Help collecting pictures of CPU and PPU packages

Discuss hardware-related topics, such as development cartridges, CopyNES, PowerPak, EPROMs, or whatever.

Moderator: Moderators

User avatar
Individualised
Posts: 310
Joined: Mon Sep 05, 2022 6:46 am

Re: Help collecting pictures of CPU and PPU packages

Post by Individualised »

Fiskbit wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 4:29 pm I feel like I'm missing something here. Nintendo used heatspreaders like this on many PPUs, with the chip name stamped into the metal. Attached is an image from Lockster (cropped down a bit to fit on the forum) with B and D examples.
And now I feel very silly. Thanks for enlightening me.
lidnariq
Posts: 11432
Joined: Sun Apr 13, 2008 11:12 am

Re: Help collecting pictures of CPU and PPU packages

Post by lidnariq »

loglow wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 4:00 pm I just tested this and I can confirm that both of my RC2C03B chips do NOT exhibit the supposed "wrong" colors.
[...]
Perhaps the "wrong color" anomaly is limited only to specific lot numbers?
Or maybe the specific PPU that Kevtris analyzed there was just defective for some other reason, and the reason that we've never seen any games that rely on this unique palette is that Nintendo didn't know they'd made it.
loglow wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 4:07 pm I don't know how to test the tuning tables or pin 30 functionality.
If pin 30 is the clock divider, you should just see M2 change from one frequency to another when you bring the pin high/low, so that should be easy to test.

As far as testing the tuning tables, let me go write a simple test that will run through them and compare the pitches that they "should" make to the pulse channels.

As far as the ones that are /RDY - that's trickier, because MOS wrote that (for the plain 6502) RDY must only change during φ1, and the PC10 hardware gets that exactly backwards. (As a result, the supervisor Z80 can crash the 2A03, but has to reboot the 2A03 to restart it)
loglow
Posts: 48
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2022 1:47 pm

Re: Help collecting pictures of CPU and PPU packages

Post by loglow »

lidnariq wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 6:10 pm If pin 30 is the clock divider, you should just see M2 change from one frequency to another when you bring the pin high/low, so that should be easy to test.

As far as testing the tuning tables, let me go write a simple test that will run through them and compare the pitches that they "should" make to the pulse channels.

As far as the ones that are /RDY - that's trickier, because MOS wrote that (for the plain 6502) RDY must only change during φ1, and the PC10 hardware gets that exactly backwards. (As a result, the supervisor Z80 can crash the 2A03, but has to reboot the 2A03 to restart it)
I just tried playing around a bit with a /16 UA6527P (an 8916S), a PAL RP2C07-0, and a master clock at 26.601712 MHz (1.66 MHz CPU clock). PAL games seem to play reasonably correctly and everything looks good in terms of video output. The sound is mostly okay, but I thought I could detect a few effects that sounded a bit off, but then again that could just be because the CPU is a clone chip after all.

I can test pin 30 a little later. Which specific revisions were you interested in me checking out?
lidnariq
Posts: 11432
Joined: Sun Apr 13, 2008 11:12 am

Re: Help collecting pictures of CPU and PPU packages

Post by lidnariq »

Here's a very simple test for the periodic noise sounds.

It just endlessly plays pairs of notes: first the noise channel, then a square wave that should be almost the same pitch, then silence. The first sixteen pairs are the NTSC table, the next sixteen pairs are the PAL table. If the first sound mostly right and the second mostly don't, the chip is using the NTSC table. Vice versa, it's using the PAL table. If it sounds like white noise, it's a 2A03 without version (or a clone). If it sounds like tones but they're all wrong, who knows?

Only the first ten/eleven tones are in range for the NTSC/PAL tables respectively, afterwards I play the same notes at higher octaves. Doesn't use the PPU at all (there's no video output).
Attachments
2a03noise.zip
(2.96 KiB) Downloaded 54 times
loglow
Posts: 48
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2022 1:47 pm

Re: Help collecting pictures of CPU and PPU packages

Post by loglow »

lidnariq wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 7:34 pm Here's a very simple test for the periodic noise sounds.

It just endlessly plays pairs of notes: first the noise channel, then a square wave that should be almost the same pitch, then silence. The first sixteen pairs are the NTSC table, the next sixteen pairs are the PAL table. If the first sound mostly right and the second mostly don't, the chip is using the NTSC table. Vice versa, it's using the PAL table. If it sounds like white noise, it's a 2A03 without version (or a clone). If it sounds like tones but they're all wrong, who knows?

Only the first ten/eleven tones are in range for the NTSC/PAL tables respectively, afterwards I play the same notes at higher octaves. Doesn't use the PPU at all (there's no video output).
Results!

These were all done with a system at PAL timings (26.601712 MHz clock), your provided ROM (2a03noise.nes), an EverDrive-N8, and a PAL PPU (RP2C07-0).

Code: Select all

CPU                  Code     Table
---                  ----     -----
RP2A07               7C4 39   PAL
RP2A07A              1GM 36   PAL
UA6527P (No logo)    9027AC   NTSC
UA6527P (Old logo)   9025S    NTSC
UA6527P (New logo)   9023     NTSC
UA6540 (Old logo)    8833S    NTSC
I'm not especially surprised about the UA6527P chips all having the NTSC table.

But I am kind of surprised about the UA6540 also having the NTSC table, since it's actually intended to be used as a PAL chip, isn't it?
loglow
Posts: 48
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2022 1:47 pm

Re: Help collecting pictures of CPU and PPU packages

Post by loglow »

Hey, I found some new chips!

RP2C02E wasn't listed on the wiki at all, so I added it.

PPU=RP2C02E 4M3 14.jpg
PPU=RP2C02E 4M5 25.jpg
lidnariq
Posts: 11432
Joined: Sun Apr 13, 2008 11:12 am

Re: Help collecting pictures of CPU and PPU packages

Post by lidnariq »

loglow wrote: Wed Oct 05, 2022 2:40 pm But I am kind of surprised about the UA6540 also having the NTSC table, since it's actually intended to be used as a PAL chip, isn't it?
That is definitely surprising! But maybe they didn't expect people to care about the tonal noise?

Here's a new test that tests both the DMC channel and the noise rate. It only bothers with one in each table...
whichapu.zip
(2.99 KiB) Downloaded 43 times
(noise:NTSC test PAL, gap, dmc:NTSC test PAL)

Now I think about it, I should remake the first test with a DMC test too.
Fiskbit
Posts: 891
Joined: Sat Nov 18, 2017 9:15 pm

Re: Help collecting pictures of CPU and PPU packages

Post by Fiskbit »

loglow wrote: Wed Oct 05, 2022 2:50 pm Hey, I found some new chips!

RP2C02E wasn't listed on the wiki at all, so I added it.
What is this madness?? What are the serial numbers and models of the consoles that had these chips?
loglow
Posts: 48
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2022 1:47 pm

Re: Help collecting pictures of CPU and PPU packages

Post by loglow »

Fiskbit wrote: Wed Oct 05, 2022 3:36 pm
loglow wrote: Wed Oct 05, 2022 2:50 pm Hey, I found some new chips!

RP2C02E wasn't listed on the wiki at all, so I added it.
What is this madness?? What are the serial numbers and models of the consoles that had these chips?
No idea, they were bought loose, but from someone who desoldered them.
loglow
Posts: 48
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2022 1:47 pm

Re: Help collecting pictures of CPU and PPU packages

Post by loglow »

Fiskbit wrote: Wed Oct 05, 2022 3:36 pm What is this madness?? What are the serial numbers and models of the consoles that had these chips?
OMG, I removed a "2C02E" heat spreader, and look what was hiding underneath!

IMG_0370.JPG

UPDATE: And I did two more for good measure:

IMG_0371.JPG
IMG_0372.JPG
loglow
Posts: 48
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2022 1:47 pm

Re: Help collecting pictures of CPU and PPU packages

Post by loglow »

lidnariq wrote: Wed Oct 05, 2022 3:11 pm
loglow wrote: Wed Oct 05, 2022 2:40 pm But I am kind of surprised about the UA6540 also having the NTSC table, since it's actually intended to be used as a PAL chip, isn't it?
That is definitely surprising! But maybe they didn't expect people to care about the tonal noise?

Here's a new test that tests both the DMC channel and the noise rate. It only bothers with one in each table...
whichapu.zip

(noise:NTSC test PAL, gap, dmc:NTSC test PAL)

Now I think about it, I should remake the first test with a DMC test too.
Results are the same as above, in terms of whether the middle tone matched the pitch of the first tone (NTSC) or the third tone (PAL). None of the chips had a split result, aka the result of the first set of three tones always matched the result of the second set, for each chip in the list.
lidnariq
Posts: 11432
Joined: Sun Apr 13, 2008 11:12 am

Re: Help collecting pictures of CPU and PPU packages

Post by lidnariq »

Wild! So it seems there's no difference between the 6540 and the 6527Ps without a - in their date stamp. How confusing...
loglow
Posts: 48
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2022 1:47 pm

Re: Help collecting pictures of CPU and PPU packages

Post by loglow »

lidnariq wrote: Thu Oct 06, 2022 5:25 pm Wild! So it seems there's no difference between the 6540 and the 6527Ps without a - in their date stamp. How confusing...
That’s what I was thinking… are there other possible differences? I wonder if they use the same die? I probably don’t have the tools to check, but I’d be happy to donate some chips to find out.
lidnariq
Posts: 11432
Joined: Sun Apr 13, 2008 11:12 am

Re: Help collecting pictures of CPU and PPU packages

Post by lidnariq »

Uh, prescaler, noise pitch table, DMC pitch table, frame counter, length counters ... that's basically all of the differences between the 2A03 and 2A07. Some bug fixes, but we don't know what they all are... only one that I remember is the 2A03E/G's DMA glitches were fixed in the 2A07 but I'd be shocked if this doesn't have them given that nothing else was changed.

My understanding is that for this level of decapping, you could use the "Chips a la Antoine" technique without any problems. But the dice of the UA6527 that org and others already made don't show highly visible differences relative to the 2A03 anyway.

Would also be interesting to see if the 2A07A has the APU test registers or if pin 30 is still /RDY. (i.e. does it crash if you pull pin 30 high, or do the joypads stop working)
loglow
Posts: 48
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2022 1:47 pm

Re: Help collecting pictures of CPU and PPU packages

Post by loglow »

Okay, so, who has a microscope?

b.jpg
a.jpg
IMG_0373.JPG
Post Reply