Have some boards to ID

The boards in #2 look like computer boards - they have a similar form factor to some machines I have here, although, they look a bit different - different number of pins on the connector. They might be some kind of industrial board. I don't know of any game that uses boards like that. There are lots of games that use card cages, but I've never seen one take a board like that. If it is video, it might be some kind of poker or trivia. Hard to say. But I really don't think those are game boards.

That said, I'd be interested in them, as I'd be interested in trying to figure out what kind of equipment they're meant to go to. (I collect old computers).

-Ian
 
Yeah I have a stack of the one on the left in that picture and only one of the one on the right. They have a lot of nice gold plated chips on them. If I pulled an eprom off one of them can I identify the chip with my eprom programmer? I haven't ever tried to do it before. These are just the odds and ends I got in a lot of arcade stuff.

All I identified boards labeled.

manufacture name on #2 boards is Identicon
 
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If I pulled an eprom off one of them can I identify the chip with my eprom programmer?

That's one way - for arcade games, you can use ROMIDENT to figure out what the ROM belongs to. It's really useful for arcade games, since all the ROM data has been archived thanks to MAME. Just read the ROM, run it through ROMIDENT, and *poof* - it tells you what it goes to. Try it, it's fun - pull a random ROM off any normal arcade board and read it in. It'll tell you what game, and what socket location (usually).

For computers, not so much, especially for weird obscure stuff. The ROMIDENT database only includes known patterns, so anything really off the wall (or some bootlegs), there won't be any entry. Most poker and trivia boards don't identify either.

For the obscure computer hardware, I usually dump the ROM and disassemble the code, you can see roughly what it's doing. Also, by tracing out the board, you can determine what it's capabilities are, thus allowing you to figure out what it would have been used for.

manufacture name on #2 boards is Identicon

That's not a manufacturer I'm familiar with either... Perhaps it was a custom thing, or some other obscure key-to-tape or other poorly documented/forgotten application. Hard to say without seeing it.

I love puzzles like this :)

-Ian
 
#2 are 2 S-100 bus computer expansion boards.

What are the part #s on the bigger chips? I can use that to help you identify what the boards do.

#8 looks like a Street Fighter II bootleg

#11 looks like an Arkanoid bootleg I once had but it's missing the SIP module.
 
Which bigger chips? The processor is an 8080A, eproms c2708 and a c8228 system controller. I can make out dataman serall on one eprom and UP8D5E8 PS LAR 10 low 017c88 on another eprom.
 
Ah. Well, so much for reading in the ROM data then - you're not going to be able to read that ROM with a modern programmer, that is a triple voltage device. Even my TopMax programmer won't do it - I have some very old hardware that will, however.

I'm thinking it's a processor board for some kind of control system. What's the chip on the other board?

-Ian
 
The other board has an AY-5-1013A processor on it.

Sucks you need an old school burner I gave one to Orion a while back because I had no use for it and couldn't figure it out for the life of me.
 
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Sucks you need an old school burner I gave one to Orion a while back because I had no use for it and couldn't figure it out for the life of me.

Yeah, to use a 2708 you either need a really old programmer, or you have to build something to supply it with power and rig up an adapter to a newer programmer and try to read it as something else (whatever you wired the adapter to).

You've got the processor and serial boards though, there's enough ROM there for the thing to maybe have a functional monitor program. You can trace the serial board back from the UART - find the line driver chips, likely 1488/1489's, although some really old stuff used op amps. Once you find the rx/tx lines, you can hook them up to a terminal. Unfortunately, since this is a backplane type system, you'd have to build the backplane to connect the boards together - one hopes it was a simple parallel backplane, and that it wasn't wired funny - easy enough to check by tracing the address/data lines out to the edge connector on both boards.

Powering the boards is easy - the pinout of the 2708 is well documented, so you can follow that back to the edge connector to figure out what pins are the various voltages and ground. Another deviation from S100 boards - these boards don't have voltage regulators on them. The S100 bus used an unregulated power supply and individual linear regulators on each board.

-Ian
 
If anyone could help me with this that would kick ass. I have an EMP-20 burner and want to dump the roms from my unidentified pcb's in order to identify them. How do I do it with this burner?

Screen shot of my burner menu

DSCF3657.jpg



Ok I'm a dumbass what else is new, If anyone else wants to know how to do this with an EMP-20 then here goes.

EMP-20 rom ID

1. Identify your Rom #5 select device
2. read device into buffer menu option #4
3. this it the tricky part on the right side at the bottom of the screen it says "V" file name. So you hit the letter "V" on the keyboard and a menu pops up enter what ever you want for a file name hit ok. That file name will now be next to "V" on the bottom right (under the word Binary) and that will be the name it will get saved as.
4. #9 save file to disk (mine saved right to the desktop)
5. take your file and load it into http://www.coinop.org/RomId.aspx (in the select rom box) hit browse select the rom off your desktop and hit upload
6. enjoy your new PCB identifying skills.
 
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Board 13 came up as

Mame Zip: mkb"
FileName: "mkb-2.rom"
FileSize: 131072
Game:

Mame Zip: mk1cl"
FileName: "MK1_02.BIN"
FileSize: 131072
Game:

What the hell is that? not enough roms for mortal kombat.
 
Doh - just finished responding to your PM with instructions on how to use the Needham's software before I read this thread. Seems you got it figured out :)

It's probably a bootleg Mortal Kombat. Those black chips soldered to the board along the bottom are probably mask ROMs.

-Ian
 
My Data I/O Series 22 programmer will read the 2708... and even the pesky TMS2716 tri-voltage 16Kb EPROMs from TI (and second sourced by Motorola)

:D
 
My Data I/O Series 22 programmer will read the 2708... and even the pesky TMS2716 tri-voltage 16Kb EPROMs from TI (and second sourced by Motorola)

:D

Yup! I've got one too. What a great little programmer. Ancient, but good! For the longest time it was my only EPROM eraser too. I've since built a much better one... My arsenal of programmers - the Series 22, Needham's PB-10, and the EETools TopMax.

I like the Needham's the best, mostly because the software is awesome. The EETools is great because it does so many more devices, but I find the software interface to be kind of clunky.

-Ian
 
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