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Killer Instinct Dual Board

Neku since you full control the boot rom, how hard would it be to code in a "board health check" to test the board components that cause boot issues on these boards? (ram test, cpu test, u92, u96 etc?)

What a post by the way. Out of nowhere!
 
luke7110 said:
Just an observation from the point of view of a noob which likes the oem look and stealth mods!
There's a jumper besides the rom that toggles high/low and thus allow to select boot [and sound rom ?] upper or lower bank.
[Update: I might be wrong, cause it's long time I ain't played with this stuff. I'm afraid the jumper may just toggles the boot rom, I don't remember for sure right now, which means a pcb for sound rom or daisychain is still needed]
We could focus on the HD and leave the ROM as simple as possible. 8MB ROMs, a bypass board on the boot ROM with a MCU connected to the jumper to select the right bank, and a bypass board on the IDE bus with a MCU to remap access to a single drive (as you mentioned). The interconnection of the 2 pcbs could be done with a flex hidden under the board.
Click to expand...
I like the idea of two small daughter boards instead of one big going on top of a third of the main board.
To my knowledge 4/8Mb toggle is only for the boot rom but i will double check.

MickyMac said:
Neku since you full control the boot rom, how hard would it be to code in a "board health check" to test the board components that cause boot issues on these boards? (ram test, cpu test, u92, u96 etc?)

What a post by the way. Out of nowhere!
Click to expand...
SRAM check, DRAM check, sound ROM checksum can be done quite easily.

For the CPU test, i guess it boot or it doesn't, if the CPU is defective we cannot rely on it to do a self check, tell me if i am wrong.

For the CPLDs (U92, U96, U103, U104) my knowledge of their roles and behaviours is really limited and i have no clues how to test it.
I have started to draw a schematic of the board but it's far from complete.
Maybe later i will have enough knowledge about it to be able to introduce health check of those components.
 
neku said:
SRAM check, DRAM check, sound ROM checksum can be done quite easily.
Click to expand...
This kind of check would be highly valuable especially if it was able to identify the specific chip that is bad, if any.
Any way to check that IDE device is good?

Most problems are either CPU, RAM or IDE device related and right now there is no easy way to tell which is at fault.
 
twistedsymphony said:
This kind of check would be highly valuable especially if it was able to identify the specific chip that is bad, if any.
Click to expand...
This can be done, i have to determine for each SRAM/DRAM chip which address range each chip is assigned to.
twistedsymphony said:
Any way to check that IDE device is good?
Click to expand...
What kind of check are you thinking of ?

I have i am not wrong data on the disk are compressed, meaning it can change quite a lot.
One check that can be done is reading the header of the disk (disk version, date, ...) and validate everything looks right.
From there if everything is right it means the IDE communication is working properly but if data on the disk are corrupted after this part it will be tricky to know.
 
I think verifying that there is good communication to the IDE device would be a good start to confirm it's functioning.
Maybe some check-sum operation on the data to determine it's validity.

knowing base-line check-sums for original OEM drives and popular CF images would be a good way to confirm that it makes a good known image.
 
You probably know but just in case, the game writes to the ide device (operator data, high scores etc) so you’d just want to checksum on some static data (not the whole image).
 
Yesterday evening, I worked on making a font and writing a print function in the boot rom and this afternoon on self test, here's a quick peek at the result.

The following test are implemented and working:
- SRAM
- VRAM framebuffer 0
- VRAM framebuffer 1
- DRAM

For the moment if a test fails it will display NOK instead of OK, later when i know each chip memory range it will display the chip ID (Uxx as labeled on the board) if failing.

In the screenshot, on first and second line is displayed respectively the board identifier (based on U96 label) the boot rom is compiled for and the game rom version

Screenshot 2023-01-11 at 19.42.02.png
 
Hi guys,

I have been working on two patches for KI 1.5.

The first one was already mentioned on a previous post, the soft reset that will be useful once the dual boot rom and hardware is complete.
Pressing P1 UP + P2 UP + P1 Start + P2 Start at any time will reset the machine back to boot sequence.

Link to the video :
View: https://youtu.be/Rq-eNFVqsI0


The second one is patching something that really bothered me for a long time, the attract/demo mode volume fade out !

Link to the video of the full attract demo without volume fade out :
View: https://youtu.be/iaQF67oUWNU


I have also reworked a bit the boot screen, cleanup the code and started to write the readme for the git repository.

Screenshot 2023-01-12 at 22.58.52.png

This week-end i will be programming an EEPROM to test the modified ROM on real hardware, i have ordered a programmer, few EEPROMs and a UV EEPROM eraser and everything should be delivered tomorrow.

Until next update,
Have a nice week-end
 
Hello,

It's time for an update !
I have tested the ROM on my KI2 board, i will let you see the result by yourself in the video below.
I was a bit anxious while recording it as i am not used to doing that and i hope my french accent will not hurt your ears too much ;)

View: https://youtu.be/fwWUcm7xwjM


Side note, this week-end i have made some progress on the "software multiboot", i am working on the hardware part of it, software is done and working.
 
neku said:
Hi guys,

I have been working on two patches for KI 1.5.

The first one was already mentioned on a previous post, the soft reset that will be useful once the dual boot rom and hardware is complete.
Pressing P1 UP + P2 UP + P1 Start + P2 Start at any time will reset the machine back to boot sequence.

Link to the video :
View: https://youtu.be/Rq-eNFVqsI0


The second one is patching something that really bothered me for a long time, the attract/demo mode volume fade out !

Link to the video of the full attract demo without volume fade out :
View: https://youtu.be/iaQF67oUWNU


I have also reworked a bit the boot screen, cleanup the code and started to write the readme for the git repository.

Screenshot 2023-01-12 at 22.58.52.png

This week-end i will be programming an EEPROM to test the modified ROM on real hardware, i have ordered a programmer, few EEPROMs and a UV EEPROM eraser and everything should be delivered tomorrow.

Until next update,
Have a nice week-end
Click to expand...
so, 2 players doing random select would reset the game? I'd suggest to use UP plus 2 buttons (LP and start per side) to the reset the game.
 
Hackcell said:
so, 2 players doing random select would reset the game? I'd suggest to use UP plus 2 buttons (LP and start per side) to the reset the game.
Click to expand...
Yes, If done simultaneously. I didn't thought about it.
I would like to avoid finger gymnastic. I think i will go with LEFT + START on P1 side and RIGHT + START on P2 side.
Does that sound a better option ?
 
Last edited:
neku said:
Yes, If done simultaneously. I didn't thought about it.
I would like to avoid finger gymnastic. It think i will go to LEFT + START on P1 side and RIGHT + START on P2 side.
Does that sound a better option ?
Click to expand...
way much better!! that combination is not used at all by the game.
btw, great work of yours!!!! Really amazing!
 
neku said:
Hello,

It's time for an update !
I have tested the ROM on my KI2 board, i will let you see the result by yourself in the video below.
I was a bit anxious while recording it as i am not used to doing that and i hope my french accent will not hurt your ears too much ;)

View: https://youtu.be/fwWUcm7xwjM

Side note, this week-end i have made some progress on the "software multiboot", i am working on the hardware part of it, software is done and working.
Click to expand...

This is pure magic mate 😁🙏
 
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