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Reverse engineering 161 in 1 cartridge to change Rom games

Yes you're probably right, but I'm sure there must be a happy medium somewhere of quality vs quantity.
The cart I have has all of the important stuff. Some ancillary games are there like quest of the jong master, irritating maze, etc. But the important games (fighters, platformers, Crossed Swords 2, Ironclad, etc) are there.

Hell I even got Fight Fever on there XD

This is quite literally the end-all be-all of multi carts. Only drawback I can see is new stuff that's coming out cant be on there unless the whole process is redone.
 
Great project guys!
If I provide the 2 MVS carts (V3) is there anyone out there that can assemble a modified cart with the full set for me?
(for a price offcourse)
 
In all honesty I'm really hoping the Chinese just start manufacturing the true "All in one Card" and all the "struggle" right now will be ultimately totally unnecessary

Based on what I see on AE, I think the Chinese are going back to using 55LV100S memory chips. This means that instead of a single 1Gb flash chip, we're back to 10 chips holding all that memory (A typical 161-in-1 will go back to having 32 flash chips instead of the 5 the V3's had). No one is desoldering 32 flash chips, programming them and soldering them back. There's also no provision (nor space) to even grow these carts to hold all the games.

So unless the Chinese find new flash chips, write FPGA code to support them, create new PCBs to support them, etc. it would be cheaper for them to just make carts the way they used to. The Chinese factories always put priority on price and why I don't think you'll ever see them making these carts. :(
 
I (vaguely) remember second hand accounts of interviews with the creator of the 161 in 1 saying that their work had been stolen and cloned by Aliexpress factories.

Maybe the combo of Vortex amazing work, and the supply chain disruption is what they need to come out of retirement to make a “v4” cart :-)
 
I (vaguely) remember second hand accounts of interviews with the creator of the 161 in 1 saying that their work had been stolen and cloned by Aliexpress factories.

Maybe the combo of Vortex amazing work, and the supply chain disruption is what they need to come out of retirement to make a “v4” cart :)
Do you have a link to that? I wonder if the FPGA code for CP1 on the PRG PCB has ever been dumped/shared. The Chinese do something Vortex doesn't, save/load DIP settings to the STC11 IC. Vortex did document his findings on this chip, but I don't know enough Verilog to write my own routines to handle that. It's really the last big missing piece from making this cart "perfect".
 
Do you have a link to that? I wonder if the FPGA code for CP1 on the PRG PCB has ever been dumped/shared.
Nope, just vague recollections of half-forgotten posts. I’m hoping someone with a better memory than me might have have something useful
 
Congratulations on getting this mod working successfully!

In the Vortex github there is also a fix for the voltage regulator, designed to help fix sound issues. If you haven’t already might be worth checking out
Tried this one, no chance. Thanks for the suggestion though!
 
Hello Everyone! First of all, and most important, thanks to everyone who made this possible. Specially Vortex and rockbottom for the hard reverse engineering work, ack and ManCloud for their contributions to the project, rewrite for giving advice and sharing his experiences... Sorry if I miss someone, there are a lot of talented people in this thread.

I discovered this project a couple of weeks ago, sadly too late to buy a 161-in-1 v3 from Ali at a decent price, and the good old 161-in-1 v? cart I got a few years ago can be only used as donor (is the version that uses a F0095H0 chip for P ROMs). So a few days ago I decided to buy an used second-hand v3 from eBay, for several times the original price plus shipping, but I don't care, as I really want to do this project, both because is very nice to have a full set onto an insta-load flashcart, and the challenge of doing it yourself.

I read the 40 pages of this thread, and on the hardware side, is all very clear for me. I've been into electronics for many years, both professionally and as a hobby, I have the required tools and skills, and also done similar things in the past. Of course this is a very long and tedious process, so a lot of things can go wrong along the road, but in general terms I'm confident with the whole process. My only hardware related concern is that, to avoid scavenging my old 161-in-1, I ordered an spare F0095H0 from Ali. Reading this thread, seems very likely to be from a low quality/rejected batch, so I don't have big expectations on this. In worst case scenario, once I have the v3 working with 2gbytes, I will take one F0095H0 from my old 161, which is known to be good, and use it to make the full 3gbytes.

On the software side of things, while I wait for the v3 to arrive, I want to have it as clear an polished as I can. Right now I have mainly two questions. The first, and most important, regarding the CPLDs. I took the full game.txt from Vortex repo, with 161 games, and only modified it to sort the games alphabetically. VTXCart.exe generates all the files fine, without any error, but when I try to compile the CPLDs projects with Quartus, for "PROG_CP1" and "PROG_PCM2" I get an unable to fit error, so I have to change the optimization technique from Speed to Area to be able to compile it ("CHA_CP1" is already on Area, so no problem with this one, I guess). Unfortunately my knowledge on CPLDs and FPGAs is very limited, so I can't evaluate by myself is this represents any issues. Had anyone run into the same problem and can confirm that Area optimization is safe to use? It would be totally discouraging to have everything reprogrammed, just to find out the CPLDs are not working as they should, and have to start all over from the beginning.

My other software related question is about kof2000. It seems pretty clear that it is not possible to fit all the S tiles on only 128kb, so corruption is inevitable. Reading the whole thread, I have found two versions: kof2000b from the Vortex archive.org and Kof2000nrxfix from page 35. Tested both of them on MAME, and they both have S layer corruption, obviously, but Kof2000nrxfix seems a bit better, at least character selection screen and in-battle texts are more readable. Is there any other better option? if not, is there any reason to not use Kof2000nrxfix?

Once I have these two questions sorted, and I get my v3 cart, I will be ready to begin. I hope everything goes as smooth as possible. Thank to all you, I have a good perspective of all the things that can go wrong, and which parts require extreme caution.

Thanks for your help.

EDIT: I just received this today from Aliexpress, just 6 days after placing the order (is this a record?). It is the first part I have for this project, and the last one I'm going to use. It is not salvaged, as it still has gold plated pads, and visually it is in mint condition. Did anyone have any luck flashing one of this "supposedly new" chips from Ali? I Hope I didn't waste 20 bucks. It is going to be a long time until I can test it, I still have to order the programmers, PCBs, connectors...

IMG_20241003_195937.jpgIMG_20241003_195946.jpg
 
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You can use the neoragex roms for kof2k. I was working on a fix for the tiles, but lost interest after the MotW's one hit a roadblock.
 
Thank you for doing the original research, and the implementation, and responding here - your work is noticed and it is appreciated.
If I'm understanding this correctly KOF2000/MOTW have graphical glitches in the Vortex 161in1 because the Fully Decrypted sets being used are actually not-quite-fully-decrypted. Up until recently they have been missing the extra XOR.

So fixes are
1) either update the emulator to implement the extra xor (per FBN proof of execution)
2) or update the not-quite-fully-decrypted romset so that the extra xor is decrypted too.

Clearly 1 is preferable from an emulation perspective, but only 2 is going to be possible on the vortex161

What I'm struggling to understand is why MS3/MS4/MS5 do seem work on the vortex161in1.
My simple mind thinks that if MS3/4/4 use the same CMC and have been missing the same extra XOR they should have the same problem as KOF2000/MOTW?
 
Thank you for doing the original research, and the implementation, and responding here - your work is noticed and it is appreciated.
If I'm understanding this correctly KOF2000/MOTW have graphical glitches in the Vortex 161in1 because the Fully Decrypted sets being used are actually not-quite-fully-decrypted. Up until recently they have been missing the extra XOR.

So fixes are
1) either update the emulator to implement the extra xor (per FBN proof of execution)
2) or update the not-quite-fully-decrypted romset so that the extra xor is decrypted too.

Clearly 1 is preferable from an emulation perspective, but only 2 is going to be possible on the vortex161

What I'm struggling to understand is why MS3/MS4/MS5 do seem work on the vortex161in1.
My simple mind thinks that if MS3/4/4 use the same CMC and have been missing the same extra XOR they should have the same problem as KOF2000/MOTW?

Unfortunately no,

regarding KOF2000, the data that holds the 'fix' (text graphics) is larger than what the vortex can handle.
MOTW used a copy protection chip on MVS and AES cartridges called SMA. There were other games that used this chip, but SNK released versions that didn't have it (and those are the ones you see on the vortex cart), whereas MOTW, all known versions (except the prototype), used the SMA.
I have managed to remove most of the protection from MOTW, but not the bank switch protection, but that's where vortex fails for this game. It can only bankswitch (AFAIK) in 1MB increments, MOTW needs more control than that-32kb increments.

The decryption stuff I figured out is good for two things-documenting how the hardware actually works and cartridge conversions. Games that use encrypted sprites (kof99, for example) can be potentially converted to newer games (snk vs capcom, for example) by decrypting the graphics, then re-encrypting them using the target cart's encryption type and modifying the z80 rom.

Hopefully this makes sense.
 
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May as well see if anyone else has run into this one before. I've got two carts that boot to this. The menu works fine, just looks bad, and absolutely everything works perfectly once you boot a game (even the game's S rom graphics). I've pulled the S rom, verified it, put it back, pulled it again, reprogrammed it, cleaned the cart edges, beeped it out end to end to end to end, and still this. I had one of these early on that I fixed, but it was before I started keeping detailed notes on what problems had what solutions (d'oh).

I've set them to the side for now, and have enough CHA boards I could just ignore it and move on, but it's eating at me.
 
rn_image_picker_lib_temp_c133198b-3eaf-43b2-a356-36abed8e5d3e.jpg

May as well see if anyone else has run into this one before. I've got two carts that boot to this. The menu works fine, just looks bad, and absolutely everything works perfectly once you boot a game (even the game's S rom graphics). I've pulled the S rom, verified it, put it back, pulled it again, reprogrammed it, cleaned the cart edges, beeped it out end to end to end to end, and still this. I had one of these early on that I fixed, but it was before I started keeping detailed notes on what problems had what solutions (d'oh).

I've set them to the side for now, and have enough CHA boards I could just ignore it and move on, but it's eating at me.
Seems like the CHA board CPLD is not addressing bank 0 for the S ROM on boot, so it is displaying tiles from another game instead of the menu. Maybe some lines of the cable that connects the boards are not making good contact? Do all the games work, or only some of them?

Obvious question, did the cart work fine before modification? Maybe some outputs of the CPLD are damaged or stuck at a fixed logic level.
 
EDIT: I just received this today from Aliexpress, just 6 days after placing the order (is this a record?). It is the first part I have for this project, and the last one I'm going to use. It is not salvaged, as it still has gold plated pads, and visually it is in mint condition. Did anyone have any luck flashing one of this "supposedly new" chips from Ali? I Hope I didn't waste 20 bucks. It is going to be a long time until I can test it, I still have to order the programmers, PCBs, connectors...

IMG_20241003_195937.jpgIMG_20241003_195946.jpg

I just pulled the trigger too, ordered 1 exrta chip :D. Now I have the Cart, programmer, but need to read up on all the daughter boards and programmer boards.. see which ones to get and which ones who might have changed etc.. this thread is quite long now haha
 
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