Konami M2 boards

**pitsunami** · 02-09-2008

Originally Posted by Borman

Just curious though, do ya actually play them? :P

Not really...no damn time!!:banghead:

**Borman** · 02-09-2008

Thats sad :P

I cant wait to get home to try Evil Night. May be missing the shotgun, but since itll probably be just me anyway, who cares :P

**3do** · 02-11-2008

Man i wish i could get Heat of eleven as thats the one Konami m2 arcade game i've never seen except the 2 pics on system16 and i'd love to actually play it to see what its like.

**pitsunami** · 02-11-2008

Originally Posted by 3do

Man i wish i could get Heat of eleven as thats the one Konami m2 arcade game i've never seen except the 2 pics on system16 and i'd love to actually play it to see what its like.

:icon_bigg I will tell you in a few days!!:110:

**pitsunami** · 02-12-2008

Originally Posted by WindowsKiller

I would as well, but I have to build a SuperGun first...

Do you have other arcade m2 mobos? maybe polystars??:dance:

**Borman** · 02-12-2008

3 or 4 days til I get to play Evil Night...if my systems cooperate hah

**pitsunami** · 02-13-2008

Originally Posted by WindowsKiller

Nope, not yet. But I will certainly try to find out how to modify the arcade board to play all M2 arcade games.

:nod: I am waiting for this vveeerrryyy much!!:110:

**Borman** · 02-17-2008

Any of you guys have the manual for Evil Night? Having trouble calibrating it correctly

**pitsunami** · 02-18-2008

What exactly do you need?I have the total vice manual. Gun callibration??

**Borman** · 02-18-2008

Yeah I cant get it to calibrate. No big deal though, Ill mess with it more over my next break late in March. Everyone with a m2: Screw you guys, your pictures are deceiving. The motherboard is a beast

**Bojay1997** · 02-20-2008

Originally Posted by Borman

Yeah I cant get it to calibrate. No big deal though, Ill mess with it more over my next break late in March. Everyone with a m2: Screw you guys, your pictures are deceiving. The motherboard is a beast

Actually, it's not that big of a board at all. It's the cage that is beastly. I once had a Polystars board and drive that the previous owner mounted on a piece of plexiglass and the whole thing was maybe 7 inches wide and 14 inches long. Not really that large by 90s arcade board standards.

**pitsunami** · 02-20-2008

Originally Posted by WindowsKiller

I haven't done any testing yet but noticed that not all games use the same amount of RAM. Heat of Eleven, for example, has 8 MB of RAM (that's 8 chips on the upper board), while some of the others only have 4 MB. So one cause for a game to fail on the "wrong" hardware is definitively lack of memory. Heat of Eleven could never work on a board with only 4 MB, since the executable file alone is over 7 MB big. It would most likely display a hardware error.

Apart from that, the upper board is the same for all games. It doesn't contain anything else than the basic M2 hardware.

The interface board (the one with the JAMMA connector) should be fully identical for all games also, I wasn't able to find any differences between my Heat of Eleven board and any of the others for which photos are available.

So, only two things left: The BIOS ROM and the sub board. Now one could hastily say that the BIOS is tied to the game, but that can't be the case. The five released M2 arcade games are only using two different BIOS'es, so there's no connection between the BIOS and the game(s) you can play on that hardware.

Conclusion: Whether a different game runs on the hardware solely depends on the amount of RAM on the top board and the installed sub board. Heat of Eleven uses an RTC sub board, no ideas about the other games. If you read this, pitsunami, please post what sub boards the other games use. There should be at least another one that uses an RTC board as well, which would be the first to try on the Heat of Eleven hardware. :)

I got my heat of eleven some days ago and the first thing i did,was to try all the other games if they run.Without luck though....Every board is unique and every game gives the same error on each board.
Total vice gives me a black screen error in all mobos.
Hell night starts loading and then restarts with a hardware error.
All others gives me a hardware error in the begining..
Dont really know,they are pretty weird pcbs!:-(

**pitsunami** · 02-20-2008

Originally Posted by WindowsKiller

Anyway, it would be nice if you could tell me which sub boards the different games use. In case you don't know, the sub board is the small board that is connected to the bottom side of the interface board.

Well you can see the first pictures in my post in the previous page,i dont have the polystars and i will photo total vice tomorrow.is there sth else you need?

**pitsunami** · 02-20-2008

Yeap almost missed them!:lol: I will check the vice morrow and we will see.:thumbsup:

**smf** · 02-22-2008

Originally Posted by WindowsKiller

There should be at least another one that uses an RTC board as well, which would be the first to try on the Heat of Eleven hardware. :)

Konami normally store the game id in the RTC. The games might just check for it.

**smf** · 02-22-2008

Originally Posted by WindowsKiller

Wow, that's bad. Those Timekeeper chips have a battery which normally dies after 10 years or so... and you can't replace it (wouldn't make sense then anyway, as the data would be lost).

But that's a start. It shouldn't be that hard to find the game id within the game's code. Will have a look later.

Good luck, after hacking around konami's obsfucated code on system 573 I don't envy you. And it is a lot easier to find stuff like this if you can run the code in an emulator with a debugger.