Saturday Night Slam Masters - Secret Photo DIP

[Morden]

Earlier today, Undamned posted a question about a particular setting in the Slam Masters menu. It sets the game mode to "FOR PHOTOGRAPHING". This is most likely a feature implemented for old school screen photography, preventing photo blur. When I saw this, I immediately thought of the freeze DIP on the Neo or the pause feature on many ST-V games, but he couldn't find a way of activating it, even with the setting on. I took a look at the manual, and while it lists the feature, it just tells you to set the game mode to "FOR BUSINESS", I assume for regular play without the pause feature.

When the manual didn't help, I searched around the internet, but I couldn't find anything. The only other place this feature is mentioned is the CPS MAME driver, in which it comes with a comment that it doesn't appear to be doing anything. However, MAME adds a DIP setting called FREEZE, which isn't present in the game menu. Turning it on didn't help, either. I tried some button combinations with no luck.

This is really interesting, to say the least. Does anyone in here have any idea how to activate the pause? If it's a button combination, it could literally be anything, so a trial and error approach wouldn't really be effective. It would be nice to figure this out, because it doesn't seem like anyone has. I mean, how many secrets [hiding in plain sight] do CPS games hold these days?

Edit: The linked MAME driver code seems to be specific to bootleg boards, but that doesn't really help. The same Freeze setting is present for legit games.

 

[Morden]

Thanks to the invaluable help of @Apocalypse we now have an answer!

OK so:
- the physical DIP for freeze (DIP4 on SWC) is never read by the game
- the "FOR PHOTOGRAPHING" option in the service MENU (saved in EEPROM) does work. The game is frozen as long as you maintain the COIN1 input. Note that it still has the effect to add a credit and when 9 is reached the input isn't taken into account anymore either for credits or freezing (you need to lose one credit to gain one more freezing possibility) (...) It also works in freeplay but once you have reached 9 credits (it seems the credit counter is still incremented in freeplay) there's obviously no way to lose one.

I did test it, and it works just as Apocalypse explains it to. With "FOR PHOTOGRAPHING" enabled, the game will be frozen for as long as the COIN1 input is maintained. Aside from the coin mech, many cabs have a coin button next to the test one, but you'd still need to hold it down. It's great to have this small secret revealed at last.