Reverse Engineering Namco Customs: My setup

dude..... you are the kind of guy who i could see coming up with reproduction pp boards someday. THeyre all broken it seems. good work man, alot of that is over my head man but im impressed.
 
Way over my head, but very cool.
Are any of the "custom chip" technical documents available from long ago?
Surely some docs are out there?

Getting ready to restore a PPII, anyone know a good board repair person?

Great video BTW!! :D
 
Just out of curiosity, couldn't you dump all the binary data into an excel spreadsheet and use a karnaugh map to develop the equations for these chips or are they too complicated?
 
dude, you are my hero. COmeup with a small board that plugs into the old connector, with a molex or just leads to go direct to a switcher, youll have solid effing gold.
 
Just out of curiosity, couldn't you dump all the binary data into an excel spreadsheet and use a karnaugh map to develop the equations for these chips or are they too complicated?

My guess would be that they have internal state (registers or counters or whatever), which makes that technique not work.
 
My guess would be that they have internal state (registers or counters or whatever), which makes that technique not work.

I'd be really interested to see a block diagram of one of these custom chips. I never thought about it having internal storage or some kind of arithmatic capabilities. I was picture custom chips as being some kind of proprietary gate array that Namco decided to put on a chip to prevent pirating. That's where I was going with the Karnaugh maps. It never crossed my mind that these chips might actually manipulate data.
 
"Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th."

Sorry, you and your PP project have to be destroyed to avoid the end of the world. Seriously though - thanks for the effort you are putting into this! Very interesting to see your software solution. I assumed all those chips were cracked because of the MAME emulation and their decapping efforts.
 
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Just out of curiosity, couldn't you dump all the binary data into an excel spreadsheet and use a karnaugh map to develop the equations for these chips or are they too complicated?

You could if it were all combination logic insode (I.E. a PLA, PAL, or GAL). And in fact, that's for I reverse engineered the PAL's located at 5C, 2N and 7C. But these have sequential logic inside (latches, flop flops). In fact the 04xx has a huge internal finite state machine that I had to figure out.
 
I assumed all those chips were cracked because of the MAME emulation and their decapping efforts.

Nah MAME's pretty useless when it comes to this stuff. They just look at what's going on visually and make a best guess as to how to achieve that effect in software. Doing it in real-time in hardware is another story. And I'd rather not guess. The purists will know. ;)
 
Wow, impressive.

Can you reverse engineer any chip?

If so, how about taking a stab at the Electrohome G08 custom chip on the monitor deflection board? If that could be cracked, I'm sure VectorLabs could design a replacement deflection board.

Just throwing it out there...

Good work!
Tom
 
For a G08...Take the reasonably robust 6100 replacement, make the inputs use the sega voltages, tweak the power supply to support the HV section and neckboard, and you have a nice supportable design that doesnt smoke 15 bucks worth of transistors every time it gets grouchy... And PLEASE make the neckboard wiring detachable.
 
Very impressive work.

I'm always amazed by what a true electronics professional can accomplish. Helps keep me in my proper humble place as an electronics hobbyist.

Thanks for sharing thin information about the process and tools.
 
Since I don't understand any of that stuff:

1) is this the same 04xx used on Galaga?

and if so...

2) How do I get one?
 
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