Important Capcom CPS2 Announcement

[mastercello]

Freaking amazing....you guys rock!

[rugdoctor]

Awesome work!!!

[KmanSweden]

[KmanSweden]

Did I understand this correctly that this can be used only on boards with original roms?

[Commodore64]

Amazing Stuff!

[idc]

Did I understand this correctly that this can be used only on boards with original roms?

Depends on what you mean by "original ROMs". If the board has been phoenixed, you will need to rewrite encrypted ROM images, such as those from the MAME dumps.

[KmanSweden]

Got it, thanks.

[Radiant]

great work
i found a CPS2 AvP last Weekend in one of my boxes ( i was searching for my cps3 games to replace the battery )... a sticker told me -->battery = 2004 and it was still alive changed the battery today (and it's still alive )

[vasilas432]

great work
i found a CPS2 AvP last Weekend in one of my boxes ( i was searching for my cps3 games to replace the battery )... a sticker told me -->battery = 2004 and it was still alive changed the battery today (and it's still alive )

[vasilas432]

Thank you guys! Great achievement for retro arcade history!

I find the revival procedure a little bit difficult to perform from someone who has not any idea where 5v and grounds are on a board. Can the tools become a little more user friendly? I own 12 boards on battery but I am not sure I can make it to a revival in case of a suicide.
Thanks again
Vassilios

[idc]

Thank you guys! Great achievement for retro arcade history!

I find the revival procedure a little bit difficult to perform from someone who has not any idea where 5v and grounds are on a board. Can the tools become a little more user friendly? I own 12 boards on battery but I am not sure I can make it to a revival in case of a suicide.
Thanks again
Vassilios

That's certainly one of our goals. The good thing is that now the information is in the public domain, anyone can make and share their own improvements that will help the wider community.

[vasilas432]

Thank you guys! Great achievement for retro arcade history!

I find the revival procedure a little bit difficult to perform from someone who has not any idea where 5v and grounds are on a board. Can the tools become a little more user friendly? I own 12 boards on battery but I am not sure I can make it to a revival in case of a suicide.
Thanks again
Vassilios

That's certainly one of our goals. The good thing is that now the information is in the public domain, anyone can make and share their own improvements that will help the wider community.

I hope it will go to wider community or else most people will send their boards to some experts which will use your tools and your innovation for extra profit

[idc]

I hope it will go to wider community or else most people will send their boards to some experts which will use your tools and your innovation for extra profit

Well, it's all up on GitHub, freely available for those who care to take a look at it and use it.

[vasilas432]

I hope it will go to wider community or else most people will send their boards to some experts which will use your tools and your innovation for extra profit

Well, it's all up on GitHub, freely available for those who care to take a look at it and use it.

Many thanks, community owes you

[idc]

Thanks to everyone for your thanks. It definitely couldn't have been done without the other team members, I was just in the fortunate position of having some good information and theories for a considerable time, and eventually the right contacts to deal better with what I had.

Big thanks belong to Pete Grounds, who did the initial hardware analysis on our behalf; to Artemio Urbina, who helped us obtain valid key data and deduced pinouts; to Eduardo Cruz, who rightfully took the lead and handled the analysis of my captured logic data and the resulting mathematics that is far more complicated than I could handle; and of course to the small team of beta testers who helped us with the final issues in the months between announcement and yesterday's release.

Thanks too to the community for the overwhelmingly positive reaction. This is why we do what we do.

[WilalvesBR]

Artemio Urbina, who helped us obtain valid key data and deduced pinouts;

The keys used by the device to revive real boards aren't the same keys used by emulators?

Over the coming weeks additional details about the CPS2 hardware internals will be released providing unseen insights into how Capcom implemented security.

Very anxious to see the technical details and internal looks from the Capcom custom chips!

[idc]

Artemio Urbina, who helped us obtain valid key data and deduced pinouts;

The keys used by the device to revive real boards aren't the same keys used by emulators?

CPS2 boards require a data stream which holds the keys, the encrypted range (which is not always the entire program ROM space) and the watchdog instruction.

However, this data is not in the clear, but is in an encrypted/obfuscated form. The keys, ranges and watchdog instructions listed in MAME are correct. The actual key data we send to the board is a derivation of that, so we had to investigate exactly how the data needed to be presented.

I'm sure Eduardo will provide a full (and better) account of the process on his blog very soon.