Issue dumping working Midway Sportstation Hard Drive to Compact Flash

bdlou

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Issue dumping working Midway Sportstation Hard Drive to Compact Flash

Hello all. Been trying to send ToplessZ a PM on here, but perhaps I'm blocked because of lack of post. (Or else he has 4 messages awaiting him, in which case, sorry!)

I have attempted to dump my working Sporstation hard drive to a Compact Flash using CHDMAN without success. Here's the info:

My cabinet has a Western Digital WD Caviar 24300 in it that works just fine. On the boards. I see an official chip that says 494 Blitz 2000 494<serial>, and an EPROM with a piece of tape that has Sportstation written on it.

When the machine boots up, it says:
Version: NBA SHOWTIME 2.1
Build Date: Sep 22 1999
Build Time: 20:47:53
<Serial>
Date of Manufacture 10/05/99


Then it loads to the NBA SHOWTIME NBA on NBC splash screen and says version 2.0.

I've tried using versions 0.140 and 0.148 of CHD MAME to dump the drive to the Compact Flash card. When the game boots off the flash card, it reboots at any attempt to show gameplay. The behavior is the same as described in this thread, which lead me to ToplessZ:

http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=97032

I've seen mentions of various versions, security chips, boot ROMs, etc. I've found nothing but dead ends.

So, any tips you have for me? I'd love to retain the data on the hard drive, as it seems to be the original drive from the unit, has tons of high scores, and of course, my save game.

I own a SuperPro 3000U, so if it's a matter of burning some chips for upgrading, or if perhaps there's some tricks regarding CHDMAN, let me know.

Also, the Compact Flash adapter is an HX-168 CF-IDE40 and I'm using a Transcend CompactFlash 133x 8GB card.

Thanks in advance!

Louis
 
I've got one I just got running. Here's how I understand it.

There's about 6 different versions of the security chip/boot rom/HD. Blitz/Showtime, Blitz2000/Showtime, Blitz 2000/Showtime2.0 , Blitz Gold/Showtime 2.0, Blitz Gold Showtime Gold, etc.

Each has it's own set of stuff. If you have any of it wrong, it won't boot, or will reset, or the sound won't work, or NBA will work but Blitz wont, etc.

The compact flash likely only works with a modified boot rom. You can get the one off Mame, but if it doesn't match your security chip, it won't work, even if you use the mame .chd.

Mine wouldn't play blitz, I tried swapping a bunch of stuff, etc. but the only image really available for any of this stuff is the one in MAME. Eventually I just bought the kit from Topless and upgraded everything to 3.0, the latest release, and it works great.
 
I think you told me that the game runs fine with your original harddrice right? then you are attmpting to make a flash drive for reliablility reasons correct? So instead of using mame files for the flash drive you just need to dump your harddrive and make a chd of it and then image the CF drive with your new CHD.
 
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