MAMEWorld Forums - News - It's Alive! (sort of)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-cfbSnwURs

This boots and run an attract loop, obviously still a lot of unknowns with this, but hopefully having the code running will allow better techniques to be developed for extracting the internal ROMs (every single game, and revision of each game has a different internal ROM)

> With the help of these ones done so far to find errors in the OCR data I have a ROM
> where the checksum of the data matches the internal checksum stored in the program.
> That's a good sign.
>
> The 4000-47ff range isn't covered by the checksum, but given the high confidence at
> this point I think we're good there too.
>
>
> > Some months have passed since the last time a collective effort was needed, but now
> > we need help to type the data of the internal ROM of a Pacman handheld which was
> > recently trojaned out.
> > Here are the instructions:
> >
> > There is an increasing decimal counter on the left (the address)
> > To the right of this there is another value (the data) again decimal
> >
> > for EVEN addresses the data will be displayed near the center of the display
> > for ODD addresses the data will be displayed closer to the right of the display
> > (this is done to avoid 'half and half values' appearing mid-update)
> >
> > valid address/data combinations will persist for several frames, so valid frames
> > should
> > be obvious and transitional frames can be ignored.
> >
> > the address counter updates slightly before the data updates, don't let this catch
> > you out,
> > as mentioned above, data for odd addresses will always be display to the right of
> the
> > screen
> > so if in doubt you can double check tht way.
> >
> > data is needed in the format
> >
> > address, data,
> > eg
> >
> > 016384, 000000,
> > 016385, 000000,
> > 016386, 000000,
> > 016387, 000000,
> > 016388, 000000,
> > 016389, 016703,
> > 016390, 016692,
> > 016391, 016441,
> > 016392, 016470,
> >
> > the first digit in each column will always be 0 (these are 16-bit values so highest
> > possible value is 065535)
> >
> > files should be named the same as the video name
> > eg. 0_part1_4000_43ff.txt for 0_part1_4000_43ff.mp4
> >
> > etc.
> >
> > be sure to familiarize yourself with the different number graphics, they are all
> > distinct
> > but be careful not to confuse 1 with 7, or 3 with 8 or 0. the address display is
> > useful for
> > learning the character shapes.
> >
> > videos starting with the final one here are a bit darker than the first batch,
> > although still readable
> >
> > most of these videos cover a 1024 word range (1kwords) although due to recording
> > boundaries some are split smaller.
> >
> > ideally 2 people should independently do each video, as it makes mistakes more
> likely
> > to be found
> >
> >
> > https://og.kervella.org/pacman/0_part1_4000_43ff.mp4 (1024 words) DONE (Team
> Europe)
> > https://og.kervella.org/pacman/0_part2_4400_47ff.mp4 (1024 words) DONE (Osso)
> > https://og.kervella.org/pacman/0_part3_4800_4bff.mp4 (1024 words) DONE (Osso)
> > https://og.kervella.org/pacman/0_part4_4c00_4fff.mp4 (1024 words) DONE (Osso)
> > https://og.kervella.org/pacman/0_part5_5000_53ff.mp4 (1024 words) DONE (Team
> Europe)
> > https://og.kervella.org/pacman/0_part6_5400_55ff.mp4 (512 words) DONE (Team Europe)
> > (display is a bit darker on ones below)
> > https://og.kervella.org/pacman/1_part1_5600_57ff.mp4 (512 words) DONE (Team Europe)
> > https://og.kervella.org/pacman/1_part2_5800_5bff.mp4 (1024 words) DONE (jrideburg)
> > https://og.kervella.org/pacman/1_part3_5c00_5fff.mp4 (1024 words) IN PROGRESS
> > (jrideburg)
> > https://og.kervella.org/pacman/1_part4_6000_63ff.mp4 (1024 words)
> > https://og.kervella.org/pacman/1_part5_6400_67ff.mp4 (1024 words) IN PROGRESS (Team
> > Europe)
> > https://og.kervella.org/pacman/1_part6_6800_6bff.mp4 (1024 words)
> > https://og.kervella.org/pacman/2_part1_6c00_6fff.mp4 (1024 words)
> > https://og.kervella.org/pacman/2_part2_7000_73ff.mp4 (1024 words)
> > https://og.kervella.org/pacman/2_part3_7400_77ff.mp4 (1024 words)
> > https://og.kervella.org/pacman/2_part4_7800_7bff.mp4 (1024 words)
> > https://og.kervella.org/pacman/2_part5_7c00_7fff.mp4 (1024 words) DONE (f205v)
> > https://og.kervella.org/pacman/2_part6_8000_81ff.mp4 (512 words) DONE (f205v)
> > https://og.kervella.org/pacman/3_part1_8200_83ff.mp4 (512 words) DONE (jrideburg)
> > https://og.kervella.org/pacman/3_part2_8400_87ff.mp4 (1024 words) DONE 2x
> (jrideburg
> > and Osso)
> > https://og.kervella.org/pacman/3_part3_8800_8bff.mp4 (1024 words) DONE (jrideburg)
> > https://og.kervella.org/pacman/3_part4_8c00_8dff.mp4 (512 words) (mostly empty)
> DONE
> > (Team Europe)
> >
> > total 19.5kwords of data
> >
> > useful technique: use VLC on a separate laptop, hit space to pause / unpause video
> > for each value while entering data on PC
> >
> > If you're interested, please post hereunder which video you are going to tackle, to
> > avoid too many people working on the same video and noone working on others.
> > Thanks to everyone who'll help to preserve another system in MAME!