Century Play Pack (Driving Force)

I had a spare bootleg replacement play pack from a Driving force on Galaxian hardware, so I proceeded to trace the circuit and try to identify the ICs used since they all have the IDs removed, other that the one attached as a later addition as IC7.

Following the tracing, I used the pinouts to identify the most likely ICs used, and where possible put them in the Retro Chip Tester and tested / read or dumped them.

The ICs turned out to be :-

  • 1 : S2650
  • 2 : 82S158 (handles all the Z80 <-> S2650 control lines and protection)
  • 3 : TBP28S42 (memory remapping, dumped this, matches “Top Racer”)
  • 4 : 7474
  • 5 : 7474
  • 6 : 74244 (used for IN0 protection – most games don’t use)
  • 7 : 7474 (along with this written from main PCB)

The 82S158 is a precursor to PALs and GALs and allows you to program custom logic into each chip. I used the PAL dumping option on the RCT to get the original equations.

  • (1) /Z80-RD = /S2650-RW * S2650_OPREQ;
  • (2) /Z80-WR = S2650-WRP * S2650-MIO * S2650-RW * S2650_OPREQ * Z80-WAIT;
  • (3) /Z80-M1 = S2650-MIO * OUTPUT-FROM-ADDRESS-REMAP-ROM;
  • (4) /Z80-MREQ = S2650-MIO * S2650_OPREQ;
  • (5) /7474-2D = /Z80-WAIT + /S2650-CLK;
  • (6) /S2650-RESET = Z80-RESET;
  • (7) /74244-GATE = /S2650-MIO * /S2650-RW * S2650_OPREQ * OUTPUT-FROM-ADDRESS-REMAP-ROM;
  • (8) /7474-CLK = /OPREQ or /RW or /A14 or /WRP or MIO or A13

(5) will pause the 7474 that divides the z80 clock by 2, disabling the S2650 clock.
(7) is used to read IN0 from the 74244 (used for protection on Top Racer).
(8) triggers the flip flop to load D7 – this is fed back to D0 on IN0 and is used for protection.

Going back to a bootleg of the original play pack, it has most of the same chips but skips IC5 and IC7 used on Driving Force. They are used to feed BUSREQ to D6 and a signal from the main PCB (wire was dangling, so no idea where from) to D7 which would be returned on port 0

so it looks like the original play pack could have the protection as well, but not many games seem to use it. (they would have port 0 mapped in mame)

It seems that D0 would be loaded from D7 when an extended IO command is executed, but not being that familiar with S2650 coding I am unsure exactly which it would be.

Similar Posts

  • Atari Tetris

    In normal mode, just had a blank screen. Enable test mode and you instead get an error message showing that the ROM test had failed (even though the rom itself checks out OK with correct content) This is because the custom Atari SLAPSTIC chip is not functioning correctly. It is used to page banks of…

  • Gorf

    Capacitor burnt. (game board), particularly at C37 the capacitor was showing signs of extreme heat. Replaced them all with 22uF 25V axial electrolytics. No Speech / Some SFX missing. (game board) Output from speech chip SC01 was OK, as was output from IO Custom (X3). checked transistors in output stage and 2N4401 was faulty. (Q2)…

  • Galaxian

    No display – When move board, display flickers – go around board pushing each chip in turn, when press on 2E picture appears. Pin 16 rusted, only just in place. replace chip – picture back to normal. No star display. Board had been hacked to play an alternate game, pin 15 on chip 2B had…

  • Pacman

    Screen filled with coloured lines, unstable, no sync (see above) – check clock signals from horizontal and vertical scan generators (74161’s at 2R,2S,3R,3S) – no signal feeding into pin 2 of horizontal generators. Follow trace back to 7474 at 3N, signal going in, nothing coming out – replace chip and screen display back to normal….

  • Missile Command

    The board originally failed to get into the game, instead resetting just after drawing the ‘MISSILE COMMAND’ logo. Test mode faired a little better, managing to report RAM OK, MAP OK and ROM OK before resetting. Ram and Rom checked out OK using the Fluke. Measuring various CPU signals revealed that the interrupt seemed very…

  • Sega System 16

    Altered Beast – Colours missing, no reds, other colours looked like diminished palette (like windows in 16 colours) – used test mode to perform ram test, and one ram chip identified as faulty (I10). Replaced this and red was back, but still reduced pallette. Looking at colour circuit, and it uses resistor arrays driven by I11…