Tuesday, March 7, 2017
Back in League
This weekend im heading back out to Brads to place $100 down on all ~30 machines. However, i have to wait until the end of the month to afford the storage for all the units. Im going to be buying the complete lot off him now that things are more organized and funds available.. Soon this website will truly be functional.
Monday, March 6, 2017
lost but not forgotten...
Wow... Now nearly half a year later now that the snow is disappearing and roads are safe to drive again... Im getting out there to absolutely make the purchase on the arcade machines... I seriously hope theyre still there. Like i said... Lost but not forgotten. Stay tuned for details!! : )
Long live retro-repairs.ml!!-!!
Long live retro-repairs.ml!!-!!
Tuesday, September 13, 2016
Sleepin' like it's Christmas Night ( = D)
Things are starting to go into place now..
Tomorrow morning I'm going to be heading over to 'Brads' to finally decide on which machines I'll be taking. So much for sleep tonight; I'm just too excited!
So if all goes well, I'll have a bunch of photos of the machines I'm buying tomorrow afternoon. I'll be heading over there first thing in the morning.
Remind myself to get a loan for $100 so that I can give Brad some cash straight up for waiting so long.
Tomorrow morning I'm going to be heading over to 'Brads' to finally decide on which machines I'll be taking. So much for sleep tonight; I'm just too excited!
So if all goes well, I'll have a bunch of photos of the machines I'm buying tomorrow afternoon. I'll be heading over there first thing in the morning.
Remind myself to get a loan for $100 so that I can give Brad some cash straight up for waiting so long.
^^ Great arcade games from the 80s and 90s ^^
Thursday, September 8, 2016
Down-sizing Purchase
Sorry for the long delay in updates...
I decided I won't be picking up every single machine from the barnyard... $280-300 a month for storage is just out of my league right now... maybe I would if they were functional machines. I can buy popular PCBs of mid-2000 games for $250.
But I contacted buddy and I'm going to take about 10 arcade machines for my apartment... even only being a bachelor suite.
A lot of the titles I've been talking about I will still be getting... Nintendo Super System, Nintendo Unisystem VS, SanFransisco Rush: The Rock... not sure about Bubble Bobble (depends on if cabinet is original or not)... not sure about Galaga... and Rygar in the state it's in is unlikely. I'll mainly be buying the completest machines I see there.
I'm going to try getting over to Cash Money tomorrow and make a $300 loan (first loan is only $320 payback.. so I loose $20) to give to buddy with the machines since I've been making him wait so long already.. I might also hire him as my driver. I hope to have a date to when I'll be dropping off the money and taking photos of the machines by Saturday the 10th (2016).
I decided I won't be picking up every single machine from the barnyard... $280-300 a month for storage is just out of my league right now... maybe I would if they were functional machines. I can buy popular PCBs of mid-2000 games for $250.
But I contacted buddy and I'm going to take about 10 arcade machines for my apartment... even only being a bachelor suite.
A lot of the titles I've been talking about I will still be getting... Nintendo Super System, Nintendo Unisystem VS, SanFransisco Rush: The Rock... not sure about Bubble Bobble (depends on if cabinet is original or not)... not sure about Galaga... and Rygar in the state it's in is unlikely. I'll mainly be buying the completest machines I see there.
I'm going to try getting over to Cash Money tomorrow and make a $300 loan (first loan is only $320 payback.. so I loose $20) to give to buddy with the machines since I've been making him wait so long already.. I might also hire him as my driver. I hope to have a date to when I'll be dropping off the money and taking photos of the machines by Saturday the 10th (2016).
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
Creating Harddrives from CHDMan.exe
Taken from: www.pinrepair.com/rush/
To change the code from San Francisco Rush to San Francisco Rush the Rock, the game code needs to be changed. This means new hard drive code.
To re-create the harddrive image, a DOS program called ChdMan.exe is used (in a DOS window) to read a CHD file which is the hard drive image (CHD means Compressed Hunks of Data). The ChdMan program then reconstructs the image file onto a new 8 gig or larger hard drive. Info on the CHD file can be seen by typing in the MS-DOS command.
To create a new hard drive, first go to the Window's Control Panel, and click on "Administrative Tools", and then double click "Computer Management". Now click on "Disk Management", and all the hard drives listed on your computer will be shown. Notice in the example below that the freshly FAT32 formated 19gig hard drive called "RushRock (D:)" is known as "Disk1" (that is, Windows maps this drive as "disk1"). Using this mapping, CHDMAN.EXE can be run to recreate the Rush the Rock hard drive using this MS-DOS command. Note the PYSICALDRIVE portion of the command is followed by a number. This number MUST be the mapping drive number you found in the above "Disk Management" program. If you put in the wrong drive map number, you can accidentally overwrite that hard drive! So be careful and type the correct drive number. In the case shown below, drive Disk1 is the drive I want to overwrite with the Rush the Rock code. Note the size of the new hard drive does not matter. It just needs to be bigger than the .CHD file. I created a new Rush the Rock hard drive using a 20gig drive, and it worked fine. Now open an MS-DOS window and go to the directory that holds the Rush.Chd file and the ChdMan.exe program (both in the same directory). In my case, these are on my C: drive, and the hard drive I will be creating is the D: drive. I made sure the Rush.Chd and ChdMan.Exe files were in the same directory on C:, and that I was logged into that directory thru Ms-Dos. Here's the commands I typed on my Win2000 system's Ms-Dos window:
To take a step back, a friend of mine had a professional hard disk copy program, and made me a copy of his Rush the Rock hard drive onto a Fujitsu 8.5 gig (16383 cyl, 16 head, 64 sec) hard drive. He could have used a different size hard drive, but that's what he had that was big enough for the Rush the Rock data, but not too big to be wasting money. I put this Fujitsu hard drive into my Windows 2000 system, and could see the hard drive was mearly a "data dump" for the game. That is, the Fujitsu hard drive was not a recongized Windows partition. Here's what the Administrative Tools' Disk Management showed for the Rush to Rock Fujitsu 8.5 gig hard drive:
I wanted to use CHDMan.exe to back up this drive, so I could always recreate the hard drive if I needed (as shown above), saving the drive to a .CHD file. I opened a MS-DOS window, went to the directory I wanted to save the new .CHD file, and typed the following command:
Chip Code Update from SF Rush to SF Rush the Rock.
There are some chips that need to be changed also, to work in conjunction with the new hard drive image. This includes two new 27040 EPROMs. This include U32 which is the "boot" ROM and U69 which is the Sound Boot ROM). The sound data ROMs are at U49, U53, U61 and U62. These are all 42 pin 16 Mbit (2meg byte) 27C160 EPROMs by ST Micro (about $10 each). The good news is all these EPROM chips are easy to "burn" and reproduce using an EPROM programmer. The big issue is the security PIC chip at U96. This is a 28 pin PIC, which needs to be copied (unfortunately I don't have the image file for it). The PIC code can be copied onto a new PIC16c57 blank by the MicroChip company. This is a 8 bit micro-controller RISC CPU with 2k bytes program memory and 72 bytes of RAM data memory running at 20MHz clock input, and uses a low power, high speed CMOS EPROM technology. I just need the image file to do this, which unfortunately people are holding tight to (if you have this image file, please email me at cfh@provide.net as I would greatly appreciate the file.) This is the problem chip, and makes changing from SF Rush to Rush the Rock difficult. The chip is there to prevent an easy upgrade, as Atari/Midway obviously wanted operators to buy the upgrade. I ended up just buying the chip already programmed from www.arcade-service.com (Indianapolis, IN).
For fun, I put the newly created Rush the Rock hard drive in the game with it running all the original SF Rush firmware chips. It actually works (kind of). The sound is quite confused, but the game does boot and run (you will lose all your settings/high scores and the steering/peddles will want to be recalibrated). With the Rush the Rock hard drive and the SF Rush firmware, you get the same three SF Rush tracks (Beginner, Immediate, Expert), plus the Rock track. This will give you an idea of what Rush the Rock is all about. The Rock track is pretty cool, with lots of hidden routes and gravity-defying loops and jumps.
Next I tried the Rock HD and the 27040 Rock EPROMs at U32 and U69. The U69 sound boot EPROM works with the SF Rush 27C160 data EPROMs, but the sound is unbearable. Better to leave the SF Rush U69 installed until the four 27C160 Rock sound data EPROMs can be acquired. Unfortunately the U32 program boot EPROM would not work at all, the game just would not boot. I'm sure this has to do with the security PIC, which is no doubt different for Rush the Rock. The LEDs on the CPU board near U32 were going nuts (contant alternate flashing) compared to their normal boot behavior.
In the end I just ordered the complete chip set from www.arcade-service.com and was done with it. At about $115 per kit (not including the hard drive) it wasn't cheap, but I was done with the upgrade from SF Rush to Rush the Rock.
-DOWNLOADS-
http://www.pinrepair.com/rush/rock.chd
http://retro-repairs.netai.net/san_francisco_rush/the_rock/sfrush-therock_-_boot_soundboot_roms.rar
http://retro-repairs.netai.net/san_francisco_rush/the_rock/sfrush-therock_-_sound_data_roms_part1.rar
http://retro-repairs.netai.net/san_francisco_rush/the_rock/sfrush-therock_-_sound_data_roms_part2.rar
http://retro-repairs.netai.net/windows_ms-dos/chdman0.83.rar
To change the code from San Francisco Rush to San Francisco Rush the Rock, the game code needs to be changed. This means new hard drive code.
To re-create the harddrive image, a DOS program called ChdMan.exe is used (in a DOS window) to read a CHD file which is the hard drive image (CHD means Compressed Hunks of Data). The ChdMan program then reconstructs the image file onto a new 8 gig or larger hard drive. Info on the CHD file can be seen by typing in the MS-DOS command.
Input file: rock.chd
Header size: 120 bytes
File version: 3
Flags: NO_PARENT, READ_ONLY
Compression: zlib+
Hunk size: 4096 bytes
Total hunks: 1833419
Logical size: 7,509,680,640 bytes
MD5: 425c83a4fd389d820aceabf2c72e6107
SHA1: 75aba7be869996ff522163466c97f88f78904fe0
Metadata: Tag=47444444 Length=35
CYLS:913,HEADS:255,SECS:63,BPS:512.
To create a new hard drive, first go to the Window's Control Panel, and click on "Administrative Tools", and then double click "Computer Management". Now click on "Disk Management", and all the hard drives listed on your computer will be shown. Notice in the example below that the freshly FAT32 formated 19gig hard drive called "RushRock (D:)" is known as "Disk1" (that is, Windows maps this drive as "disk1"). Using this mapping, CHDMAN.EXE can be run to recreate the Rush the Rock hard drive using this MS-DOS command. Note the PYSICALDRIVE portion of the command is followed by a number. This number MUST be the mapping drive number you found in the above "Disk Management" program. If you put in the wrong drive map number, you can accidentally overwrite that hard drive! So be careful and type the correct drive number. In the case shown below, drive Disk1 is the drive I want to overwrite with the Rush the Rock code. Note the size of the new hard drive does not matter. It just needs to be bigger than the .CHD file. I created a new Rush the Rock hard drive using a 20gig drive, and it worked fine. Now open an MS-DOS window and go to the directory that holds the Rush.Chd file and the ChdMan.exe program (both in the same directory). In my case, these are on my C: drive, and the hard drive I will be creating is the D: drive. I made sure the Rush.Chd and ChdMan.Exe files were in the same directory on C:, and that I was logged into that directory thru Ms-Dos. Here's the commands I typed on my Win2000 system's Ms-Dos window:
c:chdman -extract c:Rock.chd \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1
Note I was getting a "error opening output file \\.\physicaldrive1"
message. This happened because there is a bad version of CHDman out there that does not work (version .121).
I used version
CHDman 0.83
and the above command worked fine. Also after CHDman is done putting the Rush
the Rock image on the hard drive, this drive will no longer be accessible by Windows or MS-Dos.
Again this is because it's a raw data dump, and not a DOS partitioned drive.
To take a step back, a friend of mine had a professional hard disk copy program, and made me a copy of his Rush the Rock hard drive onto a Fujitsu 8.5 gig (16383 cyl, 16 head, 64 sec) hard drive. He could have used a different size hard drive, but that's what he had that was big enough for the Rush the Rock data, but not too big to be wasting money. I put this Fujitsu hard drive into my Windows 2000 system, and could see the hard drive was mearly a "data dump" for the game. That is, the Fujitsu hard drive was not a recongized Windows partition. Here's what the Administrative Tools' Disk Management showed for the Rush to Rock Fujitsu 8.5 gig hard drive:
I wanted to use CHDMan.exe to back up this drive, so I could always recreate the hard drive if I needed (as shown above), saving the drive to a .CHD file. I opened a MS-DOS window, went to the directory I wanted to save the new .CHD file, and typed the following command:
chdman -createhd \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 rock.chd
This created an image of the Rush the Rock hard drive on my Window machine.
The resulting file created by CHDMan was a single 143meg compressed file
which reflected the entire 8 meg non-windows hard drive image.
From this image I could again use CHDMan to create a new hard drive (as shown above).
There is also a 7.5meg uncompressed
(http://www.pinrepair.com/rush/rock.chd) version of
Rush the Rock out there too, which works file also.
After the new hard drive is created, it is then transplanted from the host computer to the SF Rush game. Chip Code Update from SF Rush to SF Rush the Rock.
There are some chips that need to be changed also, to work in conjunction with the new hard drive image. This includes two new 27040 EPROMs. This include U32 which is the "boot" ROM and U69 which is the Sound Boot ROM). The sound data ROMs are at U49, U53, U61 and U62. These are all 42 pin 16 Mbit (2meg byte) 27C160 EPROMs by ST Micro (about $10 each). The good news is all these EPROM chips are easy to "burn" and reproduce using an EPROM programmer. The big issue is the security PIC chip at U96. This is a 28 pin PIC, which needs to be copied (unfortunately I don't have the image file for it). The PIC code can be copied onto a new PIC16c57 blank by the MicroChip company. This is a 8 bit micro-controller RISC CPU with 2k bytes program memory and 72 bytes of RAM data memory running at 20MHz clock input, and uses a low power, high speed CMOS EPROM technology. I just need the image file to do this, which unfortunately people are holding tight to (if you have this image file, please email me at cfh@provide.net as I would greatly appreciate the file.) This is the problem chip, and makes changing from SF Rush to Rush the Rock difficult. The chip is there to prevent an easy upgrade, as Atari/Midway obviously wanted operators to buy the upgrade. I ended up just buying the chip already programmed from www.arcade-service.com (Indianapolis, IN).
For fun, I put the newly created Rush the Rock hard drive in the game with it running all the original SF Rush firmware chips. It actually works (kind of). The sound is quite confused, but the game does boot and run (you will lose all your settings/high scores and the steering/peddles will want to be recalibrated). With the Rush the Rock hard drive and the SF Rush firmware, you get the same three SF Rush tracks (Beginner, Immediate, Expert), plus the Rock track. This will give you an idea of what Rush the Rock is all about. The Rock track is pretty cool, with lots of hidden routes and gravity-defying loops and jumps.
Next I tried the Rock HD and the 27040 Rock EPROMs at U32 and U69. The U69 sound boot EPROM works with the SF Rush 27C160 data EPROMs, but the sound is unbearable. Better to leave the SF Rush U69 installed until the four 27C160 Rock sound data EPROMs can be acquired. Unfortunately the U32 program boot EPROM would not work at all, the game just would not boot. I'm sure this has to do with the security PIC, which is no doubt different for Rush the Rock. The LEDs on the CPU board near U32 were going nuts (contant alternate flashing) compared to their normal boot behavior.
In the end I just ordered the complete chip set from www.arcade-service.com and was done with it. At about $115 per kit (not including the hard drive) it wasn't cheap, but I was done with the upgrade from SF Rush to Rush the Rock.
-DOWNLOADS-
http://www.pinrepair.com/rush/rock.chd
http://retro-repairs.netai.net/san_francisco_rush/the_rock/sfrush-therock_-_boot_soundboot_roms.rar
http://retro-repairs.netai.net/san_francisco_rush/the_rock/sfrush-therock_-_sound_data_roms_part1.rar
http://retro-repairs.netai.net/san_francisco_rush/the_rock/sfrush-therock_-_sound_data_roms_part2.rar
http://retro-repairs.netai.net/windows_ms-dos/chdman0.83.rar
Getting to know San Francisco Rush
One of the cabinets I'm going to be picking up within a couple weeks is San Francisco Rush: The Rock - Alcatraz Edition. Honestly, this game has no-where near the collection value that I thought it had... being one of my favourite child-hood sit-down games. Apparently it's a 1997 game.
Looking on eBay's 'completed list' these systems sell for about $1,030 ($800 USD) in working condition... or $770 ($600 USD) for a broken down unit. I'm getting mine for $25! I'd imagine the cabinets alone are worth $250-380.
Here's a few YouTube videos I found that had to do with this game.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Looking on eBay's 'completed list' these systems sell for about $1,030 ($800 USD) in working condition... or $770 ($600 USD) for a broken down unit. I'm getting mine for $25! I'd imagine the cabinets alone are worth $250-380.
Here's a few YouTube videos I found that had to do with this game.
San Francisco Rush the Rock Alcatraz Edition sales video
San Francisco Rush The Rock Arcade Game! 90's classic Atari Racing action!
San Francisco Rush (PlayStation vs Arcade)
Inside My San Francisco Rush Alcatraz Arcade
SF Rush The Rock Arcade Monitor Replacement Part 1 - Part 3
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
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