eeprom in my NITD: legit or boot ?

lovecraft

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Hi all,

I have an english Nightmare In The Dark white MVS cart, below is a pic of the boards.
I wonder if it's a boot, because unlike these, I have noticed there is one EEPROM chip (see the red arrow for the bottom board). Oddly, the eeprom window was not covered, so I have put a dark-purple sticker on it before shooting the pic. All other chips are Toshiba's.
Also, the title label on cart is glossy but not holographic like most late MVS carts.
So is this cart legit, any idea ? Thanks.

nitd2bxr3.jpg
 
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Kunio

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That's a 100% real one. It's a fix of some kind. There are no boots with Toshiba stamped mask roms as far as I know.
 

Circa2113

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Kunio said:
That's a 100% real one. It's a fix of some kind. There are no boots with Toshiba stamped mask roms as far as I know.

Ditto.

Anything with numbered toshibas is at the very least "partially legit" (ie: a fix, recycle, etc)
 

ttooddddyy

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It looks legit.

BTW The device is an eprom, not an eeprom which is electronicaly erasable.

eproms use uv light through the window ;)
 

lithy

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Kunio said:
That's a 100% real one. It's a fix of some kind. There are no boots with Toshiba stamped mask roms as far as I know.

Not entirely true, there are several Puzzle Bobble boots out there with mask roms from other games, World Heroes 2 is one that comes to mind.

This was done when you could ditch your WH2 and sell it as a Puzzle Bobble for much more money since the latter was a huge arcade success.

These mask roms are basically 'leftover' and unaccessed by the replaced copied M1 so they can be left on the board.

I did something similar when I made my Ghostlop, I left all of the Samurai Shodown 2 mask roms on the board that had no Ghostlop replacement.
 

Neo Alec

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lithy said:
Not entirely true, there are several Puzzle Bobble boots out there with mask roms from other games, World Heroes 2 is one that comes to mind.

This was done when you could ditch your WH2 and sell it as a Puzzle Bobble for much more money since the latter was a huge arcade success.

These mask roms are basically 'leftover' and unaccessed by the replaced copied M1 so they can be left on the board.

I did something similar when I made my Ghostlop, I left all of the Samurai Shodown 2 mask roms on the board that had no Ghostlop replacement.
That's a good point, but a rare exception. In that case, the majority of the roms on the board would most likely look replaced. I would say the above rule is true as long as the majority of the chips don't look unoriginal.

Frequently we see people posting pics of obviously authentic carts (like this one) on this message board, but panicking because of one or two suspicious chips. The rule about the Toshiba chips, especially those with the NGH number, is a good rule of thumb.
 

lovecraft

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Neo Alec said:
Frequently we see people posting pics of obviously authentic carts (like this one) on this message board, but panicking because of one or two suspicious chips. The rule about the Toshiba chips, especially those with the NGH number, is a good rule of thumb.

reason in my case is the pic in that link in which no eprom appears, and also because I heard some bootlegs were manufactured with high quality standards and modified SNK-brand boards. But I'm reassured to learn about the Toshiba rule.
 

lithy

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Neo Alec said:
That's a good point, but a rare exception. In that case, the majority of the roms on the board would most likely look replaced. I would say the above rule is true as long as the majority of the chips don't look unoriginal.

Frequently we see people posting pics of obviously authentic carts (like this one) on this message board, but panicking because of one or two suspicious chips. The rule about the Toshiba chips, especially those with the NGH number, is a good rule of thumb.

That's true, but then again it depends on what the persons idea of legit is. An op could have owned this cart and it died at some point and he had a rom burned and replaced to repair the cart.

In some sense its a bootleg in some sense its legit.

Of course when I was buying MVS carts I just didn't like eproms anyway so I stayed away even from the truly official SNK fixes of games that had these eproms like SS3, MOTW, and some others.
 

Neo Alec

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lithy said:
That's true, but then again it depends on what the persons idea of legit is. An op could have owned this cart and it died at some point and he had a rom burned and replaced to repair the cart.

In some sense its a bootleg in some sense its legit.

Of course when I was buying MVS carts I just didn't like eproms anyway so I stayed away even from the truly official SNK fixes of games that had these eproms like SS3, MOTW, and some others.
You're taking the meaning of "legit" to too much of an extreme if you won't accept one that's obviously real but has had something done. It's only not legit if a game is being made where there wasn't one before.

If you're worried that one rom has been re-burnt and replaced, I wonder what you'd think of my Turtles in Time board that I re-burnt from 2-player to the 4-player version. It's still a legit board, and the same rom chips I got with it. From the looks of it, it probably was a 4-player board to begin with that someone had changed to 2-players at some point. It's pointless to worry about this after the original labels on the roms have already been removed by someone else.
 

FalcomAdol

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If it has a majority of original chips in it, I'm not worried unless it's a hack. But you'll definitely find some interesting combinations even in legitimate carts.
 

lithy

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Neo Alec said:
You're taking the meaning of "legit" to too much of an extreme if you won't accept one that's obviously real but has had something done. It's only not legit if a game is being made where there wasn't one before.

If you're worried that one rom has been re-burnt and replaced, I wonder what you'd think of my Turtles in Time board that I re-burnt from 2-player to the 4-player version. It's still a legit board, and the same rom chips I got with it. From the looks of it, it probably was a 4-player board to begin with that someone had changed to 2-players at some point. It's pointless to worry about this after the original labels on the roms have already been removed by someone else.

Well there is a large difference (again, to me) between Neo carts which are mask roms and say something like CPS2 carts which are all eproms to being with. So to me a Phoenix CPS2 cart is as original as it was before.

Of course, this is probably all a little more philosophical than most people here care about. I was just saying that to me, I didn't like having 'repaired' carts. I actually traded my MOTW with 4 eproms + some cash for an all flash rom version.

For reference of this sort of argument :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_theseus
 

Neo Alec

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Yeah, you're right it does depend on the object. If I had a fairly common MVS cart of a game I like a lot, and it was heavily repaired, I might try to get a better one.
 

Neo Alec

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I wouldn't have a problem with that Nightmare in the Dark cart of yours if it was mine.
 

Fakk2

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lithy said:
Not entirely true, there are several Puzzle Bobble boots out there with mask roms from other games, World Heroes 2 is one that comes to mind.

This was done when you could ditch your WH2 and sell it as a Puzzle Bobble for much more money since the latter was a huge arcade success.

These mask roms are basically 'leftover' and unaccessed by the replaced copied M1 so they can be left on the board.

I did something similar when I made my Ghostlop, I left all of the Samurai Shodown 2 mask roms on the board that had no Ghostlop replacement.

Yuck, what the fuck? Are you serious? Why the hell would you do that? Utter laziness?
 

lithy

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Fakk2 said:
Yuck, what the fuck? Are you serious? Why the hell would you do that? Utter laziness?

You do realize that it does not affect the game in any way and in fact decreases the chance that I'll fuck up a trace somewhere with my soldering iron.

Less work, no adverse results, the better question is, what the hell is wrong with you?
 
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