CPS2 - How to determine a boot?
- Thread starter mmsadda
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Really? I don't think that's correct - in fact there's one for sale here right now that's a bootleg, that I believe has the plastic case. It seems one could EASILY throw a bootleg in a proper plastic housing for another case, and tear the label off (or make a fake label, which wouldn't be too suspect, as those labels peel off with relative ease)
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Plastic case doesn't determine it as a non boot. Progear boots are easy to point out as they'll be full of eeproms and have no CPS3 SIMMS in.
Its pretty easy once you've seen a few, and to be honest, it hardly happens except with progear. Just buy the games you like and enjoy them.
Plastic case doesn't determine it as a non boot. Progear boots are easy to point out as they'll be full of eeproms and have no CPS3 SIMMS in.
Its pretty easy once you've seen a few, and to be honest, it hardly happens except with progear. Just buy the games you like and enjoy them.
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Thats true, but in progears case, it uses surplus CPS3 flash SIMMS, if you look at an original progear, and a boot, they are totally different. I guess a boot progear basically looks like a normal CPS2 game but with rewritten eeproms, so ..yeah.
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Gotcha. I think I've got a pretty good idea now. I'll use the Capcom stickers as a means of checking. Though, as Kern/Bobak said, most of the games are similar enough in value that people don't really seem to make a whole lot of boots.
Thanks guys!
Thanks guys!
voltronbadass
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mainman mentioned to me that the only boots he has ever seen are progear and SF anniversary
So most other games I don't worry about
So most other games I don't worry about
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Ask on AO
Plastic case doesn't determine it as a non boot. Progear boots are easy to point out as they'll be full of eeproms and have no CPS3 SIMMS in.
Its pretty easy once you've seen a few, and to be honest, it hardly happens except with progear. Just buy the games you like and enjoy them.
Official U.S progears DO have eproms instead of mask roms, the only way to catch a boot blue progear is to just plain avoid a blue board that is phoenixed or not sold in a whole kit. All green progear use cps3 simms however.
A official true blue SSF2T has banks of 4meg eproms instead of mask roms, same with sports club, rockman 1 and a few others. But the plain truth is the vast majority of cps 2 games use mask roms, if you have a MVC, D&D2 with eproms then you have a boot. The vast majority of boot are SF anniversary and progears. I have rarely seem other boots such as AVP
All orange boards I have ever owned are what I call South American special because Capcom South America would do conversion using cheap flash roms then boot the board with official encrytion
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I've seen a few CPS2 conversions posing as legit copies coming from Hong Kong that have a daughter board soldered across several sockets in place of the program roms. These are either a conversion from one game into a rarer one with a fake label slapped on the case. The label usually doesn't pass close inspection, but I would imagine it could. In some cases they actually convert a game to the same game with this daughter board method. These conversions are always the phoenix version of the game since they can sell it for more.
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Is this thinking mob mentality, the only difference is missing vocals in the U.S version. I'm going to let you in on a secret, the blue version is more reliable for the long run as the green based version simms have flash roms which are more susceptible to damage, it uses 2 type of flash roms one of which can not be sourced for replacement and on top of that requires understanding of how the data is organized if you do have the replacement parts, not to mention the needed programmer and adapter. If you ever had simms on cps3 boards go bad like me, you know where I am coming from, keep in mind I WAS NOT constantly re flashing the simms with new games when they went bad on me.
I would love to get my hands on a blue kit. By the way Bobak, its just eprom, a eeprom is a totally different device.
At this stage in the game I wouldn't even trust coin-op express
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Its easy to spot one but firstly you have to decide what you class as a bootleg. For me that can be a legit CPS2 'b' board that has had the game changed and uses a phoenix edition type fix to work. I want to point out that there are buchered phoenix edition versions out there that do not have the splash screen so its harder to spot. Easy signs to look for is manual soldering around the PALs, and non standard mask ROMs for gfx and sound.
You cannot really look at the soldering of the jumpers as a clue as those are done manually when Capcom change games.
You cannot really look at the soldering of the jumpers as a clue as those are done manually when Capcom change games.
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But only one pal needs to be changed and that one is always socketed. Yeap sorry raz a lot of people have butchered your work, I think the most popular name for your phoenix files without the splash screen is called stealth edition. These hacked phoenix files are used in combination with OTP roms and actual having the battery still on the board for added effect even though it doing nothing. These boards are the high end boot and will fool the vast majority except the experts.
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WilalvesBR
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Some original B-boards doesn't have the official Capcom stickers on the EPROMS:
Handwritten labels are also common on some original B-boards:
Some B-boards were oficially converted/relabeled but kept the sticker of the previous game intact on the plastic case.
In this case i found a D&D2 and a X-men sticker under the Marvel vs Capcom sticker.
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Some original B-boards doesn't have the official Capcom stickers on the EPROMS:
Handwritten labels are also common on some original B-boards:
Some B-boards were oficially converted/relabeled but kept the sticker of the previous game intact on the plastic case.
In this case i found a D&D2 and a X-men sticker under the Marvel vs Capcom sticker.
The mask roms in 95 percent of all cases are the tell-tell. Capcom did all type of crazy things in house, my Megaman 2 blue board which was built at capcom U.S was a conversion that was built wrong because the jumpers were incorrect and I had to fix them
TheGreenMachine
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Don't forget fake serial labels.
Sometimes operators remove legitimate serial labels before selling B boards, just like they scratch the serials on MVS carts. However, there is absolutely no reason to put a fake serial label onto a B board unless you are trying to deceive someone into thinking it is real.
- TGM
Sometimes operators remove legitimate serial labels before selling B boards, just like they scratch the serials on MVS carts. However, there is absolutely no reason to put a fake serial label onto a B board unless you are trying to deceive someone into thinking it is real.
- TGM
Dion
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I don't have any pics but some legit b boards used some kind of mini flash pcbs for each rom (11-20) instead of mask roms. Not the daughter boards that HK boots used. I can get pics later if needed. I've seen a DD2 use these twice.
I've seen the fake serial labels before. Not on a boot either. What's the point?
If you buy any b boards from South America its possible you'll find all sorts of crazy things inside. I've gotten carts that had been relabeled and converted three or four times with all the labels still stacked on top of each other. Japanese carts reflashed with hispanic code. They even used japanese motherboard also. And yes I even found some with improper jumpers which I had to play with to fix.
I've seen the fake serial labels before. Not on a boot either. What's the point?
If you buy any b boards from South America its possible you'll find all sorts of crazy things inside. I've gotten carts that had been relabeled and converted three or four times with all the labels still stacked on top of each other. Japanese carts reflashed with hispanic code. They even used japanese motherboard also. And yes I even found some with improper jumpers which I had to play with to fix.
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Something you can look for to detect a phoenixed game thats had the splash screen removed is to go into test mode and do the memory check. Firstly the phoenix edition changes the test to check the entire program ROM space and not 1 byte in every 4096. This means on most games (not all however) the EPROM test takes a few seconds for each program ROM. So if you see that then its a good indicator its a modified phoenix edition, the test for the program ROMs is almost instant with the original games.
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Hey guys, I recently picked up a Progear USA version locally. Can you help me determine whether it's legit?
I had to cut the capcom warranty labels over the security bolts to open it up. At first I tried to peal them back, but they started to separate, so I went ahead and cut them. There's no daughter board with CPSIII SIMMs, consistent with what mainman wrote earlier. It had a Toshiba battery installed (I went ahead and changed it). A couple of other strange things are that the eprom labels are all hand-written, and there is a strange wire running on the backside of the board to one of the PAL chips.
When I start the board, it boots normally without a phoenix splash screen. I read Razoola's post about the stealth phoenix chips and memory test. When I run the memory test, it takes about 11-12 seconds total and when it gets to the PROGRAM ROM 0 and PROGRAM ROM 1, those tests fly by almost instantly.
I had to cut the capcom warranty labels over the security bolts to open it up. At first I tried to peal them back, but they started to separate, so I went ahead and cut them. There's no daughter board with CPSIII SIMMs, consistent with what mainman wrote earlier. It had a Toshiba battery installed (I went ahead and changed it). A couple of other strange things are that the eprom labels are all hand-written, and there is a strange wire running on the backside of the board to one of the PAL chips.
When I start the board, it boots normally without a phoenix splash screen. I read Razoola's post about the stealth phoenix chips and memory test. When I run the memory test, it takes about 11-12 seconds total and when it gets to the PROGRAM ROM 0 and PROGRAM ROM 1, those tests fly by almost instantly.
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