RyoGeo
Global Moderator, Voice of Reason, Member #13
- Joined
- Aug 14, 2000
- Posts
- 2,495
Hello all. Since I seem to have set off a bit of a wildfire here, I feel as if I should post some additional information I have come to learn. I had a two and a half hour chat with a very good and trusted Neo friend two nights ago that also has a business as an operator. Since people are checking their carts for EPROM chips, please take the time to read this post and educate yourselves as I have done over the past three days.
EPROM chips are commonly used in arcade PCB manufacture. Many boards out there (SF2, Magic Sword, Crime Fighters, you name it) employ the use of these chips and here's why.
Often times, just prior to a run of boards, a last minute update will necessitate the quick production of a few new chips. Evidently, the fastest and easiest way to accomplish this is through the use of EPROM chips. They are easy to burn quickly and are a bit cheaper than standard PROM chips. Another circumstance that may result in the use of EPROMs would be a new run of a particular title. Perhaps Art of Fighting is doing really well, and there is the need to make some more to fill demand. You're short some particular chip. What do you do? Burn ERPOMs to fill the void.
Another circumstance that would result in the use of EPROM chips would be that of the repair. Operators are frequently reparing their boards because some dumb ass spilled pop on the machine or in some other way cooked a chip. Interestingly, this is where those pesky ROM images come in to play. The original purpose of the ROM images that we find so readily on the internet today was to aid operators in the repair of their boards. This goes for Neo as well as everything else. Cook a chip? Burn a new one and your machine is back on the street. VERY common.
Now, there are also, as we have come to find out, some not so honorable uses of the EPROM. My Garou:MOTW cart is a prime example of an out and out pirate job. The boards had no encryption on them and the ROM images contained on the chips were that of the beta software. Not a single SNK part in the package with the possible exception of the cart case. Bootleg through and through. Here is another kind of bootleg. The bootlegger finds a compatable and authentic Neo board and removes the game specific chips and then populates the board with new EPROMs of a completely different game. Kinda bootleg in that it's a conversion, kinda not since at least most of the parts are authentic SNK issue. After all, the Z-80 chip already on the board is a Z-80 chip, whether it's used for World Heroes or Real Bout.
Now, having said that, I think there are a couple ways you can tell the difference but these are purely subjective and my opinion. Yours may vary.
In the process of checking out all my other carts (roughly 30) I found that some did indeed have EPROMs in them. One of them was an AoF. Now, this AoF still had the serial numbers on the spine of the cart, had the silver SNK seal sticker on the side seam and was purchased by an operator that I know who purchased it from a distributor that gets (or got) ALL of their stuff directly from SNK. This cart had an EPROM in it. It is also totally authentic.
What leads me to believe it is real, beyond what I have already stated above, are two fold. The chip itself was spotless. No chalk writing on it, no marks of any kind, other than the tell tale golden eye staring at me from its center. The solder job was also REMARKABLY precise. This chip was probably never even handled by a human. It went from manufacture to assembly line to the circuit board without ever even brushing a human hand. The installation was pure automation. This is a real cart.
Now, I have another cart, a KoF '95, that I believe is either a repair job or possibly a chip swap. This cart has four EPROMs on it, all on one board all in a row. The color of these chips differs from the others on the board as well. They are more of a tan color than the more standard charcoal black. They also have chalk writing on them with some uninteligible markings, each of them with a different color. One has blue marks, one red, another yellow, another green. To me, this looks like either a human assembly line creating KoF '95 with color coded EPROMs or an operator that didn't want to mess up which chip went where as he was trying to repair his cart. The rest of the cart is totally authentic. Curiously, this cart also has some graphic glitching, where as the AoF cart does not.
Ok...here's the really funny part. Many of the home carts that we all have use EPROMs.
And you know what? So do SNES games and Genesis games and any other platform you want to mention. My friend has verified this by opening a sac cart to find EPROMs inside.
So, the short version of the story is, don't panic if you find EPROMs in your cart. They may be TOTALLY legit. It's up to you to decide. If the cart looks hacked, doesn't have SNK boards or there are ANY wires in it, you're probably looking at a bootleg.
Also, EPROMs are used by SNK but that doesn't mean that the whole cart should be made of them either. Again, use your common sense. Believe me, you can tell if a huuman did the work or a machine did.
It is true that they loose their memory faster than PROM chips, but they don't just go to hell over night either. For me, the games I have that employ EPROMs may over time get replaced. i have a copy of WOrld Heroes with an EPROM on the boards and one without. I'll keep the one without just for that added bit of security. However the one that I would trade/sell is TOTALLY authentic. They were just made at different times in the WH production run.
Hope this is helpful for everybody. I know it just makes the playing field that much more foggy, but at least you now know that if you find an ERPOM or two on one of your carts, it's not time to freak out and call the person that sold it to you. It very well may be the real deal.
I will try and update my web page on this topic soon.
Thanks all!
------------------
-RyoGeo
[This message has been edited by RyoGeo (edited January 19, 2001).]
EPROM chips are commonly used in arcade PCB manufacture. Many boards out there (SF2, Magic Sword, Crime Fighters, you name it) employ the use of these chips and here's why.
Often times, just prior to a run of boards, a last minute update will necessitate the quick production of a few new chips. Evidently, the fastest and easiest way to accomplish this is through the use of EPROM chips. They are easy to burn quickly and are a bit cheaper than standard PROM chips. Another circumstance that may result in the use of EPROMs would be a new run of a particular title. Perhaps Art of Fighting is doing really well, and there is the need to make some more to fill demand. You're short some particular chip. What do you do? Burn ERPOMs to fill the void.
Another circumstance that would result in the use of EPROM chips would be that of the repair. Operators are frequently reparing their boards because some dumb ass spilled pop on the machine or in some other way cooked a chip. Interestingly, this is where those pesky ROM images come in to play. The original purpose of the ROM images that we find so readily on the internet today was to aid operators in the repair of their boards. This goes for Neo as well as everything else. Cook a chip? Burn a new one and your machine is back on the street. VERY common.
Now, there are also, as we have come to find out, some not so honorable uses of the EPROM. My Garou:MOTW cart is a prime example of an out and out pirate job. The boards had no encryption on them and the ROM images contained on the chips were that of the beta software. Not a single SNK part in the package with the possible exception of the cart case. Bootleg through and through. Here is another kind of bootleg. The bootlegger finds a compatable and authentic Neo board and removes the game specific chips and then populates the board with new EPROMs of a completely different game. Kinda bootleg in that it's a conversion, kinda not since at least most of the parts are authentic SNK issue. After all, the Z-80 chip already on the board is a Z-80 chip, whether it's used for World Heroes or Real Bout.
Now, having said that, I think there are a couple ways you can tell the difference but these are purely subjective and my opinion. Yours may vary.
In the process of checking out all my other carts (roughly 30) I found that some did indeed have EPROMs in them. One of them was an AoF. Now, this AoF still had the serial numbers on the spine of the cart, had the silver SNK seal sticker on the side seam and was purchased by an operator that I know who purchased it from a distributor that gets (or got) ALL of their stuff directly from SNK. This cart had an EPROM in it. It is also totally authentic.
What leads me to believe it is real, beyond what I have already stated above, are two fold. The chip itself was spotless. No chalk writing on it, no marks of any kind, other than the tell tale golden eye staring at me from its center. The solder job was also REMARKABLY precise. This chip was probably never even handled by a human. It went from manufacture to assembly line to the circuit board without ever even brushing a human hand. The installation was pure automation. This is a real cart.
Now, I have another cart, a KoF '95, that I believe is either a repair job or possibly a chip swap. This cart has four EPROMs on it, all on one board all in a row. The color of these chips differs from the others on the board as well. They are more of a tan color than the more standard charcoal black. They also have chalk writing on them with some uninteligible markings, each of them with a different color. One has blue marks, one red, another yellow, another green. To me, this looks like either a human assembly line creating KoF '95 with color coded EPROMs or an operator that didn't want to mess up which chip went where as he was trying to repair his cart. The rest of the cart is totally authentic. Curiously, this cart also has some graphic glitching, where as the AoF cart does not.
Ok...here's the really funny part. Many of the home carts that we all have use EPROMs.
So, the short version of the story is, don't panic if you find EPROMs in your cart. They may be TOTALLY legit. It's up to you to decide. If the cart looks hacked, doesn't have SNK boards or there are ANY wires in it, you're probably looking at a bootleg.
Also, EPROMs are used by SNK but that doesn't mean that the whole cart should be made of them either. Again, use your common sense. Believe me, you can tell if a huuman did the work or a machine did.
It is true that they loose their memory faster than PROM chips, but they don't just go to hell over night either. For me, the games I have that employ EPROMs may over time get replaced. i have a copy of WOrld Heroes with an EPROM on the boards and one without. I'll keep the one without just for that added bit of security. However the one that I would trade/sell is TOTALLY authentic. They were just made at different times in the WH production run.
Hope this is helpful for everybody. I know it just makes the playing field that much more foggy, but at least you now know that if you find an ERPOM or two on one of your carts, it's not time to freak out and call the person that sold it to you. It very well may be the real deal.
I will try and update my web page on this topic soon.
Thanks all!
------------------
[This message has been edited by RyoGeo (edited January 19, 2001).]
