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Re: Toaplan Decapping
01/24/16 04:57 PM
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> > I understand very well, you guys have explained the issues and challenge with that > > sort of job, so it won't happen tomorrow nor the day after for good reasons. > > > > What I meant is for people who are in a hurry to play those few sound-less Toaplan > > games, and if they are not aware it's a poor solution, well too bad for them... > > fair enough, at least you acknowledge that it isn't really a great solution, i've > found it quite depressing reading elsewhere that people now consider these 'done' > because of the sample support. > > getting the code out of the various MCUs on arcade boards is going to be a long and > expensive task, not just toaplan, but plenty of the others too, I would say probably > one of the most difficult and expensive undertakings we've seen, for results a lot of > people aren't going to notice, but given the way PCB prices are rising at the moment > there's room for debate there (and of course, the worst case scenarios of when > prototypes have MCUs, nobody wants to risk those without a solid non-destructive > solution! and yes, some did have MCUs, especially ones which were near production > stage) > > we do need to work out what priorities are with such things, personally I'd say any > MCUs containing important game data that can't accurately be represented without the > MCU code should be the key ones, and as the Toaplan ones contain all the music > sequence data (that you would struggle to reconstruct 1:1 from just hearing the > samples or even probing the commands sent to the YM) those count. > > unfortunately previous decapping efforts, too many chips that weren't REALLY needed > got sent, chips that when decapped told us absolutely nothing we didn't know, while > ones that were critical to getting games running properly were left untouched. we do > need to avoid a repeat of that ;-) > > decapping isn't even the magical solution it's made out to be, although it can tell > us more about the chips in order to maybe find another way to read them out, anything > that isn't using a MASK rom internally can't be dumped using visual techniques and a > lot of these MCUs, including the Toaplan ones fall into that category. All decapping > might help show us is where the protection bits in the MCU are, giving hints at how > we might be able to wipe them in order to read the chip out without destroying the > actual game data etc. > > the worst part is, none of this is something us software dev guys who contribute to > MAME can really help with, it's in the hands of the hardware guys and those able to > make contacts, and supply the funds + chips to make it happen.
You mentioned earlier in the thread that people who help on the non-arcade sytems in MESS/MAME have a lot better hardware dumping contacts than Guru's.
Would any of their expertise be of help on such specialized chips?
It can't hurt to ask, after all.
"Note to Noobs:
We are glad to help you but simply posting that something does not work is not going to lead to you getting help. The more information you can supply defining your problem, the less likely it will be that you will get smart-alec replies.
C.D.~"
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