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Wargods CF and Boot Rom

I was unaware of this thread until I was notified of being mentioned. I'll need to read the thread and determine if it's worthwhile adding to HBMAME.

Thanks for the heads-up! :)
 
Robbbert said:
I was unaware of this thread until I was notified of being mentioned. I'll need to read the thread and determine if it's worthwhile adding to HBMAME.

Thanks for the heads-up! :)
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The short story is the original wargods chd/code required it to be installed on an ide drive with very specific geometry. So the only way to replace a dead drive was with another of the same size/geometry (hard to find), or by editing a compliant drive with a SETMAX command with ide drive adjustment tools (complicated). Also very few CF or DOM drives support adjustment with that command.

This chd has been modified to remove those geometry checks, so it can be written to any ide drive and played on an original pcb.
 
Does anyone have a copy of the wargods pcb manual? I need to find out the pinout for the kick harness and 3d button, lol
 
So I found a possible annoyance with the wargods pcb. There is an on-board lithium battery and I was wondering what it was for. Turns out, it's related to certain settings in the menu. For some reason, the battery is responsible for the volume settings. When the PCB is plugged in with the dead battery, the settings default the volume at 255/Max which makes this sound horrible. Settings have to be adjusted every time you experience this. I could maybe replace the battery but it looks like a pain to do so. Unless I am wrong about that assumption.
 
kinooshi823 said:
So I found a possible annoyance with the wargods pcb. There is an on-board lithium battery and I was wondering what it was for. Turns out, it's related to certain settings in the menu. For some reason, the battery is responsible for the volume settings. When the PCB is plugged in with the dead battery, the settings default the volume at 255/Max which makes this sound horrible. Settings have to be adjusted every time you experience this. I could maybe replace the battery but it looks like a pain to do so. Unless I am wrong about that assumption.
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it's not a 2032, it's some other size, and obviously a solder tab battery. I've modded these in the past with 2032 holders, but because the original battery is a smaller diameter you have to get a little creative with bending the legs of the 2032 holder. but it's obviously achievable. I might even have pictures from when I did it, I'll have to scrape back pretty far though. as I noted in a previous post, I have a War Gods to sell and I have to do my battery mod. maybe I can video it.
 
Killerinstinct69 said:
Ok id like to make a war gods flash also im new to these flash cards tho. How would i write those files to it? And also what would i all need before i do so on my pc?
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I believe this was my exact syntax with CHDMAN when I converted a KI2 drive to War Gods last year. be mindful the CHDMAN commands vary between versions, so my command will only work with the version 0.157 I used (I think the older one was like 0.138, they changed everything since then)

what really sucks is I had a War Gods proto 4.0 from one of the artists that worked on the game and I can't find it anywhere in my stuff. I hope I didn't overwrite that one. lol

20220521_221826.jpg
 
mecha said:
I believe this was my exact syntax with CHDMAN when I converted a KI2 drive to War Gods last year. be mindful the CHDMAN commands vary between versions, so my command will only work with the version 0.157 I used (I think the older one was like 0.138, they changed everything since then)

what really sucks is I had a War Gods proto 4.0 from one of the artists that worked on the game and I can't find it anywhere in my stuff. I hope I didn't overwrite that one. lol
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Oh man .157 is from 2014. time to upgrade! But even on 157 the commands you shared are not the right ones to use for writing this image to a CF/DOM/SSD. Those commands create a CHD image from a drive - so maybe you were backing up the drive there? (good news?? find that file!)

you used:
chdman createhd: create a hard disk CHD from the input file
folks here want:
chdman extracthd: extract raw hard disk file from a CHD input file

Anyway, here's what you do if you want to write the image to a new drive.
1) download a new version of mame :)
2) determine the drive# using DISKPART

load a dos prompt:
>cmd.exe

launch diskpart:
>diskpart

list the disks from within the diskpart command prompt:
DISKPART> list disk

output:
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 1863 GB 1024 KB *
Disk 1 Online 3726 GB 1024 KB *
Disk 2 Online 931 MB 1024 KB *

In the above my disk2 is the 1gb flash drive. Then for good measure you clean it

DISKPART>select disk 2
DISKPART>clean
DISKPART>exit

3) Write the image to the drive with CHDMAN extracthd, the below continues my example of writing to drive#2
>chdman extracthd -i wargods_11-07-1996_any-ide.chd -o \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2 -f
 
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I used Winimage...look at this simple method..

1.) Install Winimage
2.) Insert CF (should work with DOM, haven't tried with a sata hdd)
3.) Open Winimage
4.) Choose Disk on the options
5.) Choose Restore Virtual Hard Disk image on physical drive
6.) Choose generic storage device on the drive list or whatever device ID comes from your CF
7.) Choose Wargods Image where you have it saved (make sure you select all files on the drop-down to show the file)
8.) You get a warning to restore the image on the target. Click yes.
9.) It's done..plug and play
10.) F*** Chdman, lol
 
That all is fine assuming you have an iso and not a chd ;)

(Otherwise you’d use chdman to create the iso first)
 
kinooshi823 said:
Worked with the bin file neko provided.

Try it out with the chd and see what results you get. Doesn't hurt to try right? ;)
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Iso/bin/raw it’s all non-compressed, and that’s all that shareware tool handles.

Thankfully we do have an iso here but for general chd management you can’t get away from chdman. It’s all mame uses. In other words that shareware program only does half the job required (write a raw binary to the drive) in all other arcade situations. better to learn mame’s (good and free) tools instead of disparaging them

the example above was the reverse process (hd to chd) I felt the actual chd->hd process was worth detailing
 
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ekorz said:
Iso/bin/raw it’s all non-compressed. Thankfully we have an iso here but for general chd management you can’t get away from chdman, and since the example above was the reverse process (hd to chd) I felt the actual chd->hd process needed to be detailed. You won’t have iso/bin for anything out of mame, better learn their (good and free) tools instead of disparaging them and patting yourself on the back for avoiding them.
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Not really patting myself on the back..

I just offered another alternative to this particular situation since there are 2 flavors released for those who wish to use them.

Yeah, maybe I offed chdman and could have worded that last part better or overall but I also never said that my method was the be-all end-all to those using chdman. I only brought up this method for this game since that's what I went with first to test.
 
ekorz said:
Oh man .157 is from 2014. time to upgrade! But even on 157 the commands you shared are not the right ones to use for writing this image to a CF/DOM/SSD. Those commands create a CHD image from a drive - so maybe you were backing up the drive there? (good news?? find that file!)

you used:
chdman createhd: create a hard disk CHD from the input file
folks here want:
chdman extracthd: extract raw hard disk file from a CHD input file

Anyway, here's what you do if you want to write the image to a new drive.
1) download a new version of mame :)
2) determine the drive# using DISKPART

load a dos prompt:
>cmd.exe

launch diskpart:
>diskpart

list the disks from within the diskpart command prompt:
DISKPART> list disk

output:
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 1863 GB 1024 KB *
Disk 1 Online 3726 GB 1024 KB *
Disk 2 Online 931 MB 1024 KB *

In the above my disk2 is the 1gb flash drive. Then for good measure you clean it

DISKPART>select disk 2
DISKPART>clean
DISKPART>exit

3) Write the image to the drive with CHDMAN extracthd, the below continues my example of writing to drive#2
>chdman extracthd -i wargods_11-07-1996_any-ide.chd -o \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2 -f
Click to expand...
LOL probably ;)

I have other pictures showing how to actually do it right somewhere :D
 
Killerinstinct69 said:
Can you post those or make a vid tutorial how to do it…
Click to expand...
from 2019 War Gods Beta 4 -> Release version: https://www.arcaderepair.net/2023/10/08/the-time-i-upgraded-a-war-gods-hard-drive/

before everyone jumps on me for this, full disclosure, I noted that I was using a very old version of CHDMAN for this operation. also the CHD files are dependent on CHDMAN versions, they're in like different compression formats? so I think what happened was I was using a very old version of wargods.chd from my MAME repository and the CHDMAN version I used was compatible with it.
 
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