Coin-Op Collection Update: RA9704 (Armed Police Batrider) Schematics & More...

Happy New Year, everyone! We're ready to start 2025 off with a bang. Thank you once again for all your support in 2024! Here's a brief update on what we're currently working on as we kick off the new year:

First up are development documentation, in-house reverse-engineered schematics, and tutorials. Many supporters have expressed interest in the development process and how it works. To address this, we have decided to document both previous and future FPGA implementations in a GitHub repository.

The Development-Documentation repository contains in-depth overviews, schematics, and other development resources. It currently features an overview of Midway, Technos, and Raizing. We're currently working on adding documentation for Toaplan 1 / 2 hardware.

Below is a snippet of Midway's Z-Unit hardware, provided by Pramod, to include high resolution scans of the schematics from the service manual.



In the future, we'll be branching out with courses and tutorials on Udemy. These courses will cover how to develop a core for MiSTerFPGA and PocketFPGA, along with Verilog courses and tutorials that integrate with our upcoming "game-core" framework and GUI-based tools.

Second on the list is the RA9704 (Armed Police Batrider) PCB reference, layout, and schematics reverse-engineered by our newest team member Brandon! In the midst of working on his upcoming Capcom ZN-1 project, he volunteered to reverse-engineer his PCB.

Brandon spent over 90 hours on the project, and his hard work will benefit arcade repair, emulation, and the FPGA implementation. For more information, see the readme file.

The KiCad project, high resolution images, and schematics in PDF format are available in the Development-Documentation repository mentioned above.

Moving forward, I ran a poll at the end of the year regarding 2025 roadmap targets for Q1. To my surprise, Toaplan2 emerged the victor! We've started working on the NEC V25 (μPD70327) that's required for the remaining games and targeting late February / early March for a release. Below is a brief description of the microcontrollers functions:

We’ve completed our "game core" framework for the MiSTerFPGA platform, PocketFPGA is a work-in progress and we are now porting Technos16 (featuring The Combatribes, Double Dragon 3, and WWF Wrestlefest) for release. Alongside this, we’re developing the upcoming Tecmo16 core (featuring Ninja Gaiden, Tecmo Knight, and Strato Fighter).

We’re also preparing tutorials to explain how everything works with Tecmo16. I'd like to thank long-time patreon supporter yeahbuddy for donating a Ninja Gaiden PCB last month to use as a reference and for reverse-engineering purposes. In the future, we'll see a full schematic and PCB layout published for this title.

We'll be back in a few weeks with a follow-up. Hope you all enjoyed the holidays and are ready for 2025!




Disclaimer: 
All product names, trademarks, and registered trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. "NEC", "Analogue," "Analogue Pocket," "MiSTerFPGA," "Capcom," "Midway," "Technos," "Tecmo," "Toaplan," "Raizing," and all derivative works are trademarks, registered trademarks, or copyrighted materials of their respective holders. Use of these names does not imply endorsement or association with this post. All rights reserved to their respective owners. This post is for educational and research purposes only.