I was browsing Xianyu, a Chinese secondhand shopping platform, in late March and happened upon some very odd-looking GameCube motherboards after searching for "Nintendo factory board":
After some digging, it appears they are graphics processing cards from Japan-exclusive arcade pachinko slot machines made by Sammy, aka "pachislots" or "pachislo". Many of the motherboards were listed as "Onimusha 3 graphics cards", but there are bajillions of these pachislot machines with different themes.
Some photos from eBay showcasing the anatomy of an early 2000s pachislot. The metal box in the bottom left of the second photo is where all the processing cards live.
I spent a week or so haggling with various sellers on Xianyu. Some sellers specialize in repairing these machines and only want to sell tested and working boards, at a premium.
Here's one seller's warehouse in North China. He is clearly buying huge quantities of junk pachinko machines from Japan, repairing them, and parting them out. I'm surprised there's a market for such things in the PRC considering the legal status of gambling, but I didn't pry.
I bought three tested and working boards from this guy, just as a baseline. Here's how he tested them:
Unfortunately those three motherboards are stuck at Chinese export customs. But I hedged my bets, and also got a massive lot of untested boards from another seller, via sea freight.
All of the boards I got are 04728A-1 and P05728A-2 revs. There's at least one more rev, P08728A-3, which has the FPGA on the front side, but I didn't get any in this lot.
Here are some support boards that were included. You can see the Sammy logo on some of these.
Also, some of these Pachislot machines were actually powered by Dreamcast hardware! I'll make a separate thread in the Dreamcast section to document these boards.
Here's the final haul. Plenty of boards to facilitate destructive reverse engineering.
This thread will be my hub for documenting the GameCube Pachinko boards. I'll share anatomy notes, pinouts, and the results of experiments such as:
After some digging, it appears they are graphics processing cards from Japan-exclusive arcade pachinko slot machines made by Sammy, aka "pachislots" or "pachislo". Many of the motherboards were listed as "Onimusha 3 graphics cards", but there are bajillions of these pachislot machines with different themes.
Some photos from eBay showcasing the anatomy of an early 2000s pachislot. The metal box in the bottom left of the second photo is where all the processing cards live.
I spent a week or so haggling with various sellers on Xianyu. Some sellers specialize in repairing these machines and only want to sell tested and working boards, at a premium.
Here's one seller's warehouse in North China. He is clearly buying huge quantities of junk pachinko machines from Japan, repairing them, and parting them out. I'm surprised there's a market for such things in the PRC considering the legal status of gambling, but I didn't pry.
I bought three tested and working boards from this guy, just as a baseline. Here's how he tested them:
Unfortunately those three motherboards are stuck at Chinese export customs. But I hedged my bets, and also got a massive lot of untested boards from another seller, via sea freight.
All of the boards I got are 04728A-1 and P05728A-2 revs. There's at least one more rev, P08728A-3, which has the FPGA on the front side, but I didn't get any in this lot.
Here are some support boards that were included. You can see the Sammy logo on some of these.
Also, some of these Pachislot machines were actually powered by Dreamcast hardware! I'll make a separate thread in the Dreamcast section to document these boards.
Here's the final haul. Plenty of boards to facilitate destructive reverse engineering.
This thread will be my hub for documenting the GameCube Pachinko boards. I'll share anatomy notes, pinouts, and the results of experiments such as:
- poking around the FPGA
- wiring up GCVideo / CubeVGA
- wiring up Picoboot / Flippydrive / EXI / SI devices
- dumping the IPL!
