Bubble Bobble Bootleg info

[joaoljr]

As you may have guessed, i took the liberty to ask him if you could contact him directly, and you are welcome to reach Tom...

Ok, I have sent him an email with some questions. I will post again once I have some news.

Punji

[Asure]

Just got this one in, from greedbay. I figured at would be the next best thing besides owning a real BB, they're rather pricey



It did look rather dirty before cleaning, and the seller noted "audio doesn't work sometimes". I wiped it down with wet baby towels, then with alcohol. It smells minty fresh now
Here's a pic at 50% cleaning progress:


(Both pics are clickable for higher res.)

It appears to be 99% jamma compatible, except for some inputs that are wrapped around, i don't know if this is because of the (possibly?)bad (damaged)ENC-2 chip near the edge connector, or common for these bootlegs?

For example, i have pin17 P2 start on component side, vs P1 start. Shot/Jump is ok, P1/P2 left/right also seem to be wrapped around.
Does the Redux set fix this input issue, or do i need to cut/rewire some traces to make it 100% jamma? Any advice is welcome! Thanks!

p.s. something i could make out from the thread, does the 'Super BB' bootleg set have an issue with the treasure rooms or not? Or was this limited to a miswired board from one user?
Mame doesn't mind, i can get into the treasure room in stage 20, nothing is corrupt.. Just wondering

[joaoljr]

Just got this one in, from greedbay. I figured at would be the next best thing besides owning a real BB, they're rather pricey

True. I tried to get an original one for a fair price but gave up and created the REDUX mod instead!

It appears to be 99% jamma compatible, except for some inputs that are wrapped around, i don't know if this is because of the (possibly?)bad (damaged)ENC-2 chip near the edge connector, or common for these bootlegs?

For example, i have pin17 P2 start on component side, vs P1 start. Shot/Jump is ok, P1/P2 left/right also seem to be wrapped around.
Does the Redux set fix this input issue, or do i need to cut/rewire some traces to make it 100% jamma? Any advice is welcome! Thanks!

Who knows why those almost-JAMMA boards exist? I have one that also requires a connector adapter...
The REDUX mod does not address this issue, since bootleg boards differ from each other. It may be possible to do that for your board but not mine,
since it has differences at the power/ground pins as well.

p.s. something i could make out from the thread, does the 'Super BB' bootleg set have an issue with the treasure rooms or not? Or was this limited to a miswired board from one user?
Mame doesn't mind, i can get into the treasure room in stage 20, nothing is corrupt.. Just wondering

You may still have a problem there, it all depends on the ROMs #6, #7 and the other two socketed 28-pin chips above them.
I can't read those four chip numbers even in the high-res pictures, what are those?

Punji

[Asure]

Who knows why those almost-JAMMA boards exist? I have one that also requires a connector adapter...
The REDUX mod does not address this issue, since bootleg boards differ from each other. It may be possible to do that for your board but not mine,
since it has differences at the power/ground pins as well.

I checked the rest of the board, the following are inverted: 1P Start, 1P Left, 1P Shot1, 1P Shot2 (with 2P versions) only the RIGHT input is correct for both 2P and 1P.
There is already a small bit of wiring/jumpering done on the board, i think for video but i'm not sure. The board is on the test bench in my basement
I verified rewiring of the start button works. But i think maybe the ENC is bad, some date maybe not xor/and correctly from the inputs? I don't want to cut all those tracks..

p.s. something i could make out from the thread, does the 'Super BB' bootleg set have an issue with the treasure rooms or not? Or was this limited to a miswired board from one user?
Mame doesn't mind, i can get into the treasure room in stage 20, nothing is corrupt.. Just wondering

You may still have a problem there, it all depends on the ROMs #6, #7 and the other two socketed 28-pin chips above them.
I can't read those four chip numbers even in the high-res pictures, what are those?
[/quote]
I _think_ they are 8700-A1 and 8700-B1 (The board also has some 8700 markings on it, i guess it's Bootlegger identification for 'Bobble Bobble'?)
I think they are OTP (one time programmable roms) compatible 27C256 but not 100% sure. I will check tomorrow and take proper high res pics of the board in daylight

I still don't understand the inputs. I hope it still works for 2 players at the same time if i rewire it.. I don't know what's inside the ENC (encased substrate array thing it seems..)
It also doesn't help that my logic probe is not here yet.

cool work!
did everyone get the mystery - free play ?
you will earn 255 credits for free.
- simon

Found this in a youtube comment:

The memories... and right after defeating the boss, both player repeatedly pressing Jump + Bubble + Start during the credits glitched the machine into generating 255 credits.
Those were the days!

You still need to play the game to the end then do this.. Kind of like the UMK3 infinite play bug.. (not well documented)

[joaoljr]

I checked the rest of the board, the following are inverted: 1P Start, 1P Left, 1P Shot1, 1P Shot2 (with 2P versions) only the RIGHT input is correct for both 2P and 1P.
There is already a small bit of wiring/jumpering done on the board, i think for video but i'm not sure. The board is on the test bench in my basement
I verified rewiring of the start button works. But i think maybe the ENC is bad, some date maybe not xor/and correctly from the inputs? I don't want to cut all those tracks..

Did you actually power-up the board to confirm that? I don't see any signs of re-wiring on the component side near the edge connector.

I _think_ they are 8700-A1 and 8700-B1 (The board also has some 8700 markings on it, i guess it's Bootlegger identification for 'Bobble Bobble'?)
I think they are OTP (one time programmable roms) compatible 27C256 but not 100% sure. I will check tomorrow and take proper high res pics of the board in daylight

I could not find any ROM/PROMs named 8700... also, it may help if you provide pictures from the solder side as well.

I still don't understand the inputs. I hope it still works for 2 players at the same time if i rewire it.. I don't know what's inside the ENC (encased substrate array thing it seems..)
It also doesn't help that my logic probe is not here yet.

That ENC is likely just a capacitor array to filter the input signals, why do you think it is damaged?

Found this in a youtube comment:

The memories... and right after defeating the boss, both player repeatedly pressing Jump + Bubble + Start during the credits glitched the machine into generating 255 credits.
Those were the days!

You still need to play the game to the end then do this.. Kind of like the UMK3 infinite play bug.. (not well documented)

I tried to reproduce this a while ago but could not... I was not able to find anything in the code either related to this glitch.
Note that with the REDUX mod, you can skip all levels and go straight for the last one to fight the boss!

Punji

[Asure]

I could not find any ROM/PROMs named 8700... also, it may help if you provide pictures from the solder side as well.

The exact writing on these ic's is:
8700-A1 / Japan / 8732 D
8700-B1 / Japan / 8732 D
- PCB Front Pic.
- PCB Back Pic

There are 7 eproms(7x 27C256) on the board, no other OTP parts. The mystery 8700 ic's are paired it seems to the 6 and 7 roms.

That ENC is likely just a capacitor array to filter the input signals, why do you think it is damaged?

The package is damaged, bits are falling off. See this picture..
I'm not sure yet it's actually broken. I could rewire it cleanly for 100% jamma, no problem. Maybe it lowers the 'board value' for collectors hell, i don't know

Did you actually power-up the board to confirm that? I don't see any signs of re-wiring on the component side near the edge connector.

I powered up the board and tried all the inputs with my supergun. I only have a single joystick wired to DB-15 on my Smallcab minigun.
The board has been rewired/worked on in the past, before i got it. There's a wire on the back, and a jumper on the front. Seems for pin13 parts side.. (Video Blue)
(You can see the trace on the bottom right of ENC, i cut for P1 Start/P2 Start to swap them on the back. The newly swapped p1/p2 works fine by the way.)

Oh and there's a mystery cut between two of the Z80's i noticed whilst cleaning It doesn't seem to affect the board/gameplay at all, probably some error they noticed after production of this run. Now i'm just waiting on some eproms. Then to fire up my old pc with the bigass rs232 port

Edit: Pfff local electronics shop wanted 14 euros for a single 27C256, i told them to check the buyicnow.com website, then walked out the door. Can't believe those prices!

[joaoljr]

The exact writing on these ic's is:
8700-A1 / Japan / 8732 D
8700-B1 / Japan / 8732 D
There are 7 eproms(7x 27C256) on the board, no other OTP parts. The mystery 8700 ic's are paired it seems to the 6 and 7 roms.

Your ROMs are:

1 -> Sound CPU
2, 3, 4 -> Main CPU (bb3, bb4 and bb5 images)
5 -> Slave CPU

ROMs 6 and 7 plus those 8700s should be the video ROMs... that should be 2x192KB for a fully working game.
ROMs 6 and 7 are 27C256, i.e., 32KB each. The 8700s would need to account for 160KB each, which does not seem possible on a 28-pin package.
I suggest you check the treasure room at level 50th and/or the boss at the final level.
If that shows video artefacts, you may try reading the contents of ROMs 6 and 7... we may figure out something from there.

Oh and there's a mystery cut between two of the Z80's i noticed whilst cleaning It doesn't seem to affect the board/gameplay at all, probably some error they noticed after production of this run.

That is the COLOR selection signal used by the main CPU to write to the palette RAM. It goes from pin-13 of the PAL 16L8 right below the Z80 to pin-1 of the 74LS157 near the bottom-left, right above a 74LS74.
Your board should not be working if that trace is really cut!

Punji

[Asure]

Since the local ripoff electronics shop charges me 15 euro for a 27C256, i didn't write the Redux roms. yet
I did dump the roms 6&7, perhaps they can shed some light on my board setup? (Downloadlink for 6 & 7 roms)

Edit: did some compares
6.bin = a78-20.35
7.bin.. ? (looks like a78-09.12 at the start..) (and matches 1q.rom from set sboblboa.zip)

Any guess we can make from this?

P.s. there seems to be plenty of room around most of the roms. (There's a lot of empty data in the gfx ones at least it seems.)

[joaoljr]

Edit: did some compares
6.bin = a78-20.35
7.bin.. ? (looks like a78-09.12 at the start..) (and matches 1q.rom from set sboblboa.zip)

Any guess we can make from this?

P.s. there seems to be plenty of room around most of the roms. (There's a lot of empty data in the gfx ones at least it seems.)

7.bin = a78-14.17

So, I think the 8700s are 128KB (P)ROMs and your board has an issue with the treasure room / final boss, i.e., it is missing the data from a78-13.16 and a78-19.34.
Now, on my board I just had to replace the 27C256 with a 27C512 and flash those images concatenated,
but on Simon's board we had to do quite a lot of rewiring to get the extra address range properly selected.

My advice: buy a pair of 27C512 and try it out.

Punji

[Asure]

At the moment i suck too much to get the treasure room to see, but it seems logical to me that it would be missing. (Even om Mame i keep dying and the door disappears too soon aargh..)
With the local shop (only for local people..) charging me €15 for a 27C256, i guess they'll have a special deal like €30 for 27C512, so i'll keep waiting for my UV light. I have some 512's on a parts board.

Which roms do i need to copy /B into the 512's ? I guessed this:

6 = a78-20-35 & a78-19-34
7 = a78-14-17 & a78-13-16

Br,
Alex

[joaoljr]

We used these DOS commands to create the proper images:

copy /b a78-13.16 + a78-14.17 r6
copy /b a78-19.34 + a78-20.35 r7

As I said, once you get the REDUX mod with level skip in place, it will be easy to check the treasure room and final boss.

Punji

[Asure]

Uh oh.

I got my eraser & logic probe today, and erased & burned the new images. I verified them, all seems well. Game would not boot.
Burned back the old images(and verified) i had backupped before trying redux, and the board now does boot up, but seems in somewhat bad shape.
I took proper care when removing the old roms, and the board was fine before the swap.. aargh.
I did only bb3/4/5 and not the 27C512's at this point.

It resets constantly. Sometimes after a few seconds on the title screen, and sometimes after it shows the basic rules. Here's a video showing both types of reset :


I checked the z80's they seem fine. (although they are being reset for some reason, i can see the reset line going low/high when it happens.)
Inputs are broken, the board flips screen, doesn't coin up.. sometimes also displays a 'time error':



Could roms be crapping out? (i've some new ones on order, just in case). I'm really **** off at myself now, i must have broken something somehow..


Help!

[joaoljr]

Uh oh.

It resets constantly. Sometimes after a few seconds on the title screen, and sometimes after it shows the basic rules.
I checked the z80's they seem fine. (although they are being reset for some reason, i can see the reset line going low/high when it happens.)
Inputs are broken, the board flips screen, doesn't coin up.. sometimes also displays a 'time error':
Could roms be crapping out? (i've some new ones on order, just in case). I'm really **** off at myself now, i must have broken something somehow..

Help!

The board has a watchdog timer in the main Z80 CPU, if its output address does not get written to from time to time, the reset signal is activated.
The reset behavior and the video garbage is consistent with the CPU reading bad data from the EPROMs. Idem for that timing error.

It may be that your EPROMs are fault, but in that case the verify should have been unsuccessful. Maybe some EPROM pin is not well connected.
The original sockets and EPROM pins are usually rust from the time exposed to the air. If you have a multimeter, check the resistance from each pin
to the corresponding solder pad at the bottom of the board. It should be close to zero ohms.

Anyway, don't dispair!

Punji

[Asure]

Don't despair indeed

I spent the morning checking the sockets, and they were all 100% connected. I cleaned them with alcohol, and a little tiny 2mm hand drill i have for my solder sucker.

Then i pulled each of the new burnt bootleg bb3/4/5 and tested them, also ok. But, i probably made a mistake with the bb5 rom at some point. I think i burned it as BB4? Not quite sure though..
Mislabelled roms in my original board were 'bb2/3/4' in those sockets.
So i reburned those three of them with redux. But.. the BB5 rom acted wierd, and would not program. I erased and programmed it again, this time it verified as OK. and...


(To duplicate my stupidity, you can try with BB3/BB4/BB4 or BB3/BB5/BB5 combination, the board boots, and gets stuck in the reset loop in MAME too..)
Edit: It may be a bad read on rom BB5 (or missing BB5 rom) that causes this as well. I think?

So, now to check the level 20 treasure room.. so i skip to level 20.. but. uhm..when skip from 15 to 16.. this appears:



It does this each time consitently on level 15-16 when the two big sprites are 50% on screen. Sometimes the game also crashes when playing normally, picking up some item.. etc.
I guess i need to fix the common ram, or perhaps some IC driving it?
Anything special happens at level 16 when those sprites come into the screen? Or could this still be bad 3/4/5 rom issues?

p.s. I noticed you had this problem as well at some point.. I checked the roms i wrote are the correct redux ones from a later date where this was fixed.

The crash ate level 15 was due to some code protection being triggered by a missing initialization done by the PS4 code.

Edit: Tested the files i burned in MAME and they are ok, no crash.
Could it be some parts of my roms are not read properly by the cpu?

Edit2: i just parasolled (level skip) past level 16 to 18, and shortly after that, it crashed in level 18..

[joaoljr]

Hi, the crash I had before was at level 15. Does the issue happen at that level as well, when the big sprites are at 50%?
Could you add a video? It may give me some clues...

As far as I know, the RAM is only verified during the boot, but I may be wrong here.
It could be some bad ROM data causing the code to jump to the address that displays the RAM error message.

We already have quite a few boards successfully running the REDUX mod (actually, not a single failure case so far).
Have you tried to flash the original code again and get to level 16? I know it may require a few tries to get there...

I need to think how I could help you more here...

Punji

[Asure]

Yes, i still don't trust the eproms completely.. Can you tell in which eprom the PS4 emulation code is stored? I'll try and swap that one with some other from a donor board to see what happens

About the crash, you wrote before:

I consistently get a "COMMON RAM ERROR" when changing levels after 15 and the game freezes.

This is after level 15, i can play (and complete) level 15, or i can skip directly to level 16, and the game will crash when the big sprites come into the screen. It freezes, so it's easy for me to take a screenshot. If i make a video, it will just be level skipping up to 16, and then you see the game freeze at this exact point.

Lets call the three sockets A/B/C for a moment, and the eproms are bb3/bb4/bb5.
I know for sure if bad eprom is in socket C, this will cause the reset loops and crashes (duplicated in mame with bad data in C socket..)
If i test mame with BB3 in socket B, it never boots, so i guess this one could also be good to read.
Lucky guess is that the ps4 emu is in #5?

So i think the eprom with the PS4 emulation on it is damaged, or having some bad reads from time to time for some unknown reason. Maybe it's just too old.
From my experience with the watchdog reset before, it makes sense that at least one rom is bad, the one in third socket 'bb5'. If this is also the one that has the PS4 code in it, that would explain a lot.

Maybe i have this faulty eprom in 'bb4' socket now, as i swapped them around when erasing and reprogramming them a few times.. Only the BB5 gave me a hard time when i programmed it..

Edit:
I took two 27C512's, doubled up the roms, and flashed them as BB4 and BB5. These are 20ns versus the old 250ns eproms that were in there. (bb3/bb4/bb5 were all 250ns.) Powered up the board... aaaaaand:



It appears the error is in rom BB4, which i swapped out with the old reburned 27C256, and the same freeze with the big sprites on start of stage 16 occurs again.

With working bb4/bb5 roms, i then tested the secret room at stage 20, which i can now pass to



This looks different from the error i saw in the thread before where there were still graphics in the 'brown/yellow' area, i appear to have no gfx there at all.
I didn't have my probe handy and could not see where the game tried to read from / what pin was hi/lo at that moment.
Can you tell from the picture if this can be fixed with 512's?

I played for a bit more, but not all is well. bb4 is still on an old eprom, i guess that one is also 'not good' for some reason. Some random game crashes/freezes still occur on stages after 20..

Edit:
I see i am asking the same as Simon/Golani had, and the solution is already in the thread. Will report back when i get the correct 256' and 512's.

I'm calling it a day for now, i have 27C256/200's and 27C512/150's on order that should arrive somewhere next week, i hope those work out ok, i'm blaming all this on bad roms for now

p.s. just the question of the eprom speed remains now, how fast/slow are yours for bb3/4/5?

[joaoljr]

I see i am asking the same as Simon/Golani had, and the solution is already in the thread. Will report back when i get the correct 256' and 512's.

I'm calling it a day for now, i have 27C256/200's and 27C512/150's on order that should arrive somewhere next week, i hope those work out ok, i'm blaming all this on bad roms for now

p.s. just the question of the eprom speed remains now, how fast/slow are yours for bb3/4/5?

I'm glad you were able to advance on your own. Lets see if the new EPROMs can completely cure the issue.

I don't use EPROMs because I don't have an UV eraser. I use 27SF256 flash chips with 70ns access time. But as per the original board schematics, you should be fine with 200ns EPROMs.

By the way, from your treasure room screenshot, I think your board is similar to Simon's, i.e., the video ROM selection circuit will need to be modified in order to enable the full 192KB address range.

Punji

[Asure]

By the way, from your treasure room screenshot, I think your board is similar to Simon's, i.e., the video ROM selection circuit will need to be modified in order to enable the full 192KB address range.
Punji

I'll grab the board tomorrow and see if i can follow the steps you wrote down for Simon, and if the parts are at the same positions/etc.
I will take some high res pictures of the pcb front and back side areas involved as well.

I have some junk boards coming in also, perhaps i can borrow a few 512's or 256 from that and get this thing fully working tomorrow

Edit: I borrowed another 27C512 from a board, and the game plays perfect reduxed with three 512's in bb3/bb4/bb5 slots. I played all the levels, original game, did a few bonus rooms, and completed it. The bonus rooms & end boss are still bad, but i don't have any other eproms to test/patch the board. Will report back when i do
(Also erased the 256's for a long time (30 mins) and reprogrammed.. but the game still won't run properly with them installed.)

[Asure]

So, i got a bunch of 512's in the mail and am ready to fix the treasure room now
My board is pretty different, i don't have any indication of part names or letters to ident them.
Also i appear to have both VCC and GND in tracks on the top. The bottom is pretty empty. I took the following pictures.

Pic1
Pic2
Pic3
Pic4a (LS138 is there)
Pic4b (LS138 back side)
Pic5

I hope the pics are good enough quality? And thank you again for creating Redux, it must have been a lot of work to make it!

[joaoljr]

I see you previously posted a hires panoramic view of the board top:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/677 ... .52.40.jpg"

Please also post one for the bottom.

Punji