Puzzle Bobble V ROMS

[GadgetUK]

Hi, I've got a Puzzle Bobble that I think has a suspect V ROM. One or two of the sounds dont sound right.

Anyway, long story short, I am trying to order a couple of replacement chips (pre programmed) and the emulator copies for the same game I have are 4 x V ROM images. ie. V1, V2, V3, and V4.

V1 to V3 seem to be 1Mb images, and V4 is 512Kb.

Now on the board itself I have only 2 chips:-

V1 and V2, and these are both 27C4000 chips, which are 512Kb. So, you can see the dilema here, wtf is going on lol. If I am to believe the rom set there are 3.5Mb of V ROMs, and yet I seemingly have 1Mb and i've checked on the MVS cart scans site and its definitely an original board.

 

[shadowkn55]

You've certainly had a lot of bad luck with V roms lately. On Puzzle Bobble carts, you only need to worry about V3 and V4. Nearly all of them are repurposed Power Spikes II carts and V1/V2 are data for that game. V3 is an 8mb rom while V4 is 4mb.

 

[GadgetUK]

So since I have 2 x 4mb chips on this board, someone must have downsized / compressed the samples from the 1Mbyte chip down to 512Kb. I cannot see how else I would have 2 x 512Kbyte chips =/

Does anyone have the CRC32 checksums for the 2 chips I need - V3 and V4? Since mine are fitted in the V1 and V2 slots and there's only a V3 empty with no V4, I am starting to wonder if someone has converted this board from some other game in the past?

 

[GadgetUK]

I think its a boot.

It looks like this:-

http://www.mvs-scans.com/index.php/Bust-A-Move_(pirate)

EDIT: Mine looks like set 4.

 

[GadgetUK]

Does anyone know from looking at that 'set 4' set of boards on the link on the post above, is it possible to fit the V3 8mbit and V4 4mbit chips? It seems to support 42 pin chips, so I guess it would work? The PCM chip is there as well, just not sure what changes might be required?

My suspicion is that I have a bootleg here and the bootleggers compressed the 1Mb ROM down to 512Kb - hence some dodgy sounding effects. I don't think its corrupt as such, although if anyone can point me to the bootleg ROMs that would help because I could then check the CRC32's against the ROMs on board to see if they have corrupted.

 

[Xian Xi]

As with most PB carts, it may have been converted from old Power Spikes 2 carts.

 

[GadgetUK]

Thanks for the info guys. I got a Willems programmer today so I will dump the V ROM(S) and compare checksums to known working copy. I suspect there's the odd byte corrupted.

 

[GadgetUK]

This still doesnt make sense to me. I've since looked back at my board and the char board appears to be original. It has proper mask ROMS with only 2 EPROMs which appear to have been fitted as a repair.

On the top board (V ROMS) there are 3 slots on the board, V1, V2 and V3. V2 and V3 are populated - both with NEC 27C4000D. I cannot find a datasheet for these chips, from what I can see they are 512Kb (4 Mega Bit).

Now what doesnt make sense is above someone mentioned that only V3 and V4 were required. The emulator copies of these ROMS have V1, V2, V3 and V4. If you remove either pair (V1 and V2, or V3 and V4) then you get screwed up sound totally - ie. all 4 are required. ie. 3 x 1Mbyte and 1 x 512Kb.

So, as you can see it just doesnt make any sense at all. How can I have 2 x 512Kb chips when apparently 4 are required and most of them > 512Kb?

On MVS Cart Scans the two commercial boards show 4 V ROMs. I have to assume this is a pirate? Does anyone have this 2 V ROM version, has anyone dumped these ROMS at all? It's hard to tell if the ROMS are dodgy or perhaps the quality is poor on some samples because pirates down sampled the PCM wavs to fit into 2 x 512Kb chips?

 

[GadgetUK]

Alternatively - if no one can provide a dump of the 2 x 512Kb boot V ROMS, what can I covert this into (Bang Bang Busters?):-
PROG 4096 B
CHAR 42G-3

 

[Xian Xi]

You only need two of the V roms, you then need to update your jumpers.