Altering ROMs and re-burning for arcade use.

[crashing bore]

I've seen the ton of info regarding the ROM editing for playing on the computer, etc. but I was wondering if anyone has ever altered the original arcade version ROM and burned it onto a chip to play on arcade  game itself?

The guy I bought my upright from just mentioned he may be getting a ROM burner and told me that if I wanted to have him do something for me at some point to let him know. So, I need to be able to edit the arcade ROM and provide him with the files to be burned onto the ROM chip so i can swap them out on the daughtercard.

I tried to open the original arcade ROM using RBIeditor but it doesn't seem to open properly. I assumed it is only meant to be used with the NES version of the ROMs?

Has anyone else messed with this type of thing before or has it been limited to the NES versions? Thanks for any and all info you lot can provide. Much appreciated.

[ultimate7]

Did you use Nightwulf's editor?  It has the arcade ROM as one of the files you can edit, but yes it is the NES version not the MAME version.

[crashing bore]

No, it wasn't Nightwulf's editor via the browser (which kicks ass). Not sure of the editors origins but I'm sure I got it off of a link from around here somewhere. Hmmm, I'm wondering if there is anyway to save the newly created NES (Arcade) ROM and convert it to a pure arcade ROM. I have no idea if that is just stupid wishful thinking or what but...

[ultimate7]

The main problem is that the Arcade gameplay sucks as compared to the NES gameplay which is why it's not worth it to have a MAME ROM editor, I'm not sure if one exists.

[crashing bore]

The main problem is that I have an upright arcade version 

I tracked it down and it is DBatch's editor I was initially messing with.

Thanks for the info and well, if anyone has any suggestions and or helpful insight, please let me know.

[nightwulf]

There is no "export to MAME (PRG/CHR) format" option in rbi-editor because, well, I never would've thought someone would want one. It's not difficult to do though. Basically you could take a iNES-format ROM from the editor, strip off the first 16 bytes, save the first 65536 as the PRG file, and save whatever's left as the CHR file, and rename them for MAME.

As far as burning it to the arcade upright, I'm really not sure. I don't know if the Vs. Unisystem ROM has any kind of checksum check, but I wouldn't think so. I'm also unsure of how the ROM is stored on the chip, or if it's spread out over multiple chips (I know Vs. SMB is done this way). Either way, you'll probably want to dump the ROM itself and compare it with the MAME ROM images floating around and ensure that it's not interleaved in some goofy way before you try burning your own.

[crashing bore]

Uhhh, yeah whatever you say 

I really have no idea about the whole editing thing and was hoping it was gonna be something really simple. You're talking about aspects of the ROM that I'm just flat out ignorant about at this point. I really appreciate your input but because I'm a dufus it is kinda lost on me.

Perhaps I'll ask the guy that is considering getting the ROM burner and ask if he wants to get involved. He is in the arcade business so he may know exactly what you mean and have some insight.

Really, thanks again.

[TβG]

Now i know what it feels like to be struck by lightning.