GTI Club: Supermini Festa

[Scoutp]

after going through an tearing my hair out trying to get further than that hardware error, I did a bit of googling and after a while came across someone who has done the exact thing I'm aiming to do

https://mon.im/2017/12/konami-arcade-drm.html

My end-goal hope is to be able to provide tools and instructions on how to get this working, and scalable no matter the operating system, or hardware.

XPEmbedded and XP overall simply put, is awful. it limits our ability to use SSD's and find cheaper era-specific (or newer) hardware to support these. A good example is TEM100-001B motherboards. cheapest I have found is £500. The motherboard for my AM5 PC didn't even cost that much, and that's a top of the line board.

This seems somewhat complex, and somewhat simple at the same time.

Down the rabbit hole we go...

[aerobert]

You're doing extremely valuable work. Document it all!

[Scoutp]

You're doing extremely valuable work. Document it all!

Doing it as a go, will be published at the end, just doing small updates to retain my sanity lol.

Thank you

One thing I learned last night though- the motherboard DOES matter, but... Only if you're using an original hard drive.

The BIOS of the board apparently checks the hard drive for a key, if harddrive doesn't have that key, no boot (this IS different to the iKey)

But, from what I can tell reading both the above linked site, and checking myself, the Konami software doesn't check against that, that's just Taito sprinkling in a small F**k you.

So in theory, you can just replace both and viola problem solved, and that's backed up by my "hardware error" that's complaining about the missing iKey.

Hardware coming soon, and I'm the meantime we work on the iKey bypass

[aerobert]

Very good! But it is concerning it's blowing motherboards. As you say, strange enough for it to not be a coincidence.

[Scoutp]

Very good! But it is concerning it's blowing motherboards. As you say, strange enough for it to not be a coincidence.

Yeah, I hope it is a coincidence, but dad is checking everything over now, meanwhile I've got a normal PC power supply to test everything at home.

Just waiting for parts, and diving down the rabbit hole in the meantime.

I've also just had an email back from konami, so although that may not bear fruit, fingers are crossed

[nem]

So in theory, you can just replace both and viola problem solved, and that's backed up by my "hardware error" that's complaining about the missing iKey.

I'm not sure I follow, why are you not using the hardware keys that you have?

I've also just had an email back from konami, so although that may not bear fruit, fingers are crossed

Interesting tactic decompiling their game and also being in contact with them.

If an arcade manufacturer doesn't have spare parts available for an older title, they want you to buy one of their current games. They usually do not want to help you to fix it by yourself. Best case scenario they'll tell you they can't help you, worst case scenario you'll be asking the site admins to take down this thread.

[Scoutp]

So in theory, you can just replace both and viola problem solved, and that's backed up by my "hardware error" that's complaining about the missing iKey.

I'm not sure I follow, why are you not using the hardware keys that you have?

I've also just had an email back from konami, so although that may not bear fruit, fingers are crossed

Interesting tactic decompiling their game and also being in contact with them.

If an arcade manufacturer doesn't have spare parts available for an older title, they want you to buy one of their current games. They usually do not want to help you to fix it by yourself. Best case scenario they'll tell you they can't help you, worst case scenario you'll be asking the site admins to take down this thread.

So the main reason I'm not using my hardware keys is, because it would be fun to just remove that requirement and still use original hardware.

So I'm mainly in contact with them for manuals etc, I haven't mentioned the thread, other than: dad bought a cab, we're trying to repair manuals, please give me some.

I have also been in contact with Taito, who confirmed that although this is extremely similar to type x hardware & software, this is all Konami. Result. A lot of the issues I was dreading (Motherboard talking to the HDD for confirmation) may not be a factor, here's to hoping. But if they are, i still have an easily accessible workaround.

The main goal of my little side project while repairing this cab, is keeping these machines alive.

Those mechanical drives, will die.

Those motherboards, will die.

Those iKeys, will die.

Windows XP (and XP Embedded) is a big blocker, stopping the top two from becoming easily accessible replacements to keep these machines alive.

The lack of native IDE controller in a motherboard, is a blocker, and unless you can get into XP to go through the process of injecting ACHI drivers (which I can assure you is not easy, nor fun) is a blocker.

Essentially. I want make resources and documentation that if you have the cabinet, and a broken PC, or even no PC. you have a blueprint, and all the tools & knowledge ready, to revive this cabinet, using it the way it original was in an arcade, without emulation, or anything.

Just running Konami software, on a more accessible operating system, with easier access to parts.

and there are posts about beating this DRM for years. Konami isn't generally a company that cares about people digging through old hardware or software, they're not Nintendo.

Beating the DRM for me is more of a challenge and a bonus point, the main goal is to change operating systems, making it much easier and cheaper to keep these machines alive, Vista for example ended support in 2017, meaning we go from PC component replacement parts from only 2008 or before (due to IDE) to anything before 2017 (vista EoL) in theory. Opening the door to SSD's for better reliability, and off the shelf replacement parts for dirt, dirt cheap. All the while not changing your arcade experience at all (apart from potentially getting a solid 60fps or even 4k output if you upgrade the system).

[arcnl]

Have you tried loading the teknoparrot version to see if it works with original IO ?

[Scoutp]

Have you tried loading the teknoparrot version to see if it works with original IO ?

Not yet but I am trying to keep as original as possible.

The IO is sorted by the Konami applications not the game itself.

That's the main guts of what I want to see if it works on another operating system

The end goal for me is to say:

Here's how to rebuild your harddrive (if you need to)
Here's how to upgrade the OS to help you replace some components.

[Scoutp]

stumbled across something pretty cool on a random windows xp subreddit
The Konami XP embedded instal disk iso's



https://archive.org/details/win-eleven-game

[Scoutp]

UPDATE!

New motherboard works, and has a dedicated IDE controller, so a small bit of BIOS settings and BAM she is working!

I was right, KonamiPC does NOT have the same motherboard hard-drive "marrying" that Taito Type machines do (SCORE!) so the old OS will just work granted your hardware supports it (Dedicated IDE controller)

Serial to PCI adapters coming to open up all the serial ports again for the IO boards.

Will be about a week until im down there next to test it (as well as test my prepped vista drive) but motherboard swap is possible!

[aerobert]

Excellent work!

[arcnl]

Where is the security dongle? I was expecting to see something plugged in to a usb or serial port

[Scoutp]

Where is the security dongle? I was expecting to see something plugged in to a usb or serial port

So on the older Konami PC machines the security dongle is plugged into one of the IO boards and connected via serial.

I don't have the IO boards currently as they're still in the machine down my dad's, gonna be a week probably until the next update and while some PCI to Serial adapters come so that we can hook the machine up.

In the meantime my dad is replacing all of the serial cables on the machine as they don't feel great at all

[uncletom]

Have you checked with Andygeezer about this?

[Scoutp]

Have you checked with Andygeezer about this?

I'm not sure who that is sorry, would be more than happy for any help with this though so please pass his details through!

Small update it looks like konami's XP embedded is extremely particular about serial ports, so assuming the hardware error IS the lack of iKey, the system just isn't seeing my IO boards on either machine.

And my windows vista USB has now decided to just NOT work...

Time to make a new USB and look more closelyer at getting past the pesky key

[Scoutp]

If someone with a machine could yank their security dongle out and let me know if they get "HARDWARE ERROR 1-1603-0004" I would be extremely appreciative, I'm not sure at all of this is relating to the iKey or if it's a red herring and I need to look elsewhere.

[uncletom]

Andy Geezer Services, or AGS. Not marketed too much for obvious reasons stated earlier here in the thread. I bet he is, or at least was, a pain for both dealers and manufacturers for his ease of fixing games *the simple way*. I remember he had a couple of these set up once, I bought a system of him at one time and had plenty of fun with it.

I see you're in Wales, Andy should still be in Cambridge. Say "hi! from uncletom", and if possible pay him a visit.

Oh and have you got a proper motherboard / PC-setup working yet? And I don't mean buying used boards of ebay or any such, but getting maybe a complete working PC with similar chip-set from around 2009-2010. You should also use a new PSU, not an old one not serviced for ages because the caps are either blown or dry by now. Start at the bottom working your way up. If your HDD is OK, with Konami proprietary boards, you'll have a playable game any day.

And, have you got the wiring and other docs for the game?

[Scoutp]

Good shout! I've dmed him on here but I'll try and find other means of contact!

So I've tried it in a VM and got the 1-1603-0004 error, now with the working hardware (new SSD duplicated from og drive, new PSU, new cooler etc) I get to the same point.

Looking through the archived arcade manual for Silent hill arcade, this seems to be "The PCB unit is not functioning correctly"

Making some leaps and looking at the program in IDA Pro, this is a call made for the iKey as it's "security_cookie" check. As part of the IDREQ check that calls HIDGET.exe in the Konami files.

Given the above and looking at the IO boards it looks for a "PC ON" check on one of the IO boards, I'm assuming it checks this before sending/receiving more data, meaning my iKey isn't being received.

That's where this strange little PCB comes in that acts as our power, res switcher and serial port.

The IOboard calls the PCB, checks if it has power, if it does, it sends more data.

That, coupled with the weird layout of the front panel io pins on the motherboard, makes this strangely proprietary, and more problems to solve.

Thankfully, konami's code is fairly well documented, but this is where the IO boards in the cab have now stepped in to scupper me.

Without that little add in Card, you can't communicate with the IO boards, so you don't get any data, so you don't get your iKey validation, and as a result, get stuck as the game isn't decrypted.

It's possible I could create a condition in HIDGET.exe to always return "yes" to that check, but as I don't know what the IOBoard is doing in this situation, or when it checks, it may still result in an error

[Scoutp]

Update:

I've successfully bypassed the iKey, at least in the initial part of the script. And it was much easier than I expected.

So your standard "Hardware error" is called from a program called HIDGET.exe which is part of the IDREQ check in the initial Konami batch file.

The fun part is, this, this is just initial checks, this actually does nothing other than validate. And it calls the iKey here.

So, what if we just remove the idreq check function from the script?

Well, it just proceeds as normal and doesn't care! Classes the script as a pass and moves on because it didn't get an error.

So now, we have game boot, but only, we don't.

Because of how picky XPE is with my motherboard swap I don't have any drivers, so that's my next step, getting those drivers installed.

Another funny thing about this XPE build, it has 0 usb drivers. So, I need to get a PS/2 keyboard and mouse to get drivers installed as well as removing klock.

That's arriving this week, and we should be on the very edge of having this booted.

Once it is, I'll publish all scripts and disk images on archive.org and look at porting this to another OS properly

I know the iKey is still called as part of the IO check in SELECT.exe, that's the next problem to attempt to reverse engineer, but you can also bypass that entirely by just using the boot.bat in the gti3 folder.

You can just place that over your normal Konami start.bat file in the startup folder and go straight into the game, more testing is needed with that to check the IO works but I know the ELOTouchSystems drivers are already loaded at that point, so it should be fine.


This week should be exciting...