Universe Bios 3.2 released!

[Pasky]

Is the communication protocol documented anywhere?

 

[mikew]

Is the communication protocol documented anywhere?

No, it's proprietary. The neogeo firmware, USB device firmware, and PC clients are closed source.

 

[Pasky]

Ah, after seeing this post:

http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showt...n-working-on&p=3650979&viewfull=1#post3650979

I understand exactly what's going on now. Just a way to cash in on piracy I guess. $150 for a small pcb with nothing more than what appears to be a ft232r or ft2232h. I just want to upload code to my MVS.

I'll look into a different method to achieve my goal by either editing the palette on a game I have using eproms already or checking out the devkit and making a simple bootable game on eproms.

 

[mikew]

Im afraid your completely wrong. It's for development purposes and does not use simple ftdi or any other hobbyist grade devices. Good luck though, I wish you all the luck in your project.

 

[Pasky]

Im afraid your completely wrong. It's for development purposes and does not use simple ftdi or any other hobbyist grade devices. Good luck though, I wish you all the luck in your project.

Sir,

This is the epitomy of hobbyist:

An etched, single sided pcb, with a six pin debug header, and the AVR microcontroller (most likely atmega with how the crystal pins are lined up) with the part # photoshopped out. You're not fooling anyone hiding under the guise of development charging that much for such simple items. Either way, thanks for the encouragement, I'll look elsewhere.

 

[Pedrobear]

Well to be fair the current version is more like this

Maybe it could be a bit less expensive but having PCB done and fitted isn't exactly cheap either when you are only doing a handful of them.

 

[Pasky]

So the only thing that changed was there appears to be a NRF24L01 (not hobbyist parts, but buys an off the shelf arduino part) for wireless (to program it wirelessly I assume, pretty cool idea) and 2 245 octal buffers (74 series logic) and the AVR chip changed.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/10PCS-Ardui...271?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item27c59c2557

PCB's aren't much at that size.

Even with oshpark you're gonna pay just $5 per square inch. I'm not trying to shoot the project down, do what you need to do, but be up front about it at least.

 

[mikew]

Well to be fair the current version is more like this

Maybe it could be a bit less expensive but having PCB done and fitted isn't exactly cheap either when you are only doing a handful of them.

Thanks Pedrobear. Pasky, again, you've got it all wrong and you really need to look elsewhere.

 

[Jibbajaba]

I understand exactly what's going on now. Just a way to cash in on piracy I guess.

You'd have to be a pretty huge dipshit to spend over $200 on a device that uploads games to a system for which you can readily burn copies of retail games without the need of a mod chip, just because the games load a bit faster.

For use in homebrew development, OTOH, $200 is a reasonable price to pay for a tool like that.

Quite frankly, you sound like you're just butthurt because you want MikeW to divulge his secrets in order to help you build a device for pirating MVS games.

 

[Pasky]

Yes, I'm extremely butt hurt over a device that cannot exist due to limitations razoola stated himself, in that data can only be written to RAM in the MVS and AES... You got me. Darn.

 

[Jibbajaba]

Yes, I'm extremely butt hurt over a device that cannot exist due to limitations razoola stated himself, in that data can only be written to RAM in the MVS and AES... You got me. Darn.

Yeah. Because "I want to make my MVS display solid colors of red, green, and blue" is a waaaaaay more plausible explanation.

Spoiler:

Fag.

 

[Pasky]

Yeah. Because "I want to make my MVS display solid colors of red, green, and blue" is a waaaaaay more plausible explanation.

Spoiler:

Fag.

http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?253220-MV-1C-Vp-p-values

This was the PM I wrote to razoola TODAY, I wasn't even aware of the PC-2-NEO until he replied:

I was wondering if it would be possible to make a color test screen on your unibios which simply displays the entire screen as red, blue, or green. I'd like to use an oscilloscope to measure the vp-p levels on a mv-1c board so that the maximum output values can be documented for everyone to know. I'm not sure how much work this would be, but I don't have the tools necessary to make a 'dev board' to do this myself. Would this be possible and relatively easy for you to provide? Thank you.

You're a fool if you think you can't reverse engineer a serial bus with a simple logic analyzer or Razoola's windows program (which I have no intention of doing either), this has nothing to do with wanting to copy his work as I have no interest in such matters, I don't care about pirating MVS carts. Not to mention, you'd actually need Razoola's own code which is on a CD to even attempt this. I truly wanted to help the community.

Spoiler:

<3

 

[Razoola]

Pesky, I have a simple solution that may help you. Put unibios into Japan arcade mode. As soon as the Japanese warning comes up go into the ingame menu patch option. Patch address 0x400002 and 0x400003 to change text color. Patch 0x400004 and 0x400005 to change background color. Then exit ingame menu, screen will stay that color you set until the Japan warning is cleared.

 

[Pasky]

Pesky, I have a simple solution that may help you. Put unibios into Japan arcade mode. As soon as the Japanese warning comes up go into the ingame menu patch option. Patch address 0x400002 and 0x400003 to change text color. Patch 0x400004 and 0x400005 to change background color. Then exit ingame menu, screen will stay that color you set until the Japan warning is cleared.

Thank you Razoola. Which game is this? I'm unable to get a Japanese warning logo without a cart in. I'm assuming you forgot to mention the game? I'm not getting any warning with a cart.

I tried something similar by going to palette editor in SVC chaos, however when changing the background at FF-F it was immediately overwritten. The same when using the unibios patch to patch 0x403FFF manually, you can't set it static while leaving the patch menu and it would immediately overwrite it.

EDIT:

Got it with Samurai Shodown II

 

[Pasky]

Perfect! Thank you!

 

[Razoola]

Vales to use I think will be;

0x4F00 = Red
0x20F0 = Green
0x100F = Blue

Raz

 

[Pasky]

Correct.

There also appears to be a bug in the Unibios 3.1 Patch system. It's writing word values as opposed to bytes (for instance 0x4F in the patch menu was writing purple 0x4F4F in the XRGB space). Verified this using the main memory viewer. Unsure if this was caught and fixed in 3.2. Downgrading to 2.3 I was able to achieve the colors I wanted

 

[Razoola]

That's strange, I don't get that issue here with 3.1. I also checked the source its defo writing bytes only.

 

[Pasky]

That's strange, I don't get that issue here with 3.1. I also checked the source its defo writing bytes only.

Not sure what the issue is then. This 3.1 was downloaded from your site yesterday. This is done on a MV-1C using 3.1 right now.

EDIT:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/slokvptkrmcgl38/unibios_issue.MKV

 

[Razoola]

I have tried many times I cannot get what you are seeing to happen even though the video show it. I even looked the free version and can confirm its only writing a byte. If it were a word the neogeo would crash when you tried to write to 400003

 

[mikew]

You're a fool if you think you can't reverse engineer a serial bus with a simple logic analyzer or Razoola's windows program

You're a fool if you think data is transferred between PC2NEO and the Neo using a serial bus! Razoola's windows program uses USB 2.0 Bulk data transfers, I suppose that protocol by definition is serial, differential serial of course at 480mbits. Is this what you suggest is simple to reverse engineer?

 

[Pasky]

You're a fool if you think data is transferred between PC2NEO and the Neo using a serial bus! Razoola's windows program uses USB 2.0 Bulk data transfers, I suppose that protocol by definition is serial, differential serial of course at 480mbits. Is this what you suggest is simple to reverse engineer?

No. I was referring the protocol used by the LPT version. I have no interest in reverse engineering any of this.

I have tried many times I cannot get what you are seeing to happen even though the video show it. I even looked the free version and can confirm its only writing a byte. If it were a word the neogeo would crash when you tried to write to 400003

I was using a Samurai Shodown II cart if that makes any difference. I didn't check the CRC so unsure what region it was, and I know for a fact it's a legit board with all mask roms, so it's not an issue with hacked roms or anything like that. I'll check when I get home. I'm unsure if it happens in any other games.

 

[gamerwhat]

If i remove and put back in the same mvs bios does it reset everything?

 

[Razoola]

no, you need to reset the backup RAM for that.

 

[gamerwhat]

And if i swap it for a different region/revision or aes bios, will it reset?