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Naomi dimm firm 4.02 direct flasheable binary file to chip

Tailsnic Retroworks

Tailsnic Retroworks

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Hi. I released a few months ago this binary file that allows you to flash directly to a tsop48 chip the dimm firmware 4.02 without any net-dimm with @TylerDurden67 's original method:

- Method: https://www.arcade-projects.com/for...ompact-flash-on-normal-non-net-dimmboard.626/
- 4.02 direct flasheable binary file: segaretro.org/User:Tailsnic.
- Alternate link: http://behindtheroto.x10host.com/Dimm_4.02_FIRM_BINARY.rar


I hope you like it. It's free for use. Thanks to @TylerDurden67 for the tutorial.


06/04/2019 - WARNING: it is possible that after soldering the new chip with 4.02 firm, the dimm won't boot up with black screen effect. For assuring that, try to connect the raw motherboard without any RAM neither the SCSI-50 PCB, and wait at least 30 seconds. If your naomi system ends with a black screen, your dimm is not updatable. You have to solder again the original chip and use the dimm only for GD-ROM, sorry. There isn't any explanation for that, but it may occurs. By the way, if you have the typical "ERROR 22" message, it's probably because your new chip isn't soldered well or you have broken the dimm in the proccess. Anyway, try to solder the original chip and test.

05/06/2019 - It is highly recommended to have a BIOS FREE chip on Naomi base for using the 4.02 firm of the dimm
 
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Great work.
But i've never been able to have a 100% working unit using that method.
I Always finished having a dimm that only works sometimes, while many times it just stuck on a black screen.
The same won't happen if on the top board you have a net dimm.
With that it boot 100% of the times, but with a normal non net dimm top board it will stuck 95% of the times on black screen.
Also Tyler never understand why.….
 
I can tell you that 4 dimms are well with this binary directly soldered. I haven't do anyone with bad results.
 
Pretty damn cool. Now just have to figure out how to flash a TSOP48 with my Top3000 programmer.
 
I used the binary to update one dimm the other day that just WOULD NOT update via netboot. It works but like some regular dimms it is a bit tricky.

I dont really think the problems with some normal dimms not booting is FW related. It's something else. Some regular dimms boot 100% every time and some just dont like to boot.

I've never had s problem getting a netdimm to boot a cf card at all. It definitely has something to do with the daughterboard.
 
Mitsurugi-w said:
I used the binary to update one dimm the other day that just WOULD NOT update via netboot. It works but like some regular dimms it is a bit tricky.
Click to expand...
So if I understand this correctly. You had a DIMM that you soldered 3.17 firmware to. Then when you tried to netboot to update to 4.02, it would not netboot to 4.02? But soldering on tailsnic's version of 4.02 firmware then allowed you to CF boot with the regular DIMM's firmware?
 
Yeah, it wouldnt connect to the network so I couldn't push the fw update to it. I spent two hours trying to update it. Every other dimm PCB I connected the netdimm daughterboard would connect fine but this one just would not. All setting were correct and I tried several different IP addresses, cleared and reset settings several times, etc. First time I've ever had that issue so I tried the file posted here and it updated the dimm for cf use just fine.

But like I said, like some other normal dimms it would boot and load games but not 100% every time.
 
Mitsurugi-w said:
Yeah, it wouldnt connect to the network so I couldn't push the fw update to it. I spent two hours trying to update it. Every other dimm PCB I connected the netdimm daughterboard would connect fine but this one just would not. All setting were correct and I tried several different IP addresses, cleared and reset settings several times, etc. First time I've ever had that issue so I tried the file posted here and it updated the dimm for cf use just fine.

But like I said, like some other normal dimms it would boot and load games but not 100% every time.
Click to expand...
Could you elaborate on your method of testing the dimm with the CF cards? Are you loading the same game over and over? Swapping different cards with different games on them?
 
Try loading the same game multiple times. Switch games and known working cf cards. Trying different brand CF cards that have worked before. When I convert a DIMM for a customer they either work 100% of the time or they are difficult and will load a game once in every 5 or 6 tries. With no CF card installed on the CF kit they will always boot to the "No GD rom found" error but when a CF card is inserted some of them just stick at a black screen.
 
Mitsurugi-w said:
Try loading the same game multiple times. Switch games and known working cf cards. Trying different brand CF cards that have worked before. When I convert a DIMM for a customer they either work 100% of the time or they are difficult and will load a game once in every 5 or 6 tries. With no CF card installed on the CF kit they will always boot to the "No GD rom found" error but when a CF card is inserted some of them just stick at a black screen.
Click to expand...
How much time between power off and power on when testing the same game multiple times? I’m going to convert one for fun and would like to test it out properly.
 
When they are tricky they do seem be boot better if you give it some time in between.
 
Mitsurugi-w said:
Yeah, it wouldnt connect to the network so I couldn't push the fw update to it. I spent two hours trying to update it. Every other dimm PCB I connected the netdimm daughterboard would connect fine but this one just would not. All setting were correct and I tried several different IP addresses, cleared and reset settings several times, etc. First time I've ever had that issue so I tried the file posted here and it updated the dimm for cf use just fine.

But like I said, like some other normal dimms it would boot and load games but not 100% every time.
Click to expand...
Welp, there you have it. A testimony on the merits of the effort from @Mitsurugi-w. Going to PM you so you can burn me a few. My soldering skills should be up to snuff now. Nice work @tailsnic.

@Gakman, probably should reach out to tailsnic and get his blessing and archive along with the rest of the NAOMI stuff.
 
Thanks a lot to all of you. I very appreciate it, really. I invested a lot of money for publishing the binary file for all de Naomi community, because I had the same problem of not having a normal dimm able to be updated to 4.02 firm.
 
Mitsurugi-w said:
I dont really think the problems with some normal dimms not booting is FW related. It's something else. Some regular dimms boot 100% every time and some just dont like to boot.

I've never had s problem getting a netdimm to boot a cf card at all. It definitely has something to do with the daughterboard.
Click to expand...
I Always had problems booting cf cards with a non net dimm top board.
Always.
And i tried on several different dimms.
1 time boot
30 times not.
Problem disappears if i use a net dimm top board.
Never understand why.
 
tailsnic said:
Hi. I released a few months ago this binary file that allows you to flash directly to a tsop48 chip the dimm firmware 4.02 without any net-dimm with @TylerDurden67 's original method:

- Method: https://www.arcade-projects.com/for...ompact-flash-on-normal-non-net-dimmboard.626/
- 4.02 direct flasheable binary file: segaretro.org/User:Tailsnic.

I hope you like it. It's free for use. Thanks to @TylerDurden67 for the tutorial.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the release. I compared your firmware file to mine after doing the @TylerDurden67 method
to my Non-NetDimm and the files are an exact match.


Mitsurugi-w said:
I used the binary to update one dimm the other day that just WOULD NOT update via netboot. It works but like some regular dimms it is a bit tricky.

I dont really think the problems with some normal dimms not booting is FW related. It's something else. Some regular dimms boot 100% every time and some just dont like to boot.

I've never had s problem getting a netdimm to boot a cf card at all. It definitely has something to do with the daughterboard.
Click to expand...

I used a Non-NetDimm with 1.02 Firmware and updated straight to 4.02 using @tailsnic posted firmware and could not get my Dimm to function properly not even when swapping boards with a NetDimm. I just kept getting Error 21 and no game/CF card would load for me. So I triple checked my soldering and still nothing. I removed the chip and flashed it with firmware 3.17 and updated via @TylerDurden67's method and that worked. The funny thing was I got more consistent successful loads using a Zero PIC for a NetDimm than I did using the CF version that @rtw posted in his thread. I then desoldered one more time in order to dump the file and compare with the OP posted and it was a match.


acblunden2 said:
Mitsurugi-w said:
Yeah, it wouldnt connect to the network so I couldn't push the fw update to it. I spent two hours trying to update it. Every other dimm PCB I connected the netdimm daughterboard would connect fine but this one just would not. All setting were correct and I tried several different IP addresses, cleared and reset settings several times, etc. First time I've ever had that issue so I tried the file posted here and it updated the dimm for cf use just fine.

But like I said, like some other normal dimms it would boot and load games but not 100% every time.
Click to expand...
Welp, there you have it. A testimony on the merits of the effort from @Mitsurugi-w. Going to PM you so you can burn me a few. My soldering skills should be up to snuff now. Nice work @tailsnic.
@Gakman, probably should reach out to tailsnic and get his blessing and archive along with the rest of the NAOMI stuff.
Click to expand...

Just know that the Non-NetDimm boards are very fickle as to when they load games properly.


glstar said:
Mitsurugi-w said:
I dont really think the problems with some normal dimms not booting is FW related. It's something else. Some regular dimms boot 100% every time and some just dont like to boot.

I've never had s problem getting a netdimm to boot a cf card at all. It definitely has something to do with the daughterboard.
Click to expand...
I Always had problems booting cf cards with a non net dimm top board.
Always.
And i tried on several different dimms.
1 time boot
30 times not.
Problem disappears if i use a net dimm top board.
Never understand why.
Click to expand...

I'm afraid you won't be achieving anything new if you try and use the OP's posted file.
 
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I'm sorry to hear that there are problems with the binary, but I have updated many dimms with this method with 100% success. I think that the problem is because of the Naomi base. Before this experiment, my other Naomi base didn't boot a net dimm with 3.17 firmware, so I had to buy another one.

In this new one base, I have achieved to load all the dimms to 4.02 firmware, except 2 of them because I broke them.

I have put a message on the segaretro page for warning the people because of your problems. Sorry, really.
 
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I have a Net-only Dimm (no GD-rom port) that's stuck on 2.13 Firmware, I've tried swapping the top board for a standard one and using my FW update GDROMS and it recognised my A version as being the same as the 2.13 that was installed but refused to flash with my C or E GDROMS (to update to 3.17 by the official route). I've tried a net top board and using transfergame to send newer FW to it but it refuses to budge from 2.13,

I'll try this later, as have granddaughter staying with us overnight, ! can't fire up the cab/soldering irons until she's been picked up by her parents.

I've reset the network settings and set Ethernet to "None" in case that is part of the problem with swapping bios chips and ending up with bricked dimms.


Hopefully it'll work as I have a net-dimm top board where the network port doesn't seem to work (nic leds flash but it never detects a network and the RPI doesn't either) and one of Mitsu's CF-reader PCB's so I'll put 4.02 on and set to GDROM mode and use it with that and swap the net-only top onto the 3.17 Net-dimm that has a faulty network port (no point in upgrading to 4.x as no GDROM port).

It could be that dimms with >= 3.03 have some different hardware/firmware that works all the way to 4.x and anything <= 2.13 has a subtle difference that causes instability/bricks it if you do, otherwise why do the official FW update GDROM's fail to update them beyond 2.13.
 
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