Konami Firebeat

[Skull Leader]

Hey, so I recently picked up a Para Para Paradise cab with a Firebeat system. Seller says it doesn't work, and i haven't tested it to find out. I wanted to go over everything before trying to fire it up. I'm not familiar with this system at all, but once thing I've noticed is there are no discs in either drive.
It's an uncommon game, so i wonder if anyone here is familiar with it?

If it turns out to be too much of a pain in the butt, is there any information on how to connect it to a PC to run Stepmania (which has a para mode) on it? Maybe some way to turn the sensor connection into USB?

 

[phokkun]

Firebeats can be a bit of a nuisance at the best of times and in this condition I'd be setting my expectations low. Can you take some closer shots of the PCB? From what I can make out I'm seeing quite a bit of rust.

A great source of info by the way is gamerepair https://gamerepair.info/hardware/5_firebeat

Worth noting the vrams have a tendency to go bad. A local has two firebeat stacks for a keyboardmania and both seem to have faulty vram (hopefully just that).

Best of luck mate.

 

[saberu]

welcome to the sad firebeat owners club! I have two for keyboardmania that both are failing to read CDs.

discs for the Firebeat games can be found in mame, however it doesn’t look like you have a security plug so with some use of python and a google for “firebeat patches” you can crack the discs on your own and they’ll work.

regarding PC input, there is no plug and play solution by any means. So things like lights and controller input on the stock arcade hardware would need to be custom engineered.

there is also paramania which uses a build of SM: https://riako.neocities.org/sm/eksd

I believe this can interface with the PS2 controller which does connect via USB.

Lastly, PPP does work decently in MAME if you wanted to go that route as well.

Good luck restoring a fantastic game!