Author Topic: I'm new, but I have a dump : Thumps Up 240 in 1  (Read 9035 times)

emuboy85

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I'm new, but I have a dump : Thumps Up 240 in 1
« on: December 08, 2018, 04:24:00 PM »
Hi , I literally discovered this forum 1 hour ago, I recently received this as a present  :

https://www.thumbsupuk.com/Products/Mini_Arcade_Machine

After 5 minutes of playing I got bored and took it apart, inside there is a blob chip and a w25q64 spi eeprom , I desolder it , throw it in my tl866 universal programmer and dumped the content of it :

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5tt6mpruwtl59ax/mini_arcade.bin?dl=0

I tried to open it in emuVT and nintendulator without a lot of success , I was wondering if someone was able to help me to understand what chip this thing have...

Thanks!
« Last Edit: December 09, 2018, 08:00:00 AM by emuboy85 »

Icareevenless123456789

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Re: I'm new, but I have a dump : Thumps Up 200 in 1
« Reply #1 on: December 09, 2018, 02:50:58 AM »
I don't know anything about dumping, but I believe the 200-in-1 already has a working dump here (1st post): http://bootleg.games/BGC_Forum/index.php?topic=1794.0

unless you meant the 240-in-1 model, which is a new, unemulated type of famiclone (it has 32-bits iirc, so pretty advanced by famicom standards). in that case the rom may be good, but there's no way to emulate it as of now

emuboy85

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Re: I'm new, but I have a dump : Thumps Up 240 in 1
« Reply #2 on: December 09, 2018, 07:59:46 AM »
I just double checked , it is the 240in1 , not the 200

NewRisingSun

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Re: I'm new, but I have a dump : Thumps Up 240 in 1
« Reply #3 on: December 09, 2018, 07:04:00 PM »
The game uses the VT369 chip, which is basically a VT03 but with some of the additional graphics capabilities from the (non-NES-compatible) VT1682. Thankfully, this plug-and-play does not make use of these features. So the only thing that was preventing it from working in NintendulatorNRS was a so-far unemulated type of opcode scrambling. In this case, bits 5 and 6 (0x20 and 0x40) only of CPU opcode bytes are inverted. The CPU boots up with opcode scrambling enabled; setting bit 0 of 0x4169 disables scrambling. As none of the other VT369 dumped games boot up with encryption enabled, I have tentatively assigned submapper 1 of mapper 296 to indicate this type of encryption, at least until I think of something better.

Attached find the headered ROM as well as a build of NintendulatorNRS that runs it.

In any case, great job dumping that ROM --- we need more dumpers like you! :)
« Last Edit: January 26, 2019, 09:34:32 AM by NewRisingSun »

forgotusername

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Re: I'm new, but I have a dump : Thumps Up 240 in 1
« Reply #4 on: December 10, 2018, 01:44:29 AM »
Oh, so this is more of a standard VT03 then? My console had a different chipset (i'm presuming a VT1682 one, that they must have wrote over with different gamelist for some reason). it was in the same casing as the one on the website, and by the same company iirc.

There were seven undumped games on this multicart - Air Alert, Bugbear, Fighter, Fisher, Happy Adventure, Hot Speed, Jungly Guy. i ripped them and will put them in next project plug 'n play update. we're nearing the end of the Famiclone library at this point!

(also bothered to actually log in to my normal account now. whoopee)

NewRisingSun

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Re: I'm new, but I have a dump : Thumps Up 240 in 1
« Reply #5 on: December 10, 2018, 03:15:17 AM »
We had earlier agreed that I was going to release the next Project Plug and Play update. I have already started working on it.

And no, it uses a VT369 but  merely does not make use of any of its advanced features beyond the opcode scrambling, the 8 KiB of CPU RAM (NES has 2), and the 15-bit RGB palette.
« Last Edit: December 10, 2018, 07:08:35 AM by NewRisingSun »

emuboy85

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Re: I'm new, but I have a dump : Thumps Up 240 in 1
« Reply #6 on: December 10, 2018, 06:22:43 AM »
Thank you for the fixes NewRisingSun!

Sadly I haven't got any other device like this but if I get one in my hand I would be happy to dump it.


So...is the content encrypted ? I wanted to make a custom rom with official NES games in it , instead of bootleg ones, I noticed that the roms are saved in "banks" , I tried to replace one with Super Mario Bros. 3 but that did't work (I guess the mapper is unsupported?) perhaps with the emulator now I can try the edits before burning the eeprom :)

Edit: Nevermind, I re-read your answer, I guess , I either swap the  opcodes in the rom I want to paste in or I disable the scrambling in the eeprom ? (if is even possible?)

« Last Edit: December 10, 2018, 06:39:44 AM by emuboy85 »

NewRisingSun

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Re: I'm new, but I have a dump : Thumps Up 240 in 1
« Reply #7 on: December 10, 2018, 06:48:40 AM »
Replacing the existing games in that plug and play requires extensive knowledge about the OneBus banking registers, and if the games are to be integrated into the existing menu, how the menu uses them. If the subject interests you, begin by reading the relevant articles on nesdev (1) (2). Super Mario Brothers 3 uses the MMC3 ASIC, to which the OneBus chips are backwards-compatible, provided you correctly set up the PRG and CHR masks and offsets. The game however expects an additional 8 KiB of WRAM at $6000-$7FFF, and I am not sure whether that is included on your PCB.

You will not have to scramble the instruction opcodes in the game's ROM, because the menu disables scrambling before proceeding to launch the selected game.

Quote from: emuboy85
Sadly I haven't got any other device like this but if I get one in my hand I would be happy to dump it.
If you are looking for a challenge: My Arcade DGUN-2573 Gamer V needs to be redumped because the current ROM image is corrupt. Davidstech has said that it uses a different kind of flash ROM chip that is more difficult to dump.
« Last Edit: December 10, 2018, 12:29:52 PM by NewRisingSun »

emuboy85

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Re: I'm new, but I have a dump : Thumps Up 240 in 1
« Reply #8 on: December 10, 2018, 04:04:20 PM »
meh, that's sound fun , but honestly not enough time to justify it...I guess i'm gutting the case and use a reaspberry pi...

forgotusername

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Re: I'm new, but I have a dump : Thumps Up 240 in 1
« Reply #9 on: December 10, 2018, 04:05:55 PM »
Quote
We had earlier agreed that I was going to release the next Project Plug and Play update. I have already started working on it.
You never replied to me originally...I meant more that we would do a collaboration effort, not that you would take over the entire project. Since you never got back to me I figured you changed your mind... (not trying to sound rude here, i'm just confused)

Quote
So...is the content encrypted ? I wanted to make a custom rom with official NES games in it , instead of bootleg ones, I noticed that the roms are saved in "banks" , I tried to replace one with Super Mario Bros. 3 but that did't work (I guess the mapper is unsupported?) perhaps with the emulator now I can try the edits before burning the eeprom :)
To put game inside a multicart slot, you have to match the game + graphics data in the correct place, with the correct size. Mario 3 wouldn't work because its a 384K game, none of which are inside the 240-in-1; Mario 1 would, as many games on the console are 40K. They also can only be mapper 0 roms.

to find the gamedata, take the project plug 'n play rom for the specific title, and search for the first few lines of code in FCEUX hex editor. then replace the code with the game you want in its place. do the same process for graphic data. (does that make sense at all? i'm terrible at explaining these things)

I've attached ROM with Abscondee replaced with Mario 1 as an example.

(also one more sidenote for NewRisingSun - the Nintendulator you posted won't run the majority of pnp VT03/09 extracted roms. is there a reason for that?)

NewRisingSun

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Re: I'm new, but I have a dump : Thumps Up 240 in 1
« Reply #10 on: December 10, 2018, 04:10:28 PM »
Quote from: forgotusername
You never replied to me originally...
I have no idea what you are talking about. I think I was quite clear when I wrote "I will gladly continue the project, though I will probably choose more conventional folder names.", and you were quite clear when you replied "That would be great if you could, but only if you're up for it." I am not aware of any unanswered communication.

Quote from: forgotusername
(also one more sidenote for NewRisingSun - the Nintendulator you posted won't run the majority of pnp VT03/09 extracted roms. is there a reason for that?)
Yes, because ever since I had originally sent them to you, I had to add additional NES 2.0 header fields specifically denoting what type of VTxx hardware the games ran on, and without those header fields, the emulator now runs them as regular Famicom. So they all have to be re-headered, a process that I have already finished on my end. This change became necessary when VT32 and VT369 ROMs were discovered, and there was no way I could continue just auto-detecting the VT chip type being used.
« Last Edit: December 10, 2018, 06:50:00 PM by NewRisingSun »

emuboy85

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Re: I'm new, but I have a dump : Thumps Up 240 in 1
« Reply #11 on: December 11, 2018, 08:26:11 AM »

I've attached ROM with Abscondee replaced with Mario 1 as an example.

Hey, thank you for that, I removed the header I burnt it on the device and it works nicely, I think will take me a big effort to get up to speed with all that knowledge, I'm an embedded programmer ,so , nothing new there but there is lot of legacy information...too bad...I was already dreaming about a python script that generate menu and roms automatically....

NewRisingSun

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Re: I'm new, but I have a dump : Thumps Up 240 in 1
« Reply #12 on: December 11, 2018, 09:24:33 AM »
V.R.T. actually did provide such scripting functionality in its original VT02 development kit, though it used 6502 assembly code with macros rather than Python to do that, and if I remember correctly, a few C-written helper applications.

emuboy85

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Re: I'm new, but I have a dump : Thumps Up 240 in 1
« Reply #13 on: December 12, 2018, 07:29:03 AM »
Do you know where I can find it?

And, what happen if I burn a single nes rom into the eeprom? will it boot it?
« Last Edit: December 12, 2018, 09:58:13 AM by emuboy85 »

NewRisingSun

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Re: I'm new, but I have a dump : Thumps Up 240 in 1
« Reply #14 on: December 12, 2018, 03:52:21 PM »
"Nesmaker" on the chip manufacturer's page:
http://www.vrt.com.tw/download.htm

If it is an MMC3 ROM, then it should boot it, at least in theory. In practice, at least the LCD display will require extensive initialization to show any image, so you are better off keeping the 240-in-1's menu code, which does that for you, in place. The Nesmaker package's menu is for an earlier console and thus will not contain LCD initialization code, in particular since every LCD manufacturer and model type will require different initialization.
« Last Edit: December 12, 2018, 03:54:47 PM by NewRisingSun »