Nibbler high score save kit

[HudsonArcade]

Always a pain to do a mod on a game that has several revisions, particularly when some are undocumented. I ran into that problem with BurgerTime as well (there's one undocumented rev, but fortunately it's fairly rare).
This one looks like a good candidate for a CPU daughtercard (since the CPU is socketed). That way everyone runs the same code and you can eliminate a bunch of old EPROMs from the equation. But then again, this is Nibbler.... Can you find 20 buyers to make this even moderately worthwhile doing?

Daughterboard solution was proposed many pages ago...

..back when there may have been enough buyers to make it worth completing. Now there certainly aren't.

 

[Phetishboy]

Ok, I installed the whole kit minus rom 14 onto the newer rev 9 board, the one without the jumper. I got the jaws theme, no video. I then removed the NVRam replaced it with the original chip and just left in kit roms 8 and 10. I powered it up, got the boot screen, then the quick rom check which showed both 8 and 10 as 'fail', right after that it went to the grid screen. Tried a second and 3rd power up, exact same result. Plugged in my other board (the earlier rev 9) with all original roms installed, and it powered up fine the first 2 times, but on the 3rd power up while my son was playing, it started to show inverted colors. I powered it down, then back up twice, same thing. I then removed it, cleaned the edge connectors, powered it up and now it's fine. No idea where that came from, other than the fact that I have installed, removed, installed, removed the board and this kit or part of it so many times something was bound to happen. I can definitely say with certainty that the NVRam is bad, but I am not sure why the other chips aren't working.

 

[Phetishboy]

Not sure if anyone is still monitoring this thread, but also of note, both working board sets I have here are set to freeplay. Would that have any affect on the kit?

 

[hatrick]

Not sure if anyone is still monitoring this thread, but also of note, both working board sets I have here are set to freeplay. Would that have any affect on the kit?

Mine is set to free play as well and the kit works fine, so I don't think that should be an issue.

 

[DarrenF]

Mine is set to free play as well and the kit works fine, so I don't think that should be an issue.

Yeah, I set Shawn1976's to free play after I installed it, too. No problems. I also ran his both with and without the new 14 EPROM. Worked fine either way; only diff was if it reported bad PROMs at boot up in self test (that's all the kit's 14 ROM is for, to fix the checksums for power on self test),

 

[Phetishboy]

Yeah, I set Shawn1976's to free play after I installed it, too. No problems. I also ran his both with and without the new 14 EPROM. Worked fine either way; only diff was if it reported bad PROMs at boot up in self test (that's all the kit's 14 ROM is for, to fix the checksums for power on self test),

So, wonder why mine goes to a grid pattern? It's almost like the test switch is grounded or the test dip is flipped. I could send you one of these boards with your kit if you wanted to check them together and see what's up?

 

[DarrenF]

OK... in short, attached are the Nibbler HSS kit ROM files I found on my laptop. Have at 'em.

Caveat utilitor. A couple people have tried it and it worked fine; another didn't have any luck; and yet another it worked for a while and then stopped booting. For all I know the problems were unrelated to the HSS kit (or the NVRAM)... but perhaps they were. I long ago tired of f-ing with it, and on top of that my USB stick containing all of my notes/knowledge about this (and MUCH other stuff) failed, and was not recoverable.

For now, the attached files are the only place to get it, but at some point I'll update my webpage to have them downloadable there too. There are no instructions aside from what's been posted in this thread, and what's on this webpage: http://www.finck.net/highscores/nibbler.html (ignore the part about kits for sale... they are not for sale)

If anyone tries doing it, please post your results here... sucessful or otherwise.

Enjoy!

 

[Buffett]

thanks for giving it a go.

i hope i can get it to work on my machine.

Peace
Buffett

 

[KidVidiot]

Have there been any updates to this in 3 years? Daughter card, diagnostics on startup, etc?

 

[shazam78]

I am also interested in knowing.

 

[HudsonArcade]

I made a kit too, but I never got around to digging out a Nibbler board to try it out on.

I did recently buy a fantasy, so I can test on that if it works

 

[disjaukifa]

I made a kit too, but I never got around to digging out a Nibbler board to try it out on.

I did recently buy a fantasy, so I can test on that if it works

Did it work? Would love one for my Nibbler!!!

 

[BladeZX]

Did a nibbler high score kit ever come to light?

 

[DZA]

Also interested in how well this works/progress?

 

[eb94110]

Resurrecting this too: Was a kit ever made?