I would love to be able to convert Captain Tomaday, Zedblade, Bust-A-Move Again, and other lower meg count games to MGD2 format. I believe there is a program that works with earlier titles, but it would be great to have more to work with.
No programs (except my private one ;-)) can reliably convert back to MGD2. Also it doesn't work that way, the MGD2 can't just play any game <= 138M, you're limited to 64M of C ROM and 8M of P ROM.
I know that. Captain Tomaday is 106Megs, Zedblade is 110Megs, & Bust-A-Move Again is a mere 46Megs. I've never seen the Neo-Geo backup board in anyone's collection. Obviously those original MGD2 Neo dumps came from somebody who did have the backup board back in the day. However, since for the life of me I can't find one now, and since you can convert MGD2 dumps into MVS roms, I believe it's only logical that the same process could work in reverse. MGD2 backup board, with Megadrive/SuperFami slots:
That's not right and you're missing the point, Captain Tomaday has 16M of P ROM and Bust a Move Again has 80M of C ROM, they won't fit. Zedblade will though. "MVS" dumps can be converted to MGD2 for the most part, but MVS and home carts aren't always identical like people assume. I'm going to have to build my own AES dumper eventually to get good dumps without damaging the carts. The Uni-BIOS 3.0 is also an option for dumping the P ROMs which may be the only ROMs changed from MVS.
Hello Zedblade was convert for the NeoGeo CD with some other http://www.neogeocdworld.info/html/jeux/conversions.htm If you would try with other title i propose all the soft http://www.neogeocdworld.info/html/jeux/jeuxamateurs.htm I think, like say Calpis it's not possible for Captain Tomaday
I'm more of a collector and gamer than tech pro. I honestly thought the meg count was all it had to do with it. You learn something new everyday. Anyway, a Neo Geo MGD2 interface + 4x 32megs Dram + 8Megs Sram + MGD2 unit is a lot of money, so it sucks that all the MGD2 compatible games are like $10 titles. :/
Neo carts contain separate ROMs for the game program, sound program, audio data, sprite data and fixed tile data just like an arcade machine would have on the PCB. All other consoles besides NES have JUST the game program ROM; all the other data is loaded from that program ROM by the CPU into a small video RAM, sound RAM etc internal to the console. The MGD2 I/O is configured: 8M SRAM -> game program 32M DRAM -> audio data 32M DRAM -> audio data 32M DRAM -> sprite data 32M DRAM -> sprite data 1M SRAM (internal) -> audio program 1M SRAM (internal) -> fixed tile data
Thanks for this informative post. If you can take the time, could you answer a few questions? On a Neo Geo cart there are two boards, a program board and a chassis board. The program board usually has all the V chips, and the P chips. What is the difference when there is P1, EP1, SP2, etc? I often see chips labeled P2 but the board is labeled SP2 where the chip is located. On the Chassis board, are all the C chips, and a chip labeled M1, and sometimes a chip labeled S1. Once again, What type of data is on these C, M1, and S1 chips? I feel I can safely assume that both C and V chips are for sprites and audio, although I don't know which is which. I know that people used to convert games for the AES console from MVS carts, and only certain carts were compatible with each other. Was this because some carts don't have the available areas for the chips, such as how some carts don't have an S1 chip, or is there something unique about the boards beyond available areas for the chips? Please excuse my ignorance, I'm trying to take in a lot of info all at once. ray:
P ROMs are 68000 program ROMs V ROMs are YM2610 ADPCM data ROMs. There are actually two types of V ROM, one for the low frequency channel, one for the high. Games quickly started containing a chip called NEO-PCM which allows both channels to use the same ROM. P1 is typically the main program ROM, it can be up to 8M and contains the entire game logic. Some old PROG boards use 2/4M ROMs so P2-4 can be the rest of the P1 address space. Then there's another address range used for a few different things such as the link circuitry, Fatal Fury 2 protection and later on it became used for another 8M+ of program ROM. ROMs mapped here are SP2 (P2 on the chip) if P1 is 8M. EP1 replaces P1 with updated program code. EP2 can be either the second half of EP1 if they're both 4M or can be the same thing as SP2 (8M+). Your "chassis" board is actually the CHAracter board because it contains the Character ROMs. Tile data is commonly referred to as character data by many. The C ROMs only contain sprite data (which also makes up the backgrounds on the Neo), not the fixed tile layer data. The Music? ROM contains the Z80 sound engine program as well as the actual "track" sequences. Remember all sample data however is contained in the V ROMs. The Static? aka the "FIX" layer ROM contains the fixed (non-scrollable) tilemap layer that overlays sprites. Life/POW bars are made of this. More because people didn't really know what they were doing and made conversions by guesswork. All carts have the same chips. Apart from the AES donor board not fitting the MVS ROMs, or not containing the same peripheral or protection chip, just about any game can run on any board.
Wow, this was very kind of you to take the time to explain all of this in such great detail. I honestly do appreciate it.
Bear with me. So EP1 is essentially just updated data, such as a fix/repair? Once they install the EP1/EP2 data, do they need to remove the original P chips, or are they simply overridden? I mean, If a board had EP chips, would the game still run if you removed the original P chips from the equation, or are the original P chips required? Also, a P1 chip can also be combined with the P2 chip in either the SP2 or EP2 socket if the program is 8M+, doesn't matter which socket? Now, if I got this completely wrong....I wouldn't be surprised.
Yes, EP1 is for fixes. You don't need to remove the old chips (but you can) if it's a direct replacement, jumpers must need to be changed though. It can even be more complicated because the jumpers can change how/where ROMs are mapped too. I haven't actually checked the decoding on all boards to verify the naming rules, largely it doesn't matter unless you need to follow SNK protocol. P1 chips need to be in the P1 socket unless there's a EP1 I guess. SP2 I think is the default socket for the P2 ROM and EP2 will only be populated if a fix to it has been made. Nope, don't have a Neo I/O at the moment, passed up all the fair deals over the years and now can't justify overspending, especially when I've been working on something much better.
