KoF '99 + Altera chip daughter board

wyo

wyo

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What's the deal with this?

SCAN0503.JPGSCAN0504.JPG
 
aha2940

aha2940

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Your cart uses both P roms (P1 and P2). I checked my KoF99 cart and it has the exact same boards, but the second P ROM is PG2, not P2. I guess somebody had to replace that chip and needed to decrypt it, the way they found to do it was soldering an Altera chip the way you see it. Everything else looks right (which you already knew, I'm sure).

Regards.

Edit: I just checked mvd-scans and it seems the ROM used was either a P2 or a PG2, so my theory is wrong. Sorry.
 
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wyo

wyo

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Yeah, it's weird. I have other copies that appears to be exactly the same, only without the daughter board.
 
aha2940

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Question: Are you able/willing to remove the daughterboard and post a pic of it here? maybe taking a look at it, and knowing how it is connected (3rd pic) somebody here can help understand what it is for.

Regards.
 
wyo

wyo

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aha2940 said:
Question: Are you able/willing to remove the daughterboard and post a pic of it here? maybe taking a look at it, and knowing how it is connected (3rd pic) somebody here can help understand what it is for.

Regards.
Click to expand...

I'd prefer not to but if no one chimes in over the next week I will do it in the interest of science.
 
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SNKorSWM

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That certainly doesn't look like a repair, and everything else looks original. Does the game run any differently from the other copies without the daughter board?
 
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julencin2000

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It's not a first, as it looks:

http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?18876-ALTERA-MAX-chips-amp-MVS-carts!! (two posts thread only)

Razoola here refers to this thing as some decryption thing.

leonardoliveira (decryption CPS2) refers here to Altera chips and MVS carts.

@ neogeodev:
Some carts like King of Fighters '98 - Dream Match Never Ends had Altera MAX CPLDs as protection devices.
Click to expand...
https://wiki.neogeodev.org/index.php?title=MVS_cartridge


So my money is on: legit cart, decryption thing.
 
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wyo

wyo

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SNKorSWM said:
That certainly doesn't look like a repair, and everything else looks original. Does the game run any differently from the other copies without the daughter board?
Click to expand...

Not that I can tell.
 
mikejmoffitt

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The Altera MAX is a CPLD, and it looks like it is connected to all of the lines of the ROM chip (I am assuming the left side of pins is connected on the other side). Likely it is there as hardware decryption, and it may do checks to be sure it is read the correct way so a bootlegger can't simply read the ROM "through" the decoder to dump it unencrypted.
 
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