Neo Driftout conversion project questions. Mainly, boards.

I've done a fair amount of searching and haven't found what I'm looking for.

Now before this turns into a bitching about conversion's thread, I'll save the trouble:

I've got a neo driftout mvs that I opened up because its shell and label were suspect. Sure enough its a boot filled with eproms, pretty clean soldering job but the chips scream bootleg. It looks to be using world heroes 2 or world heroes 2 jet snk pcb's.

So onto a constructive discussion, no real snk cart was sac'd for this, the aes donor will be a loose world heroes 2 that i've got laying around. When I'm done i'll put the wh2 chips onto the wh2 mvs pcb's and still have 2 working games.

The mvs boards are:
NEO MVS PROGBK1, marked 1994
with v1, v2, and p1 chips for a total of 3 on that board. The pcm chip is a 9502 W35

2nd board:
NEO MVS CHA42G 3B
with c1, c2, c3, c4 m1 and s1 chips for a total of 6 on that board. It has a NEO ZMC on it


The aes WH2 board is NEO AEC CHA42G 3
It has c1, c2, c3, c4, c5, c6 m1, s1 that uses 4 less pins than are on board. It has a ZMC2 chip on it.

J1 and J4 are marked S and are open, J2 and J3 are closed and marked M. I'm guessing thats to tell the ZMC2 what size for banking? Switching to S instead of M for neo driftout would make it see the correct size roms?

The 2nd board for WH2 is:

NEO AEC PROG4096 B
It has V1, V2, and P1 for a total of 3 chips.
The PCM is a 9310 W95

Is the 9310 for 16meg sound and the 9502 for 32meg? With a direct swap over would I have to change jumpers so its not trying to address the 2nd half or does it even matter?

I can post some pictures of both sets of boards later, (camera battery is charging atm).

Neo driftout is smaller in meg count (106 as opposed to 146 for WH2). Although NDO is from 1996 and WH2 is from 1993. Any potential problems there?

In my experience forget the 42Gs. Find a CHA256.

I know a cha256 from a ss2 would be a easier way to do it. However if I can better understand the banking on the different boards it would open the options for sac games. Besides the guy I got the wh2 from couldn't find the case or manual, plus they are just as or more common than ss2.

There is only a handful of games I would like to convert: NDO, panic bomber, puzzle bobble, etc...that are only on mvs. The converters bring in those nasty scaling artifacts, atleast on the phantom 1 I own. I have 3 cabs, but when you want to take the neo somewhere its alot easier to tote around a aes than a consolized mvs. ( I have a nice soft padded case that fits a aes, hookups and a couple carts perfectly.

With the 42Gs you have to flip the data in the roms iirc. So if you're using legit chips instead of eproms it isn't possible.

Technically without official SNK mask ROMs, you wouldn't have a conversion. You would have a reproduction cart, which around these parts could also be synonymous with the word "bootleg". In normal home console communities though, reproductions are different from pirate carts.

I had thought of Neo Drift Out conversion too at some point... The pictures of Neo Satellite's copy's PCBs offered some insight on what possible boards could be used. CHA board was CHA512Y and PRG was PROGBK1Y. I saved the pictures because they looked nice.

Although the chips are already on a 42g-3b board on mvs, the wh2 cart is a 42g-3. Wouldn't that mean the data has already been flipped if its fully funtional on the boot mvs?

Hmm...I could dump and reburn the chips if needed I suppose. I can get access to a burner and a reflow station.


I looked up neo satellites picture. It just seems like a waste to use a cha512y for such a small meg count game, the 512's were used iirc on last blade 1 and later games. On tiptonium's site he uses a char256b and PROGTOP2 from a SS2.

If the chips are off similar boards then it should be a straight swap.

Don't turn a real AES cart into a bootleg. You made a big deal in your first post like you're doing the right thing, but actually you're doing this exactly the wrong way. Since the materials you're using are suspect to begin with, this probably won't even be a reliable finished product.

On a similar note, why bother with pirate cart EPROMs when you can just burn them yourself? Still yeah, usually best to go with mask ROMs since they last for a very long time and in general are extremely reliable.

sat985 said:

There is only a handful of games I would like to convert: NDO, panic bomber, puzzle bobble, etc...that are only on mvs. The converters bring in those nasty scaling artifacts, atleast on the phantom 1 I own.

Click to expand...

You can fix your converter:
http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showt...-1-Upgrade-board-Install-For-P1-users-Revised.

The neo driftout is using WH2 boards with the chips replaced with NDO....so to take a aes WH2 and swap it to the same pcb's for mvs doesn't matter....the label is already fake anyway...and the AES label has seen better days.

On a sidenote, since they belong to me and are not forsale, what business of yours is it to tell me what I can and cannot do with my own property?
That is something dictators in 3rd world country's do....

As for the 'reliable finished product', I think it will be a 'reliable finished project' when i'm finished.

The phantom is nice, I just don't think anything will fix the minor dot or two I see from scaling. It was one of the last made and i've tested it with 600+meg/encrypted ones and they work.

Main reason for the conversion is to not have to bring my open pcb phantom around and not have a foot tall setup sticking out of the cart slot. Aside from that, its a learning experience.

sat985 said:

On a sidenote, since they belong to me and are not forsale, what business of yours is it to tell me what I can and cannot do with my own property?
That is something dictators in 3rd world country's do....

Click to expand...

Well if you want to get technical, actually the game program for Neo Driftout is stolen, since it's a bootleg copy.

I have actually worked with eproms for a number of years now, and they can be remarkably reliable if you take the simple precaution of just covering up the window with a strip of electrical tape. Personally, I'm interested to hear how it works out for you, as I've been meaning to do a little experimenting with the cartridge PCBs from a few of my own boots / unwanted MVS carts.