Xevious

I got one of those bootleg Xevious boards. This one is XEVIOS- it is a 2-board setup with 4(!) Z80s. Software-wise, it is identical to Xevious, except for a couple of patches- the copyright is different (Watson 1980), the first hidden message is different ("DEAD COPY MAKING copy under NAMCO program"- I don't understand it!), and the Xevious logo was obviously hacked to Xevios- even the sparkle across the top of the logo goes too far- as if the u were still there.

The top board is pretty much square, with the 44-pin main connector (not the same as Xevious). All 4 Z80s are on this board, along with 9 EPROMs, 2 6116 SRAMs, an 8255 and two 8-position DIP switches. The lower board is taller, has 10 more EPROMs, a bunch more 6116s, 4 6148s, and a 6-pin connector that has RGB, sync and 2 grounds. They are connected together by a 50-pin ribbon cable, and a couple of power wires.

I'm currently working on getting the original ROMs to play on it, and ROM switch in Super Xevious. 11 of the ROMs are identical, 2 have a few differences, 2 have a lot of differences, 2 have the same data but the bytes are bit-swapped, and 2 are unique to this boardset and aren't part of the original set. I used the NAMCO images for ROMs 4, 5, 7 and 12, but the game gets stuck in diagnostics mode- RAM OK, ROM OK, SOUND 0...F, and a display of the DIP switch settings. I changed #4 back to the bootleg and it plays fine, but the logo still says XEVIOS.

       GND  A  1  GND
         ?  B  2  Cocktail
         ?  C  3  ?
      Bomb  D  4  Bomb2
         ?  E  5  ?
         ?  F  6  ?
         ?  H  7  Pause
        Up  J  8  Up2
     Right  K  9  Right2
      Down  L 10  Down2
      Left  M 11  Left2
      Fire  N 12  Fire2
   1 Start  P 13  2 Start
      Coin  R 14  ?
      Coin  S 15  Reset
       +5V  T 16  +5V
       +5V  U 17  +5V
      +12V  V 18  +12V
         ?  W 19  ?
         ?  X 20  ?
     Audio  Y 21  Audio
       GND  Z 22  GND

Here are some of the DIP switch settings; more will come soon:

DIP SW 9 - 6 and 5 = number of ships
           0     0   3 ships
           0     1   1 ship
           1     0   2 ships
           1     1   5 ships

DIP SW 11 - 1 = Continuous Bombing
            8 = Freeze

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