The General Purpose Arcade Thread.

[Yoshi]

They definitely have been over the last decade-plus. You never know if it'll continue or, like you said, if I could bring myself to cash out. In the past, I've never had a problem doing so when things reach a price where the money is worth more to me than the item.

[Darmonde]

I was looking for an excuse to post here anyway!

GohanX mentioned possibly being able to fix CPS2 stuff. Is there a good site where I can read up on this kind of thing, for CPS2 and 3 specifically?

If I remember correctly, I have a dead MvSF, and maybe a dead Xmen COTA. I have a working MvC, AvP, and COTA- I think that was it.

I might dig through my crawlspace sometime and look. Gohan, if you just want something to mess with, I could send you a board to try and revive or do whatever with.

I do know i have several dead CPS3 carts and those I would LOVE to revive. I'm pretty sure that's possible now because I've seen some crazy CPS3 setups recently. I never really know where to start looking for this kind of info though, also too lazy.

[GohanX]

You can read up on a lot of information at http://cps2shock.emu-france.info/. There is a competing team that has released decrypted roms for free at http://cps2.avalaunch.net/, which is what I would use to revive boards unless you are going to pay Razoola for Phoenix roms (I will not pirate Phoenix roms.)

I'd love to get my hands on the dead board to see if I can revive it! In theory, as long as the battery didn't actually explode and damage components, all I'd have to do is remove some of the program eproms and reprogram them with Avalaunch's roms. I don't really want to tinker with mine since they both have good batteries still.

As far as CPS3 goes, I don't know much about it, but I think most of them can be resurrected, or converted to use as a multicart.

[Darmonde]

Thanks for the links! I'll take a look at those sites. It sounds like batteries are still needed without Phoenixing?

I'll definitely send you a board once I find out what I have. No idea when I'll get to it though, will let you know.

[GohanX]

Yes, the battery powers the chip that contains the key for decrypting the roms. If the battery dies, the decryption key is lost, and the board can not run the encrypted code ever again. Phoenixing is basically just reprogramming the chips with unencrypted roms to allow the board to work again.

[Darmonde]

I remember it used to be a brute force method with some kind of xor tables. I guess I was hoping that now that it was fully decrypted reprogramming without the need for the battery would be standard. I have no idea if its way harder to rewrite the game data as opposed to the decryption only though. That step has always been a mystery to me.

[GohanX]

Yeah, that's the way it works. Battery dies, you reprogram chips with decrypted roms, continue gaming.

[Darmonde]

Gotcha, I was getting the term phoenixing mixed up with Raz's official Phoenix roms.

CPS3 sounds basically wrapped up. You can get a dead cart brought back by sending to someone who will replace the chip with a version that will load ALL cps3 games. Just need the rest of the hardware. That's kind of crazy. It sounds like it only works with burned ISOs, not original disks though. I'd like to see if I can get a 3s cart just redone without suicide, but I don't think that's an option. At least I know my hardware can be brought back to a usable state.

Reading up on all this is getting me excited again, so I'll hopefully try out my boards this weekend.

[Yoshi]

If you decide to go the CPS2 multicart route, I'd probably be interested in your AvP if the battery is still working.

[GohanX]

Yes! Nobody ever wants to play avp with me