Diggerman Music and Sound Mystery

[Xian Xi]

I just realized that Diggerman has some weird problem where the music and sound/audio won't play on an MV1C but will work on every other MVS board.

What is it about the MV1C that prevents the music from playing? Is it because it completely lacks a Z80 and maybe something along that vein in the coding is for a Z80?

 

[Xian Xi]

Forgot to add that this was tested using 4 MV1Cs, 1 MV2F, 1 MV1F and an MV1FZ. Tested on the MV1C with both stock and Unibios.

 

[distropia]

The YSA2 chip is a merge of the Z80 cpu, memory mappers and Yamaha sound synthetiser. The chip was made to follow the initial SNK development kit specifications, and if the Diggerman authors didn't follow that specs, the behaviour is inconsistent across all the sound subsystem revisions.

 

[Fakk2]

Diggerman also has issues on my AES console. 1 time ever did the sound work going through a converter. Never have I succeeded getting the sound/music working on it since. Even after converting the game to AES boards, there is no sound. UniBios has an error starting the music player also, yet the same eproms in an MVS cart being played on my cab, it works just fine. Diggerman is strangely programmed.

 

[smkdan]

MV-1C and all home systems don't have the SM1 which does a few things on power-on that Diggerman probably depends on. Every other MVS has the SM1 run before the game M1 takes over.

 

[Xian Xi]

MV-1C and all home systems don't have the SM1 which does a few things on power-on that Diggerman probably depends on. Every other MVS has the SM1 run before the game M1 takes over.

Is the MV1C the only MVS mobo without an SM1?

 

[smkdan]

Actually I think MV-1B is also missing the SM1. I don't own one and never got a good look at the PCB though. The SM1 ROMs are mostly dead weight so it makes sense that they got rid of them in later boards.

 

[Xian Xi]

So MV1B and MV1C both no SM1. Is that an easy coding fix?

 

[shadowkn55]

Rise from the dead with new info.

I managed to get my hands on a 4-slot that has a socketted sm1 to confirm whether or not the presence of sm1 is the reason why there is no sound on an 1c/1b. The whole real z80 thing on the 1c didn't make sense to me because the 1b has a real z80 and ym2610 and it still doesn't work on that board either. So I quickly made a Diggerman cart from the usual pile of puzzle bobble boots and threw it into the 4-slot. Sound works just fine. Popped off sm1 and the sound is gone. I threw in Aero Fighters 2 for good measure with sm1 removed and sound still works for that game. Put sm1 back in the socket and sound returns in Diggerman.

So it looks like sm1 does some initialization routines to the sound system and m1 in Diggerman doesn't do it even though it looks like every other game duplicates some of the subroutines in sm1 to an extent in their sound driver. To me it screens homebrew since sm1 is automatically loaded into emulators during start up instead of a lost proto from a legit company. A legit company programming for the Neo-Geo in the heyday would have known that sm1 isn't present on AES and games pretty much had to be written to work on both systems whether or not they eventually got a home release.

If anyone owns the AES release of Diggerman, can they chime in and confirm whether or not the sound works?

If you want to replicate this test, you'll need a unibios and turn off hardware test. Pulling out the sm1 with a stock bios makes the board throw a z80 error.

 

[Xian Xi]

Rise from the dead with new info.

I managed to get my hands on a 4-slot that has a socketted sm1 to confirm whether or not the presence of sm1 is the reason why there is no sound on an 1c/1b. The whole real z80 thing on the 1c didn't make sense to me because the 1b has a real z80 and ym2610 and it still doesn't work on that board either. So I quickly made a Diggerman cart from the usual pile of puzzle bobble boots and threw it into the 4-slot. Sound works just fine. Popped off sm1 and the sound is gone. I threw in Aero Fighters 2 for good measure with sm1 removed and sound still works for that game. Put sm1 back in the socket and sound returns in Diggerman.

So it looks like sm1 does some initialization routines to the sound system and m1 in Diggerman doesn't do it even though it looks like every other game duplicates some of the subroutines in sm1 to an extent in their sound driver. To me it screens homebrew since sm1 is automatically loaded into emulators during start up instead of a lost proto from a legit company. A legit company programming for the Neo-Geo in the heyday would have known that sm1 isn't present on AES and games pretty much had to be written to work on both systems whether or not they eventually got a home release.

If anyone owns the AES release of Diggerman, can they chime in and confirm whether or not the sound works?

If you want to replicate this test, you'll need a unibios and turn off hardware test. Pulling out the sm1 with a stock bios makes the board throw a z80 error.

More proof that Diggerman is indeed a homebrew. But like you, I am still wondering about the AES version that was released.

 

[shadowkn55]

By the off chance, I decided to test out a couple copies of diggerman on some new cmvs builds. Strangely enough, I got sound on an MV-1C when playing in arcade mode. I tested this with unibios 3.1 and 3.2. Anyone else want to try it?

 

[Xian Xi]

Which MV1C was in the system?

 

[shadowkn55]

Which MV1C was in the system?

It's the original version with a serial in the 200k range. At first I tried it in a New Channel board (500k) and thought it was that but I tried an older board and it seems to work.

 

[JMKurtz]

Are people still beating this dead horse?

Diggerman is NOT a FACE game. Look up "Dangerous Dungeons" on KLOV and visit www.thegameroom.com too.

Really guys, I thought the discussion of the origin of this game was over...

Jeff

 

[shadowkn55]

Are people still beating this dead horse?

Diggerman is NOT a FACE game. Look up "Dangerous Dungeons" on KLOV and visit www.thegameroom.com too.

Really guys, I thought the discussion of the origin of this game was over...

Jeff

I don't think anyone is talking about whether or not this is a FACE game or not. At least not in the more recent posts.

 

[JMKurtz]

Ah, I see now, some of those posts are rather old

Still - why bother? (rhetorical question - not looking for an answer)

 

[shadowkn55]

Ah, I see now, some of those posts are rather old

Still - why bother? (rhetorical question - not looking for an answer)

Pure curiosity. I'm going through disassemblies of several games to see how they tick.