About the NeoGeo Pocket

General No-Intro related discussions.
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psykopat
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About the NeoGeo Pocket

Post by psykopat »

Hello there.

I wanted to start a little thread about the NeoGeo Pocket systems (monochrome or color). A long forgotten console, with a rather small game library. New roms are rare, and that's mainly because dumping tools were not so common. But things are moving a bit recently, and maybe some redumps will appear in the next weeks/months. Two tools in particular are now available :

"Tengu neo geo pocket dumper", sometimes sold under "GAMEBANK NGP Damper" name on chinese websites. The v1 was giving a lot of reading errors, and the v2 is quite more stable. The pc client is not open source so we are stuck with the publickly available exe. Even if not perfect and a bit expensive, this is doing the job. To be nearly sure about your rom result, it's adviced to dump the same game multiple times, compare their CRCs, and keep the most frequent given one...

And sanni's cart reader, in combination with a NGP-to-SNES adapter. I updated the NGP source code this week and it should now handle the majority of 4, 8 and 16 Mbits carts. I would be interested by your feedbacks if you got all the needed stuff to try it. What is working well and what is not, to improve the global compatibility.
32M games are untested since I don't own one. 32M games are actually designed as 2 x 16Mbits chips inside the cart, so the dumping process/addressing may be a bit different for them.

Now that tools are available, I wanted to share some important info I noticed during the process.

First, and this is maybe the most important, you have to know that NGP(C) games do not have a save battery as GameBoy games. They are flash, and the save is written directly to the chip. Unfortunately, for the ones who are familiar with 3DS card2 games, things are not working the same here. For 3DS card2 the save data was stored after game location. Here it's not the case. Save data can be placed here and there, splitted in various sectors, and doing a full dump of the cart will give you a rom with game + save data all together. So if your CRC doesn't match dat-o-matic info, don't be surprised. And for datters, take care when a rom will be submitted, because it won't be easy to say if save data are present or not inside of it.

Dumping tools can maybe be improved on this. If we manage to detect precisely the "locked" sectors (reserved for game data) and then "open" ones disigned for saves (that could be filled with "FF" during the process). FlashMasta members were working on that problem a long time ago, but I don't know how it ended.
EDIT : at the end I coded it myself lol. Sectors scan is now added to the latest commit of Sanni's cart reader :p

Quick speech about how game serials/IDs work : they are 4 digits long, stored inside the rom and also visible on the cart front sticker.
Depending of the game localization/region the sticker is not the same and one more digit can be added, but the game/rom will stay the same. Example :
"Dark Arms - Beast Buster 1999" : sticker displays NEOP0045 (for Europe) / NEOP00450 (Japan) / NEOP00451 (USA) but the rom inside is strickly the same worldwide, with gameID "0045". So the last digit you can find on sticker is more or less informative. "1" is usually for the US, "0" for Japan, "7" for "Best Collection" reprints etc.

Serial info (4 digits) and the rom version (2 digits) are quite important to identify a rom and its revision, and really should be added in dat-o-matic for each NGP game. I can help on that if needed, I made my own database. I've already found many rom revisions, totally undumped.

Then about oddities, I can talk about various things I've found when opening/dumping cartridges :
- The same game can have multiple revisions, and it's not visible from the cart sticker. For example NEOP0052 got at least 3 revisions, and maybe more. Some early revisions are stored on 4Mbits chips, and more recent ones seems to be on 8Mbits.
- The same game + same revision could have been produced by different manufacturers. For example NEOP0110 was burned onto Samsung chips, but also on Toshiba ones. The PCBs are differents, flash chips too, but data is exactly same on both variations.
- Prototypes sometimes haven't a gameID, so the serial is "0000". Physical chips and PCBs seem not different from retail ones.
- Games manufactured by Samsung usually got a 48 pins flash chip and a fully green PCB (visible by looking under a closed cartridge) and Toshiba are often 40 pins flash, with a brownish PCB.
Last edited by psykopat on 16 Dec 2021 18:27, edited 2 times in total.
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psykopat
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Re: About the NeoGeo Pocket

Post by psykopat »

All right, more info about that little handled. Since documentation was not easy to find online, I did my own researches about the hardware and sharing little by little here. Hope it will be useful for datters or collectors.

Cartridge PCBs
So far, three distinct models :
NP-CFL16 : are used for Toshiba flash chips, 40 pins. Games can be 4/8/16 Mbits ("16" is probably for "16" Mbits max)
NP-CFL16-S : are used for Samsung flash chips, 48 pins. Games are 8 and 16 Mbits. ("-S" is probably for "Samsung")
NP-CFL32-D : are only used for 32 Mbits games. Two 16 Mbits Toshiba chips are on it. Note that it's the only PCB exploiting both sides of the cart ("32" is probably for 32 Mbits, and "D" for "Dual" chips ?)

Flash chips
The last line printed on chips is the most useful one.
For Toshiba :
T8U66 or T8U66A : 4 Mbits
T8U67A : 8 Mbits
T8V12A : 16 Mbits
For Samsung :
Chips starting by "R8" are 8 Mits (R8F050AA, R8F037AA)
Chips starting by "R5" are 16 Mbits (R5FE70AA, R5H070AA)
Even before dumping them you can already have a guess on the expected rom size.

Unlike nintendo cartridges, the NGP is quite exotic.
You can find the SAME game + SAME version sometimes burned on Samsung chips AND on Toshiba ones. But once dumped, data is identical.
Also, the SAME game but DIFFERENT version are sometimes burned on different sized flash chips, of different brands.
Lot of fun :)

Flash memory
Games are stored on flash chips, splitted into various sectors. Some of them are protected against writing commands (game data) and others are not (can be used by save data). Most of time games are storing their save data in the last sectors, but not all of them. They can be found between game data blocks as well. Note that the very last sector is reserved for the system only and must never be written.

Game ID
Software id can be found at address 0x21 and 0x20. They follow the "NEOPxxxx" code printed on cartridge's sticker, boxart etc.
Prototypes can have different values, or blank ones "0000".

Game version
Probably the most neglected info in NGP roms until now.
Stored at address 0x22. This value should REALLY be added to DoM.
I've found many revisions so far. Some of them were already dumped (and named randomly "v1.1" in dats), but others were totally unknown and undumped. I'll try to help on this, but some work clearly need to be done on the existing NGP & NGPC romsets

Unfortunately the revision can't be guessed from the cart sticker, or flash chip printings. Dumping seems to be the only solution...
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Last edited by psykopat on 29 Jan 2024 11:23, edited 4 times in total.
sCZther
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Re: About the NeoGeo Pocket

Post by sCZther »

Great work on this!
Would be good to get some dumps from unplayed carts, to know how the save area looks from the factory.
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psykopat
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Re: About the NeoGeo Pocket

Post by psykopat »

Yup. But who is going to open blisters ? :D
Here I bought a lot of different carts for experiments. That's how I found unknown revisions. All loosy of course, already opened and probably hardly played. And most of them do have savedata on chip. But a few are still virgin. All unprotected sectors totally blank. And that's fun because not all games do have in-game option to reset the save manually. Even a "soft reset" sometimes write shitty data in these sectors. So I don't know what happened with their previous owners, but I've got a few save-less games here. Quite useful to compare with the existing spreaded roms.

I'm now making a list of all strange dumps/serials existing. A few titles will really need to be redumped, and maybe some region changed in dats too. I need a bit more time. If people in the US are interested to help, message me. Many suspicious roms are from USA.
pop_and_lock
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Re: About the NeoGeo Pocket

Post by pop_and_lock »

I agree with sCZther. Great work being the one person army and SNK hero! I joined this forum to come in for support. I really want to increase accessibility and knowledge in this space and front a defense against repros passing as real. NGP(C) is the final frontier of retro western gaming. I couldn't find a single PCB pic on the internet so I made an album of my 10 games. I used a T6 star bit to open the carts. Another thing that I couldn't find on the internet.

Your note about the 48 pin Samsung chips was the proof I needed that Mizuki Shigeru no Yokai Photo Studio (水木しげるの妖怪写真館) is real. Never booted and now I know it's because the gold plating wore off.

So maybe Samsung flash chips come on cheap tier cheap second printings with June 23, 1998 stamped versus April 9, 1998 with all my Toshiba flash chips. Notably both dates are before the Neo Geo Pocket release. I think you're saying that all but the 32 megabit games can come in either Toshiba or Samsung chips. Maybe some games in low prints are just in Toshiba chips but no hard set rule. You say Gbit but it's Mbit just fyi.

Let's establish which games are 32 megabits aka 4 megabytes. I like using megabits as SNK and Nintendo did, including for SNES SRAM, however awkward today.
  • Densha De GO! 2 (Japan)
  • Metal Slug - 2nd Mission (World)
  • SNK Vs. Capcom - The Match of The Millennium (World)
I'm ordering 2nd Mission (JP) to get such a cart, for research purposes of course.
psykopat wrote: 26 Aug 2021 19:58If people in the US are interested to help, message me. Many suspicious roms are from USA.
I live in the US. I have Faselei! (US) with no save data. Can save data be erased on it? I bought Ogre Battle sealed and never saved on it so is virgin. I saw Bust-A-Move Pocket aka Puzzle Bobble Mini has the option to erase saved data. We should get a list for games that have saved data and which can further erase it.

When we say "US", does that mean Canada didn't get an official release? Mexico if not also parts of South America did but clearly no Spanish carts.

Sad reality is that blisters are too expensive to pop. I have a blister of Metal Slug: 2nd Mission (Europe), Dark Arms (US), Pocket Tennis (Europe) and Capcom Card Fighters' Clash (Europe) I thought I paid about $75 USD for in 2010. Open to discussion on how desirable for research purposes any of those games in provable virgin form are.

I do need a cart dumper. I have good electronics knowledge and looking for suggestions on which one to get. Happy to buy used. I'd rather not custom build a NGPC adapter for the Sanni cart reader and I'm only otherwise interested in SNES. Maybe there is a less expensive DIY fork of it. By the way, NGP(C) carts are 5V logic right? GBA and N64 are notably 3.3V compared to rest of consoles with 5V carts.

To Do List
Hopefully with support! Cotton and King of Fighters R-1 + Melon-chan are too rich for my blood.
  • Dump my carts and check for unknown revisions. Motivate others to dump theirs. Maybe can be a dumping tool available to borrow. I can confirm if my Puzzle Bobble Mini demo is identical to the E and J releases as I expect.
  • Check which game revisions, if any, have noticeable gameplay differences.
  • Have least one pic of every game's PCB freely available. I can retake my pics with higher res when/if I get a good camera and tripod. Any quality is acceptable.
  • List of games with saved data and which can erase said data.
  • Confirm ChuChu Flamingo's statement that the speaker is 16 ohms and is the same in each console since some people need replacements.
  • By extension, discern any load times or other non-documented differences between NGP and the two NGPC versions. I have both NGPCs.
  • Figure out what Match of the Millennium linking with Card Fighters' Clash does. I have neither game in loose form.
  • Determine the extras for some carts getting inserted into Neo Geo Pocket. All been done, I think, just have to find the info that's out there.
  • Figure out which US/Europe games can link with Japanese releases that are actually distinct ROMs. I thought I read that Faselei! can't. No issue with Dreamcast since King of Fighters R-2 and SNK vs. Capcom: Match of the Millennium have one World release.
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psykopat
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Re: About the NeoGeo Pocket

Post by psykopat »

Hey there ;) Glad to meet another NGP fan out there !

You're right about Gbit haha. That's the problem with working on N3DS and the NGP at the same time... I fixed this in my previous post ;)

I can't really say where / when the Toshiba chips were used vs the Samsung ones. Could be the release period, when a brand was cheaper than another. Or maybe both at the same time to avoid a monopoly to a single brand. At least I've redumped a large quantity of Pachinko games like Hanabi, and for the same title + same version, the game came sometimes on Toshiba, and sometimes on Samsung.

Your 32 Mbit game list is complete. Only 3 retail ones used this size. I've redumped all of them, sometimes from different sources. Datomatic is up to date ;)

Save data can be deleted only on certain carts via an in-game option. But for a lot of them it wasn't planned. No menu option, no button combinaison. I guess the only way for these ones would be to flash empty data on the cart directly with an external tool. Like OSCR for example. I've coded a function to find unprotected sectors, which are used to store saves. But, keep in mind that when a game offers to delete a save from an in-game option, often the method ins't perfectly clean. The game deletes save data, but re-write some values right after. It's possible to quickly see this behavior with an emulator.

No, when I say "US", I only meant an "America" serial on cartridge sticker (5 digits long, ending with a "1"). Canadian releases were maybe using the same scheme. I would be interested to confirm this if you have in hands a cart bought brand new in Canada.

About getting a NGP dumper, sanni cart reader (OSCR) would be the best option imo. The code is open source, not like Tengu dumper, and it currently does more things than other tools : display game ID and version, checking for sectors protection, dumping unofficial flashcarts... I've added a lot to it ^^ And since the NGP adapter plugs in the SNES slot, getting a OSCR will let dump both. NGP dumping uses 3.3V.

You can buy one already assembled for not that expensive. I've seen some hw v3 on sale on Yahoo Auctions for under 90 dollars. And some builders are also selling hw v5 in the US. You can reach them on the discord server.

About your to do list :
- Cotton was redumped and game data confirmed, but its save data is giving us a little problem. The top scores are set to a certain value when the cart went out of factory, and playing it will modify the values. We tried to rebuild the cart to its original form, and it worked, but result is just theorical. We would need a totally brand new cart, never played, to be dumped and confirm the initial save state. We can't just erase it.
- King of Fighters R-1 + Melon-chan were redumped :)
- "Dump my carts and check for unknown revisions. Motivate others to dump theirs." >> please do !
- "Have least one pic of every game's PCB freely available." >> I did my best on this, on another dumper Picta helped me on the project. All of our pics are on Datomatic.
pop_and_lock
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Re: About the NeoGeo Pocket

Post by pop_and_lock »

Thank you for responding! I overlooked your PCB pics in this very thread and didn't investigate what Datomatic was. Dump thread with zip links of cart and PCB, dream realized. I think pics should be compiled into a single link or else posted unzipped so people can search for any game online and find the PCB like they can for popular consoles. Nothing stopping me.

I think Datomatic indicates the most useful of my carts are US Faselei! with no saved data and EUR Pocket Reversi. Faselei! has no way to delete saved data on real console that I could find. My recently arrived Bust-a-Move Pocket has all 99 stages unlocked. Only comes by default with 10. I think what this scene needs is a patch to unlock all stages. Maybe that's easy from viewing RAM while unlocking stages but desirable to have a control unlocked with real console for comparison. Then advance to writing saves to cart.

Dumping carts, GBxCart RW does 5V and 3.3V for $33 with open source software. I don't get why we need a mammon machine to push up the price point but I can do under $100. Thanks for 3.3V warning and OSCR recommendation. I figure I'll make a move in March after I'm done cart shopping. Hm so virgin Cotton is needed, if indeed it still exists. We could get Cotton on Switch VC considering the Cotton rebooting. Then presume the save data wasn't reworked.

Else for Datomatic, relabeling US to NA for Canada's sake seems reasonable to me. Maybe we can ask the few NGP(C) message boards if Canadian owners have a different cart number in their collections.

2-player worked between Bust-a-Move Pocket and Japanese demo version of Puzzle Bobble Mini to no one's surprise. I wouldn't have bought the demo version if I realized No-Intro accounted for it. Maybe we should be explicit on what demos are identical to their release counterparts and what all comes in demo form. I used an "honest fox" brand link cable that cost me $19 pre-COVID. I don't suppose anyone tried reverse engineering with real console and digital logic analyzer.

More To Do List

In some sense I'm disappointed this isn't the wild west. Only hard mode tasks and spreadsheet crunching left. An ancient hardware document mentions a connected Neo Geo controller uses C for Option and D for an 8th button. I thought I read in ancient bbs times that the 8th button enables debug-like things on certain games. I can't find the source.

I'm getting on the two color hardware revisions comparison. I question the Wikipedia source that the cursive color has improved audio. I started measuring power consumption and emulated the official power supply's 3.15V. Initial testing shows 3.15V is optimal for minimizing current draw. Compared to max volume, sound turned down to mute, else bypassing the audio amp by plugging in an audio out cable, reduces current draw by about 10%. Less current draw = lower mAh = more battery life.
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