[TUTO] Save or répair Deathsmiles 2 Arcade PC-PCB

[needaes]

write in French my english is too poor for this tutorial


Salut à tous , ayant fais l'aquisition y a pas longtemps d'un Deathsmiles 2 original en PC Cave et voyant que d'après pas mal de monde ce jeu tombe souvent en rade.
Je me suis décidé à tenter de sauvegarder le mien qui fonctionne encore nikel et mon astace.
Pour vous, elle a pour but de :

1-Ne plus avoir peur d'acheter ce genre de arcade PC de Cave
2-Acheter à petit prix un éventuel jeu en rade.

Première étape :
on demonte le capot du pc : 8 vis noires ( 4 sur le dessus et 2 sur chaque coté)



On enlève le capot en le tirant vers le haut!
On admire la bete



On remarque que l'OS (windows Embedded Standart) est situé sur une compact flash de 2GO UDMA 300x de marque Transcend.C'est ce système qui fait planter 99% des deathsmiles2
Les cartes sont fragiles et plantent très souvent sans parler du lecteur.
Bref, le mien fonctionne nikel, je me suis fais 2-compact flash d'avances mais avec la méthode qui suit, en cas de grosse panne sur le lecteur de la compact flash, votre jeu sera sauvé.




Deuxième étape :
il faut simplement sauvegarder la compact flash sur un PC en utilisant un logiciel de sauvegarde de disque.
J'utilise toujours Aomei Backupper Standard.
lien ici : https://www.ubackup.com/


Pour lire la compact flash sur PC , j'utilise une clef USB avec port CF.10€ sur ebay.
lien ici : https://www.ebay.fr/itm/Integral-Lecteu ... 2749.l2649
le salop il a doublé le prix depuis avant hier  :ptdr:



Pour sauvegarder la carte :
on lance Aomei, on choisit l'option sauvergarder puis sauvegarde de disque.
Il suffit après de suivre c'est à dire choisir le lecteur à sauvegarder ( ici la carte compact flash s'appelle OS).
Nous voici donc une un fichier image du système de démarage de notre Cave  :cheers:





Troisème étape:
On formate son nouveau disque SSD en ExFat et on le nomme : OS
On installe simplement le fichier image sur le SSD Sata:
On ouvre Aomei on choisit l'option Restaurer, puis on choisit son fichier et le SSD cible.
C'est très simple et je pourrais aider si une personne hésite à le faire

Dernière étape:
Brancher le SSD; toutes la connectique est dispo dans le PC Cave sans rien modifier (enfin si il faut juste un cable Sata pour brancher le SSD sur la carte mère(le cable bleu)).
Important, il faut brancher sur le port SATA-0

Il nous reste plus qu'à démarrer la bete et voir si ca à marcher.

Tada









bon jeu à tous en esperant vous donner l'idée de vous lancer dans l'achat de ce jeu(qui est génial) sans peur ou mieux à moindre frais  :mrgreen:

[SuperPang]

I had no idea it would run simply by copying the CF data to an SSD and plugging it in. Nice work!

There are a few other things wrong with the hardware that can cause it to fail but the cheap compact flash is the worst.

[needaes]

thank's

[nem]

Yeah, I'm really surprised you can drop the image to a different drive and it will work.

[SuperPang]

Security is built in to the I/O I believe.

[needaes]

i think it’s in usb dongle

[peg]

It's actually the combination of the 2, you need the correct I/O board and USB dongle to match it in order for it to run. I believe the USB dongle is keyed to only work with a specific I/O board.

I have 2 DSII Cave PCs and replacing the IDE cables fixed the issues with reading the CF cards. Not sure if that will work for other people but it fixed both of mine. Well, that and I also had to replace the motherboard and PSU on one of them as well, but now they both work.

[SuperPang]

Well, that and I also had to replace the motherboard and PSU on one of them as well, but now they both work.

Pretty much everything then.

[zak]

Is there any other way to play this identically without using CAVE's PC?

[peg]

Well, that and I also had to replace the motherboard and PSU on one of them as well, but now they both work.

Pretty much everything then.

Well the CPU, RAM, CF card, CF reader were all working fine. Well the most important part is the Black Cave case and the I/O board, as those are custom. Everything else is (somewhat) easily replaceable. Actually the motherboard is unfortunately fairly rare and hard to come by, it's not something you can just log onto ebay and find easily.

I would really like to know if the OP had to go through all that trouble when he could have just replaced the IDE ribbon cable and called it a day. For whatever reason, those, not the CF card or reader, were the cause of my problems.

[zak]

Has anyone figured out how to remove the USB dongle from the setup?

Can you make a copy of the dongle data for safe keeping?

No idea how much preservation work has been done for this Hardware already

Does anyone have a backup image of the final release?

[trev1976]

Yeah would be good to get this working in normal PC hardware with windows rather than faffing about Caves rare and unreliable board/pc

[arcadista]

Yeah would be good to get this working in normal PC hardware with windows rather than faffing about Caves rare and unreliable board/pc

Sorry, maybe I don't understand the language well enough or something, but it is actually playable in windows on a normal pc using one of those shady gamelaunchers out there, I think the game is cracked in order to work though.

[zak]

The problem is that it's optimised for the Hardware they used 10 years ago.

It runs too fast on Taito X2 for example.

My aim is not to run this on a modern PC. I just need want to know if anyone has backups of the image and the patch to remedy the I/O error (for original Hardware).

[zak]

Gents,

Do you have a copy of the original CF card image? Would really appreciate it.

Could you guys also clarify something for me? Does the original CF card have 2 partitions on it? (one with OS and one with game data/launcher?)

[trev1976]

Yeah would be good to get this working in normal PC hardware with windows rather than faffing about Caves rare and unreliable board/pc

Sorry, maybe I don't understand the language well enough or something, but it is actually playable in windows on a normal pc using one of those shady gamelaunchers out there, I think the game is cracked in order to work though.

Yes sorry , I know it can run but it runs at the incorrect speed.

It would be nice to be able to emulate it perfectly.

[zak]

Has anyone replaced the original motherboard with one of these by any chance?

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1000005 ... b201603_53

They're almost the same (including the side port memory).

Also, just a heads up - this seller puts fake model number stickers on the wrong motherboard:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3288419 ... b201603_53

This is actually a GA-MA78GM and not a GA-MA78GPM

Also the info provided about the motherboard in most places is wrong. The shipping release of the CAVE PC does not use a ASUS M3A78-EM. They're all Gigabyte motherboards from what I've seen. The picture of the ASUS M3A78-EM backplane is in the manual, but I don't think many of these are in the wild.

Most also think that it uses a 5050e Brisbane 2.60GHz CPU. This is correct, but the shipping release also came with a 2.7GHz CPU. I guess they used what was available.

[zak]

This may also be useful to someone in the future:

I replaced the original motherboard with a GA-MA78GM - when booting the game I get the following error:



I'm guessing that the cvgame.exe relies on the board's 128mb sideport memory (which is missing from the GA-MA78GM).

So don't buy that as a replacement board.

[kazuo]

Thanks for sharing that info! Might be worth adding it to the wiki for future reference, if it isn't already there.

I wonder if it's possible to reproduce the sideport memory and add it to boards where it is missing... but guessing it's far more complicated than that. Is it surface mount, or some kind of module?

[zak]

Thanks for sharing that info! Might be worth adding it to the wiki for future reference, if it isn't already there.

I wonder if it's possible to reproduce the sideport memory and add it to boards where it is missing... but guessing it's far more complicated than that. Is it surface mount, or some kind of module?

Unfortunately that's not possible. It will be a surface mounted chip.

I'll be buying some more similar motherboards with sideport memory - once I test them, I'll post the results here. Be wary of Aliexpress sellers they don't send the correct motherboard (they just cover the original model number with a white sticker with the incorrect model number printed on it).