King of Dragons - Reviving the CPS1 borad questions

[OCEAN]

Sakura's Bank Manager
Joined
Aug 14, 2003
Posts
747
Well, after one more stone in the road, I finally got this thing working properly!!!! Thanks guys for all the help.

So here's what I got: ordering he mask roms according to the different B-Board memory map and using the King Of Dragons KD29B PAL didn't work, BUT keeping that order AND using either Knights of the Round KR63B or Captain Commando's CC63B PALS it DID work.

Checking MAME's CPS1 driver it seems that PAL establishes the memory map for the mask roms, so I'm guessing either the KD29B pal is broken or it just isn't compatilbe with that type of B-Board (somehow misses the extra slots?). Since CCommando and KOTR use the same memory map I guess it makes sense.

Now, the damned thing still wasn't working 100% properly: one layer of background was missing as you can see in this pic:

IMG_2320.JPG

The graphics that were showing were correct, so I tried replacing the "fixed" eeproms from the dead battery society with the original "dead" ones one by one. It turns out that the game was working identically using th original KDE_31a or the "fixed" KDEX_31a from the ETC 910805 set. I re-burnt KDEX_31a to discard a problem with the eeprom and it did the same.

Finally I burnt the 32Mb 40pin ETC 910711 version and used it on slot 32 (34 in the original board). And, finally, everything works correctly!

photo(1).JPG

So, I'm guessing the KDE_31a fixed rom is wrong...or somehow that board just doesn't get along with it.

To summarize (in case anyone runs in a board like this one):

  • Got a working Captain Commando B-board with an original set of King of Dragons roms and C-Board in it.
  • "Revived" the board fixing the C-Board and using the ETC 910805 eeproms from the dead battery society, but the game didn't start
  • The B-Board was still carrying CCPRG, one of Captain Commando's 3 PALs
  • Replacing CCPRG with the BPRG1 PAL found in many other games made the game run, but with corrupted graphics
  • Altering the order of the maskroms to fit the different B-Board's memory map and replacing the KOD's KD29B PAL with CC63B or KR63B made graphics look fine, but with a missing layer
  • Using the 32Mbit fixed eeprom from set ETC 910711 instead of the 4 8Mbit ones from set ETC 910805 made the board work again

So, now I have a working King of Dragons set, but it needs a BPRG1 PAL and either CC63B or KR63B PALs to work. It would be ideal to get replacement ones, so I don't have to swap them from the other games every time I want to play.

Anyone knows of these PALs can be cloned in some way?

Thanks again for the help! :)
 

Pasky

Fug:DDDDD,
Joined
May 5, 2013
Posts
2,844
PAL dumps exist, there's an archive for them, just search the web. It's also possible to create your own if you know what you're doing. Then you can just burn them to a GAL16V8, which is basically a re-writable PAL, similar to what a FPGA is to a CPLD :P.
 

[OCEAN]

Sakura's Bank Manager
Joined
Aug 14, 2003
Posts
747
Great, just found it. Will try to burn a duplicate of those so I don't have to keep changing them between boards.

Thanks!

PAL dumps exist, there's an archive for them, just search the web. It's also possible to create your own if you know what you're doing. Then you can just burn them to a GAL16V8, which is basically a re-writable PAL, similar to what a FPGA is to a CPLD :P.
 
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