How to Modify your XXXX IN 1

How to Modify your XXXX IN 1
Written and edited by MaNiAc-Uk
Helpers: Please apply via my email address
Contact email: Modcarz@hotmail.com
Date: 13/03/08 Last update: 13/03/08
Disclaimer:
Make sure you have made back up of the hard drive before trying anything written here. i
will not be held responsible to any damage to your system. Pirating ROMs is a crime only
do this if you own the original ROMs
Introduction:
I have decided to write this Help file to help others customize their Jamma XXXX in 1 PCB
aka Babystar aka games family 40gb (it’s actually a 10gb hard drive) hard drive systems.
After searching the web for information and finding nothing I decided after buying a
system up date that I would back up my hard drive and have a play around to see if I could
change the graphics on the menu screen and add ROMs that were missing from the
XXXX in 1 system.
Armed with some information on the system which was not quite correct I have managed
to figure out the rest by trial and error till I go the system working the way I wanted it work.
This is a ongoing project if anyone would like to help please feel free to email me with your
findings and I will add them to this file. Just email me modcarz@hotmail.com
Work in progress:
I also have decided to see if I can add other emulation software to the system and add
network support so I can edit files on hard drive without having to remove it I also might
add networked juke box and some other mods if I can figure a way to launch them like a
brightness and contrast control so you don’t need to keep messing around with the
monitor as on some of these old arcade cabs it can lead to having to repair the monitor as
I found out to my expense.
So what will you need to know to customize your machine? A General knowledge of
computers and installing hard drives you will also need to know how to edit script, how to
use a paint program to edit graphics, and how to use mamewah layout designer.
Tools required:
Small cross head screw driver and a medium size cross head screwdriver pliers.
Software required:
Software:
Description:
Paint / Photoshop I used adobe photoshop as I found it easyer to use than windows
.bmp editor
paint program
Mamewah
For editing fonts font colors and layout of back ground image
Layout designer
Pspad / notepad To edit all the .bat .ini .lst .fav files that need to be modified to add
ROMs and different systems.
Mame32
This will generate the .cfg and .nv files automatically for use within the
system.
Optional software:
Software:
Softimage
Partition magic 8
Description:
Created a image of original hard drive for installing to a bigger hard
drive
For making OS partition bigger for more ROMs and emulators
Hardware:
Pc running
windows
Description:
This is used to do any editing as the drive installed in the xxxx in 1
boots only in to the mame menu.
Optional
Hardware:
Easy IDE Usb
Description:
This allows you to mount the hard drive to windows without having to
change jumper settings. It also means I can un mount it and mount it
without having to reboot windows every time. This item is available off
ebay just look for ide to usb I found this a great aide to editing quickly.
Longer IDE cable Makes it easier to plug in and out of the board
Longer power
I had some spare connectors around so made myself 30cm female to
cable for hard
male power cable just makes it easier to remove and add the hard
drive
drives off the xxxx in1 board.
Right let’s get started!!!
Backing up the system:
There are 2 ways of doing this
1. The first way is read page 18 of the games family manual you will need to be
running a 31hz monitor to do this otherwise you will only see flickering lines. If
you’re running a 15/17hz monitors please read on and I will explain how to install a
temp pc monitor to do this.
2. The second way of doing this is to remove the hard drive from the system and use
a hard drive image software. (better option in my opinion)
First things first. Continued on next page….
Option 1: Backing up the system using the built in backup system ghost.
Note you will need to be running a pc monitor to back up if not please read step 1 then
continue to step 2.
1.The PCB has 2 parts a lower and upper board the lower board is a pc the upper one is
the jamma interface card. the part we are interested in is the pc board as with any pc
mother board you have the usual connections ie keyboard mouse usb network but in the
monitor connection and serial connection you will see 2 circuit boards to plug a standard
monitor in you will need to remove the small circuit board which has 2 small cross head
screws once removed plug a standard pc monitor in and power it the mains supply.
Remove screws as shown in image.
Remove small circet board and plug in VGA monitor.
2. SW2 4 must be in the ON position on the jamma interface Board
3. Follow the user manual on about plugging in second hard drive to make a back up page
18 in user manual make sure its set on master on the jumpers
3. Power the machine you will see the standard pc boot up bios screen then you will see a
command line saying press f10 to launch genesis press Player 2 start and it will boot in to
ghost and 30 mins later will have finished cloning your drive.
4. Turn the machine off unplug the drive now you can mount the back up in your pc to
mess around with.
5. Reinstall the monitor circuit so that you can boot directly in to the arcade machine later
on.
Option 2: Backing up the system using Self image software.
To do this you will need 10gb of space on your hard drive.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Unplug the IDE and power cable off the back of the hard drive
Remove 4 holding screws off the top of the jamma board see figure 1.1
Carefully slide the hard drive out of the boards
Install the drive to your pc can use a USB adaptor such as easy ide or mount it to
your mother board you might have to change the jumpers to make it a slave drive
depending on how Meany drives and dvd-r drives you have
5. Launch self image software click radio button marked drive select the drive from
drop down menu for source then target radio button file save image to your hard
drive hit start and about 20 mins later you will have a complete copy of your drive
now quit the software unplug original drive and install new drive I used a 60gb one
I had kicking around the office (see Image Below)
.
6. Launch self image click radio button file as source find were you saved your image
and select it. (See Image below)
7. Target radio button as drive select entire drive on the new hard drive hit start you
will get a warning message saying this is a bigger drive than the original select yes
20 mins later you will have a copy of the drive.
Figure 1.1 Hard Disc removal
When you have installed the backed up copy to your pc you will see 2 partitions.
The first partition will contain the OS win 2000 and the emulator software the Second will
contain all the backed up config files for the menu interface will explain later on what to
edit to do different things. Continued on next page..
Skin Modifications:
In the second partition d: you will see /filebak /temp folders to edit the skin you will need to
go to d:/fileback/english/ inside there are 2 files you are interested in myskin.ski and
main.bmp
Main.bmp is the back ground image artwork
myskin.ski is the layout file
To edit the back ground use any of your favorite paint packages I use Photoshop as I find
it easy to use just edit and save.
To change the layout i have figured out that mamewah layout editor will edit the lay out file
you will have to change .ski to .lay to do this and don’t forget to change it back when you
have finished editing it. i didn’t save the background image to the layout file as i don’t
know if it will accept it within the system.
i just changed the color of the text to suite my layout oh and don’t forget on the games list
you will need to select different select color to the list color otherwise you don’t know what
you choosing as i did the first time i did this there are other options that the layout can
have but i haven’t played with these yet if anyone wants to experiment please feel free to
do so and let me know how it goes will add it to this file.
Once you have done this you will swap the existing hard drive for your backed up one to
do this you will see 4 screws on the jamma interface card you will have to remove them
see figure 1.1. Then unplug power cable from hard drive and ide cable remove drive
install the backed up one please note if you’re going to be modding like i do almost every
day wouldn’t bother screwing it back in to the jamma interface card in installed a longer
ide cable and extended the power supply so i can take it in and out very quickly just left it
flat on the shelf that i had installed the XXXX in 1 board to.
Power on the machine and look see your new layout in all its glory.
Before I had modified my main.bmp
After I had modified my main.bmp:
Adding ROMs to list:
The c:\emu folder brakes down like this.
There are a number of emulators being used to provide the games:
emu\game1 Mame 0.96
emu\game2 Mame 0.106
emu\game7 Final Burn Alpha 0.2.94.98
emu\game9 ZiNc 1.1
emu\game11 Nebula 2.25
emu\mult1 Mame 0.96u3
emu\mult2 Mame 0.106
emu\mult7 Final Burn Alpha 0.2.94.98
emu\mult11 Nebula 2.25
To add older ROMs to the system get yourself a nice script editor as you need to do some
additions to some files to get the system working.
what i have been doing is running mame32 on my other pc finding the ROMs i want to add
playing the rom once which generates the .cfg file and the .nv nvram file then copying
them over to c:\emu\game2 there folders cfg and nvram and to D:
\filebak\cfgbak\game2\ same files the system reads off this partition. After that i have
copied over the ROM to c:\game_roms\roms\ the snap file in C:\emu\snap seems to have
most of the screen shots already installed.
Now for the editing. Will show examples for adding ghosts ‘n goblins
Files of interest
D:\filebak\cfgbak\batch\game.ini (backed up config)(game delay launch file)
C:\emu\batch\game.ini (main file)
Scroll to the bottom of the file add new line with romname=delay as shown on next line
gng=1
C:\emu\batch\game.bat (pointer file tells the system which emulator to use to launch
game)
scroll down till you get to the end of the games list will see something like this
if%1==rampage goto emu2 make a new line copy and past the last line change rampage
to gng then save ie if%1==gng goto emu2
do the same to multi.bat in the same folder not sure if this is needed but did it all the same.
Then its back to drive d:
D:\filebak\english\lstbak\files\game.fav scroll to the end of file and add the following.
gng
Ghosts ‘n Goblins
1
0
i not sure what it does exsactly but thought i would add it as was used earlyer in the post.
last file to edit the one which is important if you dont space this right it wont work properly
as i found out earlyer.
D:\filebak\english\lstbak\files \game-0.lst
the way i did it was to copy the first discription and the 11 spaces after then paste it at the
end of the file then edit it first line is rom name second line is menu rom title eg.
gng
Ghosts 'n Goblins
make sure the is 11 returns after it otherwise will spit up errors and might not display right
won’t see the snap image.
Other things i have noticed is that if you’re playing on a arcade machine running a 15hz
monitor they don’t seem to like vector games added starwars was not as crisp as a pc
monitor. there are some issues with midway games they don’t like running on the system
NBA jam is too lagged and so is mortal combat II not sure why but don’t like to run on the
system.
Adding updated mame system:
This guide was written to add new game supported under a newer version of mame
Thanks to sakpoubel from gamoover.net for this input of the help file.
I first create a duplicate files emu, I took c: \ emu \ game2 and I copy c: \ emu \ game22
and I play1.exe replaced
by the latest available Version of MAME.
Here is a list of files changed with the number of lines
In the partition C:
C: \ emu \ game22 \ cfg \ sfiii3.cfg
--> It is actually the same file sfa3.cfg duplicate of the file and renamed it.
C: \ emu \ batch \ cnfsave.bat
Line 11: xcopy / s / y / vc: \ emu \ game22 \ cfg \ *.* d: \ filebak \ cfgbak \ game22 \ cfg
Line 11: xcopy / s / y / vc: \ emu \ game22 \ nvram \ *.* d: \ filebak \ cfgbak \ game22 \
nvram
C: \ emu \ batch \ game.bat
262 line: if% 1 == sfiii3 goto emu22
------------------------------------Line 1308:: emu22
Line 1309: cd \ emu \ game22
Line 1310: 1% play1.exe
Line 1311: goto end
C: \ emu \ batch \ mult.bat -> it is not worth but hey, I do on my own
260 line: if% 1 == sfiii3 goto emu22
------------------------------------Line 1158:: emu22
Line 1159: cd \ emu \ game22
Line 1160: 1% play1.exe
Line 1161: goto end
C: \ emu \ batch \ game.ini
Line 455: sfiii3 = 1
In c: \ game_rom \ Roms I copied the archive sfiii3 with. Chd inside, I say, because it often
is not included.
In the partition D now
D: \ filebak \ cfgbak \ game22 \ cfg \ sfiii3.cfg
--> This file is a copy of the config file of sfa3.cfg (normally is the same inputs)
D: \ filebak \ cfgbak \ game22 \ nvram \ sfiii3.nv
--> It is the file that allows the emulation of cd, I advice you to do this on a fast machine, if
you take ca va 10000
years.
D: \ filebak \ cfgbak \ batch \ game.ini
--> 455 line: sfiii3 = 1
D: \ filebak \ english \ lstbak \ files \ game-0.lst
Line 5968: sfiii3
Line 5969: Street Fighter 3 third strike
D: \ filebak \ english \ lstbak \ files \-game 3.lst
Line 352: sfiii3
Line 353: Street Fighter 3 third strike
D: \ filebak \ english \ lstbak \ files \-game 9.lst
Line 3095: sfiii3
Line 3096: Street Fighter 3 third strike
D: \ filebak \ english \ lstbak \ files \ game.fav
Line 2625: ssfiii3
Line 2626: Street Fighter 3 third strike
Line 2627: 1
Line 2628: 0
Adding other emulators to the system:
This is a work in progress will be adding information here soon for how to add Daphne to
the system so you can play classic laserdisc games.