Game PCBs that can be converted to other games

Tornadoboy

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Someone mentioned this topic in another thread so I thought it would make a great discussion.

It would be nice if there was a comprehensive list of what arcade PCBs can be converted to other games with simple ROM swaps and minor mods, without having to strip original boards of parts like custom chips, etc. For example, having to destroy a Ghost and Ghouls board in order to convert another board to Ghost and Ghouls.

Off the top of my head, here's the ones I know of:

Street Fighter: Hyper Fighter to Ghouls and Ghosts - EPROMs, minor mods and some GAL chips programmed

Mappy to Dig Dug II - EPROMs, minor mods and a couple chips from a Super Pacman board

Road Blasters to Marble Madness - EPROMs and it requires RB daughter cards with the right protection chip and main boards with LETA chips

Williams boards (except Defender and Sinistar) to Alien Arena - EPROM swap and disabling of the watchdog

Tri-pool to Uncle Poo or Loverboy - Supposed to be a straight EPROM swap

Star Fire to Star Fire II - Straight EPROM swap

Scramble to Scorpion, Mighty Monkey, Lost Tomb, Strategy X - various mods

Galaxian to Dig Dug, Pacman, Ms Pacman, Space Invaders - various mods
 
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Gauntlet to Gauntlet II (with the slapstick mod & code)
Area 51 to Area 51 / Maximum Force Duo (with code mod).
 
quite a few. Usually security chips are involved:

midway/atari vegas pcb: blitz2000, showtime, sportstation, gauntlet legends, dark legacy, road burners, war final assualt
midway/atari seattle pcb: blitz, carnevil, biofreakes, hyperdrive, vapor trx, californai speed, mace

atari system 2: 720, paperboy, apb, champ sprint, super sprint, accelerator

mcr mono: sarge, demolition derby, rampage, max rpm, power drive

mcr2: domino man, tron, two tigers, wacko, satans hollow, kozmik krooz'r, journy

mcr3: tapper, timber, sarge cocktail, discs of tron, demolition derby cocktail

sega has a ton of family boards.
 
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midway/atari vegas pcb: blitz2000, showtime, sportstation, gauntlet legends, dark legacy, road burners, war final assualt
midway/atari seattle pcb: blitz, carnevil, biofreakes, hyperdrive, vapor trx, californai speed, mace

atari system 2: 720, paperboy, apb, champ sprint, super sprint, accelerator

Don't the Atari System 2 boards have game specific protection chips?

It seems to me I've seen hacked ROM sets that allow Zookeeper and Space Dungeon to run on Qix boardsets without their coin boards.
 
Don't the Atari System 2 boards have game specific protection chips?

It seems to me I've seen hacked ROM sets that allow Zookeeper and Space Dungeon to run on Qix boardsets without their coin boards.

most games have security to keep you from converting them. Atari used slapstics on many games. If you bought the esb upgrade to atari, you needed the slapstick (plus a daughter board). Some games share slapstics:
esb and tetris
paperboy and indiana jones
gauntlet 2 player, peter packrat and 720
road runner and super sprint
road blasters and champ sprint
road blasters and apb
hydra and tournament cyberball
rampart and vindicators 2

System 1 boards are also somewhat compatible too. I don't know which, but I think you can convert some boards in to marble madness.

I think most of the security chips to some/most games have been cracked. That why you see cheap area 51/max force, rush 2049 SE, and sportstaion kits easy to find.

One of the few atari games that was just a rom swap was gravitar to black widow.
 
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From what I have been told my Nintendo 8 ball action pcb is a DK 2 stack that has just been rom swapped.

Edit:

And I just checked the 8 ball action flyers on the site, and it says right on the flyer it was a no soldering, no wiring conversion for a DK pcb, DKjr pcb, or a Pacman pcb.
 
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Pacmania,Galaga 88,Dragon Spirit,Splatterhouse,etc..

Are they straight EPROM swaps? If so I may start looking for one, I've always wanted a Pacmania in my collection!

System 1 boards are also somewhat compatible too. I don't know which, but I think you can convert some boards in to marble madness.

I think it was Road Blaster daughterboards which had the protection chip with either like "101" or "110" in them that were compatible with Marble Madness, the big pain in the ass from there was knowing what MM EPROM went where, I've not sure if that's described anywhere? Also having that LETA chip on the main board was crucial as it provided the trackball support, and not all of them came with it.

I'll mention a few I've experimented with personally to see if anyone has perhaps had better luck:

Time Pilot to Power Surge - I tried an EPROM swap based on the MAME driver, could only get a black screen. Pity, I like Power Surge. :(

Scramble to Speed Coin - Once saw an original board on Ebay that looked identicle to a Scramble PCB, a ROM swap only got me a screen full of garbled graphics

Venture to Teeter Torture - Seemed to work, coin up and start except collision detection was confused and made it unplayable, I suspect the undumped PAL chips are responsible. That seems to be a protection feature of Exidy boards, having unique PALs determine collision detection thus making converting boards difficult, I know of at least one person whom tried to convert a Pepper II PCB to Hard Hat and ran into simular problems. Trying to figure this out is still on my to-do list.
 
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Time Pilot to Power Surge - I tried an EPROM swap based on the MAME driver, could only get a black screen. Pity, I like Power Surge. :(

Never heard of Power Surge. Looks neat... playfield is a circuit.

Anyhow, I looked at the MAME driver, and it looks like the protection in Power Surge is pretty straightforward. I took a stab a disabling it... try programming this "p1" and see if that works: http://www.finck.net/arcade/p1.zip
 
Never heard of Power Surge. Looks neat... playfield is a circuit.

Anyhow, I looked at the MAME driver, and it looks like the protection in Power Surge is pretty straightforward. I took a stab a disabling it... try programming this "p1" and see if that works: http://www.finck.net/arcade/p1.zip

Oh dude, if that works you've made me a happy man! :D

I think my Time Pilot board has a bad EPROM chip so I may have to replace that before giving it a fair shot, it keeps bombing out every time I try to reprogram it back for Time Pilot.
BTW, I tried reprogramming the chips assuming P1 - 7 replaced tm (or CD listed on the actual chips) 1-7 EPROMS for Time Pilot, but there's still that TM5 ROM file amongst the MAME ROMs unaccounted for, any idea where that's supposed to go? The other ROMs seem to be just the TP protection chips and given the name "Timeplt" is still listed for them under the Power Surge ROMs I'm assuming they're unchanged.
 
Oh dude, if that works you've made me a happy man! :D

I think my Time Pilot board has a bad EPROM chip so I may have to replace that before giving it a fair shot, it keeps bombing out every time I try to reprogram it back for Time Pilot.
BTW, I tried reprogramming the chips assuming P1 - 7 replaced tm (or CD listed on the actual chips) 1-7 EPROMS for Time Pilot, but there's still that TM5 ROM file amongst the MAME ROMs unaccounted for, any idea where that's supposed to go? The other ROMs seem to be just the TP protection chips and given the name "Timeplt" is still listed for them under the Power Surge ROMs I'm assuming they're unchanged.

The MAME driver implys that the "tm5" EPROM is unchanged between Power Surge & Time Pilot (same checksum). Some of the numbers don't line up, either. So the mapping is:
Main CPU code
tm1 -> p1
tm2 -> p2
tm3 -> p3
Sound CPU code has an extra EPROM:
tm7 -> p6
___ -> p7 (is there an empty socket next to the tm7?)
gfx 1 (likely tiles)
tm6 -> p4
gfx 2 (likely sprites)
tm4 -> p5
tm5 -> tm5 (unchanged)

The rest of the stuff isn't protection, but PROMs, for color and other shit.
 
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From what I was told, namco system 1 is not a straight chip swap. Someone owed me a board a long time ago. I think I wanted pacmania. They had someone convert the board for me. I think they either copied security or they hacked out security to do it. I was told it was done by a fellow klov member.

Are they straight EPROM swaps? If so I may start looking for one, I've always wanted a Pacmania in my collection!



I think it was Road Blaster daughterboards which had the protection chip with either like "101" or "110" in them that were compatible with Marble Madness, the big pain in the ass from there was knowing what MM EPROM went where, I've not sure if that's described anywhere? Also having that LETA chip on the main board was crucial as it provided the trackball support, and not all of them came with it.

I'll mention a few I've experimented with personally to see if anyone has perhaps had better luck:

Time Pilot to Power Surge - I tried an EPROM swap based on the MAME driver, could only get a black screen. Pity, I like Power Surge. :(

Scramble to Speed Coin - Once saw an original board on Ebay that looked identicle to a Scramble PCB, a ROM swap only got me a screen full of garbled graphics

Venture to Teeter Torture - Seemed to work, coin up and start except collision detection was confused and made it unplayable, I suspect the undumped PAL chips are responsible. That seems to be a protection feature of Exidy boards, having unique PALs determine collision detection thus making converting boards difficult, I know of at least one person whom tried to convert a Pepper II PCB to Hard Hat and ran into simular problems. Trying to figure this out is still on my to-do list.
 
Thanks again for your help with this!

The MAME driver implys that the "tm5" EPROM is unchanged between Power Surge & Time Pilot (same checksum). Some of the numbers don't line up, either. So the mapping is:
Main CPU code
tm1 -> p1
tm2 -> p2
Sound CPU code has an extra EPROM:
tm7 -> p6
___ -> p7 (is there an empty socket next to the tm7?)
gfx 1 (likely tiles)
tm6 -> p4
gfx 2 (likely sprites)
tm4 -> p5
tm5 -> tm5 (unchanged)

The rest of the stuff isn't protection, but PROMs, for color and other shit.

There is an empty PCB spot for another EPROM right next to what had been CD7, so it's no big deal for me to install a socket. I'll let you know what happens with this, again I might be hampered by the fact I apparently have a bum EPROM chip, but I suspect it'll work good enough to tell me if I'm heading in the right direction or not. It'll be pretty cool having an actual Power Surge PCB amongst the collection, it meets the two criteria of what I consider personal grails, one it's fun, and two it's RARE. If all goes well I might give it it's own custom cabaret and artwork.
 
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Ok just tried Power Surge on the Time Pilot again and I'm still getting a black screen with nothing else. Although that being said I have a badly corrupted tm5 EPROM and nothing for the p7 ROM which I don't have either a socket installed or EPROM for yet, so maybe I have to get those two issues resolved before it shows any signs of life? Should I be showing anything yet?

pookdolie scared.

Loverboy is good for laughs but not much else, but Uncle Poo is actually a pretty fun game, it's kind of like Entombed for the Atari 2600
 
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Ok just tried Power Surge on the Time Pilot again and I'm still getting a black screen with nothing else. Although that being said I have a badly corrupted tm5 EPROM and nothing for the p7 ROM which I don't have either a socket installed or EPROM for yet, so maybe I have to get those two issues resolved before it shows any signs of life? Should I be showing anything yet?

I tried it in MAME with all NOP in p6 & p7 (sound CPU code), and it still boots... so it doesn't look like the main CPU waits for or needs the sound side to respond in order to work. tm5 is just a graphics EPROM, so it shouldn't prevent it from booting either. Double check your p1, p2, p3 EPROMs.

OTOH, if it won't run TP, then there is likely a fault on the board somewhere... so maybe getting TP running properly is step 1.
 
What about Namco Classics Vol.1 to Vol.2 and vice-versa?

I head the boards are slightly different. quick look classics 2 has a chip at cg1.


NamcoClassics1.pcb.jpg


NamcoClassics2.pcb.jpg
 
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