Vanguard hack? (Software and -maybe- hardware)

Scucci

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I've had these Vanguard boards laying here for years and I never looked at them because of some flying wires on the back board that had come loose.

I finally pulled them out of their box yesterday and tracked down where those wires went as they broke off flush with the chips they were soldered to and I could see see a tiny piece of the wire attached to them. So I re-ran the wires (having NO idea what they do) with some better wire, on the solder side of the board, and not the top this time.

I also pulled the EPROMs to check all of them. There were 3 with marks on them; 4 5 and 8 (C, CS, CN)... in MAME they match to ic10, ic13, and ic16 IIRC. Anywho, all but those 3 matched up to what's in MAME. In my hex editor I compared those 3 files to the ones in MAME and they were off by a good bit. Several large sections of code was completely different... not just a bit here and a bit there. I put those dumps into the MAME set and the game played fine, I didn't see any differences, but I've never really played Vanguard before, so I'm no expert or anything.

Is this a known thing or just some 1-off trickery? If I were to post those 3 files here would anyone be able to tell the difference in game-play or look at them and give me an idea of what's going on in there?

As for the hardware hack, I know mentioning it without pics is pretty much idiotic... While it didn't look factory, I have no idea as I can't find a picture of the second Vanguard board anywhere it seems.
 
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