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Midway Wolf Unit Multi

ekorz said:
@neku has “W-unit multi” in his signature

https://www.arcade-projects.com/members/neku.12932/#about

W=wolf?
Click to expand...

That's right, it's in my bucket list of futur project.
My goal is to do the same as i am doing for the killer instinct multi meaning in full software and replacing the eeprom with flash memory
But it still an idea no much research spent into it.
First i will have to properly understand the architecture of the board and create a custom bootrom for it.
 
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neku said:
That's right, it's in my bucket list of futur project.
My goal is to do the same as i am doing for the killer instinct multi meaning in full software and replacing the eeprom with flash memory
But it still an idea no much research spent into it.
First i will have to properly understand the architecture of the board and create a custom bootrom for it.
Click to expand...

The custom bootrom already exists - AnyU64 allows you to run any Wolf Unit game

The problem will be some games need a flash memory for high scores, others use an SRAM in one of 2 sizes and some games require an extra crystal in that area
 
xodaraP said:
The problem will be some games need a flash memory for high scores, others use an SRAM in one of 2 sizes and some games require an extra crystal in that area
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it's true

outside of the ROMs and U64 there are 3 differences
1. the U57 PAL, Most games use "A-20093" but Open Ice and Rampage use "A-20255"
2. the S-RAM size (U62). MK3, UMK3, and WWF use an 8K "LH5268AN-10LL" and the rest of the games use a 32K "LH52B256N-10LL"
3. WWF alone has U55 populated with an "MK41T56N" and a small crystal to support it.
I have this documented in a sheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/187hDbbW7TGaGQd30-FcVxwTrSuexIaEoCB7RrBjhKyA/edit?usp=sharing

These can co-exist though as a while back when I was documenting these differences I did a test and Upgraded a UMK3 to the larger 32K-SRAM and populated the U55 area without issue and was able to run WWF on it.
 
@twistedsymphony I did a lot of work in reversing Wolf/T-Unit games and i am not sure that WWF Even uses the real-time clock that the crystal powers. I remember there being some unused date/time related events in the code though. I need to look into that. Currently working on NBA (Max) Hangtime.. ;)

* Edit
There's a routine "_Alarmclock" in MAIN.ASM. However, this is never called. It uses a table "ALARM_TAB" to make event happen at date/time.
(It was supposed to be called by the DIRQ routine every minute when seconds are at 0.)
 
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Aww man, I would love a wolf mult because looking for reliable chips to burn WWF is a pain. Had to scour a bit to convert a UMK3 to an MK3.
 
Asure said:
@twistedsymphony I did a lot of work in reversing Wolf/T-Unit games and i am not sure that WWF Even uses the real-time clock that the crystal powers. I remember there being some unused date/time related events in the code though. I need to look into that. Currently working on NBA (Max) Hangtime.. ;)

* Edit
There's a routine "_Alarmclock" in MAIN.ASM. However, this is never called. It uses a table "ALARM_TAB" to make event happen at date/time.
(It was supposed to be called by the DIRQ routine every minute when seconds are at 0.)
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That's good to know, I was going simply by what I observed being populated on original board sets. Seems it's not needed at all, which is great news.

xodaraP said:
Yep but for a potential multi it means you will need to modify the host board in some way
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Well, according to Azure's research above so long as you have a board with the larger 32K SRAM it should work for any game without modification.
 
Sorry for dredging up this old thread, but I just wanted to note to @twistedsymphony that this post was helpful for me in converting a NBA Maximum Hangtime to NHL Open Ice (I know, I know... this is probably sacrilege to many :-D). I picked up the Maximum Hangtime board on eBay from a guy who pulled it from a NBA Jam cabinet he had, so I don't have the whole history on where the board came from. However, this Maximum Hangtime board has both the U55 populated with a MK41T56N (and associated crystal) - which I thought was something interesting and may be of use to someone else out there. The board also had a 32kb SRAM, but it is using a NEC D43256BGU-70LL.

Now could this board started life as WWF Wrestlemania... maybe? But then why does it have a 32K SRAM? Also, interstingly, the U57 A-20093 PAL chip sticker says MKIII. So who knows. Maybe this board had an interesting aftermarket history :-D Or maybe Midway was just using parts they had available on the shelf to push out their remaining stock of Wolf Unit boards in late 1996 through 1997.

EDIT: I figured I may as well take some pictures:

nba_maximum_hangtime_pcb.jpg


U35.jpg


U55_MKIII_U57.jpg


KDS_4G_32.768khz_crystal_oscillator.jpg


U62_D43256BGU-70LL.jpg
 
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Also, I don't think I've seen this posted here but Guru came up with a bunch of PIC16F57 conversions, including the UMK3 U64 PIC. See the Nov 5th, 2023 entry for details: https://gurudumps.otenko.com/oldnews2023.html

I've attached the file from the Google Drive link there to this post to make it more handy (and, hopefully, will make it less likely to be lost to internet history).

PIC16F57's seem to still be readily available, cheap and able to be programmed with modern IC programmers, so the UMK3 file in the attached zip combined with the Wolf Unit AnyU64 roms means a cheap/readily available source of U64's for any Wolf Unit game.

I was able to program a UMK3 U64 PIC16F57 with my Xgecu T56 and it works with the Any64 roms for NHL Open ICe, but check on your programming device to make sure it supports it first!
 

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Just try to keep this topic alive, because a multi would be amazing, also I have seen on YourMKArcadeSource YouTube channel and showcase or MK2 running on the Midway Wolf board. How close does that get us to a multi? Or does it change anything in the equation?
 
kazanova225 said:
How close does that get us to a multi? Or does it change anything in the equation?
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this has no impact on getting a multi for this hardware.

honestly there's nothing technical stopping anyone from making a Wolf Unit multi, other than no one has done it yet.

as a rule, if you can do conversions then you've already figured out what you need to make a multi.

the challenge with Wolf unit is that the games use a lot of ROM space. So for this multi it would likely have to be an SD card switcher, which tends to be on the most expensive side to build and the question is if the multi value would be worth the small number of games (even if you included some T-Unit conversion stuff)
 
I've also started work on Narc with lessons learned from my earlier work.

As for a multi, the gfx assets are static so they could reside in large flash or even 27c322 or bigger tsop. DCS and Program roms are not final yet and could change for the current projects.
 
Asure said:
the gfx assets are static so they could reside in large flash or even 27c322 or bigger tsop
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the graphics Assets are exactly the issue.

most wolf unit games would require 4x 27c322s per game just for the graphics assets. UMK3 having more graphics space would need 6 of them

so you wanted to have all Wolf unit games on a multi the graphics assets alone would require 30 27c322 EPROMs and you haven't even considered the sound and program space, and that doesn't even include any of the T-Unit or other conversions.

I think with DS's ROM modules you could probably get a 16 game setup across 4 modules
 
30 chips is close to a single sega model 3 conversion.
So not terrible.
If anyone cares model 2 & 3 could use a multi too...
 
With MK and MKII now working on the Wolf unit thanks to Asure (thank you)..... I really want this multi to be a thing.

Interchangeable rom and sound modules with a dip switch or some kind of selector would definitely work for me. Probably expensive but still cheaper than owning multiple Wolf, T, and Y units
 
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