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Region swapping Gunbalina to Point Blank 3

which hardware is it on?

a lot of the system 11 and 12 hardware use the same keycus between regions so you'd theoretically just need to reflash the program roms.
 
DRAGONKZ said:
PB3/Gunbalina would be system 10?
Click to expand...
is it just on 10 only? I know some of these pointblank games released on multiple platforms and not all of them are dumped.

looking at the system 10 driver in MAME there are two NAND flashes that would need to be reprogrammed and the decryption key is the same for both JP and world regions.
 
I believe MAME/System 16 show it was on 10/11/12, but I don’t think there has ever been any proof that 11/12 exist? (No pics, no one claiming to have one)

I do have a PB3 board and had contemplated what was involved to swap to Japanese (Gunbalina), perhaps swapping ROM boards with nem could be another option.
 
You can try what I did to confirm that swapping from Oh! Bakyuuun to Ghoul Panic works without needing to do anything too crazy: (just swap two ROM files around, in my case):

- Compare the differences in the ROM sets for both games and note the differences in checksums between the list of files.
- Doing a bit of trial and error, swap out the files where needed and try booting it in MAME.

Note that I haven't tried this on real hardware yet, only in MAME but if it works in MAME there's a pretty good chance it'll work on the real hardware, especially considering it's System 10.
 
Well dang. I was hoping it was on system 12.
Is 10 backwards compatible with 11/12?
 
Yes, System 10. I doubt that it was released on anything else.

twistedsymphony said:
looking at the system 10 driver in MAME there are two NAND flashes that would need to be reprogrammed and the decryption key is the same for both JP and world regions.
Click to expand...

I just tried this and I can't get it to boot.

Could be poor soldering on my part or something else at play.
 
I desoldered the flash chips, reflashed them back to the Gunbalina roms I had saved before, and it works first try :shrug:

Keycus on the board is the same as in Mame, KC002A.

Flash is NAND, Samsung K9F2808UM. Proman can read it.

Guru mentions this on his page:

So in preparation to see if running trojans on the board was possible I did 6 NAND re-programming tests just trying to get some blank NAND ROMs to accept the same identical stock dumped code without changes and run on several different PCBs. To my surprise just copying the ROM to a new NAND and running on the board doesn't work!
Click to expand...
https://gurudumps.otenko.com/namco/namcos10.html

Weird!

Anyway, I'm not going to mess with my board any more. I pulled of some pads already (fortunately not connected to anything), not worth breaking it.
 
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Weird indeed.
i wonder if there is a program lock against the serial in the flash chip.
System 10 was recently cracked. could reach out to that person to get some ideas
 
nem said:
I desoldered the flash chips, reflashed them back to the Gunbalina roms I had saved before, and it works first try :shrug:

Keycus on the board is the same as in Mame, KC002A.

Flash is NAND, Samsung K9F2808UM. Proman can read it.

Guru mentions this on his page:


https://gurudumps.otenko.com/namco/namcos10.html

Weird!

Anyway, I'm not going to mess with my board any more. I pulled of some pads already (fortunately not connected to anything), not worth breaking it'
Click to expand...

I think the problem is caused by the bad blocks as Guru mention at the end of his page...

"Please note the following.....

NEVER overwrite the original ROMs and hope it's going to work afterwards! NAND ROMs have bad blocks and vary from chip to chip. No two chips are the same so you can't just use any random NAND ROM it won't work... you need a NAND with zero bad blocks which are not easy to find."

... To make it work with your chip, you would need to rearrange the Mame dump so the good and the bad blocks matches your chip. Or find out where the region byte is stored and change it in your own roms...

There could also be additional protection, like a serial check that needs to be taken care of...
 
I always assumed the Proman software takes care of that. With both chips it gave me the go ahead to mount them on the board.
 
Maybe. that could be verified by read the data back and then compare with the Mame dump. But that would probably be a lot of work to do, with all the soldering etc...
 
I read the chips after programming and tested them in Mame.

EDIT: actually, no, I lie. I tested the original rom dumps. I'm now testing the dumps of the Point Blank 3 roms (the ones I flashed), and those dumps don't boot.

Maybe something did go wrong while flashing.
 
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Dump of 8e is failing. Goddamnit.

Lesson learned. After flashing, read back, test in Mame.

I need to score another Gunbalina.
 
You mean that your backup of Gunbalina doesn't work or the one from Mame?
 
Nono, you guys misunderstand me. My Gunbalina board is working fine right now. Like I said, I pulled pads when I desoldered the chips the second time:

gunbalina_pulled_pads.jpg


It doesn't matter. None of the pads are used. But I don't want to work on the board any more. The tracks are obviously too delicate for repeated attempts by me. This board is staying as is.

When I desoldered the flash chips initially I dumped my original Gunbalina data. Those roms work in Mame.

I erased the chips and flashed the Point Blank 3 data on them. I then dumped those (read them back), but I did not test the roms. They're on my computer.

I put the flash chips back on the board with the flashed Point Blank 3 data. It does not boot.

I desoldered the flash chips the second time. I erased them again and rewrote my original Gunbalina data. I put the chips back. Everything is A-OK.

My mistake was not testing the dumps of the flashed Point Blank 3 data. 8e does not work in Mame. Had I known this, I probably wouldn't have tried the chips on the board and I would have saved myself one attempt at it.
 
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Chipquik is how I pull all smd stuff, and on high dollar sometimes hot air too.
I rarely pull pads with it, my goal is always protect the pcb over the chip.
 
I don't normally pull pads, not sure what happened here. They just came off.

Oh well. Nothing gained, nothing lost.
 
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