Final Fight PCB graphics problems

Murray · Mar 6, 2006

I have a FF PCB I bought from a guy on eBay. It plays all the way through (no crashing) but in the intro and a couple of levels have some odd graphics problems.

All of the sprites and foregrounds are fine but some (very few) sections of background seem to use the wrong palette. This is particularly noticeable (and irritating) in the last level where the sun is setting and instead of flickering the sun (to make it dim), it flickers the sky instead (AGH, MY EYES!).

I've tried removing the B board (from the A board) and reseating it and cleaning the pins of each rom (that sucked). I haven't reseated the C board because I've heard it sometimes handles encryption and removing it could trash the game entirely. I don't have another A board to swap in so I haven't tried that either.

The board looks like an original but most (all but two) of the roms are ceramic windowed EPROMs, covered with stickers that have a Capcom logo and FF# / FFUS# markings. I thought maybe one of these might be corrupt but I don't know how to determine which one(s) (I don't have anything to read / test them with).

The game was pretty cheap so it's not that big a deal but I'd like to get it working perfectly. Can anyone suggest anything?

J0e Musashi · Mar 6, 2006

Remove and reseat the C board. Should sort it out, did mine.

J69 · Mar 6, 2006

How much did you guys pay for your FF boards? they all seem to go for like £40-50. I love that game but ive mamed it to death and il hardly ever play it.......but still really want it!!!!!!

Murray · Mar 6, 2006

Ok, I reseated the C board a few times and there's no improvement. The connectors were all squeaky clean so I didn't do any cleaning there.

While I was working on it, I discovered two things:

My Winners Don't Use Drugs screen is very corrupt.
Leaving DIP C-4 (freeze screen) on while booting (from taking pics) is a good way to give yourself a heart attack.

I took some pictures of the screens and a pic of the board. J0e, does that look like your board / the problem you had with it?

http://www.vinylfetish.net/images/ff_board.jpg (260K)

(edit) J69: My board was about $45-$50 shipped from a guy on eBay.

Superfamifreak · Mar 6, 2006

Murray said:
[*]Leaving DIP C-4 (freeze screen) on while booting (from taking pics) is a good way to give yourself a heart attack.

Same as leaving DIP-8 on on an MVS mobo. I've done it so many times :make_fac:

topher · Mar 6, 2006

Superfamifreak said:
Same as leaving DIP-8 on on an MVS mobo. I've done it so many times

Same here, enough to give you a heart attack and the last thing you'll look at to fix it

Lime2K · Mar 6, 2006

Superfamifreak said:
Same as leaving DIP-8 on on an MVS mobo. I've done it so many times

I've done that, too. (In fact, when I got my one slot it CAME WITH the stupid thing on!)

Superfamifreak · Mar 7, 2006

topher said:
Same here, enough to give you a heart attack and the last thing you'll look at to fix it

Seriously, I was so scared that I'd blown the mobo when the cab fired up and nothing came on screen.

Must remember to turn 8 OFF after I take screenshots!!!

Razoola · Mar 7, 2006

This question is a shot in the dark but this isn't a Japanese version of the game thats been converted to USA is it? I ask because there are some CPS1 games that use different GFX over region so if that is a suicide board thats been converted to English, maybe they forgot to reprogram one of the GFX ROMs.

This is pure speculation mind, maybe FF uses the same GFX over region. The thing that made me question though is the Japanese characters on that wdud screen shot.

Raz

Razoola · Mar 7, 2006

Update...

Using the tile viewer in WinKawaks I can clearly see that what I mentioned before is your problem, Japanese GFX on a USA board. If you load the USA version of the game in winkawaks and then look at the 8x8 tiles at location 48A0 youll see the wdud GFX. If you do the same in the Japanese version however you will notice that some of the wdud gfx are replaced with the kanji characters.

This fully explaines the issue you have with the wdud screen but I suspect it will solve your other isues also if you use the USA GFX data instead of the Japanese.

Raz

Murray · Mar 7, 2006

Thanks for the suggestion, I was hoping you'd have some feedback on this.

Does that mean I need to rewrite the FFU-marked roms with actual US data? Is there a good way to find out which one(s) specifically are wrong or should I just do all of them?

Razoola · Mar 7, 2006

It depends on the format because there are a few different ways Capcom did it. If you paste here the ROM names on the stickers it sould be easy to work out which ones need reprogramming. It won't be all of them, only 4 if it uses 512k ROMs.

Raz

Murray · Mar 7, 2006

Ok, I'll post that later tonight when I get home. The pic of the board I have here for reference is too blurry to read them all (worst digital camera of all time).

Murray · Mar 7, 2006

Here's the rom list (socket #, label, part #, notes):

5, FF-5M, OF1 HN62404P
7, FF-7M, OF1 HN62404P
9, FF23, D27512, odd - same label as socket 23 - blue socket
10, FF10, D27C010
11, FF11, D27C010
12, FF12, D27C010
13, FF13, D27C010
18, FF18, AM27C010
19, FF19, M5M27C101K
20, FF20, D27C010, window slightly exposed
21, FF21, D27C010
22, FF22, D27C010
23, FF23, D27C010, odd - same label as socket 9
30, FFU30, D27C010
31, FFU31, D27C010
32, FF-32M, OD1 HN62404P
35, FFU35, D27C010, window slightly exposed
36, FFU36, D27C010

Let me know if you need anything else.

Razoola · Mar 7, 2006

From that list I am not sure. Its possible its just the 5 and 7 ROM but you'll need to dump and back them up first in case its not. Reprogram them with the 5 and 7 ROM from the ffight parent set in MAME.

Raz

MKL · Mar 8, 2006

Japanese CPS boards have a different layout and don't have mask roms, only eproms. This is what a japanese Final Fight looks like:

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/3631/ffjpn6tp.jpg

The 4Mbit mask roms are replaced by 4 1Mbit eproms, so Murray's board can't have been japanese originally. And on the other hand I don't think the gfx roms change over the various regions. To me it's a matter of faulty data in some gfx roms.

Razoola · Mar 8, 2006

MKL said:
Japanese CPS boards have a different layout and don't have mask roms, only eproms. This is what a japanese Final Fight looks like:

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/3631/ffjpn6tp.jpg

The 4Mbit mask roms are replaced by 4 1Mbit eproms, so Murray's board can't have been japanese originally. And on the other hand I don't think the gfx roms change over the various regions. To me it's a matter of faulty data in some gfx roms.

Some CPS1 games do have different gfx over region and I have already confirmed ffight is one of them by using the tile viewer in winkawaks (8x8 tiles at location 48A0). Basically in the Japanese version part of the wdud tiles are replaced with kanji tiles. In the euro and usa version there is the full wdud screen and no kanji gfx tiles.

With his PCB its 100% certin at least that the currupted wdud screen is due to the pcb having japanese gfx when it sould be USA/euro gfx.

MKL · Mar 8, 2006

In any case the gfx mask roms (5 and 7) on his board cannot contain japanese data.

Murray · Mar 8, 2006

It seems logical to me that since most of them are marked "FF" that the US-specific ones would be the FFU ones. I should've thought to look through the board's built-in tile viewer to see if it really matches the Japanese version last night. I'll have to do that tonight and see what's going on.

I'll also have a look at the MAME driver and see what order these are loaded. It wouldn't surprise me if the socket numbers had nothing to do with addressing.

When I come up with something, I'll post it here. Thanks for all your help.

Razoola · Mar 8, 2006

MKL said:
In any case the gfx mask roms (5 and 7) on his board cannot contain japanese data.

Yea thats true.

Raz

Razoola · Mar 8, 2006

Murray said:
It seems logical to me that since most of them are marked "FF" that the US-specific ones would be the FFU ones. I should've thought to look through the board's built-in tile viewer to see if it really matches the Japanese version last night. I'll have to do that tonight and see what's going on.

I'll also have a look at the MAME driver and see what order these are loaded. It wouldn't surprise me if the socket numbers had nothing to do with addressing.

When I come up with something, I'll post it here. Thanks for all your help.

The problem is that MAME does not have the ROMs in a format that your board seems to have. From your list I suspect the following going on what I see in MAME.

program data

30, FFU30, D27C010
31, FFU31, D27C010
32, FF-32M, OD1 HN62404P
35, FFU35, D27C010, window slightly exposed
36, FFU36, D27C010

sound related

9, FF23, D27512, odd - same label as socket 23 - blue socket
18, FF18, AM27C010
19, FF19, M5M27C101K

GFX

5, FF-5M, OF1 HN62404P
7, FF-7M, OF1 HN62404P
10, FF10, D27C010
11, FF11, D27C010
12, FF12, D27C010
13, FF13, D27C010
20, FF20, D27C010, window slightly exposed
21, FF21, D27C010
22, FF22, D27C010
23, FF23, D27C010, odd - same label as socket 9

The problem your going to have is that MAME does not have USA gfx in this format. It uses only 4 512k ROMs. You'll probably have to make them and hope the problem area is not on the 5 or 7 ROM because those are masks like MKL says. Make sure you back all data up on the ROMs before reprogramming them. I suspect the 8 128k ROMs will give you crc matches to the ones used in the Japan version.

Perhaps its possible just to burn another 2 512k ROMs and place them on the PCB so you dont have to use those 8 ROMs. Maybe some jumper mod is needed for that though.

Raz

MKL · Mar 8, 2006

Normally on US and World PCBs all the gfx roms are mask roms:

http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/6048/ffus9ix.jpg

The mame dumps come from a board like this. On Murray's board mask rom 1 is replaced by eproms 10, 11, 20, 21 and mask rom 3 by eproms 12, 13, 22, 23. It would be possible to use the mame roms and burn the gfx roms 1 and 3 to replace the 8 eproms but you'd need eproms with the same pinout as the mask roms, for instance 27c400 but not 27c4096 or 4002 (unless you rewire the sockets, not recommended).

Murray · Mar 8, 2006

Gah! Figures I'd get something weird.

I just looked through some board pictures on eBay and it looks like most of the US FF boards have two mask roms (512K, I guess) instead of the 8 EPROMs. Maybe mine was an early revision or something. I guess I'll add jumpers to the list of things to look for tonight.

Edit: MKL beat me to the mask rom thing.

Razoola · Mar 8, 2006

What you can do is break up the other 2 512k ROMs in MAME into the format required if you don't have to spare 512k EPROMs. Make note of what MKL mentions, its not the standard 27C4096 type. It would be good to confirm the 2 mask roms you have match those already in MAME too.

Raz

Murray · Mar 8, 2006

I just looked through the on-board service mode and the graphics definitely match the JP version so I'm going to swap them ... now I just need to find someone to sell me some EPROMs and get them burned. I'm waiting to hear back from hobbyroms.com about that but if anyone has any other suggestions (or if anyone knows anything about hobbyroms.com ... I sure don't), I'd be interested to hear about it.

As a side note, I compared the version number that appears at bootup with the one in the MAME rom and apparently mine's newer. Mine is 900613 where MAME's is 900112. *shrugs* I wonder what the difference is.

I didn't find any jumpers but at $19 for a set of programmed replacement ROMs, I don't think it would hurt to just do the swap and see what happens.

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