigrants, so it's possible that someone who was working as a Capcom technician and kept the hardware and keys, immigrated to Canada and was offering the service.

The presumption here is that the middleman (probably) kept a stock of reprogrammed boards laying around, and would send a bunch in bulk to Asia to have them reprogrammed and returned (in bulk). Shipping cost per unit would be extremely low.

IMO, if the person with the equipment moved and still had it, they would probably still be offering the service, given that there is demand. Unless they fear the Capcops coming to shut 'em down, which I suppose isn't impossible.
 
The presumption here is that the middleman (probably) kept a stock of reprogrammed boards laying around, and would send a bunch in bulk to Asia to have them reprogrammed and returned (in bulk). Shipping cost per unit would be extremely low.

This post outright says that he had the hardware to reprogram carts.
 
This post outright says that he had the hardware to reprogram carts.

And this post says that Excellentcom, a vendor based in Hong Kong, also was offering the same service. Did they have the hardware too? The poster you linked to is probably just sharing what they were told by the middleman, which was either a misunderstanding by the poster, or a misrepresentation by the middleman. A subsequent post by the person you linked to also makes me feel like my earlier speculation that the middleman was just swapping in working PCBs is probably correct. But we're both speculating here.

My belief is that the person in Canada (who I still strongly suspect might've been Yaton) was simply acting as a middleman for having Capcom Asia reprogram carts.
 
Do we know if Excellentcom is still open? I will fly there in 2 months and I could visit them ;)
 
You can run any game with a cart, doesn't matter which. I ran 3S for years with an original Jojo cart. Look into CPS3 ISO Converter.

Question about this... I was curious to mess with this, and when I used the converter (v1.0), it spat out two ISO images.

The readme describes a very tedious-sounding process where you have to play musical SIMMs in order to install the game:

EXAMPLE 1) if we want to play JOJOBA on a JOJO cartridge, the 1st CD will have correct files 10,20,30,31,40 and
41 (meaning SIMMS 1,2,3 and 4).
From the 2nd CD only interest us the files 50 and 51 which will be located in position of 30 and 31 (SIMM 3).

To make it work, press service button, select UPDATE ALL FROM MENU, install first CD2 (will update SIMM3)
replace SIMM3 with an new one, update using CD1 and place the SIMM3 extracted in the 1st update
into position SIMM5.
Notice that in both updates we should keep something in SIMM5, for the BIOS to let us upgrade.

EXAMPLE 2) If we want to play SFIII 3rd Strike with a SFIII New Generation cartridge, 1st CD
will have correct 10,30,31,40 and 41 (meaning SIMMS 1,3 and 4).
2nd CD will contain the right 20,50,51,60 and 61 files (SIMM 2,5 and 6) but will be programmed in SIMM 1, 3 and 4 respectively.

In this case, we should first Update using CD2, extract SIMMs 1,3 and 4 and then update using CD1.
When the 2nd update process has finished, we place the SIMM 1,3 and SIMM 4 of the first update in positions SIMM2, 5 and 6.
And that's it.

It seems like installing from a single CD might be an edge case. Am I missing anything here?

It really does feel like installing a Super/UltraBIOS would be way less hassle.
 
It depends on your source and target games. If the game that you want to run uses more memory than the game you're going to use for it, then yes, you have to write the simms twice. Like when I ran 3S with Jojo. However, if your source cart is 3S, then it's like any normal install.

The point is that you get to keep your cart untouched and still get to play anything you want.

Anyway, I don't think it's a big deal. Unless you have Ultrasimms, it's not like anyone is switching games often on this platform. The install is always a drag.
 
Source is Jojo Heritage, target is 3S. I guess it can't do a direct write since Heritage is one SIMM short.

I dunno, between all the swapping and having to worry about a battery... I'd just BIOS swap. But to each their own!
 
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