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Namco NA1 & NA2 CONVERSIONS (and multi development)

Hammy

Hammy

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NAMCO NA1 + NA2 WORK IN PROGRESS

I've been at it since I obtained and dumped a super world court bootleg.

It's time to release / show what I have already done before any more time is wasted by others.
Videos below from a couple of tests back in april. progress is slow due to lack of time and more interesting things going on.



I also have been working on a replacement rom board with ribbon cable & bootleg keycus base for a possible multigame.

The sets below are hacked to run on any keycus and motherboard. This is an ongoing project. The software is 95% done, and the hardware is 95% done.

Note: It's a good idea to save some data (test menu, high score etc) and reset the board a few times after conversion, the internal eeprom does not always clear the first time.
Note2: EPROMS MUST BE -15 OR FASTER


15 / 5 / 2020 - All Rom(s) links removed for now, user configurable patch files will be up at some point.
The multi cannot be sold if the files are hosted by me, sorry for the inconvenience.


1. Numan athletics
(Patched to work on na1 also) Tested + working on long board - Thanks to twistedsymphony

2. Emereldia
<UPDATED PATCH 2020>
(Patched to work on na1 also) Tested + working on all setups

3. Exvania
Tested + working on all setups

4. Cosmo gang
Tested + working on all setups.

5. Super World Court
Tested + working on all setups

6. Fighter and attacker
New Version 100% working. = Tested and working for any long & short board apart from Tinkle pit

7. Knuckle heads
(Patched to work on na1 also) Tested and working on long board

8. Tinkle pit
(Patched to work on na1 also) Tested and working on long board


Hope you enjoy, feedback is much appreciated.



- Hammy
 
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@rewrite Here's an easy way to get your hands on Numan Athletics ;)


For those of you interested in finding suitable donor hardware...

These games have the "short" "4M" ROM board
  • Bakuretsu Quiz Ma-Q Dai Bouken
  • Cosmo Gang the Puzzle
  • Emeraldia (also comes on long ROM board)
  • Exvania
  • Fighter & Attacker
  • Super World Court

These games have the "long" "8M" ROM board:
  • Emeraldia (also comes on short ROM board)
  • Knuckle Heads
  • Numan Athletics
  • Nettou! Gekitou! Quiztou!!
  • Tinkle Pit
This game has a unique ROM board and likely wouldn't be suitable for anything:
  • X-Day 2

Obviously the Quiz games are going to be the cheapest option but you'll be importing them.
Emeraldia and Cosmo Gang the Puzzle seem to be the cheapest options for finding one locally.

Fighter/Attacker and Numan Athletics seem to be the highest priced games on this platform.

None of these games come up that often.

--------------
A Note on "Broken" PCBs...

These PCBs are prone to leaking SMD caps and there are a TON of them. This causes the audio volume to drop until it disappears and there is a voltage check IC that disabls the CPU if it goes bad and the caps tend to kill this too causing the game to not boot.

I've revived 3 dead NA PCBs replacing this voltage check IC (the little 3773 IC) and the near by cap (C5 I think?). these three also have very faint audio volume. and have visually corroded metal around the caps. I'm waiting on some replacement caps to do some kits after which I plan do to a detailed write up on capping/reviving these PCBs.


--------------------
A Note on Doing the conversions....

There are 2-4 Program EPROMs (27c040/27v4001) that are socketed and 0-8 Mask ROMs (27c080/27c801 equivalent) that are soldered. So If you're using a ROM board that doesn't fill all the chip locations then the holes are generally all filled with solder anyway, so you'll be doing A LOT of de-soldering.

So on a long ROM board you're looking at 256 points to desolder, and 128-192 on a short ROM board. Easy work with a De-soldering gun, but I wouldn't want to attempt this otherwise.
 
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Emeraldia NA1 comes on the short board, NA2 on the long.
All the games should run on the long board.

As said, failure rate on this pcb is very high. Capacitor acid and those surface mount pads don't mix.
They rot to a point it's impossible to get any contact, and the pins are very fine.

There are also 2 different types of short board, but they seem to work the same.
 
Hammy said:
Emeraldia NA1 comes on the short board, NA2 on the long.
Click to expand...
Interesting... my Emeralida was on a long ROM board and NA1.

is the NA2 Emeraldia locked to the NA2 hardware or does it work on both? I suppose mine could have been switched at some point.

One of my Cosmo Puzzles came on NA2 also.
 
Yeah after that post i knew the cat was out the bag.

Had big plans and was keeping this quiet but it's better to just share. It's been sat around long enough.
It's a fairly simple system for the most part. Just it rotts away with capacitor corrosion!!

The only one that looks tricky is Tinkle pit. To be fair not checked it yet.
Finding a good seed for F/A's RNG is a bit of a setback what I have up to now is not random enough.
If you've done them don't know why he did not test.. a bit silly... I did tell him to tell you it's almost all done anyway.

I will not be able to do the PCB CAD work, but will have a drawing that will need to be translated to CAD for making, so i'm gonna need help at some point.
As we all have little time we should learn to communicate a bit better on this stuff.
 
Hammy said:
If you've done them don't know why he did not test.. a bit silly...
Click to expand...
I offered to test... offer is still open too. :thumbup:

I've got the socketed ROM boards and all 3 variations of the main board so it makes for a good test setup
 
Hammy said:
Finding a good seed for F/A's RNG is a bit of a setback what I have up to now is not random enough.
Click to expand...
Is it random at all? For Nebula Rays I've tried 2 things:
- fixed set of values
- RNG
But as it only impacts stars in the background it doesn't make a difference really.
Also for RNG you have to play the game multiple times to make sure:
- the seed you've chosen is fluctuating enough
- the addresses in RAM you've used to store the seed and random number aren't overwritten at any time
Quite boring.

Hammy said:
If you've done them don't know why he did not test.. a bit silly... I did tell him to tell you it's almost all done anyway.
Click to expand...
I didn't send him anything, was just asking if he had the possibility to do the tests for me.
 
Apocalypse said:
Hammy said:
Finding a good seed for F/A's RNG is a bit of a setback what I have up to now is not random enough.
Click to expand...
Is it random at all? For Nebula Rays I've tried 2 things:- fixed set of values
- RNG
But as it only impacts stars in the background it doesn't make a difference really.
Also for RNG you have to play the game multiple times to make sure:
- the seed you've chosen is fluctuating enough
- the addresses in RAM you've used to store the seed and random number aren't overwritten at any time
Quite boring.

Hammy said:
If you've done them don't know why he did not test.. a bit silly... I did tell him to tell you it's almost all done anyway.
Click to expand...
I didn't send him anything, was just asking if he had the possibility to do the tests for me.
Click to expand...
For F/A it's used a lot, all smoke effects, explosions, waves in the sea and more, at e40004.
The seeds i have found are just not random enough, the spots just 'calm down' at some points in the game, if it gets the same random twice it reboots, unless you patch out that as well..
For me it's gotta pass the test or it's not random enough, just a case of finding enough spots that are moving frequently enough and doing something with them to get result good enough.
 
Apocalypse said:
Is it random at all?
Click to expand...
I did some testing on this game, played it through to the end once on actual hardware and again on MAME.

The specific things that stuck out to me:
1. most obvious when you destroy a boss ship in MAME there are explosions all over the ship, in the patched version the explosions all occur on top of each other on the exact same spot on the ship, and the exact same spot on every boss ship.

2. Less obvious... In some levels where you fly over water pattern of the water pixels in MAME are very random while they're a very rigid pattern in the patched version. This was very apparent on the late levels but there are some water sections at the beginning of the game too (hopefully they use the same code).

3. maybe/maybe not... Some of the smoke/explosion effects of crashing enemies seemed to look a bit more "natural" to me in MAME, but they disappear pretty quick so this might just be my imagination.
 
twistedsymphony said:
Apocalypse said:
Is it random at all?
Click to expand...
I did some testing on this game, played it through to the end once on actual hardware and again on MAME.
The specific things that stuck out to me:
1. most obvious when you destroy a boss ship in MAME there are explosions all over the ship, in the patched version the explosions all occur on top of each other on the exact same spot on the ship, and the exact same spot on every boss ship.

2. Less obvious... In some levels where you fly over water pattern of the water pixels in MAME are very random while they're a very rigid pattern in the patched version. This was very apparent on the late levels but there are some water sections at the beginning of the game too (hopefully they use the same code).

3. maybe/maybe not... Some of the smoke/explosion effects of crashing enemies seemed to look a bit more "natural" to me in MAME, but they disappear pretty quick so this might just be my imagination.
Click to expand...
My question was "Is your version Hammy random at all?".
I know where RNG is used in game.
 
The above set i think the random check is patched out- so a fixed value. This is the only version tested on hardware.
I have several versions of it. I uploaded the 'check patched only' version.

There's a lot of random stuff at around 1000 and i was using that as a base. I can confirm the smoke is affected by the RNG.
 
A little update for this one, Now have 2x long boards on the way so can work on the remaining 2 good games and incorporate the long board into the multi design

Also i found a board software that seems to be more of a style that i can use - got the lower board, keycus and rom banking down for the short board.
The multi will be able to use a bootleg keycus or an original. eventually they can be removed as the software patches become better.
With the bootleg it uses a 74HC4060 for the random generator...

It's good seeing a shitty drawing come to life on screen :)
 
Hammy said:
A little update for this one, Now have 2x long boards on the way so can work on the remaining 2 good games and incorporate the long board into the multi design

Also i found a board software that seems to be more of a style that i can use - got the lower board, keycus and rom banking down for the short board.
The multi will be able to use a bootleg keycus or an original. eventually they can be removed as the software patches become better.
With the bootleg it uses a 74HC4060 for the random generator...

It's good seeing a shitty drawing come to life on screen :)
Click to expand...
Fantastic! It seems 2018 is a good year for the multis.
 
Apocalypse said:
Hammy said:
A little update for this one, Now have 2x long boards on the way so can work on the remaining 2 good games and incorporate the long board into the multi design

Also i found a board software that seems to be more of a style that i can use - got the lower board, keycus and rom banking down for the short board.
The multi will be able to use a bootleg keycus or an original. eventually they can be removed as the software patches become better.
With the bootleg it uses a 74HC4060 for the random generator...

It's good seeing a shitty drawing come to life on screen :)
Click to expand...
Fantastic! It seems 2018 is a good year for the multis.
Click to expand...
It sure is for the 'lesser' known systems! I have another 3 or 4 others in mind as well....

Good thing about this one, is when the board is done, it can later be modded more for maybe an on screen select.
Hopefully the long board has no nasty surprises.

And Apocalypse - have some hardware for you arriving in the same job lot as the long boards, it's no irem tho before you get excited :)
 
Is Great Sluggers '94 good for anything here?
 
Never mind- that’s NB hardware. Got them mixed up. Keep up the great work though!
 
My Knuckle Heads just showed up! Someone recapped it but there's some audio buzzing still so I have to track that down. But register me interested in a multi here!
 
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