Our friend Oliveira found the way to unbrick the remaining A and B cartridges!
All cartridges can be restored now!!
The trick was with the black cable left after removing the battery.
At the moment All cartridges can be restored to work as SF III-2nd Strike.
More news coming soon about the latest version of the conversion tool.
Our Big thanks to our friend Oliveira.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Another one goes down
Today I managed to get one more kind of cartridge to work without battery and this are the ones that have a C sticker on the CPU. Olveira managed to get the D sticker working.
So basically we got 50% of the 4 versions that can now work without battery and we are missing the A and B type which are the ones that in the back side of the cartridge have a FM1208S instead of a MACH111.
Oliveira already told what needs to be done for a cartridge without battery to work, so for the ones who missed it, here it goes:
"The SH2 CPU needs to see a specific sequence of 8 bytes at a certain address (0x7FF00) when it has no keys programmed before it can operate."
So If we put this sequence in the BIOS of any C or D cartridge, the cartridge will boot without battery and with a specific default key.
The thing is that with my tool we can convert all games to work for SF3-2nd, as soon as this is supported. As you know a table needs to be done in order to separate instructions from code.
Today ElSemi told me that he will create a special version of his emulator to create this tables.
Thumbs Up! We are on the right way!
So basically we got 50% of the 4 versions that can now work without battery and we are missing the A and B type which are the ones that in the back side of the cartridge have a FM1208S instead of a MACH111.
Oliveira already told what needs to be done for a cartridge without battery to work, so for the ones who missed it, here it goes:
"The SH2 CPU needs to see a specific sequence of 8 bytes at a certain address (0x7FF00) when it has no keys programmed before it can operate."
So If we put this sequence in the BIOS of any C or D cartridge, the cartridge will boot without battery and with a specific default key.
The thing is that with my tool we can convert all games to work for SF3-2nd, as soon as this is supported. As you know a table needs to be done in order to separate instructions from code.
Today ElSemi told me that he will create a special version of his emulator to create this tables.
Thumbs Up! We are on the right way!
Breakthrough
By some very lucky accident, our friend Oliveira, managed to revive a dead SF3-3 Cartridge and convert it to SF3-2.
We are now trying several roms reencypted to see which conclusions we can draw from it. The only fact till now is that only one kind of cartridge (out of 4) can be revived.
Apparently after re-encryption, the cartridge can work with any game's BIOS, so we could re-encrypt all this cartridges with the SF3-3 BIOS that allows using only 1 single CD for update.
This will also mean that one can have a collection of 6 CDS that will work with that BIOS....
Stay tuned!
We are now trying several roms reencypted to see which conclusions we can draw from it. The only fact till now is that only one kind of cartridge (out of 4) can be revived.
Apparently after re-encryption, the cartridge can work with any game's BIOS, so we could re-encrypt all this cartridges with the SF3-3 BIOS that allows using only 1 single CD for update.
This will also mean that one can have a collection of 6 CDS that will work with that BIOS....
Stay tuned!
Monday, March 12, 2012
adding support for SFII-2nd and decapping
Hi,
This is a small update on the status of the breaking process.
I used the sygnal analyser without much luck, so before putting much of my time into something that I'm not sure if it will pay off, I contacted a colleague that has previous experience in the retro-engineering ICs and we'll try to decapp a couple of custom SH2 and find out how to reprogram them or at least narrow down the number of pins that are accessing the encryption module.
Regarding the support for SFIII-2nd I have tried to creat a new version of MAME that will just 'printf' each address (PC) that is being executed by the SH2 but I I can't get to have them all printed out.
For that reason and following Alex's propositionI'm asking for support of the experts around there to provide new C files that need to be changed in order to get printed all the addresses that are executed. An improved version should ideally generate a table that sets to one te value of an address if it was exectued, so we avoid getting laaaarge output files. This is not critical, as a little script in Notepad++ could do the job.
When we have a working C version, then I'll ask you to run it, send me the output files that you get, so I can integrate them all and put them in the latest version of the tool.
We'll (hopefully) set up an open code environment for this, so meanwhile please send your files via www.mediafire.com
Waiting for your feedback....
This is a small update on the status of the breaking process.
I used the sygnal analyser without much luck, so before putting much of my time into something that I'm not sure if it will pay off, I contacted a colleague that has previous experience in the retro-engineering ICs and we'll try to decapp a couple of custom SH2 and find out how to reprogram them or at least narrow down the number of pins that are accessing the encryption module.
Regarding the support for SFIII-2nd I have tried to creat a new version of MAME that will just 'printf' each address (PC) that is being executed by the SH2 but I I can't get to have them all printed out.
For that reason and following Alex's propositionI'm asking for support of the experts around there to provide new C files that need to be changed in order to get printed all the addresses that are executed. An improved version should ideally generate a table that sets to one te value of an address if it was exectued, so we avoid getting laaaarge output files. This is not critical, as a little script in Notepad++ could do the job.
When we have a working C version, then I'll ask you to run it, send me the output files that you get, so I can integrate them all and put them in the latest version of the tool.
We'll (hopefully) set up an open code environment for this, so meanwhile please send your files via www.mediafire.com
Waiting for your feedback....
Thursday, February 2, 2012
The Spider is ready
With the help of Raf, I've managed to get replace the 29f400 with a socketable 28f400. The result can be seen in the pictures below.
Good news is that it works perfectly and that means several things:
* Both 29f400 and 28f400 can be used
* I changed the BIOS from a Mexican one to a USA one and worked perfectly.
* This is an SF2 cartridge, which might be even better given the peculiarity of the encryption in this game (data not encrypted, code encrypted).
* It´s much easier and safer now to attach the probes from the signal analyser.
* Nope, I can't get back to life dead cartridges yet....
I will setup everything this weekend and let's start seeing what's going on.
Stay tuned.
Good news is that it works perfectly and that means several things:
* Both 29f400 and 28f400 can be used
* I changed the BIOS from a Mexican one to a USA one and worked perfectly.
* This is an SF2 cartridge, which might be even better given the peculiarity of the encryption in this game (data not encrypted, code encrypted).
* It´s much easier and safer now to attach the probes from the signal analyser.
* Nope, I can't get back to life dead cartridges yet....
I will setup everything this weekend and let's start seeing what's going on.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Small off topic
There are still two main things to do in order to completely break the CPSIII system: One of them is adding support from/to 2nd Giant. The other one is taking back to life dead cartridges. Both things will take a loooot of time and any support I get will certainly motivate me moving forward.
Besides the donate button, there are two other ways you can support for free this project if you like it:
* If you find it interesting, click on any of the ads that are shown on the blog.
* If you come from France, please tell all your friends about my other french site: www.quipeutlefaire.fr (I really hope this works out so I can definitely move to France :)
Hope you didn't mind this little off topic and expect more CPS3 news very soon!!
Cheers.
Besides the donate button, there are two other ways you can support for free this project if you like it:
* If you find it interesting, click on any of the ads that are shown on the blog.
* If you come from France, please tell all your friends about my other french site: www.quipeutlefaire.fr (I really hope this works out so I can definitely move to France :)
Hope you didn't mind this little off topic and expect more CPS3 news very soon!!
Cheers.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Christmas Release v0.3
And a new version is available.....as usual rename to RAR and extract.
http://netload.in/dateigIMHBcJ3d8.htm
Some bugs have been fixed, but the biggest improvement is....REGION SELECTOR!
You can now choose the region that you want it to run, regardles of the cartridge version that you have. Nice isn't it??
This time, supports all ISOS available of SFIII 3rd strike and JoJos adventure. No SFIII 2ndImpact yet :(
Enjoy Christmas y'all there.
http://netload.in/dateigIMHBcJ3d8.htm
Some bugs have been fixed, but the biggest improvement is....REGION SELECTOR!
You can now choose the region that you want it to run, regardles of the cartridge version that you have. Nice isn't it??
This time, supports all ISOS available of SFIII 3rd strike and JoJos adventure. No SFIII 2ndImpact yet :(
Enjoy Christmas y'all there.
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