Is it possible to dipswitch a 161-in-1?

[donluca]

I was reading through an old thread here: http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=266472

It looked like they were going somewhere but then the thread died.

I was wondering what those Cable-1 and Cable-2 were for and if there was a way to bypass the initial menu.

From what I understand, the main menu is just the starting ROM of the 161-in-1 and then, depending on the game chosen, it would map the memory to the start of the desired ROM and boot it.
If this is anything like the 138-in-1 it's just setting a binary code telling the Neo Geo which game to start and we might override it with a dipswitch.

Am I talking nonsense?

 

[shadowkn55]

They are probably jtag ports to program the logic chips.

 

[GadgetUK]

I've never seen that thread until now. Nothing new revealed, although there is reference to a possibly related datasheet which might be the same family as the Fujitsu MSP55LV100S NVPROM chips used.

The 120 in 1 uses an MCU (8051 based) to pass address decoding to the CPLDs - since the 138 in 1 uses the same board you might be able to convert the 120 in 1 to use DIP switches but I've not checked what the difference is between the 120 and 138 boards (one is marked 138 in 1, even though its a 120 in 1). The 138 in 1 obviously uses a really basic 8 bit bus to select the game, if the Fujitsu chips could be reprogrammed it would be the easiest to hack imo. The 161 in 1 doesn't have the MCU, it looks like it just handles the address decoding through the default P1 menu.

In reply to shadowkn55 - yes, they are JTAG ports for the CPLDs. In any case, if we could program the MSP55LV100S we could change the games completely, but I imagine that being a pain in the a*** to do - ie. removing, programming, refitting each chip... I've not checked that datasheet yet but I assume there's no magical serial programming or anything with these NVPROM chips.

EDIT: something interesting about that forum - if you view using a PC it seems like all the text is blanked out. View on a phone and it works... Must be some protection to stop browsers and unregistered people reading their posts.

 

[shadowkn55]

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[GadgetUK]

Having thought about the 120 in 1 the last few days I am thinking the MCU (8051) is responsible for holding difficulty settings normally read from backup RAM soft dips. Since the settings are stored on the cart using dip switches 4 and 5.

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Thanks =)