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Killer Instinct Dual Board

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Are you sure they're dedicated KI PCBs and not KI2? From the pic you posted, it looks like your U96 has 20351 (KI2) instead of 19489 (KI).

This only works on dedicated KI PCBs, because the dedicated KI2 PCBs remapped several addresses (and running the wrong one does exactly what you're seeing, going into test mode and locking up). You should confirm that your test switch isn't thrown as well, since that would do the same thing ("DISK TEST SKIPPED"), except you'd be able to run the diagnostic tests.

Did you try burning the "Killer Instinct 2 (Conversion) U98 Any-IDE Boot ROM L1.4" ROM without my patch? That shouldn't work with the conversion PCBs either on that board though... yours should require the "Killer Instinct 2 (Dedicated) U98 Any-IDE Boot ROM L1.4".


BTW, I just re-tested, and it boots fine for me on my KI PCB.


Edit: I just looked more closely at the pic you posted - your "working" ROM says KI2 ANY-IDE DEDICATED BOOT ROM. So that's correct, this ROM won't work with your board, but you also don't need the conversion PCB (it'll work if you plug your drive directly into the PCB). Your board can only run KI2 though (there's no KI ROM to run on dedicated KI2 hardware).

DogP
 

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DogP said:
Are you sure they're dedicated KI PCBs and not KI2? From the pic you posted, it looks like your U96 has 20351 (KI2) instead of 19489 (KI).

This only works on dedicated KI PCBs, because the dedicated KI2 PCBs remapped several addresses (and running the wrong one does exactly what you're seeing, going into test mode and locking up). You should confirm that your test switch isn't thrown as well, since that would do the same thing ("DISK TEST SKIPPED"), except you'd be able to run the diagnostic tests.

Did you try burning the "Killer Instinct 2 (Conversion) U98 Any-IDE Boot ROM L1.4" ROM without my patch? That shouldn't work with the conversion PCBs either on that board though... yours should require the "Killer Instinct 2 (Dedicated) U98 Any-IDE Boot ROM L1.4".


BTW, I just re-tested, and it boots fine for me on my KI PCB.


Edit: I just looked more closely at the pic you posted - your "working" ROM says KI2 ANY-IDE DEDICATED BOOT ROM. So that's correct, this ROM won't work with your board, but you also don't need the conversion PCB (it'll work if you plug your drive directly into the PCB). Your board can only run KI2 though (there's no KI ROM to run on dedicated KI2 hardware).

DogP
Click to expand...
Yeah I had those 2 miss labeled, the U96 are indeed different and work without the adapter. I have a few dedicated KI1 I will retry the patch shortly. Btw I have several non working board, to convert a KI2 to KI1, I think you only need to change the U96 and the roms right? Probably a good idea to do that so I can run both on all the pcbs I have. thanks
 
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psychopat said:
Yeah I had those 2 miss labeled, the U96 are indeed different and work without the adapter. I have a few dedicated KI1 I will retry the patch shortly. Btw I have several non working board, to convert a KI2 to KI1, I think you only need to change the U96 and the roms right? Probably a good idea to do that so I can run both on all the pcbs I have. thanks
Click to expand...
I haven't personally tried, but I believe U96 is the only difference (plus ROMs and HD of course).

DogP
 
which means getting a dump out of the original U96 now serves an important function!
i wonder if they protected it - it was not originally intended as copy-protection, it was just glue-logic.
 
Hi DogP, are you still working to this dual board project ? Do you think that using say a 1GB CF with both KI/KI2 chds and double size EPROMs (27C080s) with both KI/KI2 ROMS will be possible to make the dual board swapless ?
Could all the eproms be software switched with some kind of address offset, avoiding the danger of physically working on the board ?
 
The Sound ROMs could be condensed into a single 27c322 per game. So if one were to make a dual board it'd be a lot easier to simply create a plug-in daughter-board for the sound ROMs with a game switch and a small number of larger capacity ROMs than to pull pins and daisy-chain wires between them. In either case I see no reason a modification to the original PCB itself would be necessary.
 
I'm not working on a plug and play dual board to sell or anything... mostly I was just interested in how the protection worked, and wanted to document it.

Regarding your question about modifying the board... like twistedsymphony said, you shouldn't need to do any real mods to the board. To combine both games, you need 8 mbit of data for the boot ROMs and 64 mbit of data for the sound ROMs. This can be done several ways, like using 27C080s instead of 27C040s, or using larger ROMs like a 27C322 or more modern flash chips.

You can't simply double up the CHDs though... since those are IDE devices, and since the game knows where the data is on the disk, you really need two different drives (you can't just toggle an address pin of an IDE device to select the top or bottom half like an EPROM). Like I showed earlier, you can use a CF to SD adapter with a switchable dual uSD adapter.

DogP
 
DogP said:
I'm not working on a plug and play dual board to sell or anything... mostly I was just interested in how the protection worked, and wanted to document it.

Regarding your question about modifying the board... like twistedsymphony said, you shouldn't need to do any real mods to the board. To combine both games, you need 8 mbit of data for the boot ROMs and 64 mbit of data for the sound ROMs. This can be done several ways, like using 27C080s instead of 27C040s, or using larger ROMs like a 27C322 or more modern flash chips.

You can't simply double up the CHDs though... since those are IDE devices, and since the game knows where the data is on the disk, you really need two different drives (you can't just toggle an address pin of an IDE device to select the top or bottom half like an EPROM). Like I showed earlier, you can use a CF to SD adapter with a switchable dual uSD adapter.

DogP
Click to expand...
I see, I read again you post and saw almost all the answers. The hardware mod was in reaction to your picture outlining the eprom jumpers.
So yeah, with an IDE to SD and switchable multi SD adapter it's easy to picture how to switch from one HD to the other.
About the ROM part, it's more foggy ... For the boot ROM, the jumper on the board works to select the bank right ? In the first position it'll read the ROM from 0000-0000 to 0007-FFF0, in the other position it'll read from 0008-0000 to the end ? So, by concatenating the 2 U98 roms (anyide KI 1.5d + patched anyide KI2 conv.) and programming it to the 27C080 it should be good right ?
Assuming I'm right, we could concatenate and burn all the sound roms to 27C080, but the how to select the proper bank ?
Or by using a larger ROM, how to address it ? It'll require some logic and a daughter board as said by @twistedsymphony I guess. It'll be hard to do it for the average Joe like me... Or is there a simple way I can't picture yet ?
 
luke7110 said:
is there a simple way I can't picture yet
Click to expand...
Here is the simple way with no fancy electronics required.
1. buy ROMs that are all double the size of the original ROMs (so 27c080 ROMs to replace the original 27c040/27c4001)
2. buy an adapter that will let you switch IDE devices so you can switch between your ki1 drive and ki2 drive
3. burn all the ROMs with KI1 data on the lower bank and KI2 data on the upper bank
4. insert the ROMs into the PCB but leave the highest Address pin outside of the socket (so A19; pin 1 for the 27c080)
5. connect wires to all of the pins you have hanging out of the sockets so that they're all tied together (even the boot ROM)
6. connect that wire to a switch so that one position of the switch connects those wires to ground, and the other position of the switch connects them to 5V. Extra points if you can fine a way to simply use the drive switch on your IDE adapter

now when you set that switch to one position you'll use KI1 data, and when you set it to the other position you'll use KI2 data. 0 Modifications to the original PCB (except maybe tapping 5V and and Ground somewhere)
 
Nice, glad it worked out for you! Have you (or anyone) played all the way through KI2 using the hacked ROM yet? Just curious if anyone's confirmed that the hack is bug free... I've personally only played a few rounds.

DogP
 
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