Bubble Bobble Bootleg info

[karatechamp999]

hi guys, need your help on this one. I got a bootleg BB board and wired it into my jamma double dragon cab and I get background on the left half of the screen and all the sprites on the right half. it's also not taking credits? and test screen is just an orange screen with nothing on it - not sure whats going on here any leads? i'll try and get a couple pics up - thanks in advance

K, figured out how to get to the test screen but it just shows the right half of the grid on the left half of the screen, can't see if there's text there

[karatechamp999]

hi guys, need your help on this one. I got a bootleg BB board and wired it into my jamma double dragon cab and I get background on the left half of the screen and all the sprites on the right half. it's also not taking credits? and test screen is just an orange screen with nothing on it - not sure whats going on here any leads? i'll try and get a couple pics up - thanks in advance

K, figured out how to get to the test screen but it just shows the right half of the grid on the left half of the screen, can't see if there's text there

jumpered jpa and jpb and still no coin up - I know everything in the cab ,but the bubble bobble boot pcb, does work. Help!!! please!!!!

[sugreff]

Hey everyone!

Just spent the best part of an hour reading over this whole thread.... lots and lots of great info here! I just purchased a bootleg Bubble Bobble from ebay and I'm waiting for it to arrive in the mail so that I can attempt a Redux on it. That being said, the board I purchased looks a lot like the other bootlegs floating around, but it has a Screened PS4 chip where one of the Z80s should be. Here is a picture:



Anyone seen one like this before? I know on the offical boards the PS4 is located above the 2016/6116 ram chip, where on this board you can see there is a blank space for a socket/chip.

Adam

[Elgen]

Funny... Never seen that before. I'm pretty sure it's just a plain old Z80 that the bootleggers painted a new screen on to make it look more "legit"?!

[VectorGlow]

That's most unusual!

I'm wondering if somebody had a spare Bubble Bobble chip laying around and put in in the Z80 socket on that bootleg. If that's the case then it would need to be removed and replaced with a Z80 of the correct speed.

Is the bootleg known to be faulty or working?

[sugreff]

That's most unusual!

I'm wondering if somebody had a spare Bubble Bobble chip laying around and put in in the Z80 socket on that bootleg. If that's the case then it would need to be removed and replaced with a Z80 of the correct speed.

Is the bootleg known to be faulty or working?

That is what I was thinking, but who knows. It will be interesting to see what ROMs are on it.

It's currently in the mail to me, should be here in about a week. Coming from the US and I'm in Canada.

[VectorGlow]

Okay, please update us when you have it.

[VectorGlow]

Here's a question for the Bubble Bobble tech experts here: I'm currently working on a Bubble Bobble bootleg (no MCU replacement, just two Z80's for the main game code). It's the usual two board set.

The problem is this - in attract mode, once Bub jumps onto the first small platform the board resets. The exact time that this happens can vary a little (maybe by a second or two). Sometimes though this platform jump reset doesn't happen, instead Bub moves to the far right of the screen and then a few seconds later the board will reset.

In game, you can coin up and start a game but then it just vertically scrolls the levels on screen one at a time before it resets, so you don't actaully get to play the game.

I've spent ages looking through the address and data lines, swapped out the ROMs, Z80's, RAMs, checked control lines, etc but no go.

The only thing I did which improved things a little was to replace the PAL at IC43 - once I did that then the attract mode appeared to be working properly, BUT after maybe 20 seconds or so a vertical line of garbage appeared and the board reset. In game with the replacement PAL the vertical scrolling of the screens has stopped but the characters cannot be moved and eventually the board will again reset.

It's curious that replacing the PAL makes a difference, even though the PAL that I removed works fine on another bootleg boardset.

I'm of course assuming this fault is down to a top board problem, and not the bottom board.

Any ideas please as to the cause of this? It's got me perplexed!

[VectorGlow]

Has nobody got any ideas about the weird fault that I mentioned above please?

Thanks

[brizzo]

Hey guys,

Just replaced the program roms on a bootleg, but the title screen still shows as "Bobble Bobble" -- but says 'bootleg redux' in the bottom left. All the graphics from match the 'boblbobl' set. Fiddled with the dips, nada.

Any ideas what I am missing here?

[ChocolateApple]

I recently switched my cab to a legit Taito boardset from a redux bootleg boardset. I really miss the high score save. Is there anyway to implement this in the original code, or does the added security made it not doable?

[frsj8112]

Hi guys, i think i saw this kind of error in this thread somewhere, but i can't find it.

It seems that there's some issue with the game area screen. Take a look at my video here:

Did you see the blue dragon appear from the left and then on the right side of the screen?

Any clues?

[VectorGlow]

I've seen that quite a few times, here's an extract from my Bubble Bobble repair log:

Symptom: On some bootleg AND original boards, when Bob (blue dinosaur) walks onscreen from the right, some of him briefly appears on the left of the screen. Also, when a game has finished, the green box showing the round reached for Bub has the leftmost vertical yellow line missing
Diagnosis: Bit of an unusual one this, the problem was related to the LS169s at locations 47, 48, 49, 64, 65, 66 (locations determined by the original Bubble Bobble schematics) on the Video board – on some video boards these are often replaced by the later versions of these chips, LS669s, and this is what causes the aforementioned problem. Further investigation revealed that the problem was specific to the carry output (RCO) on pin 15.
Cure: To remedy the fault, on a bootleg board simply replace the LS669s at locations 47 and 64 with LS169s (it’s NOT always necessary to replace all six LS669s with LS169s, only the two I’ve just mentioned). On an original board, replace the LS669s at locations IC48 and IC65 instead. Note: On boards that have IC locations instead marked as ‘U’ numbers, this is U48 and U66, although replacing U50 and U68 seems to be a better solution on those boardsets.

[WhiskeyDanger]

Hi folks, wanted to drop a line that the Redux work is amazing, I've enjoyed patching up my bootleg BB and getting it to behave more like the original.

Just a note about patching: I wanted to have the continue patch but not the level skip, so I ended up patching the ROMs from my original and incrementing the patches to the correct state. In order to do that I ran into an issue that required me to disable the disable the checksum like so:

xdelta3-3.0.8.x86-32.exe -v -v -f -n -d -s bb4.original incremental\bb4.patch bb4.new

(-v is for verbose, -f to force writing the bb4.new file, and -n to disable the checksum)

Finally, a request: I was wondering if there has been any effort to add a Freeplay mode? My 7 year old loves playing the game but has to tickle the coin switch to get it to credit it up; ideally I wouldn't have her digging around the insides of the cabinet. Thanks!

[KmanSweden]

By my accounts, based on feedback posted here, these images were already installed successfully in at least 6 PCBs. I have two boards, one single and one double. It is very likely that it will run on yours. The only requirement so far is that it should NOT have an MC68705 processor, which was used to run the PS4 emulation code instead of the main Z80 CPU. That type of board seems to be so rare that I was never able to find a picture of one in the Internet.

Punji

Well.. ****. O'course I have one of the rare, useless ones.

[leonardoliveira]

I think MAME crew were looking for that bootleg to dump the MCU...

[KmanSweden]

I'm pretty sure they have it. Try Googeling "bubble bobble (bootleg with 68705)"
Besides the MCU on my pcb needs to be replaced since the game freezez when it's coined up.

[ramparts]

here is the picture from my bubble bobble single board:

http://s1.directupload.net/file/d/3198/o44qhyxj_jpg.htm"

it has more roms than your board !?

i change alredy the roms but the fault is still there.
The treasure room is still not working fine

http://s7.directupload.net/file/d/3198/ji3ktuh8_jpg.htm"

simon

hi there i am new here and i bought a dead bb bootleg with the letters and numbers can anyone post here highres pic of top and bottom ?
Because i think mine had a ceramic capacitor on solder side and no picture now after i removed it :/


Best Regards

JOSÉ

[ramparts]

hi again

this is my pcb bootleg of bubble bobble after i socketed and changed the z80´s i got game running but with vertical lines.

20151021_230243[1].jpg

does anyone has any info about these pcb ?, i know the 2018 rams are responsable for the grafic ram but what are the character roms? and their buffers?
Since i only had original bb schematics online those anyone has more info ?
I suspect it could be a line between character rom ,ram and buffer.

20151024_190401[1].jpg

Best Regards

JOSÉ

[copados33]

A bit off topic: I have an original Tokio PCB, would it be possible to convert it to Bubble Bobble? same hardware as Bubble Bobble, the western version of Tokio a.k.a. : "Scramble Formation" doesn't have the Z80, but Tokio has it.