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Released: Gaelco Conversions. Squash or Thunder Hoop into Biomechanical Toy

UPDATE! So Finally we got the Gauntlet PCB thanks to a very good price offered by another collector. Those of you who pledged, you'll get a PM from me to proceed with the payment.

The romset will be released soon. As a donor you can use squash and thunder hoop. I'm pretty confident that Big Karnak can also be used but this is uncorfimed yet.

Stay tuned for more...
 
Darksoft said:
UPDATE! So Finally we got the Gauntlet PCB thanks to a very good price. Those of you who pledged, you'll get a PM from me to proceed with the payment.

The romset will be released soon. As a donor you can use squash and thunder hoop. I'm pretty confident that Big Karnak can also be used but this is uncorfimed yet.

Stay tuned for more...
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Awesome!!!! Let me know where to send $$.
 
Darksoft said:
As a donor you can use squash and thunder hoop. I'm pretty confident that Big Karnak can also be used but this is uncorfimed yet.
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I'm not sure of it.
If you look at MAME's source you can see one of the decryption parameter is different between Squash and Thunder Hoop.
For Squash param1 = 0x0f and 0x0e for Thunder Hoop.
 
Looks like Big Karnak doesn't have enough gfx rom space. So it's Squash and Thunder Hoop.
 
Derick2k said:
Awesome, I scored a Squash pcb last night for $39 shipped :)
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nice, I see some candidates on eBay but did you find a better source? Seems like these may have been distributed around Europe more that US or Japan, so my normal channels are less useful.
 
ekorz said:
Derick2k said:
Awesome, I scored a Squash pcb last night for $39 shipped :)
Click to expand...
nice, I see some candidates on eBay but did you find a better source? Seems like these may have been distributed around Europe more that US or Japan, so my normal channels are less useful.
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Got it from a buddy in Germany, I was already getting a couple boards from him so he happened to have this so threw it in the box.
 
if your interested, the squash pcb has extra unused rom positions and jumpers to set chip size.
so big karnak probably would fit.
 
I did the conversion and it works. Thank you so much!

One minor gotcha if you're using a Squash (you should use a Squash): on the board I got, the CPU is underclocked to 10 mhz. The oscillator close to it is 20 mhz when it should be 24 (it has 24mhz silkscreened on the board). You might want to add a possible oscillator swap to the instructions. After all, the CPU installed is rated for 12 mhz anyway. I imagine some Squash boards might have 10 mhz rated CPUs soldered in as well, but I've only seen one so far.

MAME says a real board runs at 12 mhz, but I'm wondering if it's possible to upgrade it all the way to 16 mhz and get rid of all the slowdown. I might try that later but desoldering stuff out of this board is a real pain.
 
papa_november said:
I did the conversion and it works. Thank you so much!

One minor gotcha if you're using a Squash (you should use a Squash): on the board I got, the CPU is underclocked to 10 mhz. The oscillator close to it is 20 mhz when it should be 24 (it has 24mhz silkscreened on the board). You might want to add a possible oscillator swap to the instructions. After all, the CPU installed is rated for 12 mhz anyway. I imagine some Squash boards might have 10 mhz rated CPUs soldered in as well, but I've only seen one so far.

MAME says a real board runs at 12 mhz, but I'm wondering if it's possible to upgrade it all the way to 16 mhz and get rid of all the slowdown. I might try that later but desoldering stuff out of this board is a real pain.
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Thanks for the info, please share your results if you make the upgrades.
 
use a socket - incase it's too fast for the ram or some other issue happens.
 
What ICs and how many do I need to get for the conversion? I want to keep my originals ICs.
 
Astro X said:
Darksoft said:
Please try with a Thunder Hoop or a Squash PCB and let us know how it works for you.
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works with Squash PCB......and original D21 PLD,it´s not necessary to desolder it.


great stuff........... :thumbup:
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Thanks for your feedback.
I had a discussion with DS about the conversion where I explained my version didn't need the PAL to be replaced and was curious why it had to be replaced with the released version.
 
I dont know. It's not my hack. I guess the person who did it just touched the part concerning re-encryption (and not the part related to the PAL which I guess is related to mapping)
 
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