A Gauntlet Story.... Dual Rom Hack.

ThumB

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I set my friend Jay on a mission....

I terrible mission with the odds of succeeding only 50/50.

It all started when I asked him one day..."Hey, can you take a look at a few arcade boards i have that are not working right?" His answer..."sure?"

I proceeded to tell him that I had 3 Gauntlet I pcb's in various states of function and if he could take a look at them..he agreed, not knowing what unexplored mystery and intrigue might lay ahead.

Jay received the 3 boards on a Tuesday and set out to fix em all.
The first one he wired up was a piece of cake...WORKS
The second had a bad crystal if I remember correctly...
The 3rd had what I could only describe as primordial goo from perhaps the La Brea tar pits slowly eating away at solder itself!

Jay proceeded to remove the crystal from that one and put it into the 2nd board... WORKS!

Here's where the story turns ugly.

I personally have both a G1 cabinet and a G2 cabinet. I asked if he could re-burn the eproms of one of the working PCB's to Gauntlet II roms, since they used the same hardware (needing a few extra eproms and different slapstick)

He agreed...BUT BEHOLD!

Once upon a time, I'd stumbled across a website which spoke of burning BOTH G1 and G2 onto (dare I say it) THE SAME BOARD!

I found the link...and sheepishly confronted Jay with the idea.

He took the bait.

The Dreaded Dual Gauntlet HACK---

In the weeks that followed, Jay and I ordered a bunch of new double sized eproms and 2 new eeproms. {on a side note, the eeproms, coming from Hong Kong got there the same day that all the other parts arrived from California} as well as some other parts listed as needed in the instructions.

Jay and I corresponded back and forth on a daily basis and, in a nutshell, most the instructions as to how to perform this hack were WRONG.

Jay was unfazed, unfaltering, relentless and persistent. He would make this work!

For the next few days he made some progress but not success. Huddled in his cold damp basement, he toiled endlessly. Ignoring the cries of his wife and children, "No Jay! You cant go on! You must eat! You must sleep!"... When he did sleep, he was haunted by the bellows of "Wizard needs Food!" and "Valkyrie...is about to die!"... He pressed on.

Then, one night.. (err...last Thursday) he had an epiphany! And just like that, his long journey had ended. He had defeated Death and victoriously typed my name over and over into the interwebs..via google-talk.

So it is my honor....my pleasure....to bring you without further ado, The DUAL Gauntlet Hack in all its glory.

Thank You Jay. You are the master. The conqueror of the conquered. The.... oh fuck it... watch the video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOg4yZRDkzQ
 
Nice!

One thing to watch out for... Use a 220 or 330 ohm resistor to tie the pins to ground or +5v with. Connecting them directly can cause some ICs to fail.

I ran into that with some AMD 128K EPROMs on the Colecovision Dual BIOS install. The AMD chips would get red hot and after about 10 minutes they would fail. The resistor limits the current sourced by the chips because some of them float pins high internally and tying those directly to ground would cause the excessive current flow.
 
Very cool Dual Rom hack.

I see you have to turn off the game to switch modes.

I wonder is there way to prevent the accidental switching of the game when there is power on.
 
Very cool Dual Rom hack.

I see you have to turn off the game to switch modes.

I wonder is there way to prevent the accidental switching of the game when there is power on.

Use a switch that clicks into place... and put it somewhere where it won't be bumped by accident. ;)
 
the switch is a toggle type and I;ll have it behind the coin door, so i cant see this being a problem. Also, you can switch it without powering off, but you get a reboot at some point durring your 1st game.
 
When dealing with friends you build stuff for. There is always going to be that person who going to flip that switch when the power is on even if it is behind the coin door.
Maybe a few extra IC chips to Flip and reset the board or maybe a Long reset compared to a short one to flip modes.

Not to distract from the great job you guys have done already. Just a little brain storming here.
 
We poped in resistors at the +5v. Still works fine and thanks for the great idea. Nice!

Nice!

One thing to watch out for... Use a 220 or 330 ohm resistor to tie the pins to ground or +5v with. Connecting them directly can cause some ICs to fail.

I ran into that with some AMD 128K EPROMs on the Colecovision Dual BIOS install. The AMD chips would get red hot and after about 10 minutes they would fail. The resistor limits the current sourced by the chips because some of them float pins high internally and tying those directly to ground would cause the excessive current flow.
 
8 years old thread.... let's bring it back to life because I'd like to try this hack. But the video is so old it was like sneaking and watching my parents old porn tapes on beta.
 
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