MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin

I recently found "The Apprentice" TV game at a thrift store for a few bucks. Thought it would be fun to mess with and maybe document. It looks like it has a glob topped 44 pin TSOP. By glob top, I mean the epoxy covering a die or whatever happens to be underneath. I'm not active in this scene, but from what I can gather, this community deals with dumping TV games from time to time. I'm certain that this has been asked a million times, but I haven't found much useful information using google or the search here. Since google just promotes spam now, that's not much of a surprise :/

Anyways, image of the flash is here. Not sure how this forum will handle an imgur direct link. IIRC Imgur used to have some weird anti-embed thing going on.

The flash is labeled with `D44B 16M`. I have no issue lifting this hot air and wiring to a standard 2.54mm header. I assume I can read it with a common TSOP reader using a part number that matches the flash layout of this "unknown" chip. I could also probably sniff it in-circuit with a digital logic analyzer if I really wanted to act unhinged.
- Is my assumption correct?
- What, if anything do you like to dump chips like this with?
- I have a GQ4x4, Willem, and several SBCs like raspi I can dump / bit-bang with
- Wouldn't mind getting a new tool if it's actually useful for something
- How do you determine the flash layout on something like this?
- Which chip model would I try to compare it to?

The part number on the chip is referenced here (https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/tvgames/spg2xx_senario.cpp) under `apprentice.bin`. I'm clearly not the first person to have crossed this bridge. I'd love to see some kind of wiki or documentation pertaining to dumping TV games. I'm big on preservation, emulation, and virtualization. If no one can obtain the source material, it doesn't matter IMO. I get why why we don't go around posting ROMs online willy nilly. I think that describing *how* software is dumped is insanely important. It's a weekend project for me. A chance to get my feet wet editing videos and documenting obscure gaming. This game remains lost to time if it can't be dumped. I'm sure the politics are a central issue here. But **HOW** to preserve? I feel like that's missing. Maybe I'm missing where exactly that information is.

There are several pads on the PCB that seem to lead directly to the CPU. Maybe JTAG? Serial debug? If this were an ARM core, that would be cool. Could probably dump over JTAG. Intuition tells me that this will be at best MIPS, or most likely something goofy as hell. Maybe not even goofy? Some kind of CPLD? I honestly have no clue... Really excited to figure it out haha

Totally unrelated, I've run into some posts from 2022 saying the 2003 Spongebob TV game still hasn't been dumped because the code exists within the CPU. Is this still the case? I love poking at obscure systems and processors. That sounds insanely fun to look at.