20th April, 2008
LOTS of stuff arrived from Japan a couple of days ago and more will arrive soon. This box contains....

Virtua NBA NAOMI cart
Power Smash NAOMI cart
Gun Spike NAOMI cart
Mahjong Shangri-la NAOMI cart
Samba de Amigo ver.2000 NAOMI cart
Guilty Gear X NAOMI cart
Derby Owners Club II NAOMI cart
Senko no Ronde NAOMI GDROM
Shikigami no Shiro II NAOMI GDROM
Melty Blood Actcadenza NAOMI GDROM
Quiz Keitai Q-mode NAOMI GDROM
Super Major League NAOMI GDROM
Virtua Athlete NAOMI GDROM
Spikers Battle NAOMI GDROM
Capcom vs SNK 2 NAOMI GDROM
Guilty Gear XX #Reload NAOMI GDROM
Super Shanghai 2005 NAOMI GDROM
Musapy no Chocomarker NAOMI GDROM
Gekitou Pro Yakyuu Triforce GDROM
Rumble Fish 2 Atomiswave cart
Samurai Spirits Tenka-ichi Kenkakuden Atomiswave cart
Sangoku Senki (Knights of Valour) Shichisei Tensei Atomis cart
Donchan no Hanabi de Doon Aleck64 cart
Neo Geo MV1B mainboard (for dumping smt BIOS ROM)
Playmore/SNK KOF 2003 PCB
Playmore/SNK Metal Slug 5 PCB
Lethal Enforcers PCB
Mahjong Ichiban Jan PCB
Uchuu Daisakusen Chokovader PCB

A few of these were obtained as free bonuses because they're faulty. These include Metal Slug 5, Lethal Enforcers (both good for documentation purposes) and a couple of the NAOMI ROM carts, Derby Owners Club II and Samba de Amigo ver.2000.

The Metal Slug 5 board has a strange funny fault. The left joystick direction is stuck on, so player 1 always moves left. However, moving the joystick right causes the PCB to lock up (because now left and right are both toggled, which would never happen in an arcade cabinet) but the music continues on as usual. It looks like I've uncovered a bug in the original code :-D
The single Neo Geo PCBs are also statistically important because it uncovers a few gotcha's. The current dumps were not actually taken from these original PCBs because the ROM labels, ROM count and ROM sizes don't match! :-D
Update: It appears there were a few different releases of the Playmore/SNK games on different PCBs. So these are probably just different somehow, maybe a different version? Or maybe the same version, but just with a different number of ROMs?

As always, if you want to see more, please consider donating. Thanks!


30th March, 2008
I've been contacted by many people who wanted to donate just a few dollars and I had to turn them away due to lack of a paypal account. This is very worrying. Not just because the donations can't be received, but mostly because it's impossible to find an alternative to paypal! I've reluctantly re-added a paypal account back onto the site. This is a completely different account and is not related to the other one and is STRICTLY for small donations only, of $100 or less.
Please read the RED text on my donations & thanks page to ensure you comply as I don't want to have this account locked too! These small amounts will be pooled eventually for use with larger purchases or added to the decap fund. I will of course be A LOT more conscientious about removing those small amounts from the account at the end of each day :-)
In other news, I've added a new Atomiswave Dumping Status page to the list.


20th March, 2008
Finally some good news regarding the recent paypal fiasco. I jumped through all of the hoops and walked on fire barefoot (3 times) and finally the paypal thieves have released the funds! I've withdrawn it to my linked bank account then transferred it to another normal, not linked bank account via my normal online banking facilities (so paypal can't touch it) so it's safe now. This means the special bulk decapping deal can continue. The total is still short though by nearly $3000, and paypal is DEFINITELY out of the question. If you are still willing to help out, contact me for details on where to send the money (i.e. either directly to me or directly to the lab). HOWEVER, I would rather someone else collected the funds together into one large amount and sent that via bank transfer or some other tangible method like an international money order. I believe the Italian MAME forum guys had collected about 1000 Euros, so maybe inquire about sending it to them first so they can bundle it all together for us.
Thanks for your continued support and understanding in this difficult time :-)
And please, if you did make any claims, cancel them now. Thanks!


15th March, 2008
A couple of items arrived....

Super Qix PCB, thanks to madness
An STV cart, some sort of crane game, thanks to rtw
I also bought a Virtua Fighter 4 cart (NAOMI 2). It's supposedly not common because VF4 is GDROM only in Japan, and this is a ROM cart. Thanks to Brian T. for pointing it out.
Update: The STV cart is called 'Microman Battle Charge' which is a medal game.


Also forgot to mention, about a week ago I received a Casio Loopy and a few carts and another Bandai Pippin firmware board, thanks to incognito


13th March, 2008
http://page5.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/e74700454
I'm only posting this publicly because the price will be hopelessly high. There is no hope in hell of ever winning it. The price will probably go to $3000-$4000. However, this kind of thing shouldn't go unnoticed for someone that is really crazy and has more money than a bull can sh*t :-D
What is it, you ask?......... an extremely rare Taito Steel Worker PCB. Unfortunately it's not that great IMO. The PCB is a converted Taito color Space Invaders PCB, just like our friend Indian Battle. Pretty unexciting stuff, really.


27th February, 2008
In the general news, we have some more arrivals....

From 'lisac' via RB, we have Sega's Death Crimson OX (NAOMI-based) and Namco's Gunmen Wars (Super System 23)

A couple of previously-undumpable Gameboy Color carts, thanks to BigFred

The previously missing Epoch Game Computer Astro Bomber cart, thanks to Ranger Lennier

Last but not least Cave's Ibara, purchased by me about a year ago that RB was playing and hoarding holding for me until such time that I was ready for it


12th February, 2008
More arrivals today!

In the bottom box we have a nice Sega Star Wars Pod Racer (Sega Hikaru h/w). Thanks to MooglyGuy

The 2nd box contains some old handheld games including a Gakken Compact Vision and some carts, an Epoch Pocket Game Computer and Block Maze cart (this completes the full 5 cart set) and a handheld made by KOEI, plus some carts, not sure what it is yet. Thanks to Ranger Lennier
Update: Ack! It turns out we need Astro Bomber for the Epoch Game Computer, we already have Block Maze. So it looks like we got shafted by the seller :-(
Update Update: Oh hang on. Inside the main package there's a Epoch Pocket Computer main unit and a cart is plugged in! I don't recognise the title, but it's not one we already have. So it must be the missing cart that was advertised with the auction :-)
Update Update Update: Ah, the cart plugged into the main unit is a blank place-holder cart. So we did get shafted. The seller sent a boxed Block Maze cart instead of a boxed Astro Bomber cart

The next box up contains the following items....
Black Touch 96 (DGRM 1996) action game
Black Touch 1993 (Dragon punch clone?)
Gals Panic SU (Kaneko 1999) S2 clone
Knuckle Joe (Taito 1985) bootleg
Miss Puzzle (Min 1994) different game pictures
Super Bishi Bashi Champ 1996 Korean
Super Mario 1985 bootleg
Toride (Grand Computer) Korean version of Last Fortress Toride 1994 Metro
WIZ (Taito 1985) alt version, bootleg
Thanks to GP-Lee

The top box contains my newest toy. It's one of the latest models of EPROM Programmers, approx AU$2k, which I bought myself from the local distributor to handle some other newer devices that were previously undumpable. I'm sure this will come in handy for a lot of newer stuff in the future too :-)

I'd also like to personally thank Aaron Giles for his nice $1080 donation and an equal matching donation from uRebelScum. I have decided to spend it on good games. So please, no begging me to buy shit off eBay ;-)
Oh nearly forgot, also thanks to Vas Crabb for the 100000 yen donation (originally for the Bubble System carts shown below which unfortunately was not enough by a long shot) which we're going to spend on some other nice games instead :-)


3rd February, 2008
Not much to report lately. We won a rare Taito Chase Bombers auction on ebay (which I dumped about a week ago) and a couple of others in Japan, although unfortunately we lost the one shown below. I dumped all of the NAOMI GDROMs I have here so maybe we'll see some progress on that one day. In other news, I discovered I am about 3 years ahead of myself :-D
Some time ago I bought an adapter for one of my EPROM Programmers for support of a 128M TSOP48 maskROM. It turns out that the same chip is used in Atomiswave carts and is easily dumped. I think I might have actually bought it for that purpose 3 years ago! The main problem now is it takes 2 1/2 hours to read one chip and to verify it with 3 reads will take an unacceptably long time. That's because the unit is serial and is as slow as a dog. Unless you're talking about racing dogs, in which case they're fast. But for this one we're talking about an old slow dog. You know, the kind that when you take it for a walk, you have to kick it's ass every few minutes to keep it moving. _That_ kind of slow dog. Errmmm, where was I? Oh yeah, so I have decided to upgrade that unit to the latest high speed USB2 model. That will set me back around AU$1800 and also requires a separate universal TSOP48 module which is another AU$400. But ahh, it's for the good of MAME-kind :-D
That will also give me other capabilities so I can knock off more of the troublesome undumpable boards listed on my GuruDumps Page, and I've now got some plans to hack the old programmer adapter to allow for some other impossible dumps to be done. But more on that later :-D


21st January, 2008
We have an opportunity to buy this....

I don't want to mention pricing, but we will probably need A LOT. Any help is appreciated. If we can't secure it, I'm happy to return the funds (Paypal) or we can keep it for other much needed purchases. Let me know using the Paypal donations button and add a note if you want the money returned, assuming we can't get it due to lack of funds. Thanks!
Once finished with it, I'm happy to give this away to whoever donates the highest amount. So the highest donation essentially buys it from me for that amount or I can re-sell it if that person wishes :-)

In other news, I've been working with Charles on the Bubble system I have here and we've managed to find the missing 68000 loader code. It appears it's in a MCU (a custom Konami chip) in shared RAM (put there by the MCU, which we have partly extracted) and then pulls the data out of the bubble memory IC's one bit at a time. Yes that's right, we've got part of the bubble memory now (about 4k of it). Still a alot of work to do though before we get it all. So the above item is very on-topic with regards to my current WIP work :-)


20th January, 2008
This should be the final installment with regards to reversing the road logic. Phil informs me the road (at least) is complete. Looks real sweet, doesn't it :-)



18th January, 2008
Been doing a bit more PAL reversing with Phil and it's now looking like I remember it :-)

If you're interested, check out the video of a working game on Starcade (at the end of show #94)


12th January, 2008
Another box arrived today from Japan. Most of it is just a backlog of junk that we acquired from various places that was in storage, and most of it was big, so there's not much in this shipment this time. However there are a couple of interesting items in this lot....
Neogeo Battle Coliseum - Atomiswave cart
Guitar Freaks 7th Mix security cart
Another Mahjong Konami Viper board (there's a few more to come too)
Salary Man Champ (complete working Sys573 unit)
Virtua Striker 2002 (Sega/Namco Triforce with GDROM)
Winning Eleven 2003 (Konami Pyson h/w)
I got the Winning Eleven booting by using my NAOMI JVS I/O adapter and JVS power supply. The game boots off a 128M CF card but takes an incredibly long time to boot (about 5-6 minutes at least). This is due to it having to load the data off the CF card into RAM, possibly unpacking it too. The graphics are very nice though :-)
There's a custom Konami board inside, plus a main board from the old style PS2, including memory card slots and Sony Magic Gate security cart. Dumping it all looks quite easy. I can't say the same thing for the Triforce. There's a Namco custom board inside with one flashROM, a GDROM plus an original Game Cube mainboard that contains nothing dumpable that I can see? :-(


2nd January, 2008
I've been helping Phil for a while and things are coming together nicely. TX-1 is looking much better, thanks to the recently arrived Atari TX-1 board, a Data I/O Unisite, a paperweight and a dodgy program that converts the protected PAL dump to something more usable ;-)


Of course Phil did all the work, all I did was dump a few things. There's still LOTS of work to be done for both of us, but this is a great start to 2008 :-D


30th December, 2007
Road Runner is now history :-D

Seems to work OK as-is in MAME, but when you miss a shot, some junk text appears in the middle of the screen. When comparing the bytes in the ROM to the same ROM from Desert Gun, it's not just a name change. There are other bytes that are different, so perhaps just something in the MAME driver memory map needs adjusting? I'm sure someone will investigate it soon :-)


29th December, 2007
Referring to the list of stuff that arrived below, as suspected, much of it was useless :-(
Here's how it went....
- Stunt Cycle... OK, dumped both PROMs with no issues.
- Elevator Action... this is a strange one, the dumped matches the 'elevatob' set in MAME, but this is definitely an original PCB, so I suspect the existing dump is really from an original PCB (4-board unprotected version) and the bootleg set is the same thing exactly.
- Thundercade... useless, it matches the existing US set exactly. I measured and corrected some clocks for MAME though :-)
- Soldier Of Light ... useless, plus one ROM was bad. After some creative heating from my heatgun, the one ROM that differs on the bootlegs read correctly and identified as just a Xain'D Sleena bootleg.
- Tutankham... useless, just another bootleg, already in MAME.
- Taisen Puzzle-dama... useless, already dumped and in MAME.
- Thunder Force AC... will need a trojan to dump the EPM5032 protection chip so I can't do anything with it yet until the particular DEV works on it and/or sends me the required info. I'm told it's not required anyway so this would only be done for completeness.
- Empire City... useless too, already dumped and in MAME.
- The 2 Tank boards... errr, PASS!
- Choplifter... useful for dumping the 315-5139 PLS153 PLD (DIP20). I also need to dump another chip on this board, named 315-5025 which I've located, but it's an 18-pin chip and I have no idea what to dump it as.
- TX-1 (Atari version)... finally some good news! This came in handy to dump the different look up table (LUT) PROM so now colours are correct in the Atari version. It's also handy for something else and I have pics of it working in MAME, but I think it's top secret so I can't post them or tell you what else I'm doing....yet ;-D

I've been busy dumping a few other things too... the MCU on Birdie King 3 in now dumped (not sure if the dump is good yet as most of MAMEDEV is slacking now over the holidays ;-) and Lead Angle is also now dumped. I also measured and noted some clocks were wrong in these games in MAME. The remaining to-do stuff listed on my Global Index page is looking pretty sad now. Most of what's remaining is either impossible to dump or incredibly time consuming! There still might be one or two easy dumps to go. I'll sort those out soon while I'm on holiday, if I can find them! :-D

I'm still researching the strange ROM types on Road Runner so I didn't touch that yet, or the Pacman PCB which is simple to dump, but it's late and I need some Guru-Sleep so I'll leave those for another day :-)


21st December, 2007
A huge box arrived today

That 19.75kg box looks mighty impressive, although I'm not sure that all of it is going to be useful.
It contains the following PCBs....
Pacman PCB with Two Bit Score's 'Super ABC' upgrade kit (on original Midway PCB)
Thundercade (Taito, Romstar USA License, original)
Elevator Action (Taito 1982, original SJ hardware without MCU!)
Road Runner (Midway, 8080 L-board hardware, 1978)
A couple of discrete 'Tank' boards (Atari/Kee Games, 1974)
Soldier Of Light (Xain'd Sleena/Solar Warrior bootleg)
Stunt Cycle (Atari, 1975, original PCB)
Thunder Force AC (Sega 1990, original with 317-0172!)
Choplifter (Sega 1985, original unprotected version without 8751)
TX-1 (Atari version 1983, original)
Empire City (Seibu Kaihatsu, Taito/Romstar License 1986, orig.)
Taisen Puzzle-dama (Konami, 1994, version JAA)
Tutankham (1982, bootleg)

Some could be alt. versions but most don't work so I'll need to dump all of these before I can tell exactly what they are.
Thanks to Tingoes for sending these out.


14th December, 2007
I've changed the 'Global Index' link to 'GuruDumpsList'. This is a large list of every game I have dumped or had in my possession and shows at a quick glance the dump status of every game. It is fully up-to-date and should be accurate. This is also much more manageable from a maintenance point of view. The older pages showing multiple screen shots which were cross-referenced on the previous Global Index page have been removed, although of course, screen shots are still available to developers :-)


30th November, 2007
Some stuff just arrived today from Japan.....
The Block Kuzushi (ZN1 hardware)
1 on 1 Government (ZN1 hardware)
Hai Pai Paradise (Aleck64 cart)
Kuru Kuru Fever (Aleck64 cart)
Meijinsen 3 (Aleck64 cart)
Technical Bowling (STV cart)
Stress Busters (STV cart)
Magical Zunou Power (STV cart)
Tokimeki Memorial Oshiete Your Heart. This is a complete unit.... now we can finally see how this thing works. Looks like we were previously missing some parts. There's an extra controller PCB (which controls the sweat sensor and printer) and 4 CDs with this!



30th October, 2007
A few things arrived recently.....
Cool Riders (Sega H1 System)
Planet Harriers (Sega Hikaru)
Air Trix (Sega Hikaru)
Thanks to M.F.

Jet Wave (Konami, 1996)
Dynamite Cop (Sega Model 2C)
Fist Of The North Star (Atomiswave cart)
Knights Of Valour Seven Spirits (Atomiswave cart)
Neogeo Battle Coliseum (Atomiswave cart)
Thanks to Mr. J. Anonymous

Brian T. was lucky to pick up another one of the wanted Super System 22 games (now only 2 to go!). I think he got a bit too excited about grabbing a rare Super System 22 game because he bought it without first checking his Paypal balance :-(
hehehe!
With all the activity lately I'm strapped for cash because most of it went to Japan to buy up lots of good stuff and postage costs. A few kind donations would help get poor old Brian out of a sticky situation. Thanks! :-)


22nd October, 2007
Just finished dumping Hot Gimmick Integral. I think it took about 6 or 8 hours! Luckily there's no more of these games on PS4 hardware.
You may want to slow-mo the attract mode. There's some, err, very i-n-t-e-r-e-s-t-i-n-g movements on some body parts that are worth a second look :-D


Oh, I forgot to mention, a couple of days ago I received a Ketsui PCB too. I think the sender wanted to remain anonymous, so I'll just says thanks to the people that collected the bucks to buy it. I'll take good care of it, I promise :-D



21st October, 2007
I think it's about time I knocked this on the head and buried it.


Also, a special thanks to all those who donated over the past few weeks. Many new items not before seen plus a ton of stock-piled stuff is winging it's way over to me and should arrive sometime soon. Keep the donations coming.... :-)


13th September, 2007
Some trouble is brewing and we're stuck in the middle of it!
I have just been informed that one of the large PCB shops that we buy PCBs from regularly is closing it's doors to the public and will sell only to arcade operators. This means we will not be able to buy anything from them very soon. We have to take action now and buy up some of the wanted items they have in stock before it's too late. This will involve some money, of course ;-)
Unfortunately we've been very busy buying up lots of other wanted items so the Dumping Project's Paypal account is currently $0. But relax, there are a lot of very nice, friendly and generous people out there who can help. Someone just like YOU in fact. This is where you come in and send some Paypal donations so we can snap up that stuff and get it into MAME! Come on, you know you want to. Just click the Paypal donate button in the right column.
Remember, it's for the good of humanity and the future of MAMEkind depends on it! Thanks!!

P.S. If you can help out with postage costs instead, that would be ok too. We have been very busy buying up stuff because there's _always_ something interesting to buy. Unfortunately we have stock-piled probably 50+ items but have no money to post them over to me :-(


5th September, 2007
A couple of days ago I opened up the epoxy module from a Macho Mouse PCB that was lying around for a while, and extracted and read the two PROMs that are used for colors.



3rd September, 2007
I finally got hold of a ManxTT PCB on loan from a friend. Unfortunately it was not working due to bad ROMs, but 98% of them were ok. We were able to repair the PCB using my old dump and also fix the existing bad dump using this PCB. Only 1 ROM remained bad after comparing and checking all of the ROMs. I had to wait for a friend to get hold of another PCB and dump the last needed ROM which just happened today, a few hours ago.
BIG thanks to Joey for all the help!
The result is we now have a working PCB. But more importantly, I now have 2 good dumps of Manx TT. One from my original dump and the new one for the 'Twin' cabinet. Elsemi has kindly checked these for me and here are the results so far. Unfortunately no bikes on-screen yet, possibly due to DSP core emulation bugs.


Update: BIKES!!!!!



24th August, 2007
A batch of PCBs arrived last week from Korea.....
Best of Best, 1994 Suna, fighting game
Date Quiz Go Go Episode 2, 2000 Semicom
Domino Block, 1996 Wonwoo System, horiz. arkanoid type game
Quiz Punch 2, 1989 Space Computer, vertical Korean quiz
Cabal, 1989 Alpha Trading license, joystick version
Quiz Olympic, 1985 Seoul Coin, another pcb different quiz
Undercover Cops Alpha Renewal Version, 1992 Irem
Thanks to gp-lee for sending these out :-)


28th July, 2007
This rare PCB arrived yesterday from my top secret Agent in Japan.

It's the Bubble Memory version of Konami's 'Gradius'. I had it air-expressed over to me due to the fragile nature of this system. It works great but will probably be difficult to dump the bubble memory but I'm hopeful there is a way. So far I've dumped all of the ROMs/PROMs and documented the hardware.
Special thanks to Vas Crabb for donating a _massive_ US$800 so we could snap this up!
We can't keep doing this without support so if you want to see more rare stuff, click the PAYPAL donate button to the right :-)
Thanks!


10th July, 2007
Here's the latest addition to my Commodore bits collection. It's a nice Amiga 1200..... or is it?

Well, I bought and paid for an Amiga 1200 on eBay anyway, but things kind of went downhill after that. The seller sent it surface and coming from the UK, it took 4 months. Since eBay allows up to 45 days to make a claim and (of course) it didn't arrive in that time, I filed a claim and got a full refund.
I kind of figured it would arrive eventually and I know it was sent because I had a copy of the postal receipt.
Have you spotted it yet.... Yup, that's right, the MOFO sent an Amiga 600 instead!
Can you smell revenge?
The seller had purposely intended to screw me over by advertising an Amiga 1200, but actually posting an A600, and knowing it would take 3-4 months he figured he would be the winner because it would be too late to do anything about it from my end.
Not so fast, my friend. Right about now I would normally contact the seller and send him the money because the computer arrived. But this is where it gets funny..... at least I think it's funny anyway ;-)
Obviously the whole deal backfired on that dumbass UK seller. The seller had to cough up a full refund since it didn't arrive in the allowed 45 days and he gave away a nice computer in the process. So even though it's not exactly what was advertised, I'm going to keep it anyway ;-)
Hahahaaa, I'm not complaining..... it was free :-D
Guru Wins! Mwhahahahaha!!
You may be wondering why I would buy such a beast? Initially I just wanted an Amiga 1200 for my collection. Sadly that will not happen now, but it turned out well, because now a method has been devised (although still not fully working/proven), you could consider it a nice dumping tool ;-)

In other news, I finally finished the dump of Psikyo's Taisen Hot Gimmick 4 Ever. It might be the longest dump in history, taking about 3 weeks from start to end for about 20 surface mounted ROMs... I did it very slowly because I REALLY hate those stupid ROMs :-(
But again I'll get my revenge. The original donator said he can now re-buy the PCB for almost nothing so there's no need to post it back. That means I can use it for some experiments (cue Dr Frankenstein evil laugh)
The damn PCB can stay disassembled..... and here's something you'll never see.....

I ripped out the SH2 CPU and mounted it to a CPS3 security cart as a test to see if it would run a decrypted BIOS. No such luck there, but at least that Mahjong PCB was useful for something ;-)


10th June, 2007
Not much happening lately, so I thought I'd dump something that has been waiting a while to be dumped.
   
I'm not very enthusiastic about dumping these remaining Psikyo games because they use a strange type of ROM that must be custom dumped with a special adapter (each ROM must be hand surface-mounted, dumped, then removed).... this dump took about 6 hours....nasty stuff!
 
However, even a nice Mahjong game containing half-naked animated girls with big tits can't compete with this! ;-)


3rd May, 2007
Well since no one noticed.... I added a Dumping CDs & HDDs tutorial. The link (bottom of left column) has been there for about 3 days. I guess everyone is busy beating off celebrating
other great accomplishments to notice :-D


20th April, 2007
With the help of a tip-off from a Team Japump member and a donation from one of our rich devs ;-) we managed to pick up a couple of very rare & needed System 16 PCBs in record time (less than 2 days from donation to PCB arrival).
     
These particular specimens are in perfect condition too!
Special thanks to Aaron for coming to the rescue at short notice :-)
The CPU's will be air-expressed to me for super-fast dumping. Unfortunately we just missed out grabbing a System 16B version of Ace Attacker. I can't guarantee more of this type of thing can be done again in the future, but without much needed funds, it certainly won't be possible.
In the meantime, if you'd like to help simply click the Paypal donate link on the main page.
Thanks!!


13th April, 2007
As I mentioned a few days ago, I received some old console bits and pieces from Ranger Lennier. Here's what I have....

1.) APF-M1000 and 9 carts: Catena, Bowling/Micro Match, Boxing, Pinball/Dungeon Hunt/Blockout (with 3 versions), Casino 1:Roulette/Keno/Slots, Brickdown/Shooting Gallery, Blackjack, UFO/Sea Monsters/Break It Down/Rebuild/Shoot (with variations), Hangman/Tic Tac Toe/Doodle.

2.) 15 Watara Supervision carts: Dream World, Happy Race, Space Fighter, Kung-Fu Street, Thunder Shooting, Kitchen War, Untouchable, Bubble World, Hero Hawk, Scaffolder, Chinese Checkers, Climber, Pacific Battle, Recycle Design, Popo Team.

3.) Epoch Game Pocket Computer (for BIOS dump) and 4 carts: Reversi, Mahjongg, Store Keepers & Block Maze.

4.) 5 RCA Studio II carts: TV School House I, TV School House II:Math Fun, Biorhythm, Fun With Numbers, Gunfighter/Moonship Battle

5.) Mustang 9016 Telespiel-Computer (for BIOS dump) and 4 carts: Mathematische Spiele, Konzentrationsspiele (Memory), Krieg der Sterne, Flipper

6.) Tiger R-Zone [head-strap version] (for BIOS dump) and 7 carts: Daytona USA, Battle Arena Toshinden, Batman Forever, Star Wars:Imperial Assault, Star Wars:Jedi Adventure, Star Wars:Millennium Falcon Challenge, Primal Rage

Big thanks to Ranger Lennier for sending out all this errrr... junk ;-)


4th April, 2007
I've updated The Decapping Project page and also added a new Dumping Status page for Amiga Hardware :-)


30th March, 2007
The next haul from Japan just arrived, and she's a B-I-G one :-)
There's even some rare stuff and a few free items too!
Mahjong Cafe Doll
Mahjong Fantastic Love
Mahjong Vegas
Mahjong Summer Story
Hana Gokou
Koi Koi Shimasho
Super World Stadium '98
Super World Stadium 2000
Super World Stadium 2001
Kaiun Quiz
Touken Retsuden 3
Puzz-let
Combat Hawk (Sega/Sanritsu, 1987). This one was hella expensive... very, very rare
Guilty Gear Isuka.... free (Atomiswave, Sammy, 2004)
The Rumble Fish.... free (Atomiswave, Sammy, 2004)
Salaryman Kintaro (Atomiswave, Sammy)
I suspect that many more free Atomis carts will be coming off the arcade floor eventually because they don't seem to last long in Japan before people are tired of them and revenue drops to zero :-)
I think Dyq/BNathan paid for most/all of the mahjong games, so don't worry, I didn't blow a stack of donated money on them :-D

Also in this package was a Block Maze cart for the Epoch Pocket Computer, thanks to Ranger Lennier
Oh, that reminds me, I also recieved a big box full of very old rare console carts and a few old consoles too, also from Ranger Lennier about a month ago! I guess I should post some news about that too....

In a separate package that also arrived today I received a Street Fighter EX top board for what looks like a different revision of the game (Euro maybe?). But I forget who sent it! ;-)

I also got a new baby.... bought from a local friend (Hi John!)

My friend's wife was very, very happy to see it all go, especially the big stack of software that he threw in for free. I wonder why?????? Everybody loves the Amiga right?:-D

The machine is/was a 4000/EC030, but inside is a GVP T-Rex II 68060/50 w/128MB RAM, A2386SX Bridgeboard, Ariadne II network card and a 2.5" 800MB IDE HDD. The monitor is an NEC Multi Sync II.
In front is a Quicknet 2000 network card and A2091 SCSI controller with 1GB Connor CFP1080S HDD.
I've been playing around for a few days and I now have it booting OS3.9 from a 4GB Compact Flash card via a CF-IDE adapter. Works pretty well!
I'm looking for a few Amiga-related things, like an RTG card (Picasso IV anyone?), A2320 Flicker Fixer, A4091 SCSI controller and other things.
If you have any fruity Amiga bits for sale, let me know :-)


27th March, 2007
Here's the next chip we've decapped in a little more detail. This shows the full chip die at approx 20X magnification (reduced to minimise the file size, the real image is 5X bigger) and is roughly pasted together from 6 separate images for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy :-)



15th March, 2007
I've completed a very important update to my Sega Security Parts Page, thanks to our resident Dr.
Look for the 'Cracked' Items ;-)


10th March, 2007
I've been thinking about how to defeat the protected MCU's that use EPROM. My theory is to unlock the chip by exposing only the protection fuse to UV light, which should then allow the chip to be read as an unprotected MCU (for example 68705P5's on many early Taito games, and Intel 8751 MCU's used on Sega S16/S18 and others). Of course, there is a catch. It requires a high quality microscope that can be connected to a PC. There is such a device available. In fact many models are available on eBay from a retail seller.
Not cheap though!
This one is probably the minimum required. It can magnify up to 90X and has a 3.3MP CCD camera. Those camera/mag. specs are the same as the pics I got from the Japanese lab which were used to successfully re-create the code from the Namco 54xx MCU. We'll still need the Japanese lab for decapping and photographing maskROM-based MCUs, but this type of thing can't really be done by someone else, it needs a hands-on approach and lots of time. This method just might work well enough to allow reading the chip in it's unprotected form.
According to MCU protection specialists, the method I have described is one of the well known methods used to defeat EPROM-based MCUs. We could do the same, given the equipment. The only problem now is lack of funds.
I'm just wondering if it's worth it?..... hmmmmmm


9th March, 2007
Some stuff arrived today....
Lucky 8 lines w-4 (Falcon 1989) bootleg
Midnight Resistance bootleg [68705] for redumping
Penguin Adventure
Quiz Olympic (Seoul Coin 1985), the first Korean quiz game
unknown Tatsumi game (this is Apache 3)
USAAF Mustang [UPL 1990]
Wonderleague Star Magicball Fighting (MIJIN 1995)
Wonderleague 96 (Semicom 1996)
Note: Some of these are not actually needed, they were just sent anyway
The last 2 are Semicom hardware games and will require trojaning
Thanks to gp-lee.

Gigawing (Asia 990222)... not needed now :-)
Thanks to Tokrot

Two Namco 67 IC's for decapping
Thanks to Justin D.


5th February, 2007
On the 10th Anniversary of MAME, The Decapping Project is born


25th January, 2007
For those that didn't realise, the chip below is a Namco Custom 54xx and is used on Xevious, Galaga, Bosconian and Pole Position for generating some sounds (for example the 'death bang' sound in Galaga). The chip is actually a Fujitsu MB884x-family microcontroller with 1k internal maskROM. If you want to blow your mind with technical details, the datasheet is here


23rd January, 2007
Here's a few pics of the very first custom chip that I sent to a professional Japanese IC decapping company that we (Mamedev) are using to help us with some MAME-related things. Hopefully if this is successful, more will follow and also hopefully talented hardware devs like JROK will be able to make replacements for it to repair real PCBs :-)
   
You may also be wondering why we're doing this instead of using some other people who frequent the 'boards' who have offered to do this kind of thing for free?
The answer is fairly simple.... apart from the amount of time it takes to get this done, the level of communication is somewhat 'sporadic' and so far offers to supply other chips to them have been ignored. We requested pics of some CPS2 ICs that were said to have been decapped and so far nothing has surfaced (over a month has passed since then).
Doing it this way gives us more control over what we achieve and ensures the work is done in a timely manner.
Apart from that, the plan to get this IC decapped has been in the works for several months, so we might as well use the professional IC decapping company whenever possible because the amount of ICs we need to decap is possibly too much work for someone to do in their spare time for free.


17th January, 2007
Dr. Guru has finished the frankenstein experiment. Unfortunately the patient died. See the results here.


16th January, 2007
Since everyone else seems to be blogging and putting up mostly meaningless B.S., I might as well do the same.
So here's my take on things. If anyone wants to help a poor old Guru get out of this mess, I'm open to suggestions so feel free to PM me :-)


29th December, 2006
Here's a very early WIP of something that is coming soon to a MAME near you :-)



28th November, 2006
Some good news! Regarding the PCB mentioned below, we have located another one from a different place. We are organising the deal now and I will keep you posted about it's progress :-)
Also, a B-I-G thanks to all of the generous people who donated towards acquiring it.


19th November, 2006
I have located one of the rarest early 80's Taito games ever made, which has become available from a collector. But as you're aware, rare always means expensive. The Dumping Project has been actively purchasing PCBs for dumping for a long time and all of our money has been completely exhausted. This means we are unable to come up with the purchase price of US$1300. I can't mention the name of the game yet, but the fact that it is EXTREMELY expensive, one of the Most Wanted Taito games out there and is EXTREMELY rare should give you some idea of the importance of securing this PCB now.
I'm hoping everyone who enjoys MAME will donate a few bucks towards it so we can preserve this rare PCB for everyone.

I've made it very easy, just click the PAYPAL donate button to the right to donate directly to the Dumping Project's Financial Controller.
Alternatively, you can donate to Mameworld via their PAYPAL link, stating your donation is for The Dumping Project. Every little bit counts so please help us out if you can. Thanks!!

Update: The delays in collecting the required total and delays in withdrawing the money from Paypal to a bank account (5 days required by the bank to clear funds) resulted in us not achieving the target in time and now the PCB is no longer available. A vote was put out there and we have decided to hold all collected money until such time as something else comes along that is rare and available. Please continue to donate if you can, all money will go towards purchasing something (or several) as soon as it becomes available. I'm also looking at possibly obtaining the same game from an alternate location.
 

25th September, 2006
The latest PCB shipment from Japan arrived a few days ago.....

Mahjong Mysterious Orient
Mahjong Almond Pinky
Mahjong Shinkirou Deja-vu
Hana Ginga
Hana Tengoku
E-Jan Sakura Sou
Seishun Colorful Highschool
Bishou Jan (Smiling Jan)
Super Hana Paradise
CP2 Jangokushi B board
Doki Doki Penguin Land
Dynamic Shoot Kyousou
Thunder Heroes

Thanks to Dyq and BNathan for the funds used to purchase most of the Mahjong games.


23rd August, 2006
This PCB arrived.....

Unfortunately I forget what it is or who sent it! Please contact me if it was you :-)
Update: Mystery solved. Thanks to Tony for the PCB.
He thought it to be a rare Omori PCB. Looking at the PCB markings, it's obviously not. It's a somewhat rare-ish version of Scramble called Astro Ambush running on a PCB made by Falcon. Here's a couple of early shots courtesy of Dox....



28th July, 2006
2 HUGE boxes just arrived containing....
Gun Fight (Midway, 1975)
Triple Hunt including artwork/bezels (Atari, 1977)
Space Encounters- main, sub and sound PCBs (Midway, 1980)
Top Gunner (Konami, 1986)
Space Bugger (Game-A-Tron, 1981)
Devil Zone (Universal, 1980)
Zodiack (Orca, 1983)
Sega System 16 Monster Lair with 317-0085 CPU
Field Combat (Jaleco, 1985, maybe bootleg?)
I think most of these are just for fixing issues in MAME (snd/gfx etc)
Big Thanks to Tingoes


13th July, 2006
I received another PCB that Brian T. bought on eBay several months ago. The game is called Rolling Extreme by Gaelco. Unfortunately, I won't be dumping it. Here's why....
It's a powerful beast using some 3D hardware comprising TMS 320C82 DSP, Chip Express D3PLUS-4 Graphics Generator, 2 FPGA's, a large amount of RAM and a few high-capacity maskROMs... and of course, everything is surface mounted. I believe the hardware could be emulated. Most of the ROMs I can dump but there's a couple of SSOP70 ROMs (similar to what is used in the newer neogeo carts like MS5 and SVC and newer Playmore PCBs) which are 256Mbit or 512Mbit ROMs with 70 legs.
These probably hold the graphics, which are connected to the [documented] TMS320C82 DSP. There is only 1 programmer that has support for those ROMs and unfortunately it's not one of mine.
To fully dump this board would require purchasing that specific programmer (AU$1350) and the adapter (AU$350). That's
probably too much to justify for one fairly average 3d skateboarding game, although there are probably more PCBs in the future that would use these similar ROMs. I certainly can't justify that myself for just one game that is unlikely to be emulated anyway (or at least emulated at a playable speed), so it will probably remain undumped forever unless someone wants to donate about au$1800 specifically for this purpose :-(
Bear in mind that as I mentioned above, the newer Neogeo carts and Playmore single board games also use the same SSOP70 ROMs. So if purchased, this hardware could be used to dump most of the newer original Neogeo/Playmore games, if the Dumping Project were to acquire them :-)
Here's a few pics of the unit and PCB.....


Oh, almost forgot to mention, in case you were wondering, the PCB is dead. There's a small plastic fan in the housing (similar to the crappy fans used on cheap PC 3D video cards) that has seized and the poor PCB cooked itself. The top of the large graphics chip is scorched and under the PCB, the green is a brownish-green colour directly under that chip too.... tell-tale signs of over-heating.
That would have happened while the game was being operated on-site, so I'm sure the eBay scumbag who sold it as 'untested and sold as-is' would have known that too..... hmmmm


6th June, 2006
A large box arrived from Korea today containing the following PCBs.....
Pasha Pasha 2 (Dong Sung Wonder Park 1999) to fix the bad dump currently in MAME
Bobble Bobble (Taito 1986) bootleg
Big Fight (Tatsumi 1992)
Tetris (Atari Games 1988) bootleg
Midnight Resistance (Dataeast 1989) bootleg
KiKi KaiKai (Taito 1986) bootleg (I dumped the MCU on it :-)
Dharma Doujou (Metro 1994) Title & language is Korean
Hexa (D.R. Korea 199?) different music
Thanks to gp-lee


12th May, 2006
A few packages arrived today.....
Package 1 from Japan has mostly things that are passing through me (except the last 3 items), they're not specifically undumped/needed games, but I will dump and document them anyway.
The package contains.....
18 Hole Pro Golf (Data East)
Top Roller (Jaleco)
Daikaizyuu no Gyakusyuu (Taito, 1986)
Angel Kids (Sega)
Robo Cop 2 (Data East)
Blade Master (Irem)
WWF Wrestle Fest (Technos)
Bonze Adventure (Taito)
Mahjong Crystal 7 (Dynax)
Mahjong Tenjinpai (Dynax)
Mahjong Raijinpai DX (Dynax)
The last 3 are thanks to BNathan

Package 2 thanks to Glen M. contains a Color Sheriff PCB for PROM dumping.

Package 3 thanks to Andrew S. contains an original (and undumped) Data East Mad Rider PCB.

I also finally got my home arcade sorted out. Here's a pic....
With lights on.....


and with lights off :-)


From left to right..... small 20" cab running Konami 80's Classics, small 20" cab running Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, 26" Neo Geo cab running Sega Tetris (System16B), Sega Rally 2 Twin, Taito Egret II cab with 29" WG D9200 monitor running Atomis Wave Dolphin Blue. A 20" Hankin cocktail is next to that (powered off in the pic)


30th March, 2006
I hooked this up today. It's fully working, not bad for 100 bucks! :-)

I don't think the previous owner will be too sad about the low price though.....



18th March, 2006
Another box from Japan arrived late yesterday. In it is some very interesing stuff....

Mahjong Fight Club (Konami Viper, complete set of 8 identical units! We got this for �1000 total!)
Top Blade V (Crystal System hardware)
An unknown System 10 ROM board (possibly Taiko no Tatsujin 3)
E-Jan Sakura-sou
Tougenkyou / Gladiator 2003 / The Road of Sword
Spectral vs Generation
Asura Buster
Air Attack / Kuusyuu
And a pile of 'junk' CD-Roms (�0). These are obviously NOT junk :-)

Note that the CDs are not full games, just some loose items found in a pile of junk. That means that dumps of these games will be incomplete.
Among this lot are....
2 security carts (DrumMania 7th Mix & GuitarFreaks 8th Mix)
Beatmania II DX CDROM - GQ863 A01
Beatmania II DX CDROM - GQ863-JA B01 (x2) & dongle 863A02
Beatmania II DX video CD - GQ863 A04 (x2)
Beatmania II DX substream VIDEOCD - GC983 A04
Beatmania II DX 2nd style CDROM - GC985 A01
Beatmania II DX 2nd style VIDEOCD - GC985 A04
Beatmania II DX 7th style CDROM1 - B44JAA01
DDR 2nd Mix & Beatmania II DX substream Club Version 2 CDROM - GE984 A01(BM) & dongle 984A02
and lastly.....
Mobile Suit Z-Gundam - AEUG Vs. Titan DVDROM and Sony Magic Gate security dongle (Capcom/Banpresto, 2003, for Namco System 256 hardware)

I've already traded one of the Mahjong Fight Club Viper boards for this.....

......which arrived yesterday also.
Don't know which game eh? Of course, the game is Tokyo Wars.... couldn't you see that??? ;-D


11th March, 2006
I just picked up lots of juicy stuff from my local post office....

-Rapid River (1997, Namco 'Gorgon' h/w)
Thanks to R Belmont for grabbing it for us on eBay :)

Some unwanted 'junk'....
-R Type (bootleg)
-Captain Commando (bootleg)
-Turtles in Time (Konami, 1991)
Thanks to Martijn

and a bunch of Viper games....
-Boxing Mania (Konami, 2001, Viper h/w)
-Mocap Boxing (Konami, 2001, Viper h/w)
-Mocap Golf (Konami, 2002, Viper h/w)
-Tsurugi : The Sword (Konami, 2001, Viper h/w)
-Xtrial Racing (Konami, 2002, Viper h/w)
Thanks to 'bobaruni'


10th March, 2006
I finally got around to dumping the TX1 board I have. Here you can see the pile of ROMs from the PCB....


I dumped the PROMs and you will probably see them added to MAME soon. All of the PROMs and most of the EPROMs were soldered into the PCB on this version, so the dump wasn't a simple one.
Unfortunately, two of the EPROMs were damaged (most of their microfine wires were severed from the pins to the die because the top of the chip has come loose/off) and they fell apart into 1000 pieces when they were removed from the board :-(

Double unfortunately, most of the ROMs on this PCB Ident as unknown also!
So, we're still looking for a good TX1 board that does not have Atari labels. If you have a TX-1 PCB with ROM labels like 'TX1 19B' or 'TX1 5A' and want to help out, please contact me!


26th February, 2006
Just a small update.... I forgot to mention that a few days ago I received a Mr Driller 2 English version PCB, thanks to Mr T. and also a dump of Final Furlong 2 (Namco Super System 23), thanks to 'bobaruni'


22nd February, 2006
I've been working on this today....

Looks interesting, doesn't it?
It's a TSOP48-DIP48 prototyping adapter specially (and painstakingly) wired to a DIP48 socket. The ROM I'm concerned about has (unfortunately) been bastardised by the manufacturer and is hellishly custom. It's been surface mounted onto the proto adapter ready for dumping.


21st February, 2006
A few more PCBs arrived....
Gamshara (Namco System10, the game is like Cabal), purchased on eBay by The Dumping Project Team, thanks to Major Roy Fokker for the funds :-)

6 Mahjong PCBs, thanks to dyq & bnathan
Mahjong Dragon Challenge Tiger II (1998)
Chao Ji Da Man Guan II (Super Slam II,1997)
Shuang Long Qiang Zhu 2 (Double Dragon Chasing Pearl 2,1998)
Man Guan Cai Shen (Slam Plutus,1998)
Tai Shan Chuang Tian Guan (1999)
Tian Jiang Shen Bing (Supernal Weapons, 1997)

I also bought this. Sadly the old one locks up (which I discovered was a fault with running a Pentium 4 with the supplied software.... it works on my old Pentium II) and it seems I'm not the only one to have this problem
The manufacturer won't admit fault or fix the s/w (probably because that model has been superceeded by the one I just bought), so I solved the problem myself :-\

As a bonus, I get about another 1000 or so extra supported devices so I can now dump some things I couldn't do before :-)


14th February, 2006
2 packages arrived.
Crazy Fight (Subsino, 2001) - purchased by Brian T. on ebay
CPS2 USB adapter thingy, thanks to Charles MacDonald :-)
Here's a pic of it hooked up.

The adapter plugs into the 64-pin CN7 on the B board. The chips on the bench are the original ROMs and PALs. ROM3 is changed and ROM10 is added. Plus 1 PAL on the A board is changed and 2 PALs on the B board are changed. Unfortunately, none of the PALs were socketed and this particular B board didn't have a CN7 connector! So I had to desolder a CN7 connector from another dead CPS2 board and solder it to this board and desolder and socket the 3 PALs as well! Luckily she still works!
It's not that exciting to look at though ;-)


30th January, 2006
Just completed the final update to the Wanted List. If there's a game missing, let me know!
Also updated the Bad Dumps List to .103u4


12th January, 2006
A few packages arrived containing some nice PCBs....
Point Blank 2 (on Namco System 12)
Search Eye Plus v2.00
Puzzle Bang Bang
KlonDike+ (Eolith, 1999)
Don Den Lover (Korean Bootleg)
Aleck 64 cart - Tower Shaft (Azure 2003)
Crazy Wars
E-Jan Highschool (single board like Raiden 2 etc) and maybe
E-Jan Highschool 2 (not sure, both boards look the same apart from a few maskROMs with different game codes)
Dynamite Bomber (Limenko, 2000)
98 Grand Prix
Knucklebash 2 (bootleg)
Most of these came from our Korean contact and a couple came from ebay purchased by Randy or Brian T.

and these shipped from Japan....
Hot Gimmick Integral (Psikyo, 2001), Thanks to Major Roy Fokker for the funds.
Lead Angle (Seibu, 1988)
Salary Man Champ CD (Konami, 2001, on System 573)
Drummania 7thMIX power-up ver. CD
Thanks to our Japanese contact

I also got access to two other machines during the last week...
Skins Game (Midway, 2000)
Keyboardmania 3rdMIX (Konami 2001, Firebeat hardware)
Of course, they're now dumped as well ;-)

And two packages posted by Karasu....
TX1, to dump the PROMs, picked up on eBay (Thanks to Philip J Bennett for the $)
DJ Boy

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