Data East ARM6 hardware: conversion info?

[ZERO_MILES]

It's me again, with another conversion thread!

Has anyone attempted do convert Data East ARM6 hardware games?

This board has only 6 games (according to System16.com):

Captain America and The Avengers Dragon Gun Fighter's History

Locked'N Loaded / Gun Hard Night Slashers Tattoo Assassins

The most common, in my opinion, are Fighter's History and Captain America and the Avengers.

Has anyone ever done a rom swap / conversion on ARM6 hardware?

Cheers!

 

[ekorz]

If possible it wouldn’t be just a rom swap. These boards have a ton of custom chips, so they’d also need to be swapped or the roms would need patching to work with the existing customs. All the info is (as usual) in MAME: https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/drivers/deco32.cpp

For example Fighters History shares a main pcb with one version of Night Slashers, DE-0395-1. But the customs are different. Critically custom 104 only appears on other Night Slashers boards (at least within this data east hardware generation), so you’d need a donor from a dead one. You’d also need a 141 from a different Fighters History. I haven’t checked everything but you get the idea.

I’d love to see conversions like this... night slashers patched to run on fighters history, but that’s way above my pay grade.

 

[Hammy]

The short supply of the 99 chip required for the 'top end' games is the problem here.
otherwise the market would of been flooded with night slashers conversions.

This is a GFX chip so kinda important...

 

[ekorz]

Oh yeah. There is space for a 99 on the fighters history board, but it’s not there either.

 

[undamned]

Critically custom 104 only appears on other Night Slashers boards (at least within this data east hardware generation), so you’d need a donor from a dead one.

104 is on many Data East boards.

The short supply of the 99 chip required for the 'top end' games is the problem here.

This. Only a fool would sac an original Boogie Wings to make a Night Slashers conversion.
-ud

 

[ZERO_MILES]

This. Only a fool would sac an original Boogie Wings to make a Night Slashers conversion.

If I had two Boogie Wings, I'd trade both for ONE Night Slashers

I really like that game.

 

[XtraSmiley]

NS is really awesome. They had been going for about $700, but there is one on YAJ right now passing $1500!!!!

I love it, but I’d never convert a BW...

 

[undamned]

This. Only a fool would sac an original Boogie Wings to make a Night Slashers conversion.

If I had two Boogie Wings, I'd trade both for ONE Night Slashers
I really like that game.

Let me know when you get 2 Boogie Wings

NS is really awesome. They had been going for about $700, but there is one on YAJ right now passing $1500!!!!

I love it, but I’d never convert a BW...

Yeah, I've been watching that for the entertainment value. Osman did the same thing a number of years ago. Had been going for maybe $400ish for a while and then out of the blue broke $1000 and basically ruined reasonable values on that game forever.
-ud

 

[djsheep]

Boogie Wings just sold on AO for $400.

 

[XtraSmiley]

It did, and it used to sell for $250.

The Japanese version regularly goes for $700+.

 

[twistedsymphony]

Boogie Wings just sold on AO for $400.

damnit. I've been after that game for about a year now, and that's the 3rd ~$400 ish one I've missed. :-/

 

[twistedsymphony]

So having looked into this a bit There are 3 different Night Slashers PCB, and 3 or 4 differen Fighters history. One of the board versions is shared but Night Slashers uses a number of additional customs that aren't on the fighters history. Most notably the DE99 custom chip aka the "Ace" chip, which is a graphics custom that performs alpha blending operations. This chip isn't even fully emulated in MAME and it's only found on 3 games:
Boogie Wings (completely different hardware, just happens to also use this chip), Tattoo Assassins, and Night Slashers.

Lets assume for a moment that you have the correct Fighters History PCB and that you happen to miraculously have a DE99 chip and want to make a night slashers you'd also have to:
-find 7 other custom chips salvaged from various other Data East Games
-install 7 additional SMD logic ICs
-Patch the Game code to run on a decrypted CPU

Yup Night slashers uses an encrypted version of the CPU that's on the Fighters History PCB so it would need to be decrypted and or patched. OR you would have to transplant the CPU from an original Night Slashers.

And then once you did all that you could swap the ROMs and PALs

AFAIK there aren't any conversions possible among the other games either. Tattoo Assassins runs into the same issue as Night Slasher where it uses customs that are essentially unobtainable without sacrificing other expensive PCBs. and Avengers and Dragon Gun both have pretty unique PCBs despite using the same MAME driver.

 

[Hammy]

So having looked into this a bit There are 3 different Night Slashers PCB, and 3 or 4 differen Fighters history. One of the board versions is shared but Night Slashers uses a number of additional customs that aren't on the fighters history. Most notably the DE99 custom chip aka the "Ace" chip, which is a graphics custom that performs alpha blending operations. This chip isn't even fully emulated in MAME and it's only found on 3 games:
Boogie Wings (completely different hardware, just happens to also use this chip), Tattoo Assassins, and Night Slashers.

Lets assume for a moment that you have the correct Fighters History PCB and that you happen to miraculously have a DE99 chip and want to make a night slashers you'd also have to:
-find 7 other custom chips salvaged from various other Data East Games
-install 7 additional SMD logic ICs
-Patch the Game code to run on a decrypted CPU

Yup Night slashers uses an encrypted version of the CPU that's on the Fighters History PCB so it would need to be decrypted and or patched. OR you would have to transplant the CPU from an original Night Slashers.

And then once you did all that you could swap the ROMs and PALs

AFAIK there aren't any conversions possible among the other games either. Tattoo Assassins runs into the same issue as Night Slasher where it uses customs that are essentially unobtainable without sacrificing other expensive PCBs. and Avengers and Dragon Gun both have pretty unique PCBs despite using the same MAME driver.

I have a feeling the CPU has a jumper same as the M92 or the encryption is built into the 141 so decrypt not required.
Required on top of the stock FH setup is: 99 chip, 2x 52 chip, 1x 141 chip, 1X 153, 1x 104 (customs) , several extra logic ic's and correct roms / pld's.

AKA not worth it. Now night slasher to Tattoo looks way more interesting, but can't find a pic of the pcb to see how the sound BD is hooked in

PS: Boogie wings is way better than night slashers
PS2: And IMHO none of em' are worth more than 300, if the 99 chip goes, your fucked.

 

[undamned]

Yeah, it's stupid. You'd need at least 3 different boards, a ton of soldering (much of which is very fine pitch), and in the end you are sitting on a conversion that cost you about 2/3 the price of a real Night Slashers (plus all the labor/risk involved).
-ud