TerryMasters
Galford's Armourer
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2009
- Posts
- 459
This is a from a post I made at another forum, but I decided to post it here as well. I'm posting this thread to share my experience for those who are curious about whether or not this will work, as there is not a lot of clear info on this.
I was recently fortunate enough to obtain a Showtime 3.0 CHD. My current hardware version was 1.5. According to reports on several different forums, Midway released a few different boot ROMs for their Vegas hardware. The version I have is 2.5 (the only other known ROMs are 2.7, and 3.0).
I took the hard drive out, made a backup of my 1.5 image, and copied over the 3.0 image. After the installation I fired it up, and to my surprise, NBA Showtime started up. It read 3.0 and everything, but the dip-switches were set to start Blitz first. Sure enough, after inserting a coin and trying to load Blitz, the game crashed.
No matter how I try to load it, any attempt to load Blitz causes the machine to restart. HOWEVER - not only can I get into Showtime's test menu, but I can get into Blitz's menu as well. I tested both NBA and NFL file systems and all files come back OK (3060 NBA/1066 NFL). I tried resetting both to factory defaults, but Blitz still refuses to load. I have every reason to believe that this is related to the 2.5 boot ROM.
There are only two other possibilities as to why it wouldn't load. Either Chdman has to load the image onto the drive using the same version that was used to rip it, or my 3.0 image file was somehow damaged. Ironically, the backup I made turned out to be larger than the new 3.0 image (3.0 was 6.0GB, 1.5 was 6.9GB). I'm going to do some further testing, and I'll report back with the results.
Can anyone here with a 3.0 Sportstation confirm that the file system checks are infact 3060 for Showtime, and 1066 for Blitz?
Edit - I also wanted to state something just for the record. The original Blitz/Showtime hard drive is a Quantum Fireball lct. According to research, this drive has the following specs:
* Formatted storage capacity of 10.2 GB (1 disk, 2 heads)
* Low profile, 1-inch height
* Industry standard 3 1/2-inch form factor
* Emulation of IBM PC AT task file register, and all AT fixed disk commands
* Windows NT and 9x Certification
* Average seek time 9.5 ms
* Rotational speed 5,400 RPM
* Average rotational latency 5.56 ms
* New Ultra ATA interface with Quantum-patented Ultra ATA/66 protocol supporting burst data transfer rates of 66 MB/s
* 512 K buffer with 369 K (approximately) Advanced Cache Management (ACM). Look-ahead DisCache feature with continuous prefetch and WriteCache write-buffering capabilities
* Read promotion and Write Reordering features
* AutoTask Register update, Multi-block AutoRead, and Multi-block AutoWrite features in a custom ASIC
* Read-on-arrival firmware
* Quadruple-burst ECC, and double burst ECC on-the-fly
* 1:1 interleave on read/write operations
* Support of all standard ATA data transfer modes with PIO mode 4 and multiword DMA mode 2, and Ultra DMA modes 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4.
* Adaptive cache segmentation
Now a lot of people have updated their hard drive based arcades with Compact Flash cards. The fastest speed CF card I can find is a 300X 45MB/s drive - which is actually slower than the original 66MB/s. Granted, these are two different technologies so real world CF speeds may in fact be the same or faster, but there doesn't seem to be any confirmation on this. The CF card update may be suitable for the likes of Killer Instinct, but it may actually be a downgrade for Midway games.
I was recently fortunate enough to obtain a Showtime 3.0 CHD. My current hardware version was 1.5. According to reports on several different forums, Midway released a few different boot ROMs for their Vegas hardware. The version I have is 2.5 (the only other known ROMs are 2.7, and 3.0).
I took the hard drive out, made a backup of my 1.5 image, and copied over the 3.0 image. After the installation I fired it up, and to my surprise, NBA Showtime started up. It read 3.0 and everything, but the dip-switches were set to start Blitz first. Sure enough, after inserting a coin and trying to load Blitz, the game crashed.
No matter how I try to load it, any attempt to load Blitz causes the machine to restart. HOWEVER - not only can I get into Showtime's test menu, but I can get into Blitz's menu as well. I tested both NBA and NFL file systems and all files come back OK (3060 NBA/1066 NFL). I tried resetting both to factory defaults, but Blitz still refuses to load. I have every reason to believe that this is related to the 2.5 boot ROM.
There are only two other possibilities as to why it wouldn't load. Either Chdman has to load the image onto the drive using the same version that was used to rip it, or my 3.0 image file was somehow damaged. Ironically, the backup I made turned out to be larger than the new 3.0 image (3.0 was 6.0GB, 1.5 was 6.9GB). I'm going to do some further testing, and I'll report back with the results.
Can anyone here with a 3.0 Sportstation confirm that the file system checks are infact 3060 for Showtime, and 1066 for Blitz?
Edit - I also wanted to state something just for the record. The original Blitz/Showtime hard drive is a Quantum Fireball lct. According to research, this drive has the following specs:
* Formatted storage capacity of 10.2 GB (1 disk, 2 heads)
* Low profile, 1-inch height
* Industry standard 3 1/2-inch form factor
* Emulation of IBM PC AT task file register, and all AT fixed disk commands
* Windows NT and 9x Certification
* Average seek time 9.5 ms
* Rotational speed 5,400 RPM
* Average rotational latency 5.56 ms
* New Ultra ATA interface with Quantum-patented Ultra ATA/66 protocol supporting burst data transfer rates of 66 MB/s
* 512 K buffer with 369 K (approximately) Advanced Cache Management (ACM). Look-ahead DisCache feature with continuous prefetch and WriteCache write-buffering capabilities
* Read promotion and Write Reordering features
* AutoTask Register update, Multi-block AutoRead, and Multi-block AutoWrite features in a custom ASIC
* Read-on-arrival firmware
* Quadruple-burst ECC, and double burst ECC on-the-fly
* 1:1 interleave on read/write operations
* Support of all standard ATA data transfer modes with PIO mode 4 and multiword DMA mode 2, and Ultra DMA modes 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4.
* Adaptive cache segmentation
Now a lot of people have updated their hard drive based arcades with Compact Flash cards. The fastest speed CF card I can find is a 300X 45MB/s drive - which is actually slower than the original 66MB/s. Granted, these are two different technologies so real world CF speeds may in fact be the same or faster, but there doesn't seem to be any confirmation on this. The CF card update may be suitable for the likes of Killer Instinct, but it may actually be a downgrade for Midway games.
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