Lost Neo Geo Prototype FOUND, REVEALED & RELEASED : "DarkSeed"

NeoSneth

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Dont need Neo news to hang out as an oldtymer. Come to "Unrelated"
also. NTM is the man.
 

Electric Grave

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Sounds like an 80s hair band.

fku0yb.jpg
 

Fygee

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Good fucking hell, her shoulder armor is bigger than her entire body!

She must have gotten it from a World of Warcraft raid.
 

NeoHomeBrew

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http://i.imgur.com/IWu9LNo.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/jYwvoQH.jpg

I bought this board back in March last year. It was the first time I have come across a Dev board for sale that actually had the flash cards included. Looking at the auction I knew I could at least dump the 2 eproms that were on the board and I was immediately worried about the 2 Adtek SRAM cards. If this board was from the 90s, there was a high likelyhood that the batteries were dead (but more on that later). The Panasonic cards are Linear Flash and I was pretty confident that the data would be in tact if I could figure out how to dump them.

Earlier while I was waiting for the board to be delivered, I bought a few similar sized SRAM and different branded Flash cards to learn a bit about them. Bought various software and hardware that I hoped would dump it. Did some test dumps/reads from these cards and I was pretty confident I could dump them. I already had experience with SRAM cards, so I wasnt worried about that. I finally get around to dumping the Flash cards and varified that the dumps match the data on the cards.

Thank you for sharing the SNK Development PCBs pics and your description how you have dumped the data. It is awesome to finally see high resolution photos of the mysterious X3002 boards. I have only read about this board type in the SNK Programming Guide before(http://www.neohomebrew.com/forum-pics/2016/snk-x3002-development-pcb-board.png) and it is unbelievable that it is still complete (PROG+CHAR boards).

If you have the time, could you please share some more information about the PCBs? Are the boards still working? You wrote that you have found a way to read the content of the SRAM cards and the Linear Flash cards, how did you do it in detail and are you may also able to write new data to similar cards and load different game roms?
 

NeoTurfMasta

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The board still works 100%. It's how I found out that the flash cards were labeled wrong. I also have an earlier similar dev board: http://i.imgur.com/NH8AYsw.jpg

This one only allows PCMCIA cards for the program data. The rest of the data is stored on many eproms. What I like about this particular board is it has the linking capability.

As far as divulging how I dumped the data, I'm keeping that a secret at the moment. I can write data to similar cards and run different Neo games. The problem is finding the Linear Flash cards that are compatible for a reasonable price. This board is pretty picky with brand, chip type, etc. I have spent quite a bit of time and purchased several different memory cards to narrow down what this is compatible with.
 

Snkers

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Totally incredible. Or, in-creh-dee-bull. The SKYCURSER team and I were showing our game off at the Midwest Gaming Classic and all of sudden I hear NTM is about to unveil some insane Neo proto. Needless to say, it sucked my attention away from my own shit ultra quick. Huge thanks to NeoTurfMasta for the hard work. Amazing.

Anyway, haven't posted in years. And, this was once a burner account. Came out for wild shit. Love you all.

- Phil
 

Shito

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It's truly lucky for everyone that such a unique piece of history just ended up in the good hands of a rare, passionate connoisseur of the NeoGeo AND a tech expert.

Amazing job, dear fellow NTM. Thanks and congrats to you. :-)
 

TonK

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it still was good having you in the room with us during the unveiling.



ive been checking in to make sure they would be the very last people to report on this. they were. the only news they seem interested in when it is breaking is wooden cmvs's, fake protos with nostalgia names attached, and tumblrina art projects.

Fuck Kotaku.
 

NeoTurfMasta

DANCE DANCE KARNOV!,
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Thank you for sharing the SNK Development PCBs pics and your description how you have dumped the data. It is awesome to finally see high resolution photos of the mysterious X3002 boards. I have only read about this board type in the SNK Programming Guide before(http://www.neohomebrew.com/forum-pics/2016/snk-x3002-development-pcb-board.png) and it is unbelievable that it is still complete (PROG+CHAR boards).

Here are some higher resolution pics of the boards. I scaled them down for this thread. 5MB each:
http://i.imgur.com/rW7Onjd.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/mGGMQMH.jpg

Also, since you are familiar with the Programming Guide, here is a pic of the Adtek memory card reader that it recommends purchasing.
http://i.imgur.com/xEOnZj7.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/gwc8PTj.jpg
 

NeoTurfMasta

DANCE DANCE KARNOV!,
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Totally incredible. Or, in-creh-dee-bull. The SKYCURSER team and I were showing our game off at the Midwest Gaming Classic and all of sudden I hear NTM is about to unveil some insane Neo proto. Needless to say, it sucked my attention away from my own shit ultra quick. Huge thanks to NeoTurfMasta for the hard work. Amazing.

Anyway, haven't posted in years. And, this was once a burner account. Came out for wild shit. Love you all.

- Phil

It was great talking to you guys again this year. Whenever you guys are ready for the home market, I'm totally buying myself a kit.
 

NeoHomeBrew

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Posts
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The board still works 100%. It's how I found out that the flash cards were labeled wrong. I also have an earlier similar dev board: http://i.imgur.com/NH8AYsw.jpg

This one only allows PCMCIA cards for the program data. The rest of the data is stored on many eproms. What I like about this particular board is it has the linking capability.

As far as divulging how I dumped the data, I'm keeping that a secret at the moment. I can write data to similar cards and run different Neo games.


Thanks a lot for the additional photos (finding the ADTEK IC card reader is awesome too ;) ).
Yes, of course I have seen your other dev board already, it seems to be the X0007-EPIC0, right? It is interesting that it uses a different memory card type.

I am glad to read that the X3002 boards are still working after all this time (and could maybe re-produced one day?).
Would you say that using IC cards was a "real" advancement for SNK compared to the use of EPROMs in regards to writing speed and handling?
 
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NeoTurfMasta

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Thanks a lot for the additional photos (finding the ADTEK IC card reader is awesome too ;) ).
Yes, of course I have seen your other dev board already, it seems to be the X0007-EPIC0, right? It is interesting that it uses a different memory card type.

I am glad to read that the X3002 boards are still working after all this time (and could maybe re-produced one day?).
Would you say that using IC cards was a "real" advancement for SNK compared to the use of EPROMs in regards to writing speed and handling?

I guarantee that these cards made life much easier. The downside is that they were pretty damn expensive back then.

The different thing about this particular X3002 is the Char board has that header on the back that I assume would hook to their dev computer. The test menu has options that allow you to load and save directly to the Character cards. Maybe this particular board was directly connected to their custom art station for immediate loading of their work in progress.

Someone has yet to find and document SNK's custom art station. I'd love to see exactly how that worked.
 

Razoola

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For sure it makes things easier, it was standard practice to have hook up to other equipment for fast loading/saving on the fly during the game creation process (I'm sure there is the ability to upload to the P2 region on some dev Neo Geo boards also). Not just arcade games did this but it was the same way on other gaming platforms also.
 
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KRONOS

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Pardon my ignorance. Is all the game's info contained on the PCMCIA cards and the PCB like a blank RAM container that anything can be put in? Or, does the PCB contain chips with data that is necessary to support this particular game? For example, if you had different game data on the PCMCIA cards could you plug them in the PCB slots and have a different game boot?
 

NeoTurfMasta

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Pardon my ignorance. Is all the game's info contained on the PCMCIA cards and the PCB like a blank RAM container that anything can be put in? Or, does the PCB contain chips with data that is necessary to support this particular game? For example, if you had different game data on the PCMCIA cards could you plug them in the PCB slots and have a different game boot?

The board will play whatever you want, depending on the rom size. If I were to remove the 2 prog rom eproms, and put in a compatible PCMCIA with the prog data on it, it would boot the game. There is nothing on this board that prevents it from playing other games. The limiting factor is rom size, which I havent calculated the max for this board. It will probably play just about any non encrypted neo title.
 

KRONOS

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The board will play whatever you want, depending on the rom size. If I were to remove the 2 prog rom eproms, and put in a compatible PCMCIA with the prog data on it, it would boot the game. There is nothing on this board that prevents it from playing other games. The limiting factor is rom size, which I havent calculated the max for this board. It will probably play just about any non encrypted neo title.

Interesting. Makes sense.. Thank you for answering my question. So, there may be more lost Neo-Geo prototypes out there on PCMCIA cards? These days, do think companies like NG DEV are making their games and testing on a board like this or more modern, better tools that shadow this process?
 

Geddon_jt

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NTM, NGF put on their site for many years photos of one of these boards with the cards inserted. I think they were claiming it was the "Neo Pool Master" proto. Have you looked at those photos and compared the board and the PCMCIA cards to what you got?
 

Niko

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Interesting. Makes sense.. Thank you for answering my question. So, there may be more lost Neo-Geo prototypes out there on PCMCIA cards? These days, do think companies like NG DEV are making their games and testing on a board like this or more modern, better tools that shadow this process?

They are probably using emulation for majority of the work.
 

NeoTurfMasta

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NTM, NGF put on their site for many years photos of one of these boards with the cards inserted. I think they were claiming it was the "Neo Pool Master" proto. Have you looked at those photos and compared the board and the PCMCIA cards to what you got?

Yeah I remember seeing them before. A few of them use the same Panasonic card mine has. http://www.neogeofreak.com/protos/bangbusters_.jpg

No telling what is really on them. But in that pic they use the Panasonic cards for the P & V roms, I could have sworn that the manual said that you had to use a different type of memory card at least for the P roms. It's something I will probably test out at some point.

EDIT:

Yeah the guide says the Program rom is only compatible with JEIDA V3 memory cards. These Panasonic cards are V4. I don't know if the dev board in their pic is compatible with V4 cards, but it's a little suspicious to have that card in the Prog slot. But since I cant find any documentation on their particular board, I cant be 100% sure. If SNK's manual says only to use V3 cards for Prog data... I would go with that.

jOGyz2v.png
 
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RabbitTroop

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Yeah I remember seeing them before. A few of them use the same Panasonic card mine has. http://www.neogeofreak.com/protos/bangbusters_.jpg

No telling what is really on them. But in that pic they use the Panasonic cards for the P & V roms, I could have sworn that the manual said that you had to use a different type of memory card at least for the P roms. It's something I will probably test out at some point.

EDIT:

Yeah the guide says the Program rom is only compatible with JEIDA V3 memory cards. These Panasonic cards are V4. I don't know if the dev board in their pic is compatible with V4 cards, but it's a little suspicious to have that card in the Prog slot. But since I cant find any documentation on their particular board, I cant be 100% sure. If SNK's manual says only to use V3 cards for Prog data... I would go with that.

jOGyz2v.png

Great info... I guess the good news of being teased with the emulated screenshots of all Xacrow's stuff is they're off the proto boards and at least archived somewhere. Not sure if it really matters if it stays locked away for all time, but at least there is hope of one day recovering those games.
 

KRONOS

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Great info... I guess the good news of being teased with the emulated screenshots of all Xacrow's stuff is they're off the proto boards and at least archived somewhere. Not sure if it really matters if it stays locked away for all time, but at least there is hope of one day recovering those games.

Xacrow's old photos of those Neo-Geo prototype games show that the games do exist.. but, after so much time has passed, will anything more on them surface again? I really don't get having something that's a visual art form and keep it hidden away so no one really gets to enjoy it. It's like having an amusement park built inside a warehouse then locking it up and not wanting anyone on the rides. Fun Fun Bros., Mystic Wand, Sunshine, Warlocks, etc. are out there. Games are meant to be played by all.
 
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