I've always wondered this. I figure software is used for newer games and V64's and devkits are used for older cartridge based games. How are arcade boards dumped though? Some kind of supergun hooked to a computer?
I've wondered about this too. I reckon that you copy whatever is on the PCB's eprom chips somehow using an eprom reader/writer unit. Same with Neo Geo games. But I'm sure i've seen piccies of a NeoGeo AES backup unit (Bung?), although i think only about 3ppl in the world have one.
No, I'm sure Bung (or whoever) would have made lots, but according to someone on the NeoGeo forums there's only 3 known ppl that have them. Iirc, it was a multibackup unit that could do AES, PCE, SF and a couple of others. EDIT: Here we go, the MultiGame Doctor 2. Seems a versatile peice of kit, if you have all the addons. I'm sure I've seen a different one to this though. http://www.robwebb.clara.co.uk/backup/bung/bungmgd2.html
There are LOTS of MGD units out there.. .they even made several different versions. Not hard to get at all... although the Neo addon is slightly harder
PCBs are dumped with relatively expensive, and nitch hardware. You need to know what you're doing, as AFAIK, you have to dump the datat off of each ROM... a lot of those boards have a lot of roms. Check out the Rom Dump project for more details.. that guy talks a bit about it on his page.
Yes you have to dump each ROM. Yes there are quite a few. This is why, if you open the ZIP file, you'll see several files! It really is no different to dumping a cart ROM, except that there are more ROMs and you can't just plug it into your pc. A console cart uses the same rom, and the same board. The pinouts connect the ROM to the main hardware. Hence you can make an adapter to transfer the data from the cart (really from the ROM) straight to PC. An arcade board has the ROM built onto the board, so there's no interface that you can build an adapter for. Instead, you have to remove the ROM and use a ROM reader for that kind of ROM. Fortunately, the ROMs are usually socketed.
for all of your Arcade Rom dumping answers then go and take a look at the Guru's site. He's the guy responsible for over half of the big name roms out there. http://unemulated.emuunlim.com/ Yakumo
Yes, all arcade ROMs are dumped with a device programmer w/ various attachments. Many can simply be read in as many old systems used 8/16-bit DIP ROMs. Now you need really talented hardware to read TSOP packaged ROMs which actually surface mount to PCBs. Neo Geo games were originally dumped with a Multi Game Doctor 2 NG backup board. With a VERY low rate of success. There were less than 10 of these boards made... ever. None of them have escaped Hong Kong. This is not the same as a MGD2 NG I/O interface (which had a one week production run) which allows you to playback games up to 136 megabits (provided you have the four 32M DRAM "Doctor Cards") with various limitations on each ROM type. Because Neo Geo games are very different than other 16-bit "consoles" (they map different ROMs to different memory areas, this is why the "roms" are multiple files) there hasn't been a Neo Geo copier since. MGD2 interfaces are NOT cloneable because Bung specifically developed 9 ASICs for the interface, each controlling a different type of ROM. If you think finding MGDs is easy help me out with my collection. (Without pointing me to Rob Webb's site.) Bung made 2 Multi Game Doctor units, thats all the versions out. MGD & MGDII. MGD had 3 different variations, 4M, 8M & slimline 8M. MGDII had three different colors, but they're all the same thing.
http://unemulated.emuunlim.com/how_to_dump/index.html A how to written by The Guru who does a lot of the dumps for MAME Dev, including hard stuff no one else has a clue on
Wow he got more stuff since my last visit, no matter, I've got almost as good stuff albeit a little older.
Yeah, the Guru's site is very good -- nothing else like it on the net. I thought of purchasing the Gain Ground PCB and donating it, as the ROMs have yet to be dumped. Just a bit too pricey though... $800ish.
