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Irem M92 - boot or not a boot?

Hey, nah i just wanted to trade this PCB and got immediately attacked by people saying its a bootleg and i have to state that :P
 
Asure said:
Korean, and the sound section doesn't have leaky caps.

Then there's a whole discussion about the korea vs japan import things and 'korean brands first' that i don't wanna get into.

Do you want to play the game, or do you want to collect pcb's from Japan with labels and no duct tape?
Click to expand...
PCB was bought @MAK Japan around 2004
The sticker says Cosmic and it has a serial no.
 
It is a licenced Korean M92. They are not boot but manufactured cheaply for the Asian market. This is mostly seen on Ninja baseball batman. The sound section on Korean versions has cheaper components than the Japanese counterparts. Its possible to repopulate the components to match that off the Japanese version. But I wouldn't call it a boot. It's an official licenced product. You will find that with the missing components in the sound section, there will be slight difference in sound quality with some sound missing altogether. The mixing is off too. Also rather than using decoupling capacitors for each ic, they used one for a group of them.. works but a bit cheap. After repopulating and changing for the better components, its functionally equivalent to the japanese counterpart.

The Guru has contributed to the mame dumps more than most. He might not be the easiest people to talk too but he gets misunderstood that's all and has a unique personality. Ausie's are usually more cheerful ;)

Also lack of jamma key is not an abosulute indicator that it is a bootleg. Look at Rabio Lebus by Video system. That doesnt have a Jamma key.
 
20240129_100701.jpg
 
Monstermug said:
It is a licenced Korean M92. They are not boot but manufactured cheaply for the Asian market. This is mostly seen on Ninja baseball batman. The sound section on Korean versions has cheaper components than the Japanese counterparts. Its possible to repopulate the components to match that off the Japanese version. But I wouldn't call it a boot. It's an official licenced product. You will find that with the missing components in the sound section, there will be slight difference in sound quality with some sound missing altogether. The mixing is off too. Also rather than using decoupling capacitors for each ic, they used one for a group of them.. works but a bit cheap. After repopulating and changing for the better components, its functionally equivalent to the japanese counterpart.

The Guru has contributed to the mame dumps more than most. He might not be the easiest people to talk too but he gets misunderstood that's all and has a unique personality. Ausie's are usually more cheerful ;)

Also lack of jamma key is not an abosulute indicator that it is a bootleg. Look at Rabio Lebus by Video system. That doesnt have a Jamma key.
Click to expand...

Thank you very much! :-)
 
Iirc a hybrid korean japanese ninja baseball batman got sold on yahoo for like 180k yen..last year. It was a japanese rom pcb with korean motherboard... interchangable with japanese mobo. Even has the nanao customs which can be harvested to fix japanese version if you must. I thought that was crazy.

Heres a video of my all korean version.

View: https://youtu.be/QQ_G7zsKxL8?feature=shared


I also have the japanese version too. Sounds should be same if you factor in the better amp and speakers.

View: https://youtu.be/UhEhhAPW3x4?feature=shared
 
Monstermug said:
Also lack of jamma key is not an abosulute indicator that it is a bootleg. Look at Rabio Lebus by Video system. That doesnt have a Jamma key.
Click to expand...
It's an exception to the rule, I didn't know Rabio Lepus didn't have a JAMMA key.
It would be great to list original titles with that peculiarity, I'm anticipating the list to be rather short.
 
UPL was also notorious for licensing manufacturing and distribution to Asain companies to cut costs, hence keyless jamma edges.

Fact nobody knows. You can convert a Ark Area pcb to Mutant Night pcb via a simple Rom swap. Its not even nentioned in the mame driver. They didnt even bother with security.

I have both and puzzled as if it would work. It did. This should work on bootlegs and licenced versions too as they use the same pcb files abiet slightly modified for cheapness. Both fantastic games.

Usually a clear indicator of bootlegs are if they are not silkscreened with the company name/ PCB revision and if the pcb is wildly different to the original or not. I.e Robocop. There is actually a real bootleg of Ninja Baseball Batman. No time to find it sorry. It was single layer and ugly irrc. Completely different and normally the mark of a bootleg.

Toaplan Slapfight boots are identical to the original except for the pcb revision number next to the made in Japan. Has the made in japan silkscreened though. Im not even entirely convinced it was a bootleg as ive no eveidence.

Even outzone, truxton boots used same toaplan customs which really puzzles me.

Sega system 1 (system 8) also licenced to tecfri, midway, mametron etc etc. Not boots. Not Japan though.

One thing that im pretty sure distinguish a boot from an original are presense of the delvelopers mark or not. That seems very uniform from what i have seen.
 
There are also Korean versions of M92 with the JAMMA notch, so I'm not sure what that means. To me a Korean version without the notch is worth less than one with, but neither are worth as much as a Japanese one.
 
richtr8 said:
@Monstermug - are you able to post the specifics on which components need to be added to the K version board to restore sound balance?
Click to expand...
Basically, I used a japan M92 motherboard for comparison and i started with the main amp, then the dacs then the sound chips. Basically, the pcb is almost identical to the original except that they did not populate some of the components that deals with the mixing and channels in the analogue section. And the ones they did populate they used cheaper components which I replaced with the Japanese counterparts. Then i got carried away and populated the decoupling capacitors as well but that isn't necessary but after i did i couldnt tell the difference between each version.

Also the caps they used werent very good quality either with some missing or the wrong type. But at least they did not used the bad batch of Elna caps so they wont leak.

Also ive been told that the roms may reburning as well as i believe there was missing sound samples in the korean version. Probabaly as the hardware didnt require them?? im not sure. Mine came already with fixed roms. It just sounded scratchy and the either the music or effects were drowning out the other so you could barely hear one of them. I gave it away to a friend so i dont have it anymore so cant really check. If he wants too maybe he can post some good pictures of this section for referencing and also the rom side too for which eproms needs reburning.

IMG_20240128_2355520.jpg
 
thanks for the info! maybe someone with a non-korean board would be able to post the relevant values for each of the components. if i find any good m92 as reference in the meantime, i'll post it here
 
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