@soren for president !!!
New Rollergames software mod
Thank you Soren!!
Has anyone tried this yet? When I run the patch the ROM drops by half in size 16kb. I need it to go back to the 27C256 ROM which is 32kb. I’ve heard you can double them up with hex editor but this is the first time I’ve ran into this issue.
If you don’t want to fool with double up on the rom burner software (which will be a different procedure depending on the software) go into a dos window (cmd.exe) and just do a copy /b rom1.128 + rom1.128 rom1.256 and burn away.
If you don’t have windows this won’t help of course.
The game is only reading one half of the rom anyway, but doubling it up ensures that if the extra address pin a 256 has is floating for some reason it will return the same data regardless. If you were sure that pin were grounded (it’s A14, pin 27) you could just burn the 16k image into the bottom half of the 256 - we are talking about u26 of course which is supposed to be a 128 eprom, u27 should be a 256.
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Thanks for the help the command line did the trick! I can’t wait to test
So if contest is not selected does it just play like the normal ROM? Just installed and curious what “factory” settings put it to.
The ambition is to have the tweaks of these mods menu adjustable. But for Rollergames, unfortunetly, this was not possible for the Sudden death and the individual lock accounting.
The contest game adjustment will, in addition to Williams letters, control the limited ball search and the mystery random/pattern (with no eb/special).
So just to clarify, if contest mode is on, you get the predicable mystery awards, but the locks don’t release end of game.
If contest mode is off, the mystery awards are random, but the locks clear at the end of the game?
End of game lock release is the Save locks adjustement.
The Contest game adjustment = yes will prevent locks released as per a ball search.
Predicted mystery awards (with no eb and special), yes.
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So if I want best of both worlds, I need to turn on contest mode, then turn lock saves off?
Yes. Made it easy. Save locks off is now the default.
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Is lock stealing enabled in a 2 player game?
Factory Rollergames has lock stealing with an only semi-working compensation lock lits for stolen locks. Plus carry locks game-to-game, if the Save locks adjustement = yes.
The mod has individual locks-made requirement. And 100% working compensation when your locks made are removed from the trough by other players.
It works by keeping the diverter closed, diverting locks made to the inlane. If the lock made is “already” in the lock trough. Due the efford of an opponent.
Is doubling up the U26 ROM the recommended procedure? I tried that approach but the machine gave a bad ROM error. Would burning to a 16 KB chip without the doubling work?
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If the chip is a 64 KB one, it is not a doubling, that is required. But a quadrubling.
Strictly speaking, for higher capasity chips at U26, the CPU is adressing the higher most located 16 KB section. But mirroring the data to all sections available, by default, is the way to go when using chips of higher capasity. Always.
Also I would like to say, that if the game fails to start or reports ROM error, it can be loads of other issues than a mistake in what was programmed to the chip.
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Not too much experience with this kind of stuff so I’m not sure what the other potential issues would be, but the game worked fine after swapping back to the original ROM chip so presumably either the chip itself was bad or the data on the chip was bad?
Would a 16 KB chip work or is the game expecting a chip of a certain size?
The game expects a 27128 in u26 and a 27256 in u27. You can use a 27256 in place of a 27128 if you take the code that is supposed to be in u26 and double it (i.e. copy it to itself - the dos command to do this is copy /b file1.128 + file1.128 file1.256 subbing your filenames of course. The /b switch is extremely important if you leave it off, it just won’t work.
If you want to use a 27512 in place of a 27256, it’s the same command (copy /b file1.256 + file1.256 file1.512), but to use a 27512 in place of a 27128, you have to do:
copy /b file1.128 + file1.128 + file1.128 + file1.128 file1.512 (quadrulple)
No matter what chips end up in u26 and u27, the board is only going to address them as if they were the chips the board is strapped for - only really early system 11 games use anything other than a 27128 and 27256 respectively in u26 and u27. Rollergames is def. 128-256.
A 27128 is a 16k chip. Are you sure you patched the file correctly? If the game reports a checksum error on bootup, it’s either not patched correctly, not burned correctly, or not doubled up if needed correctly.
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Thanks for the detailed info! I’ll try again and use a 27128 for U26 this time.
Pretty sure I patched it correctly; I manually verified the checksum of the patched file before doubling it. This was one of 1 of 3 soren ROMs I was installing at a location and the other 2 worked fine but Rollergames U26 was the only one I tried to double up so that’s probably where I messed up. I was thrown off because the U26 ROM from the IPDB romset was 32 KB so I assumed it’d want a 32 KB chip but it sounds like that’s not the case.
Thanks Scott.
If only software updates on these older games were a little easier to install, right.
Yeah, the patch will only work against the correct sized rom image. IPDB needs a bit of a housecleaning on many of what’s posted I noticed they’re doing some now, I think they only have a couple people to police what are probably 100s-1000s of changes a month though.