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PostPosted: March 23rd, 2015, 9:13 am 
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Anyone has any dumps for this system? Don't think anything is available besides the BASIC cart.

I tried buying some carts to dump, but even at Yahoo auctions Japan they don't seem to show up these days, might also be the case that's hard as hell to find them through search since searching for Gundam will always get you thousands of hits for all the other Gundam related merchandise.


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PostPosted: March 23rd, 2015, 8:01 pm 
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I didn't know that BS-BASIC was already available as a dump! :). Anyway, seems that it's not publicy available for now.

Indeed, they're hard to find...and expensive!. All the software (not only the RX-78 one) is getting mad prices lately!

I've some RX-78 carts; but I haven't found a way to dump them (I don't want to open them as they would be probably damaged in the process, they seem glued hard). The idea is to plug the cart disabling the ROM start and from the monitor, save the binary to CMT. Usually tapping a pin in the cartridge does the trick; but the cartridge connector pinout is unknown, at least for me.

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PostPosted: March 23rd, 2015, 9:45 pm 
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repoMan wrote:
I didn't know that BS-BASIC was already available as a dump! :). Anyway, seems that it's not publicy available for now.


It is, it is ...

Did you tried the autoboot command on MESS?
https://vimeo.com/98574881
Below an example for the command line.

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PostPosted: March 23rd, 2015, 10:18 pm 
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That autoboot feature looks fantastic!. Definitely need to check it...

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PostPosted: March 23rd, 2015, 10:28 pm 
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repoMan wrote:
That autoboot feature looks fantastic!. Definitely need to check it...


My example for the command line:
Remove the "-aviwrite demo.avi" if you not want create a video file (.avi)

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PostPosted: March 23rd, 2015, 10:32 pm 
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repoMan wrote:
I've some RX-78 carts; but I haven't found a way to dump them (I don't want to open them as they would be probably damaged in the process, they seem glued hard). The idea is to plug the cart disabling the ROM start and from the monitor, save the binary to CMT. Usually tapping a pin in the cartridge does the trick; but the cartridge connector pinout is unknown, at least for me.


Check Takeda-san's page: http://homepage3.nifty.com/takeda-toshi ... index.html

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PostPosted: March 23rd, 2015, 10:47 pm 
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repoMan wrote:
I've some RX-78 carts; but I haven't found a way to dump them (I don't want to open them as they would be probably damaged in the process, they seem glued hard). The idea is to plug the cart disabling the ROM start and from the monitor, save the binary to CMT. Usually tapping a pin in the cartridge does the trick; but the cartridge connector pinout is unknown, at least for me.

The only person I know has dumped RX-78 game carts is Takeda and he won't share them so that won't help us. You could try emailing him asking about the cartridge pinout or the dumping process he used, I think he wouldn't have any problems helping you out with that since you do own the games. I can try asking Robbbert as he might know the pinout too since he was involved in the MESS RX-78 driver. I'd definitely be very interested on seeing some games preserved for this system.
Other alternative would be opening a cart and figure the pinout, but that seems to be out of question. If I was able to buy one game I would do just that :)

The BS-Basic rom is available in the MESS set btw.


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PostPosted: March 24th, 2015, 7:42 am 
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Please respect Takeda-san's policies.
I posted the link to his page already.
Check his tool called "VidDumper" (video capture to get the ROM)
Available in source.zip

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PostPosted: March 24th, 2015, 6:40 pm 
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I didn't disrespect anyone just stated he won't share the roms which is true.
My Japanese isn't good enough to fully understand his page, google translate didn't make a great job at it either, but seems that requires some extra hardware like a video capture card, instructions don't seem to be very detailed. Not sure if repoMan could follow them as well, if not maybe you could help him out with process.


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PostPosted: March 24th, 2015, 7:57 pm 
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Doh!, i overlooked the SHIFT+STOP trick!. I read about this capture (very clever, btw) method a lot of time ago; but I always thought that this only can be used to dump BS-BASIC.
If you press SHIFT+STOP when booting the machine with a cart, it simply ignores the cart and enters the monitor. The ROM is clearly visible from $2000 :-)

This opens a lot of possibilities in a near future ^_^

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PostPosted: March 24th, 2015, 8:49 pm 
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Does this mean we might be seeing some cart dumps then? :)


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PostPosted: March 24th, 2015, 9:54 pm 
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Most probably if I'm able to find the RX-78 program used to generate the blocky patterns.

I can figure out where's located... :?

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PostPosted: March 25th, 2015, 7:29 pm 
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Not able to check right now, but looking at source.zip seems this might be the project you need:
\source\source\tool\viddumper

You'll need to compile it in VB6.


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PostPosted: March 25th, 2015, 7:44 pm 
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Quote:
find the RX-78 program used to


VidDumper is the PC video capture tool used to "read" the RX-78's video output, it's already compiled btw ;-)
The RX-78 must use some kind of ROM dumper that converts byte's bits into blocks and draws them in the screen

An OCR could be also a solution; but probably it's prone to faults, so in this case doesn't seems the best method.

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PostPosted: March 25th, 2015, 11:48 pm 
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ah ok sorry, didn't understand your post.
I guess Anna could help you out then, couldn't find that in sources.zip either. If that's not available hopefully Takeda will be ok in sharing it.


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