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Handheld Game ROM Dumping and Emulation
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kevtris
Coleco Pac Man


Joined: 07 Feb 2015
Last Visit: 13 Oct 2015
Posts: 34
Location: Indianapolis, IN

PostPosted: Sat Feb 07, 2015 7:53 pm    Post subject: Handheld Game ROM Dumping and Emulation Reply with quote

(I am editing the top post now to include updates on the dumping progress!)

Totals:

23 games fully dumped, vectored, and pinned out
1 needing dump
1 needing vectoring

All dumps, VFD vectors, pinouts, etc are here:

http://blog.kevtris.org/blogfiles/Handhelds/

Fully emulated in MESS:

Bambino Laser Fight (D553C)
Bambino Superstar Football (D553C)
Epoch Dracula (D553C)
Tomy Alien Chase (D553C)
Tomy Pac-Man (D553C)
Tomy Tennis (D553C)


CPUs dumped and VFDs vectored:

Bambino Basketball (HD38750)
Bandai Packri Monster (HD38800)
Coleco Alien Attack (HD38800)
Coleco Donkey Kong (HD38820)
Coleco Frogger (M58846)
Coleco Galaxian (HD38800)
Coleco Ms Pac-Man (HD38820)
Coleco Pac-Man (HD38820)
Entex Pac-Man 2 (HD38820)
Entex Galaxian 2 (HD38820)
Entex Turtles (HD38820 + COP411)
Mattel World Champ Football (2x MM78)
Parker Bros Q-Bert (HD38820)
Tandy Astro Command (D553C)
Tandy Kingman (HD38800B)
Tandy Zackman (HD38820)
Tomy Tron (HD38800)


CPUs waiting to be dumped, VFDs vectored:

Tandy Caveman (CPU dumped, VFD needs vectoring)
Tandy Cosmic 1000 Fire Away (VFD vectored, needs CPU dumped)



-- original message follows --


Heya, I'm new around here but I have been working a bit on preserving handheld games, specifically VFD ones.

So far, I have been working on dumping the mask ROM microcontrollers in the games and vector-tracing the VFDs. I know this isn't anything new but I have made very good progress lately and thought I'd talk a bit about it.

Epoch Dracula (D553C)
Tomy Alien Chase (D553C)
Tomy Tennis (D553C)

All three games use the same CPU, the NEC D553 (D552 on Tennis) which I figured out how to dump using its factory test mode pin by looking at the chip die shot to see what the pin does.

After figuring out how the CPU test mode worked, I made a piece of hardware to dump the chips without damaging them.

Once the CPU is dumped, the VFD is desoldered, then connected up and photographed with all the segments lit, then I trace it out into an .SVG vector file. The VFD/CPU are reinstalled in the game and it works fine after its little ordeal.

Right now I am working on figuring out the factory test mode for the Hitachi HD388xx series parts which is found in Coleco Alien Chase (I have this chip out and am getting some data out of it on another test/dump rig) and it's also used on those Coleco mini arcade games like Pac-man, Donkey Kong, etc and seemingly tons of other games like Paint Roller.

Now that all the description is out of the way, I was wondering if people had some clunker games they could sell me cheap to dump/vector out the VFDs on. Preferably with either the D552/D553 and the HD38800 or HD38820. I was looking over the "game guts" section to try and identify what CPUs some of the games had.

Alternatively it'd be nice to know what games use these CPUs so I can be on the lookout on ebay. I have already bought about 6 or 7 games for reverse engineering/dumping work.

Looks like there's about a sum total of three chips used on the VFD games- HD388xx, NEC D553( and D552) and a TI part of some description. Not sure if I will be able to dump the TI parts as easily, and it might require a sacrificial chip for decapping.

In the works is a youtube video about how the reverse engineering of the test mode and dumping is done and until I post that, here's my big dump of the images, VFD tracings, chip pinouts, and data sheets available:

http://blog.kevtris.org/blogfiles/Handhelds/

The MESS emulator project is working on getting the three D553 games working on the emulator at this moment and I suspect something runnable should be done soon. A friend worked on getting the Dracula game working as a browser java script doodad and I can post a link to this when he gets the CPU debugged (currently it runs but is buggy).


Last edited by kevtris on Sun Mar 15, 2015 3:47 pm; edited 3 times in total
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Rik
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 08, 2015 1:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh crap, this is the coolest thing I've seen in a long time... Fricken' dis-assembled source code from a ROM dump! That's just awesome...

I was reading up on the TMS1100 used in Microvision a while back and discovered the Test mode that should be able to dump the ROM, but never really mastered the skills to go any further.

I'm really interested in those dumpers you'd designed, how do those connect to a computer and what do you dump them with? (I assume a little program you wrote to work with them...)

Let me dig around for games, I have a bunch of scrappers I can let go (some not working, but if all you need is the CPU and VFD to be functional, that shouldn't be a problem). I could even loan you lot more if you are willing to send them back (they'd still be 'spare' games, so no worry about the possibility of damaging one, I just don't want to part with all my spare games. Cool ) (I have spare VFDs too, I never throw away a VFD even if I trash the rest of the game, but not sure if I kept many other parts of games I completely trashed...)

If you decap any (or already have), I would love to have a copy of the highest resolution image you have of the chip itself for any game... I love chip photographs. Mr. Green
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kevtris
Coleco Pac Man


Joined: 07 Feb 2015
Last Visit: 13 Oct 2015
Posts: 34
Location: Indianapolis, IN

PostPosted: Sun Feb 08, 2015 1:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Rik wrote:
Oh crap, this is the coolest thing I've seen in a long time... Fricken' dis-assembled source code from a ROM dump! That's just awesome...

I was reading up on the TMS1100 used in Microvision a while back and discovered the Test mode that should be able to dump the ROM, but never really mastered the skills to go any further.


I managed to dump a couple of the TMS1100's in the microvision games but some were "protected" so you could not read the 8th data bit out of them. I even had two copies of one of the games, where one was a slightly older revision of TMS1100 which I could dump, and a newer rev that I could not dump! (the data was the same on both, just one was literally 10 weeks newer or so). Sean Riddle decapped and dumped the remainder so all the microvision games are dumped now and playable in MESS (pretty sure the driver for that is done, I played some of the games on that).

The info I generated on Microvision dumping is here:

http://blog.kevtris.org/blogfiles/TMS1000/

Quote:

I'm really interested in those dumpers you'd designed, how do those connect to a computer and what do you dump them with? (I assume a little program you wrote to work with them...)


It connects through a serial to USB converter, and I use putty (Terminal program) to dump them, which outputs data that looks like this:

X
000000000000000000007F007F007F007F007F007F007F007F00500150015001500140004000400040009002...

which is just a marker (X) and the raw hex data. I then run a program over that to produce the binary file. That's it.

The dumper has a PIC microcontroller on it that connects to the CPU to dump. The NEC D553's have 8 banks of 256 bytes of data. The test mode basically makes the chip spit out all 256 bytes of data in a bank. The trick is changing banks to get all the data out. This is done by running the CPU up to a jump instruction to another bank, taking it out of test mode, letting it execute exactly 1 instruction (the jump), then counting out bytes to the start of the bank, then dumping the new bank. To dump banks that are farther away my code might have to "leap frog" from one bank to the next to get all the data.

The HD38800 looks to operate extremely similar to this. I am currently experimenting with its test mode to figure out how to make it change banks. It appears to work similar; you dump data up to a jump instruction then take it out of test mode so it runs two instructions- a bank select instruction and a jump instruction- then let it dump data again.

I am getting stuck now on the HD38800 because I am missing vital information from the data sheets- the opcode patterns. I got a lead on this info so I hope that comes through. I spent hours on google and looking thru patents for source code but came up empty. Note that the HMCS404 is not the info I need. I need HMCS40A, HMCS44A, etc. There are data sheets for these in that directory I posted a link to earlier.


Quote:

Let me dig around for games, I have a bunch of scrappers I can let go (some not working, but if all you need is the CPU and VFD to be functional, that shouldn't be a problem). I could even loan you lot more if you are willing to send them back (they'd still be 'spare' games, so no worry about the possibility of damaging one, I just don't want to part with all my spare games. Cool ) (I have spare VFDs too, I never throw away a VFD even if I trash the rest of the game, but not sure if I kept many other parts of games I completely trashed...)


Great. Yes I don't have to destroy a game to dump it. I have put all the games I dumped so far back together in full working order except the Alien Attack since it's still under the knife.

I have done plenty of dump and return projects so returning them is not an issue.

Once I get the 38800's to dump I will let you know what games would be useful to have. Do you have a list?

Quote:

If you decap any (or already have), I would love to have a copy of the highest resolution image you have of the chip itself for any game... I love chip photographs. Mr. Green


Well then you'll love this site:

http://siliconpr0n.org

I used his D650 die shot to help figure out the test mode on the D553's. It is here:

http://siliconpr0n.org/map/nec/d650c_133/mz_mit20x_stacked/

I am trying to get him to decap a few more chips for me so I can figure out test modes.


Enjoy!
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kevtris
Coleco Pac Man


Joined: 07 Feb 2015
Last Visit: 13 Oct 2015
Posts: 34
Location: Indianapolis, IN

PostPosted: Tue Feb 10, 2015 10:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well after a few days of playing around, I have managed to dump the Coleco tabletop Galaxian!

My version had an HD38800A70 in it, which is the 42 pin DIP version. Don't some versions of this game have the surface mount chip instead?

During testing, I discovered the chip has a lot of factory test code in it that they must use to test the chips at the factory! There's no less than 4 banks (256 words) of test code, which came out along with the pattern table ROM.

Once I get the opcode bit patterns, I will disassemble the test code to see exactly how it works. I suspect this will help me dump these chips easier.

I dumped most of the Coleco Alien Attack, but was missing 6 banks of data. Using the test code I can dump banks 0 and 1 which I was missing, but I still cannot dump banks 12-15, so either these are not used or they access them via calculated jumps or something.

I won't know until I can get into these four banks using the factory test code to find out.

The good news is I know what all the pins do during test mode, though:

* port direction to dump the ROM data or input data
* output the 2K of ROM or the test code + pattern tables
* halt the CPU
* run test code

I put the Galaxian dump along with a preliminary disassembly in there. A friend and I on IRC were hacking on the code and figuring out what the opcodes do simply by examing the bit patterns to determine what the code most likely is doing, to deduce what the instructions do.

I also received my Pac-Man 2 and gutted that, and am going to vector the VFD tonight, but I cannot dump its HD38820 until I design a small adapter PCB to get it connected to my dumping rig. This rig should work fine but I have to connect it to the chip.

http://blog.kevtris.org/blogfiles/Handhelds/Coleco%20Galaxian/

Sooo, I'm getting there. If all goes well, soon I will have all the Coleco tabletop games dumped so they can emulated for the first time
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Rik
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 11, 2015 5:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

kevtris wrote:
Well after a few days of playing around, I have managed to dump the Coleco tabletop Galaxian!

My version had an HD38800A70 in it, which is the 42 pin DIP version. Don't some versions of this game have the surface mount chip instead?


Is the HD38820 just a surface mount version of the 38800, or a different chip all together? Pac-Man (at least some versions) use an HD38820 surface mount, as seen here:

http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Coleco/ColecoRepair/index2.html

And there's at least an A28 and A29 die code in them. I have several of these, but haven't checked all the chips. If you need any, let me know.

There might be DIP and surface mount version of all of them... But some of these (like Pac-Man and I think Donkey Kong) definitely went through some board (and probably ROM) revisions over the years they were released. It would be interesting to find out what they changed on the ROMs once and for all. Smile

Frogger also has different revisions, even two different VFDs with slightly different game play. Looks like it's time to start officially documenting all of this (assuming no one has already...)

Rik
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blanka
Atari Cosmos


Joined: 14 Dec 2010
Last Visit: 13 Oct 2022
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Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands

PostPosted: Wed Feb 11, 2015 10:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Super cool. I've been dumping optically as they told me these chips were locked for rom dumps. The sulfur acid options is quite cool as well, but this is better for the games. Check my page 2kboffun.com for some optical readout stuff. Do you have a wire scheme for the readout, and can you do it with an arduino or so?

The difference between the hd 38820 and the 38800 is the number of VFD segment drivers. A Hd38800 can control around 180 sprites, a 38820 can do more than 400.

I can help with a list of all microcontrollers/game
I had success with frogger too, optical readout rom dump. It does not run on a 38800, but on a mitsubishi.

https://www.facebook.com/2kboffun/photos/a.346524368807969.1073741832.326426274151112/424701037656968/?type=1
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kevtris
Coleco Pac Man


Joined: 07 Feb 2015
Last Visit: 13 Oct 2015
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Location: Indianapolis, IN

PostPosted: Fri Feb 13, 2015 11:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Rik wrote:

And there's at least an A28 and A29 die code in them. I have several of these, but haven't checked all the chips. If you need any, let me know.

There might be DIP and surface mount version of all of them... But some of these (like Pac-Man and I think Donkey Kong) definitely went through some board (and probably ROM) revisions over the years they were released. It would be interesting to find out what they changed on the ROMs once and for all. Smile

Frogger also has different revisions, even two different VFDs with slightly different game play. Looks like it's time to start officially documenting all of this (assuming no one has already...)

Rik


Yeah I remember a long time ago seeing the guts of two of the Donky Kong games; I had a board only a friend gave me which I think was a very late release, and another earlier release. both had a QFP CPU on it but I don't know where my board went. I just have the VFD now.

The Pac-Man I have is an A28, Turtles is an A43, and Pac-Man 2 is an A23. All three of these are an HD38820 in QFP.
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kevtris
Coleco Pac Man


Joined: 07 Feb 2015
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Location: Indianapolis, IN

PostPosted: Fri Feb 13, 2015 11:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

blanka wrote:
Super cool. I've been dumping optically as they told me these chips were locked for rom dumps. The sulfur acid options is quite cool as well, but this is better for the games. Check my page 2kboffun.com for some optical readout stuff. Do you have a wire scheme for the readout, and can you do it with an arduino or so?

The difference between the hd 38820 and the 38800 is the number of VFD segment drivers. A Hd38800 can control around 180 sprites, a 38820 can do more than 400.

I can help with a list of all microcontrollers/game
I had success with frogger too, optical readout rom dump. It does not run on a 38800, but on a mitsubishi.



Good work on the optical dumping method! Did your code dump of the tennis game match up with my dump?

My dumper is a custom made job using a PIC microcontroller and needs two power supplies to work (5V and 10V). I have been using a bench supply to run it.

I finally managed to decode the factory test code in the HD38800 (and I'm sure the '20 works exactly the same since the two might be the same die in the package). This will let me select an arbitrary page to dump, which will make life easier. I never did manage to dump 4 of the Alien Attack ROM pages, so this will let me finally get those.

Already made changes to the dumping rig to drive some of the pins on the micro to do this.

A list of games vs. CPUs would be nice if such a thing is easy to compile. I went through the "Game guts" page but not many CPUs were visible. Just a back view of the PCB is probably good enough to tell what CPU was used on the games.

What chip does Frogger use? I'm real surprised it does not use the HD38820 like the other games did. Maybe someone else designed it and they just packaged it.

Also, what CPU does Qbert use?

I added more stuff to my handhelds dir, including the Galaxian vector art for the VFD and VFD pin identification (need to update the CPU pinout file to match though)
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Rik
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 14, 2015 2:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here's a quick list from looking at some of my photographs: (Couple of LCD games at the end)

Epoch Galaga-X6: NEC D7528C 011 (or O11) (DIP) (Also a D1771C 011)
(Probably sold under many different names as indicated on my website, although the CPUs could be slightly different... Firefox F-7, etc.)

Actronics Wanted G-Man: HD38800-B24
Bandai Block Out (FL The BlocK): NEC D553C 102 (DIP)
Bandai Dokodemo Dorayaki Doraemon: HD38800B43 (DIP)
Bandai Hokuto vs Nanto Taiketsu 5: NEC D7527C (DIP)
CGL Earth Invaders: HD38800A04 (DIP)
Coleco Donkey Kong: HD38820A45 (QFP)
Coleco Frogger (no dead frogs, VFD CP5090): Konami M58846-701P (DIP)
Entex Pac-Man 2: HD38820A23 (QFP)
Gakken Super Cobra: HD38820A32 (QFP)
Parker Bros Q*Bert: HD38820A70 (QFP)
Tomy Space Attack: NEC D552C 042 (DIP)
Vtech Invaders (yellow game): HD38750A45 (DIP)

Casio Boxing Calculator BG-15 (LCD): HD43576A 2C 43 (QFP)
Casio Game Calulator MG-777 (LCD): HD43574 2C 21 (QFP)
Tomy Slimline Speedway (LCD): HD43506 0F 31 (QFP)

Some games have their CPUs listed on my site, but my search tool is broken, haven't gotten it back up yet... So it's a little hard to find them quickly.

Coleco Frogger wasn't made by Coleco, but licensed from Gakken and was sold by many companies under different names and designs. I think pretty every VFD Frogger is basically the same game. That's probably why the different CPU is in it.

One variation on the VFD is that the last sprite on the 'logs' portion shows a half-'squished' frog (indicating you died). Game play is slightly different on these I think. VFD CP5084 is one of these, mine came from a CGL Frogger, but I think the Coleco Frogger with the green sticker variation also uses this VFD...

I'd also love to have this game dumped and the VFD vector'd:
http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Tsukuda/GamePachinko.htm
I can loan you one of these for sure if you want... Smile
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kevtris
Coleco Pac Man


Joined: 07 Feb 2015
Last Visit: 13 Oct 2015
Posts: 34
Location: Indianapolis, IN

PostPosted: Sat Feb 14, 2015 10:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Rik wrote:

Some games have their CPUs listed on my site, but my search tool is broken, haven't gotten it back up yet... So it's a little hard to find them quickly.



Yeah I was poking through the pages to see what game used what CPU but didn't see a whole lot. thanks for the list.

Quote:

Coleco Frogger wasn't made by Coleco, but licensed from Gakken and was sold by many companies under different names and designs. I think pretty every VFD Frogger is basically the same game. That's probably why the different CPU is in it.


Oh that'd explain it. Is "Frog Prince" the same game? I tried looking at the VFD and it seemed to be similar but I wasn't sure.


One variation on the VFD is that the last sprite on the 'logs' portion shows a half-'squished' frog (indicating you died). Game play is slightly different on these I think. VFD CP5084 is one of these, mine came from a CGL Frogger, but I think the Coleco Frogger with the green sticker variation also uses this VFD...

[/quote]

Yeah I saw that on the page about it. I have two Pac-Man 2's, with two different VFDs. (blue pac-men and red pac-men). The CPU is the same in both though.

Quote:


I'd also love to have this game dumped and the VFD vector'd:
http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Tsukuda/GamePachinko.htm
I can loan you one of these for sure if you want... Smile


Yeah I was looking at that, looks pretty nice. unfortunately I think it uses a TI TMS1xxx CPU in there which is undumpable by me so far. I can dump some TMS1000/1100 parts but not all and not the TMS1400 and its VFD driving relatives.

The "The Dracula" by the same company has a TI part on it (friend bought one and opened it up and got a pic of the back of the PCB). I can tell by the routing that it's a TI part.

Small dumping update:

I can now dump all banks of every HD38800/20 now, with no restrictions. I also ordered a little QFP adapter board tonight from oshpark so that will make it possible to dump these other CPUs I have kicking around right now.

Does anyone have close up pics of the Frogger PCB? I'm curious if the CPU is unique or if it's simply a remarked chip.

I was looking at Astro Thunder; friend got one of those too (and sniped it out from under me. lol) off ebay and it uses NEC's "enhanced" 4-bit CPU. I am not sure if I can dump these or not; they do not have a test pin but holding it in reset and twiddling a pin might result in something useful.

The D1771 in there is actually a very poorly documented speech chip slash CPU part that's been decapped. We don't know much more about it than that. It also showed up on a videogame system called the "super cassettevision" I believe.

I have about run out of games to do, just need to finish up galaxian and pac-man (got pac-man friday). It had the usual corrosion issues but it looks like the thick flux on the board saved it from any real damage. I cleaned it off and retinned the CPU pins after removing it and I think it'll work OK after reassembly.

I had to add more parts to my dumper board to get it to finally dump these HD38800's all the way. After dumping the four undumpable banks in Alien Attack, turns out they were just full of zeros anyways, haha. Oh well, at least I can dump every bank whether code calls it or not now.

It was possible they were storing pattern data in there so I wanted to make sure it was really empty and not missing data. I will upload the alien attack rom tonight some time if I remember and update the remaining files.

Oh yeah, one of the MESS guys has now gotten Tomy Tennis, Epoch Dracula, and Tomy Alien Chase fully emulated now. That means the ROM dumps and VFD vector files are good. I will ask him when they will be integrated into the main MESS tree and pushed out with the next update.
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blanka
Atari Cosmos


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PostPosted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 12:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Frog Prince is something different. The ROMTEC stuff is pretty crappy made. The display, which by itself is excellent, is driven with a lot of flickering, and many PCB's have failing power sections. I reanimated a Frog Prince by giving it a "synthetic heart", the power section of a very common HD38800 game. Also the programming is not spot on. The refresh cycle is too slow, and the interrupts are more like hiccups.

The mitsubishi in Frogger is not a rebranded chip, it is a different manufacturer product.

Gakken did the whole Coleco series hardware design and production, that's why Gakken frogger is the same except for the display. Probably Konami wanted to develop the code in house and therefore they used another chip. They did the same with Amidar which has a similar PCB layout and MCU. They did not use the Donkey Kong and Pac Man designs for themselves, as they are a Japanese company. The Americans wanted more accurate game play with tons of sprites, see Entex, where for Japanese the sprite looks are very important. Thats why they did Puck Monster differently and made their own DK version with the European Crazy Kong license. Frogger did have enough room for nice graphics so it was good to server both nations. Zaxxon was licensed to Bandai in Japan and Europe, so no Gakken Zaxxon either.

The NEC's and TMS's are excellent for optical readout, the Hitachi's are not, so that makes it good there are 2 options! I'm gonna decap the 1771 and 7528.

I cannot check my Tennis Pro code against yours. Tennis Pro uses 1 bank more, it is 1.1KB. That explains they used a 2KB MCU the 553 instead of the 1KB 552.
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kevtris
Coleco Pac Man


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PostPosted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 1:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

blanka wrote:
Frog Prince is something different. The ROMTEC stuff is pretty crappy made. The display, which by itself is excellent, is driven with a lot of flickering, and many PCB's have failing power sections. I reanimated a Frog Prince by giving it a "synthetic heart", the power section of a very common HD38800 game. Also the programming is not spot on. The refresh cycle is too slow, and the interrupts are more like hiccups.


Ah, was wondering. What CPU is on frog prince, the 38820?

Quote:

The mitsubishi in Frogger is not a rebranded chip, it is a different manufacturer product.

Gakken did the whole Coleco series hardware design and production, that's why Gakken frogger is the same except for the display. Probably Konami wanted to develop the code in house and therefore they used another chip. They did the same with Amidar which has a similar PCB layout and MCU. They did not use the Donkey Kong and Pac Man designs for themselves, as they are a Japanese company. The Americans wanted more accurate game play with tons of sprites, see Entex, where for Japanese the sprite looks are very important. Thats why they did Puck Monster differently and made their own DK version with the European Crazy Kong license.


Hah that's pretty cool, I didn't know Gakken made those for Coleco! Also that explains the different chip. I had not seen the Mitsubishi chip in anything before, except maybe a VCR for the VFD/interface.

Been trying to get an Amidar or Frogger and a qbert but they go for quite a bit on the 'bay.

The NEC's and TMS's are excellent for optical readout, the Hitachi's are not, so that makes it good there are 2 options! I'm gonna decap the 1771 and 7528.

The 1771 has been decapped. it is here:

http://siliconpr0n.org/map/nec/d1771c_011/mz_mit20x_1/

The 7528 has not been, however.

Quote:


I cannot check my Tennis Pro code against yours. Tennis Pro uses 1 bank more, it is 1.1KB. That explains they used a 2KB MCU the 553 instead of the 1KB 552.


Oh, I didn't know there were two versions of this game. I saw the pro one on ebay but I thought it was just a packaging variation for another market or something.

There are a lot more variations in the games than I was expecting. I kind of expected the Japanese/US versions to be different but the sheer number of variations is pretty high.
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 5:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Frog Prince is using a HD 38800 as well.

Funny word, decapping. Here it is more like a total meltdown in sulphur acid Smile.
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Rik
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Joined: 07 Oct 2005
Last Visit: 25 Mar 2024
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Location: California

PostPosted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 3:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

blanka wrote:
Gakken did the whole Coleco series hardware design and production, that's why Gakken frogger is the same except for the display. Probably Konami wanted to develop the code in house and therefore they used another chip. They did the same with Amidar which has a similar PCB layout and MCU. They did not use the Donkey Kong and Pac Man designs for themselves, as they are a Japanese company. The Americans wanted more accurate game play with tons of sprites, see Entex, where for Japanese the sprite looks are very important. Thats why they did Puck Monster differently and made their own DK version with the European Crazy Kong license.


Gakken did not do all of the Coleco games. Donkey Kong was designed and programmed entirely in house by Coleco in California. Gakken may have done the circuit layout and manufacturing design, but the VFD and game code is all Coleco's. That's why no one else has ever used it in any other game. I've met the person who designed the VFD and game play.

Pac-Man and Frogger were licensed/designed out of house (Gakken, they released in Japan and France).
Galaxian was a modified version of an existing game.
Ms Pac-Man was also designed in house by Coleco. (not sure about programming on that one though)

I'll take a pic of the Frogger board tonight...
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blanka
Atari Cosmos


Joined: 14 Dec 2010
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 9:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Rik wrote:
Donkey Kong was designed and programmed entirely in house by Coleco in California.


After you told us about your meet, I contacted her and asked a bit further, and she told they did program a prototype, but the translation to 4-bit machine code was done by a Japanese partner.
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