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mathewbeall

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Hi Folks,

I FINALLY have a working N2 system - with a WMMT3 drive that I can test out in my WMMT3 cabinet. Right now - just booting it up on my bench.

Its an old WD 80GB drive. I want to make a copy of it - so I dropped it into my windows system and used win32diskimager to create an image of it -> all good.

I write that image to an SSD - and I use a SATA-IDE adapter, and it doesn't boot.

Is there a process or a way to take an image of the disk so that when it eventually crashes, I can keep the cabinet going?

Thanks!

Matt
 
I spoke too soon, the drive doesn't boot reliably. When it doesn't boot, it has a black screen, or a kernel panic screen (but no reboot in 5 seconds).

When it DOES work - I still get a kernel panic screen, but it says it will reboot in 5 seconds, and then when it reboots - it jumps into the NAMCO screen.

I am guessing that first kernel panic screen isn't supposed to be there.

Seems like not a ton of info out there about this hardware - but not sure if its maybe the hardware (motherboard, cpu, GPU) since this is now the second drive I have tried that won't consistently boot at all.

Matt
 
I’m not familiar with the N2 but I’m familiar with other Namco PC based hardware but aren’t the drives copy protected?
 
Hmm - it didn't break it - it still boots some of the time (maybe 10%) - and when it manages to boot - it runs completely fine, which is why I don't *think* its hardware.
 
The game image is locked to the drive. If the drive is dying, you need a new drive and dongle unfortunately.

https://medium.com/@dropkickshell/system-n2-exposed-5395436c824d

it still boots some of the time (maybe 10%) - and when it manages to boot - it runs completely fine, which is why I don't *think* its hardware.

Honestly, I think it's the either the PSU or the motherboard.

You really need a second complete game to troubleshoot this hardware. I have seen faulty PSUs, faulty motherboards, faulty GPUs and faulty harddrives with N2.
 
The game image is locked to the drive. If the drive is dying, you need a new drive and dongle unfortunately.

https://medium.com/@dropkickshell/system-n2-exposed-5395436c824d



Honestly, I think it's the either the PSU or the motherboard.

You really need a second complete game to troubleshoot this hardware. I have seen faulty PSUs, faulty motherboards, faulty GPUs and faulty harddrives with N2.
ah! thank you for that link, that's the one I was looking for (...and ended up pretty close).

I do have 2 other "semi complete" N2 systems that I would love to be able to bring back to life.

Wouldn't the decrypted "dancing bird emulator" image allow us to run a setup ?

like with this file? (which is Decrypted\prod.img.dec\usr\share\arcade\setup, which the above link calls "· prod.img – Encrypted AES Loop Partition, the final rootfs that is used by the game." )

Code:
# $Id: setup 309 2005-08-03 09:27:45Z yaegashi $

usage_setup() {
    echo "Usage: $program setup"
}


cmd_setup() {

    # Process command line options
    while test "$#" != "0"; do
    case "$1" in
        -h|--help)
        usage_setup
        exit 0
        ;;
        --)
        break
        ;;
        -*)
        usage_setup >&2
        exit 1
        ;;
        *)
        break
        ;;
    esac
    shift
    done

    #
    set -e
    title="Arcade Linux Setup"

    # Show banner and dialogs
    probe_networks
    msgbox "\
               *** Arcade Linux Setup ***

      (C) 2004 NAMCO LIMITED, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

                   Version: $ARCADE_VERSION
          Ethernet Address: $ETHERNET" 12 60

    keymaps=`cat /usr/share/arcade/keymaps`
    eval menu '"$ARCADE_KEYMAP" "Select preferred key map:"' 20 70 12 $keymaps
    ARCADE_KEYMAP="$answer"

    zones=`find /usr/share/zoneinfo/posix -type f -not -name Factory -printf "%P\n" | sort | while read tz; do echo $tz; TZ=$tz date +"\" %z %Z\""; done`
    eval menu '"$ARCADE_TZ" "Select your time zone:"' 20 70 12 $zones
    ARCADE_TZ="$answer"

    done=no
    while test "$done" = "no"; do
    passwordbox "Enter password for user arcade:" 8 60
    pass1="$answer"
    passwordbox "Retype password:" 8 60
    pass2="$answer"
    if test "$pass1" = "$pass2"; then
        ARCADE_PASSWORD="$pass1"
        done=yes
    else
        msgbox "             Sorry, passwords do not match." 7 60
    fi
    done
  
    inputbox "Enter this machine's hostname:" 8 60 "$ARCADE_HOSTNAME"
    ARCADE_HOSTNAME="$answer"

    inputbox "Enter workgroup for Windows network:" 8 60 "$ARCADE_WORKGROUP"
    ARCADE_WORKGROUP="$answer"

    yesno $ARCADE_DHCP "Do you want to use DHCP?" 7 60
    ARCADE_DHCP="$answer"

    case "$ARCADE_DHCP" in
    no|No)
        inputbox "Enter IP address:" 8 60 "$ARCADE_INET"
        ARCADE_INET="$answer"
        inputbox "Enter netmask:" 8 60 "$ARCADE_NETMASK"
        ARCADE_NETMASK="$answer"
        inputbox "Enter broadcast address:" 8 60 "$ARCADE_BROADCAST"
        ARCADE_BROADCAST="$answer"
        inputbox "Enter default gateway:" 8 60 "$ARCADE_GATEWAY"
        ARCADE_GATEWAY="$answer"
        inputbox "Enter nameserver's address:" 8 60 "$ARCADE_NAMESERVER"
        ARCADE_NAMESERVER="$answer"
        ;;
    *)
        ;;
    esac
  
    # Save settings
    cat > "$ARCADE_CONFIG" <<HERE
ARCADE_KEYMAP="$ARCADE_KEYMAP"
ARCADE_TZ="$ARCADE_TZ"
ARCADE_HOSTNAME="$ARCADE_HOSTNAME"
ARCADE_DHCP="$ARCADE_DHCP"
ARCADE_INET="$ARCADE_INET"
ARCADE_NETMASK="$ARCADE_NETMASK"
ARCADE_BROADCAST="$ARCADE_BROADCAST"
ARCADE_GATEWAY="$ARCADE_GATEWAY"
ARCADE_NAMESERVER="$ARCADE_NAMESERVER"
ARCADE_WORKGROUP="$ARCADE_WORKGROUP"
HERE

    cat > /tmp/smb.conf <<EOF
[global]
        passdb backend = smbpasswd:$ARCADE_SMBPASSWD
EOF
    smbpasswd -c /tmp/smb.conf -s -a arcade <<EOF
$ARCADE_PASSWORD
$ARCADE_PASSWORD
EOF
    rm -f /tmp/smb.conf

    if test -n "$ARCADE_PASSWORD"; then
    crypt=`echo $ARCADE_PASSWORD | perl -ne '$salt = pack("CC", rand 64, rand 64); $salt =~ tr[\000-\077][0-9a-zA-Z./]; chomp; print crypt($_, $salt);'`
    else
    crypt=""
    fi
    echo "arcade:$crypt:1000:1000:&:/arcade:/bin/bash" > $ARCADE_ETCPASSWD

}
 
Last edited:
Well - I think I am about to give up on this one. I managed to source another N2 system - and though the hard drive crashed on that one, I have another hard drive (with dongles).

Everything boots up, every time - but during gameplay will either crash and reboot occasionally or the system will just shut down.

I even ran it with a power supply outside of the case, as it seemed like it could be a power issue, or an overheating issue - but to no avail.

I know a ton of these systems aren't around, and I have seen some references to the system just not lasting that long, which sucks - because 3dx+ looks really fun with the ghost battle feature.

Matt
 
Well - I couldn't let this go - and kept messing around with it to try and figure out why it was crashing.

What is strange that while on my bench - it wouldn't crash, but in my cabinet, it would. I swapped out all the parts (FFB board, IO board, card reader) and finally decided to pull the CPU heatsink off and reapply the thermal paste - maybe it was dried up.

Well - it turns out, they had the heat sink on backwards. With Socket 462, there is a lip, and you can see where the original thermal paste was, that it was on backwards, so wasn't making full contact with the CPU.

I put the heatsink on correctly, and reassembled everything - and so far, this morning - everything is running great! Hopefully it will continue, but I wasn't able to get an hour out of it before it crashed. Now it's been up for 2 hours, and it hasn't crashed while racing!

Matt
 
I managed to get my second motherboard working - ended up being some bad caps on it.

What is interesting - is that when I purchased this setup from China - it came with a SSD module (sata) connected to aSATA->IDE connector. It's an 8GB module.

It ALSO just has ONE usb dongle - and it boots fine. The only issue (for me) is that it's the Chinese version (I assumed you could change the language when I first got it).

BUT - this proves that someone out there knows how to build a SSD image that works, not the original drive.

Anything I can do to dump what I have so folks can take a look at it?

Like others - I would love to be able to have a backup of the drive, and to be able to run it on an SSD to reduce heat and to make the system run longer!

Matt
 
Last edited:
Have you tried booting the SSD drive with the other dongle you have?

If it works, the next thing you could try is cloning it to a different SSD and seeing what happens.
 
It does not work with the other dongle - just the one that came with it - but it works with just the long one, it doesn't need the short one.

Matt
 
I have a Chinese region hard drive here that works with any WMMT3DX+ dongle. It also only needs the long one.
 
We have to find out who the chinese folks are that are working on this - clearly they can build a new SSD drive with the right data and somehow either make an image, or just build a usb hasp key that works.
 
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