Something I've been working on.

Razoola

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As promised more videos showing current status....

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video above show normal CD bios with pc-2-neo embedded loading from PC with a game CD present. CD audio tracks play



video above show normal CD bios with pc-2-neo embedded loading from PC with no game CD present



video above shows modded universe bios running on the CD system. In game CD loading and CD audio is not supported but almost everything else works as intended. There are some issues as the video shows.

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As you can see progress has been made since the first video. I Want to point out these videos have not been edited so you get an idea of the current upload speeds through a single joystick port. The unibios and cdbios (with pc2neo embedded) sit in a single 512KB EPROM. We managed this by compressing data on in the original 512KB CD bios. This gives the ability to switch between bios with a switch.

If you have not already guessed the purpose for these bios is not to play games but as a dev tool for homebrew etc. That said the bios does give the ability to load games on a system with broken CD drive.
 

wyndcrosser

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How is the bios attached to the neo geo cd, NeoMasta socket? Very Cool, I thought the bios changes for Neo Geo CD were "stalled". very cool Raz again.

Thanks
 

Razoola

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Yes with the Neobios Masta, Brian has given us a couple for this project which has helped greatly.
 

mikew

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How is the bios attached to the neo geo cd, NeoMasta socket?Thanks

Yes, Neoturfmasta was very helpful in providing the NBM sockets required to replace the BIOS. The current hardware has an NBM socket with a 6" ribbon cable which attaches to a 40-PIN DIP socket. Having the ribbon cable greatly improves the ability to switch 27C400 eproms in and out when testing.
 

NeoTurfMasta

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I may redesign the CD NBM once this is all complete. To help with getting around cutting a hole in the shielding AND adding a memory card slot.
 

massimiliano

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awesome work guys! Thanks a lot for keeping coming!
 

mastamuzz

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I may redesign the CD NBM once this is all complete. To help with getting around cutting a hole in the shielding AND adding a memory card slot.

If I remember correctly you did a MC test already with satisfactory results and posted the process in another thread right? but there were too many cables soldered to the IM on the cd system, have you come up with something to make it user friendly?

I am very interested on that too!

@ Raz

any plans on a NGcd-UB for games? development is great but would be awesome to have a UB for games too!
 
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Razoola

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No plans for unibios in CD games at this time. I see no point to be honest as the main features can be done with pc2neo including region switching. You can patch cheats in the game code directly instead of wasting cycles paching RAM.
 

kuk

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Hello, very interesting project, i will command one .D
so have you test some no CD game like Andro Dunos , Eight Man etc ?
have they the bug we can have in the homebrew cd conversion game ?
 

mikew

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so have you test some no CD game like Andro Dunos , Eight Man etc ?
?

Yes, in fact one of our earliest demos was Andro Dunos playing, check the 1st message in this thread :) This was done before Raz added the PC-2-NEO code into the bios so the initial loader booted from CD.

have they the bug we can have in the homebrew cd conversion game ?
?

What bug are you referring to?
 

mikew

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andro dunos are not a good exemple because we have no bug in the cd convertion
i list all the bug here (in french but we said bug too...)

I only mentioned Andro Dunos because it was the 1st game you asked about in your previous post. The replacement bios is more for testing homebrew software in a development cycle so more emphasis has been spent testing testing dev related features vs. testing existing games made for the NGCD. That said, the NGCD games I've tested seem to work fine.
 

NeoTurfMasta

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If I remember correctly you did a MC test already with satisfactory results and posted the process in another thread right? but there were too many cables soldered to the IM on the cd system, have you come up with something to make it user friendly?

Yeah the memory card works fine on it. I never made a PCB for the memory card so the wires you saw were just the test. When I make the new PCB, all it will require will be 3 solder points on the board total for the bios and memory card.

edit: found pic

cdznsm.JPG
 
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Tempest

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No plans for unibios in CD games at this time. I see no point to be honest as the main features can be done with pc2neo including region switching. You can patch cheats in the game code directly instead of wasting cycles paching RAM.
How do you do something like this? My biggest problem with the CD versions of games is that you get limited credits.
 

Razoola

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You do it by poking into memory the number of credits you want.
 

mastamuzz

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all it will require will be 3 solder points on the board total for the bios and memory card.

that is user friendly! awesome B.

NSM, MC board and the PC2NEO is all the love I need for the cd system, thanks guys!

@ Raz & Mikew

so basically the PC2Neo transforms a cd system into a Dev system making it incapable of running cd games right?

@ NTM

if that is correct about the system capabilities, could there be a switch to enable the original BIOS when needed for the new cdNBM?
 
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NeoTurfMasta

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if that is correct about the system capabilities, could there be a switch to enable the original BIOS when needed for the new cdNBM?

I do plan on having a switch that will allow you to select the original bios. Depending on which way I got, it may require another wire to be soldered down.
 

mikew

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@ Raz & Mikew
so basically the PC2Neo transforms a cd system into a Dev system making it incapable of running cd games right?

The new bios contains both the original bios and the MVS dev Unibios on the same rom. A switch connected to the rom presents either the MVS or the original bios. The original bios has been enhanced to add the pc2neo features allowing either uploads from USB or normal CD loading. In MVS mode the NGCD behaves like an MVS system with the same capabilities as the universe bios with the added ability to upload code to all regions of memory.
 

mikew

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But without a Universe BIOS for the CD, how do you do this?

By using the pc-2-neo capabilities which have been added to the original CD bios. This was not designed to be a Universe BIOS for playing CD games so you would need to know the memory regions you were modifying. On the other hand, if you use the MVS bios mode you can use the same in-game universe bios menu's assuming the game you have loaded fits in NGCD memory. This can be seen in the Puzzle Bobble video in this post.
 

Razoola

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After having short break from working on this we have got back to it. Some issues have been resolved and now we are getting speeds of 172kb/s. Its now much faster than loading from CD :)

What we need to do now is finalise the PCB design, currently there is no way to attach a 2up neogeo stick at the same time so we need to add that in I feel. Once that's done I think it will be complete.
 

xsq

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Good to hear you're still on it Razoola. Once it is complete this is going to be great ;)

Gives me a reason to start actively looking for a Neo CD again. Awesome work, Raz!

Totally signed. Can't wait for this!
 

rcantor77

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Great work Raz... looking forward to hearing more about this one.
Might finally be able to make some use of the couple of old CD units I have in the loft with fekked CD drives. :buttrock:
 
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