Rare: Botanic

HudsonArcade

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 12, 2009
Messages
14,717
Reaction score
3,619
Location
01749, Massachusetts
The term rare gets thrown around here way too much (almost as annoying as "grail")...

...but has anyone ever seen one of these before?

Got it off ebay... 1 bad chip and some work figuring out the pinouts while watching hockey, and we're up:

Pinouts:
Code:
Parts Side        Solder Side
==============    ===============
  A   GND         1   GND
  B   GND         2   GND
  C   +5          3   +5 
  D   +5          4   +5          
  E   P1 Start    5   P2 Start
  F   P1 Right    6   P2 Right 
  H   P1 Left     7   P2 Left
  J   P1 Up       8   P2 Up
  K   P1 Down     9   P2 Down
  L   P1 B1      10   Ps B1
  M              11   
  N              12   
  P              13   Speaker
  R   Reset      14   (Counter?)
  S   Coin A     15   Red
  T   Coin B     16   Green
  U   Coin C     17   Blue
  V   Coin D     18   ~CSync
  W   (to 19)    19   (to W)
  X   +12        20   +12 
  Y   GND        21   GND
  Z   GND        22   GND

attachment.php

attachment.php

attachment.php
 

Attachments

  • PICT1234.jpg
    PICT1234.jpg
    60.1 KB · Views: 258
  • PICT1232.jpg
    PICT1232.jpg
    27.9 KB · Views: 258
  • PICT1233.jpg
    PICT1233.jpg
    37.3 KB · Views: 261
Whats the game play like? I don't even see it up on KLOV just took a look So I guess it could be rare or just no one cares about it LOL. I was also wondering how does one go about figuring out the pinout of an unknown PCB? Oh who made it?
 
The game was programmed in Italy, and all the text in the game is in French, so it may have legitimately never made it here ... the game is in MAME, but given who the seller turned out to be. this could be the board that was dumped for MAME.

In this case, it was relatively easy to figure out the pinouts (I was hoping it would be the same as Bagman, but no such luck):

+5 and GND are obvious...
Found +12 and Spk+ tracing from the audio amp....
Found red/green/blue tracing from the resistor ladder DAC (almost all games from this era use 2 bits for blue, and 3 for red and green, so blue's easy to pick out, and the colors are *usually* in order on the board).
Once I fired it up and found the bad counter in the divider chain, I found sync by sticking my scope on the pins (but a logic prob would work too).
Once I had full video, I just grounded pins to find coin/start/controls...
 
This game begs to be hacked into a Marijuana themed game.:p Instead of Botanic...Chronic! (Of course!)

I thought the same thing when I first saw the leaves in that game. What would you change the power-up to?
 
Back
Top Bottom