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What do I do with the chips from my B board & other pesky questions ...

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MarkWolfe

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Greetings all,

I am preparing for my newly purchased CPS2 Multi Kit, I'm finding that I have an increasing list of questions that I am unsure of and can't seem to find answers to, most likely because they are newbie questions that are inconsequential to running the kit, but here goes...

I am awaiting the delivery of 4 suicided boards, three B boards and one A board. All USA region and all without cases

Assuming there are no physical problems with the boards and all they have wrong with them is a missing battery, I have the following questions:

Do either of the boards, A or B, require a battery to work with the multi kit?

What do I do with the chips once removed?

Can they still be revived using the new method to "de-suicide" the board now that you can do that?

Do the chips need to be in the same B board or can any B board use them provided the dips are all set right and the board revision is compatible with the game ?

Does anyone want to buy the chips from these boards? Two games are complete although I don't know which games they are and one is mostly incomplete.

How do you tell which game is on your B board if you no longer have the cases or any labels?

how do I handle vertical games on my horizontal screen?

Is there a list somewhere that has the proper kick harness pinouts for all the games that need more than four buttons?

I think that's all, I'll update if I think of anything else
 
Do either of the boards, A or B, require a battery to work with the multi kit?
  • Confirm the A-board works, then leave it as is. Battery must be removed from B-board in order for the CPS2 multi to work. Just cut the leads if you don't have a soldering iron/de-soldering gun.
What do I do with the chips once removed?
  • Store them for safe keeping. If you ever decide to get out of the hobby, your stripped B-boards will have little value.
Can they still be revived using the new method to "de-suicide" the board now that you can do that?
  • Yes.
Do the chips need to be in the same B board or can any B board use them provided the dips are all set right and the board revision is compatible with the game ?
  • Chips should be removed as indicated here.
Does anyone want to buy the chips from these boards? Two games are complete although I don't know which games they are and one is mostly incomplete.
  • Someone might but there is more value in you keeping them, IMO.
How do you tell which game is on your B board if you no longer have the cases or any labels?
  • ROM dump/compare vs. MAME is one way. Need the appropriate tools however.
how do I handle vertical games on my horizontal screen?
  • This is the real arcade experience. Turn your monitor vertical (Tate). Might be necessary to get a second cab.
Is there a list somewhere that has the proper kick harness pinouts for all the games that need more than four buttons?
  • It is all over the place, we started working on compiling them over here which you found already. But it is a slowly progressing effort. Contribute what you can to that thread.
I think that's all, I'll update if I think of anything else
  • Doesn't hurt to watch this over a few times while passing time at work/before dozing off to sleep. There is more required to the setup than the questions you've asked.
 
And...

As I made a separate thread for this but I've been thinking about it off and on today , now that any board can be de-suicided , can't the instructions for the multi kit be revised to include support for intentionally suiciding your B board to work with the kit?

I'm honestly flummoxed (that's right I said FLUMMOXED) by the seemingly unbending rule regarding the use of the multi kit and the "requirement" that users never use working boards... It's seems a bit draconian to me.

I'm willing to bet a lot of people did it in secrecy to avoid persecution and judgment but now that the new procedure has been implemented, I don't see any reason for this "rule" anymore

Unless someone has a valid argument to the contrary

I found it to be quite difficult to find suicided boards and no one willing to trade a suicided for a working B board, the suggestion of which seems very short sighted since it doesn't take into account the worth of the working board

I was lucky to find a few suicided B boards that I am confident don't have other issues but one of the first questions I asked in these forums was how do you know when buying a dead board of the only thing wrong with it is a dead battery ? You can't just depend on physical appearance alone. You take a chance when buying a dead board and this stuff is getting more expensive . The cost of the kit on top of that and you have a huge dilemma that is not helped by people judging you for suiciding a working board

I think it's time for that to be put aside since its total moot now.
 
acblunden2 !!

Exactly the sort of concise answers I was looking for, thank you

I do disagree tho regarding keeping the chips for the reason you stated. I think the kit with the prepped B board is worth lots, more so than the chips unless of course it is a rare game. I was hoping the Capcom labels on the chips would confirm what game was loaded on them

I suppose you might make a little more on the resale of kit by itself and the restored B board but in my case the boards I found are without a case and I just think that if it is kept in tact with the kit and ready to plug and play then you will get more for it in a potential/theoretical resale of it (just my opinion)

I still hope for some sort of vertical screen rotation since I am plenty happy with the real arcade experience I get with my real arcade cabinet. It even has a real arcade monitor. Vertical games look great on it in MAME due to its size so I wouldn't really lose anything from the experience of the picture could be rotated with some sort of software method but I get that it's a pipe dream


I am very happy to hear that the B board does not need a battery. what about the A board ? Does that also have a battery ? I'm not even sure actually if it has one ... I'm a newbie


Oh and I forgot to mention that I have watched that video you linked many times and is what I am referring to when I talk about worrying if the user intenrionally suicides their board ... But yes I am aware of the other things brought up in this video but I have no questions regarding those points . I do think a revised video that was a little clearer and a lot less concerned with the suicided issue would be a welcome thing to the new people comming in ... Potentially 80 new people of paradise sells out of the kit

Thanks a lot this helps
 
Nah, you just weren't patient enough was all. Now that you have your suicided boards, you're fine and you didn't pay much more for all of your suicided boards than for a single live one. You'll also get some equity back in the sale of the pieces you don't need. Worked out better in the end, yeah? Time to move on.
 
Ahh another stupid question

Do I need to have different boards for vertical VS horizontal games ??

I didn't even think of this as an issue but when you said "keep the chips to your stripped B boards" (plural) it made me wonder

My plan was to just have one B and one A board for this

Nowhere on the video is vertical or horizontal mentioned so I am assuming it is not an issue and that all that is programmed in the ROMs.

Which is why I wonder if the ROMs for vertical games could be hacked to allow for rotation and aspect ratio on a horizontal screen ?


Seems plausible, no ?
 
patient ? I'm very patient I think :/ -- I would use the word "confused" when it comes to me and this forum software ... It does not behave as expected

And yes the four dead board were $200 which is around what it would be on eBay for one working board set - or more for some .

I got a working A board fully cased for a steal for basically the cost of shipping


But I am not only asking these questions for my own situation but asking in general for all the newbies and so I can understand the whole thing better because people are asking me questions about all this now that I'm selling boards and talking about it

Thanks again !
acblunden2 said:
Nah, you just weren't patient enough was all. Now that you have your suicided boards, you're fine and you didn't pay much more for all of your suicided boards than for a single live one. You'll also get some equity back in the sale of the pieces you don't need. Worked out better in the end, yeah? Time to move on.
Click to expand...
 
About the Tate/Yoko thing (screen rotation): no, same hardware play all games but you need to rotate your display accordingly to play the game.
 
In a perfect world everyone would dump their removed program roms and compare them against MAME to see if it is an undumped revision. We know there are still some out there.

As for the policy of not killing working pcbs being 'draconian', it is a policy meant to protect the hobby. More specifically the collecting side of the hobby. People who are just 'gamers' may not care though they should if only based on the sentence just before this one. We must be consistent in our policies across all platforms. If we didn't support killing on one platform but did on another, regardless of circumstances, we would be hypocrites.
 
I really appreciate you taking the time to explain it from your point of view.

I think part, or maybe even most of my reaction is based on the video for the multi kit that you made and the way you describe the issue.

I grew up in the 70s. "Rules" in general were always questioned in my family and certainly on the streets where I grew up and most certainly in the arcades where I played classic games that became a lifelong love.

As a newcomer here, I felt that your video came across as judgmental and dismissive of those who may not have any other choice but to intentionally suicide their board. You gave absolutely no information to people to help them make an informed decision.

It felt to me like the very idea of it was some sort of dogmatic ideal that seems to go well beyond conservation.

But I get it now and I agree with you regarding the idea of possibly finding lost games or prototypes and the overall idea of conservation. At the same time though I also see how things get with mass produced games and see the other side of it if we draw an analogy to the burried copies of the Atari 2600 game E.T. ... We don't need to conserve that game, there are plenty of them and I dare say that could be the case with more than a few Capcom boards from any era.

I think it would be better to discuss the issue rather than to say "don't do this" . How about an open discussion on weighing all the options before you make a decision to suicide a board and help people to make decisions about it while offering alternatives?

To me it's just a little too strict the way all official posts, PDFs or videos are currently worded, with no discussion or even mention of recent discoveries which may very well lead to long dead boards with "new" versions of games that have never been in circulation coming to the surface. A far more likely scenario than a working board that is bought on eBay turning out to be something rare.

This is a big deal. I remember how things were when CPS1 and then CPS2 boards were new in the arcades and what the reaction was in the game community when boards started to die with no support from Capcom.

Ultimately I think it would be best to be a little more flexible on the topic. More discussion means more education, which leads to better decision making regarding how we treat these classic artifacts.


Thanks for taking to time to respond so succinctly to both of my queries.
 
As you said you are new to the hobby. This site was created after we received a lot of shit on other sites that are much stricter than what our rules are. In fact we almost had to start this site to sell the CPS2 multi as other sites told us we could not. The mods of one of those sites told us it was a bootlegging device. Our rules are much looser than a lot of other collector sites. For example, Arcade Otaku only allows you to sell one bootleg pcb A YEAR even if you didn't make it yourself and clearly state it as a bootleg. I don't condone making bootlegs and in a lot of cases conversions but it does happen and they are out there. Everyone is going to have different views on this.
 
Ha! Wow yeah I've been on that forum and that lasted about half a day

I think you and I may both be rebels

The idea that these types of products, like KRIKKZ beautifully designed flash carts are in any way pirate or bootleg products is hyperbole

In fact, it is my firm belief that devices like this preserve and extend the origonal hardware. I believe that rom use through emulation over the last 15 years has led to a classic gaming revolution the likes of which we have not seen since the 80s. And this time it won't crash

Those who would have us try to put the ROM genie back in the bottle and try to vilify end users for using technology to the fullest extent are the actual hypocrites.


I'm grateful to have lived through all these great innovations that allow us to enjoy this hobby in such amazing detail. Within the framework of emulation, rom-dumping and the advent of devices that allow the most delicate and unsustainable media to be utilized on origonal hardware is the lifeblood of the preservation community.

In other words ... Fuck those guys
 
oh.. Just a minor correction

I'm new to THIS site and JAMMA based arcade love ... I've been in the hobby before it was considered a hobby

I've had a beautiful arcade machine running MAME in my dining room since 2005

This year I outfitted it to run a modded Xbox running coinops 8 and installed a JAMMA harness and a NEO GEO MVS to be able to run on the same cabinet with only a few minor adjustments to change between them

The addition of the CPS2 capability really only happened this month

And what a month to begin !!

My goal is to have KAWAKS capability but on actual hardware ... Two down, one to go
 
I think it dawned on me what I am finding to be a bit of a double standard in regards to the suicide issue :

Wouldn't it be just as urgent to have people try to revive and dump their suicide boards now that they can be recovered ? Is the amount of labor involved with that similar to the labor involved in dumping a live board ?

So why not change the policy based on that ? How is scrapping the chips on a suicide board any different than intentionally suiciding a working board?


Mitsurugi-w said:
--
Click to expand...
 
I think these are great questions that should be in a faq in the for main info thread on every arcade project on this site...

Maybe start an "FYI" section with each arcade project's latest info.

:D

Maybe someone could take over that task, as that would be very helpful to the arcade project community.

8o
 
MarkWolfe said:
The idea that these types of products, like KRIKKZ beautifully designed flash carts are in any way pirate or bootleg products is hyperbole
Click to expand...
In my eyes the difference here is that Krikkz's flashcarts are all new hardware. Nothing was sacrificed to make them (that I know of).

Now that the instructions have been released so that anyone can revive original CPS2 hardware back to original state, multicarts are definitely a grea area. I think you should definitely keep the chips with cart, and if you ever sell the cart, include the chips in the sale.
 
nem said:
MarkWolfe said:
The idea that these types of products, like KRIKKZ beautifully designed flash carts are in any way pirate or bootleg products is hyperbole
Click to expand...
In my eyes the difference here is that Krikkz's flashcarts are all new hardware. Nothing was sacrificed to make them (that I know of).
Now that the instructions have been released so that anyone can revive original CPS2 hardware back to original state, multicarts are definitely a grea area. I think you should definitely keep the chips with cart, and if you ever sell the cart, include the chips in the sale.
Click to expand...
the analogy I made regarding KRIKKZ carts was about how rom use has inspired innovation I was not comparing that to the suicide issue

I don't think I will keep the chips for the one board I will keep for this, plus it is likely the dead board I will be using is already missing the chips so for me it's moot. For others, everyone needs to make an informed decision

My personal opinion knowing what I know now, I would do my best to dump the chips and then sell them. Barring that I would write down everything about the B board they were taken from and take detailed photos with it and then sell them because for me personally, I don't collect carts anymore, not for home consoles nor arcade with a few notable exceptions for each due to having some favorite games I want to own the originals for.

I used to have a massive cart collection for all my consoles but I sold a large portion of them off once I starts using MegaCarts and the like

I don't have room for them and they get older and less reliable over time and I am not in a position to do proper preservation.
 
MarkWolfe said:
I think it dawned on me what I am finding to be a bit of a double standard in regards to the suicide issue :

Wouldn't it be just as urgent to have people try to revive and dump their suicide boards now that they can be recovered ? Is the amount of labor involved with that similar to the labor involved in dumping a live board ?

So why not change the policy based on that ? How is scrapping the chips on a suicide board any different than intentionally suiciding a working board?


Mitsurugi-w said:
--
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
You can throw out your original mask ROMs if you want, but I'd keep them in case someone wants them or you decide you want to make your board original again for whatever reason, it's entirely possible your mind may change later on. No dumping a set of ROMs is not as labour intensive as reviving a board with original keys via the new method, but both are not extremely difficult either :)

Why not change the policy?

There are a couple of reasons:

1) Not everyone is going to be comfortable reviving their boards using the new method as it can damage your board beyond repair if you don't do it properly (+5v in the wrong place is not going to be pretty)
2) If a board is currently working on battery and the battery can be replaced (in under 20 minutes even by a novice) why would you destroy something that works
3) The new method of resurrection and reloading keys onto a suicided board did not exist until a couple of weeks ago, the CPS2 multi has been around for substantially longer.

The most important reason is there are people like me who believe that unless a board is running as it was when it left the factory (in the case of CPS2 with encrypted code backed up by a battery) this is NOT original. I understand that the battery is a risk, but I would rather replace a battery every couple of years and have original code than anything modified regardless of how little it was modified.

In saying that, I'm actually on the list at saveyourgames for a CPS2 multi as while I do have several CPS2 boards running on a battery, there are some that are really not affordable by the average person (and the risk of bootlegs is insane) and I can have all of those games on a multi with the rather awesome avalaunch decrypted code (which is as close to original as you can get) and I have a suicided board here ready for it

Call it draconian if you want, it prevents flame wars (I don't flame anyone for destroying a board but it makes me really sad when people do it intentionally) and it means that more original boards remain original. There are more than enough suicided boardsets out there (which are substantially cheaper as you found out) for CPS2 multi setups.

I agree with nem that I would keep the original ROMs with your multi board setup and sell them together if you get out of the hobby down the road
 
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