beatmania / hiphopmania / beatstage region-locked/PCB repair? Help please!

AceJay

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beatmania / hiphopmania / beatstage region-locked/PCB repair? Help please!

Hi all - not too long ago I purchased a set of all the beatmania (Japanese) mixes and a JP beatmania cab, plus a beatstage (Korean) cab.
For reference:
gQ7ovl.jpg


So, I've been having some trouble with the boards, which are DJMain (Konami GX + Audio Extend: http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=826 )

First question:
Since I've been doing a LOT of swapping of the ICs for testing and I don't have any IC extractor that works with these, is Rom dumping possible for backup purposes? and would I be able to overwrite another "spare" IC chip in case one snaps?

Second:
The reason I've needed to swap them so many times is because I have 5 DJMain boards:
1x GQ753 (A3)
3x GQ753 (A4)
1x GQ753 (A5)

Some of the boards will work sometimes, for example I have a CompleteMix2 kit that works on one of the boards in the JP cab, but my TheFinal kit will not, on the same board. TheFinal works on another board in that machine, and another in the beatstage.

So, is there some kind of region lock for this hardware? And what exactly can I do to bypass this, if anything? Ideally I just want all my mixes to work on both machines, in any PCB. Are there any "universal" mods or boards that I could fix this with?

I should mention as well that some of the boards affect cabinet lights: sometimes they're all on, other board all off, other boards halfway, etc. Most of the boards I've tried in the beatstage cab have come up with a flashing pulse and loud popping noise when powered on.

Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Paul
 
not a popular item out in these parts.

try asking about those Toshiba monitors they came with here! hah!

if it's anything like DDR, whichever mix software you try installing has to mate with the security cart, and that's a one time only, hardware-specific thing that writes to the PCMCIA card. something about you can upgrade but can't downgrade? I don't know exactly.

you might be better off seeing if there's bootleg chips available, cause those will (in some cases) permit different versions/regions.

for instance, our DDR was a DDR USA, but my bootleg DDR Extreme works with it in Japanese.

I don't know SHIT about Beatmania though. there was a guy on here not too long ago that was selling various Bemani bootleg kits that got around using the security cart.

I was half-tempted to buy a Dance Maniax 2nd Mix JParadise kit, but I figure the one I have now is completely legit (well, sort of, that's Japanese too!) so I'll leave it alone.
 
Heh, if only it was as easy as DDR 573's. DJMain is pretty stupid. Basically it's Main board with 10 ICs and a HDD. However There were at least 5 different PCB versions made and there's really no info on what mix works with what board, and what machine. I would love to go through each board and IC set, but the ICs don't come out easy and I've already bent so many - I don't want to risk snapping a pin off. I was looking into ZIF slots but I'd have to build my own, because the ICs are so close together and there's no room to put any ZIF risers on it.

573's are easy, except if you have an early mix with the PCMCIA card. If there was a way to bootleg I would be all for it. I could turn it into a MAME cab but beatmania runs offsync in MAME and is therefore unplayable.
 
So far looks like the boards labeled A5 will not work at all, with any legit Japanese mix, on a korean beatstage cab. I literally ran through all of my the ICs on both of my boards. Really a shame.
 
Ughhhh so I bought a brand new Hip HopMania CM2 kit and tried to install it in all my boards - It will POST on the A5s, but ROM 7 keeps showing as bad. I really hope it's not actually bad and that the board itself is just messed up. On the other boards it pretty much didn't work.
 
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