Asteroids ROMS

bruktmoped

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I got my second "working" Asteroids PCB off ebay several weeks ago. The first one had no roms. This one has roms, but the wrong ones.
I decided to buy an programmer, and got the willem. But what to do now? It eas not as easy as i thought.

I have one eraser with a timer on it, and the willem, and the roms. But no guide.
Does anyone have a link to a guide? Where does one find the files, and how do I get them into the chips? Ive yet to find a guide for beginners. (step by step guide)
 
you need to contact mrbill08 right hear on KLOV. He worked on two of my Asteroids bds and dose great work and he might have what you are looking for.
 
Ive already looked at several sites like that, but noone cover Asteroids and the exact procedure. I dont want to know about bits and bytes, already know about that. I dont want to know about the different rom types and their arcitectures, nor do I want to become a professor in this field. This is what I want:

1 Where to find the rom files, and which ones to use and where to put them on the board.
2 A guide which tell me exactly how to do it step by step.

The ones I found seems to leave out important information. Like in one guide I found, said that I must change the last bit to make them work, but it does not say how to change it and with what? Besides, it was totally different roms so how do I know it will apply for this? I was hoping someone knew about a guide that covers it all, without forcing me to know all about the particulars. Im not looking for an education, only how to make it work if you know what I mean. :)

I feel those general guides wont work for me. I also read that one should not delete these roms too many times, because they will degrade. Since these are pretty old to begin with, I would rather not do the try and fault technique.

I have several PCB's that wont work. To start diagnosing them, I obviously MUST know that the ROMs are working correctly. If I had a working PCB everything would be different. I do not live in the US, and im not willing to pay several hundreds in 2x shipping and repairs to get them fixed in a shop I know nothing about.

I thank you for taking your time to answer this, but been there, done that. (google)
 
I know this isn't what you want, but maybe it will help get you closer

1) Google mame asteroids roms
2) Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBX0dHSUFbs

Ive already looked at several sites like that, but noone cover Asteroids and the exact procedure. I dont want to know about bits and bytes, already know about that. I dont want to know about the different rom types and their arcitectures, nor do I want to become a professor in this field. This is what I want:

1 Where to find the rom files, and which ones to use and where to put them on the board.
2 A guide which tell me exactly how to do it step by step.

The ones I found seems to leave out important information. Like in one guide I found, said that I must change the last bit to make them work, but it does not say how to change it and with what? Besides, it was totally different roms so how do I know it will apply for this? I was hoping someone knew about a guide that covers it all, without forcing me to know all about the particulars. Im not looking for an education, only how to make it work if you know what I mean. :)

I feel those general guides wont work for me. I also read that one should not delete these roms too many times, because they will degrade. Since these are pretty old to begin with, I would rather not do the try and fault technique.

I have several PCB's that wont work. To start diagnosing them, I obviously MUST know that the ROMs are working correctly. If I had a working PCB everything would be different. I do not live in the US, and im not willing to pay several hundreds in 2x shipping and repairs to get them fixed in a shop I know nothing about.

I thank you for taking your time to answer this, but been there, done that. (google)
 
Ive already looked at several sites like that, but noone cover Asteroids and the exact procedure. I dont want to know about bits and bytes, already know about that. I dont want to know about the different rom types and their arcitectures, nor do I want to become a professor in this field. This is what I want:
So, basically, you want to do technical work, but you don't have any desire to learn anything about what you are fixing or the parts you are using.

Good luck with that.

1 Where to find the rom files, and which ones to use and where to put them on the board.
2 A guide which tell me exactly how to do it step by step.

Sounds like you'd be better off sending your boards out somewhere to get repaired. But... I can give you the basic procedure : Download the MAME romset. Unzip the file. There are your ROM images. The filenames will correspond to the locations on the board. Burn them to ROMs. Plug them into the board.


I feel those general guides wont work for me. I also read that one should not delete these roms too many times, because they will degrade. Since these are pretty old to begin with, I would rather not do the try and fault technique.

The guides won't work for you since you don't want to learn?

You can erase EPROMs dozens and dozens of times with no ill effects. You will, however, damage them by leaving them in the eraser for too long at one stretch. Of course, you'd know that already if you'd used Google and done a little reading.

I have several PCB's that wont work. To start diagnosing them, I obviously MUST know that the ROMs are working correctly.
You don't need to reburn the ROMs to verify they are working correctly. Read in the ROM chip, and use ROMIDENT to check it. Or, you can compare the checksum to the data im MAME manually.

I thank you for taking your time to answer this, but been there, done that. (google)
We are very willing to help, but you also have to be willing to learn. But nothing is more frustrating than someone that wants to be spoon-fed information, step by step, and who expresses absolutely no desire to think independently or learn the basics.

You're not going to find a ready-made, step by step guide to what you are trying to do. Why? Because such a guide would be useless to create. It would only apply to one situation, one boardset. Besides, following instructions blindly is just going to get you in to trouble - miss a step, or have something slightly different? It's not going to come out right.

For example. I work in IT. One of my users was constantly having issues with a data entry screen in an application. Constant problems, incorrectly entered data, mistakes, etc - causing lots of real problems. I talk to him, only to find out that he never learned how to use the application he's been using for the last couple years. He had a post-it note with commands written on it. "C. Part number. Enter. S. Tab." - he was following a simple script to do one operation. He had no idea what ANY of the commands meant. Of course, any time he got off a field, he royally screwed it up, since he was now typing the part number into the receipt number field or something. I spent half an hour and showed him how to actually use the program, what the commands did, and he hasn't had any more problems.

You need to learn. Learning takes a little time. We are more than happy to help you do so, and to answer questions - but you have to do your part too.

So forgive me for seeming frustrated or ticked off. It's not just you.

-Ian
 
You can erase EPROMs dozens and dozens of times with no ill effects. You will, however, damage them by leaving them in the eraser for too long at one stretch. Of course, you'd know that already if you'd used Google and done a little reading.

TIL you can damage eproms by erasing too long.
 
It seems you have misunderstood what I wrote/meant. Im sorry if my question was unclear.

What I meant was, I dont want to know about the different rom types, since I already know/found general guides about burning a rom.

They basically told me: What a rom is. Thats fine. How to insert it into a random programmer. Fine. Sizes and how data is stored. Fine. All that is great info, interesting too. But unfortunately they did not cover which files I need, and if I need to do any changes to the files, like splitting and if there is any timing/speed issues with Asteroids.

The reason for my question was that many guides told about things they did not explain further. Thats why I thought maybe there was a guy documenting what he did, explaining what he did and why. Ive found a lot of those guides earlier about different issues, and have learned a lot from them. (I restored my XY asteroids monitor that way.)

According to guides found on the internet, roms will degrade for each times deleted. I have old used roms, that might or might not have been deleted before. But if thats no issue, I will just start to program and delete if it wont work.

Thanks for the MAME tip, that was basically what I was looking for when it comes to the software part. :)
 
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