Air Duel (World, M72 Hardware) - MCU decapped

 Finally after so many years, we got another needed MCU for MAME. This is another example of great team-effort, where people around the world worked together to get this finally done.

Brian A Troha found an ebay-auction where the complete chip-set for Air Duel (World) got sold. At the same time i got contacted by Silvio from Swiss, that he has an MCU for Air Duel, but as it's missing it's labels, nobody know's if it's for the World or Japan version of the game, and that he can ship it to me for decapping.

So we had a little dilemma. When Silvio's MCU is for the World-Version we don't need to spend a lot of money for the ebay auction. If it's not, we need money to get the chip-set from ebay...

Another example why the mail-list of the Dumping Union is really important! DU-member's teamed up to assure money for the ebay-auction.

The strategy was to wait until Silvio's MCU arrived here and could get decapped. => If it's from the Japan-Version, we have to buy the World-chips from ebay.

Silvio's MCU arrived at my home on tuesday the 14-06-2022 and shortly after i got home from work i directly decapped it. Sadly it was the MCU for the Japan-Version and matched the existing decap, which i already did some years ago.

So with the amazing financial help from the other DU-members we could buy the chips and the package arrived today at my frontdoor.

 The decapping-process worked flawlessly and just after a couple of minutes, the chip was desecured and i had the 4KB of data dumped.

Finally another MCU preserved!

Many thanks to all people who were involved in this task and helped to get another game on the M72-hardware finally fully preserved.

The rom will most likely be supported in the next MAME version (0.246) which will most likely get released at end of July 2022.

Credits: Brian A. Troha, BillD, rtw, f205v, darksoft, Gor, Smitdogg, Sean Sutton, Team Europe

And a Special Thanks to Silvio, for shipping the other MCU to me. Sadly not what we needed but as always very good practice for decapping chips.

If you want to read about another great team-effort, to get the two games on the Konami Polygonet arcade platform finally emulated in MAME, head over to Mog's Blog for an amazing summary of the complete emulation-history of this platform. How the journey started nearly 20 years ago, when the roms of Polygonet Commanders were added to MAME, what happened the next 19 years and how everything come together in the last couple of three weeks! => Amazing work guys and congrats to all who helped to get this done!

BPROM Read-Adapter v0.2 (21in1)

 In August 2021 i released the first version of the BPROM-Read-Adapter...which supported reading 14 different bproms with your programmer. You can read about it here.

As some boards from Funworld use the extremely rare CY7C291 bproms in PLCC28 package, i reworked the complete adapter-design and added support for it too. Previously i always had to handsolder the CY7C291 to something useful for reading it with a programmer.

 

In the end i added the following devices to the new design: CY7C261, CY7C263, CY7C264, CY7C291, 2564, 2532 and 2516.

The CY7C*-devices are even supported as PLCC28- and DIP24-package!

So the new adapter support's READING the following 21 devices (Of course it also supports the equivalent BPROM's from other company's like the 24S10 or 74S287 for the 82S129):

• 82S123 (32 byte)
  
• 82S129 (256 byte)
  
• 82S131 (512 byte)
  
• 82S135 (256 byte)
  
• 82S137 (1 kbyte)
  
• 82S141 (512 byte)
  
• 82S147 (512 byte)
  
• 82S181 (1 kbyte)
  
• 82S185 (2 kbyte)
  
• 82S191 (2 kbyte)
  
• 82S195 (4 kbyte)
  
• 82S321 (4 kbyte)
  
• 82S641 (8 kbyte)
  
• 2708 (1 kbyte)
• CY7C261 (8 kbyte)
  
• CY7C263 (8 kbyte)
  
• CY7C264 (8 kbyte)
  
• CY7C291 (only 2 kbyte! - so split the 8kb dump into four 2kbyte pieces!)
• 2564 (8 kbyte)
  
• 2532 (only 4 kbyte! - so split the 8kb dump into two halves!)
  
• 2516 (only 2 kbyte! - so split the 8kb dump into four 2kbyte pieces!)
  

 

All BPROM's can get read as 2716, 2732 or 2764 (see the markings on the adapters) which should be supported by any programmer.

For reading 2708 eproms, you will need an external power-supply, which get's the needed +12V and -5V...just connect it to the adapter, read it as 2716 and split the dump afterwards into two halves.

Reading the BPROM's as 2716 will give you a 2kb file. Split the file to the correct sizes of the BPROM (The size of the BPROM is written above at the list of supported BPROM's) and you will get your correct dump of the bprom! (example 82s123: Split the 2kb file in pieces of 32byte each. All pieces should have the same CRC. Enjoy your BPROM-dump!)

If your programmer supports a "PIN-Check" before dumping you can have "1 Missing Pin" on some of the BPROM's. That's OK, don't worry ;-) !

 

 

 

 

Needed parts:

• 8 pcs 40 Pin 1x40 Male 2.54 Breakable Pin Header
  
  
  
• 3 pcs 1P2T Toggle Switch
  
  
  
  
• 2 pcs DIP16 IC Socket
• 1 pcs DIP18 IC Socket
  
• 3 pcs DIP20 IC Socket
• 2 pcs DIP24 IC Socket
  
• 2 pcs DIP24 IC Socket (wide) 
• 2 pcs DIP28 IC Socket (wide)
  
• 1 pcs PLCC28 to DIP28 Adapter.
  
  

  

•  2pcs 12pin single row female Pin Header.
  
  
  
  
• PCB Files: You can order the boards here.