Donpachi early/loctest/proto board

[system11]

Well I was thinking of trading my Donpachi board tonight, so I got it out to take photos. I'd never really looked closely at it before, just assumed someone had region hacked it due to a few scrappy labels I paid no mind to.

Well - take a look (shame about the corner, I received it that way):

http://www.system11.org/temp/forumposts ... to_top.jpg

Items of note:
1) Not just the program and text ROMs are socketed, normally everything else is soldered in - on this one every writeable chip is socketed, from the factory.
2) Some of what would be mask ROMs are highly expensive gold legged ceramic ROMs about 2mm thick. The labels on them are solid black plastic or metal of some kind, theyre fixed with epoxy covering what is probably the part number underneath. I'm too scared to remove these and dump them, I've seen ceramics crack on removal.
3) One of them has an Atlus sticker with Donpachi hand written, along with a date of 4/04 and a version of 'ES'.
4) Check out the serial number.
5) Code version matches the JP rev in MAME, as for the sound/graphics chips I can't say.

Thought some people might find it interesting. I might not trade it now.

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

That is awesome. The others are probably the same as what is dumped, most likely. They were probably waiting on the mask roms to arrive and wanted to go ahead and get it out to a few places.

[emphatic]

Wow! What a nice surprise for you.

[rtw]

Thanks for sharing this information with us

This is truly an interesting specimen!

[antime]

2) Some of what would be mask ROMs are highly expensive gold legged ceramic ROMs about 2mm thick. The labels on them are solid black plastic or metal of some kind, theyre fixed with epoxy covering what is probably the part number underneath.

They might be UV-EPROMs with the window sealed.

[Udderdude]

Any hidden/secret features on this board? Maybe some debug stuff still on there? D:

[system11]

Any hidden/secret features on this board? Maybe some debug stuff still on there? D:

Aside from everything being in sockets, no. As I say the code is identical.

[undamned]

No joke, I actually had an ESP Ra.De. like this. I wish I still had it to compare the ROMs to what is available in mame now. I had a number of ESP Ra.De. pcbs on hand at the time but had intended on keeping that one for myself. When selling them off, I accidentally grabbed that one to send Doubtful I'll ever see one of those again.
-ud

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Makes one wonder how many of those loke Donpachi PCBs did Cave release to the Japanese game centers?

And if such a DP loke PCB is in the hands of a private arcade PCB hobbyist, surely such a DDP loke PCB is around somewhere as well?

Do you have a standard production DP PCB on hand to place aside next the loke DP PCB to compare/differentiate?

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[system11]

Looking at photos, already described all the differences I can see. I've decided to keep it because it's so unusual.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

It certainly is quite an unusual DP loke PCB indeed.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[sven666]

I have one of those esprade protos ud mentioned above, no difference software wise from a regular one tho so they proboably just sold them off as regular units. A cool curiosity for collectrs anyways..

[rtw]

I have one of those esprade protos ud mentioned above, no difference software wise from a regular one tho so they proboably just sold them off as regular units. A cool curiosity for collectrs anyways..

So you dumped the EPROMs as well sven ?

[sven666]

No I don't have the time know-how or equipment. ..