150-in-1 VT369 hacking and display blanks

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Nexrem
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Mar 10, 2022 9:51 am

150-in-1 VT369 hacking and display blanks

Post by Nexrem »

Hey, so I dug up this VT369 console and decided that it would be fun to get some proper games running on it. I'm an embedded engineer professionally, so I already had the tools to pop the chip off and dump it. I used Nesmaker from this forum to generate a new menu and then burned it back to the chip. The device does boot, but the display remains blank/white. Someone noted that it's likely that the ROM contained the display initialization routine. I don't know much about the 6502 or its assembly so I would love some insights from people who do.

Coincidentally another member owns a similar device and has dumped it already. Comparing his and my dump there are various differences, where most of my focus was at the very end of the dump, since that's where the joystick test lies and I'm guessing that's where the initialization routine/offsets are as well (at least that's what we do with micros in my field).

My dump (with proper iNES header): https://files.moskvich.xyz/misc/Chinese ... e_dump.NES
Other member's dumps on his post here: viewtopic.php?p=257743#p257743

Image of the device attached. It seems to be identical to the one from the other member with the only differences being a 128Mbit flash chip on mine vs a 64Mbit. And a different screen, mine is marked LCM-25F012-A1.
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middleagedhacker
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2022 1:43 am

Re: 150-in-1 VT369 hacking and display blanks

Post by middleagedhacker »

Hi,

has anyone made progress on this topic? I'm interested because I also bought a cheap handheld famiclone named BL-508 "268 games in 1". I did not manage to crack it open yet but I found out somebody already did it but sadly with the single purpose of reusing the case rather that modifying the console (https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/ob ... ter-49794f). It seems to have two I2C or SPI flash chips. Since there or other "268 games in 1" handhelds out there that seem to have different PCB I figure they might also have other games too so it would be interesting to swap the contents of the flash. I have not managed yet to dump mine because I do not have the tools.

I'm also curious about the pinout of the COB, if anyone has info. I'm mainly interested in discovering the composite video out pin. This handheld does not have the usual audio+video jack as others and I would like to add one to play in tv. Also, other similar consoles have an additional gamepad that connects to it. How would I proceed to discovers the pins for the additional joystick. Does any one have the pinouts of the VTxx/xxx cobs ?

thanks!
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