> > While Raz may be to thank, for getting them playable, he may also be to blame,
> > for them not getting properly preserved. Such confounding duality.
>
> Sorry but I have made these games totally preseravable. I have made public a
> method to bring suicide games back to life without the need for a battery plus
> they will never die again from suicide.

Interesting, I took a look at CPS2SHOCK again for the first time in a while, and I have to hand it to you Raz, that is some nice work. Granted, though, that's not preserving the original, only a mutated hacked bootleg version of the games. Emulation may not be 100% perfect either, but it's closer to the original than your solution, technically.

I'm curious though, there were some rumors that there was a second unencrypted 68K on the boardset, something about CPS2 being based on CPS1, and still including the other CPU onboard, is that true? Or is the "encrypted" CPU on CPS2 totally stock, with the encryption/decryption happening outside of the CPU? (N.B. I've never seen a physical CPS2 boardset personally.)

> Finally I would say that you are to blame for not getting the correct algo
> running for MAME, not me because I have made it perfectly clear that I will not
> give out info (that I dont even have) while there are newer games on the system.
> You have simply spent some 3 years slagging me off instead of actually getting
> up and doing it yourself, why if its so important to you? In the process you
> have made me less willing to actually get up and get more data when I feel the
> time is right to do so. No doubt you will go on for another 3 years with the
> same attitude and then maybe one day you will realise that the fate of CPS2 algo
> emulation does not rest on my head but yours for sitting back and expecting
> others to do it for you. Before you know it it will be to late to start.

Uhm, I think that's kind of the point - that you initially offered cooperation, based on this hardware device + software trojan setup that you had, and then you spurned working with other people, telling them to do it themselves. Yet, you continue to vaguely insinuate that you do have some unquantified chunk of dumped CPS2 squirrelled away (yet at the same time you profess in the same breath to having shared all of the data that you have up to this point).

It's very misleading, and indeed, in some cases, it might already be too late, to re-acquire the full set of boards again, to dump enough data to properly crack the algo.

What you are basically saying here is - "Yes, I figured out a way to dump some data tables, but I'm going to tease MAMEdev with this ability, and not actually work with them - so why didn't they automatically decide to waste time duplicating that same effort, knowing that I wouldn't share? That's their fault - not mine."

It's called cooperation, to avoid duplication of effort, and is what allowed System16 games to be decrypted (properly) and emulated so quickly.

> It took me just over 1 year physical time to do it and about 10 months of that
> was doing nothing waiting for hardware. You also know the method. In effect it
> should take somone with the neccessary hardware less than 2 weeks to get data
> and thats very well over estimating.

Yes, I know. You said yourself the biggest problem, once you know the method, was waiting on the hardware. Well, I don't own any hardware.