Do you remember the QuizardArcade machines? These are interesting Arcades as they were based on CD-i technology; A fully operational CD-i 210 is inside and connected to a MCU board, built inside an arcade cabinet. The company behind this is TAB Austria (which actually still exists nowadays)
Team Europe describes it as following: "This CD-I based quiz-system uses an Standard CD-I Player and an external Jamma-PCB which is connected to the CD-I Player over the serial port on the back of the Player. The Jamma PCB has an MCU (D8751H) as a copy protection on it and by starting the game, the CD-I player communicates over the serial port with the MCU. There are 4 different CD-Versions for the Quizard (1, 2, 3 and 4) and a couple of different revisions for each version. For example version 1 got 8 different revisions (1.0 to 1.7). To play a version you need the matching MCU for it! So to play any revision of version 1 you a need an MCU for version 1. The same goes for version 2, 3 and 4. So you can not play a version 1 CD with the MCU from version 4..."
So what you see here is a MCU board. It is basically a chip with a CPU and eprom chip inside. This chip is protected with a lock bit so you can't read the eprom data part. The only way to get around this protection is by decapping the chip: Open the chip and delete the lock bit with UV light. After this reset you can read the eprom part again. You should protect the eprom part before using the uv eraser as this part is very sensitive... If the process went right you can make a dump of the eprom now, using it in MAME to emulate it.
TAB Austria created 4 Quizard games on CD-i. The protection of the first two versions have been figured out thanks to Harmonious Code, but version 3 and 4 refused to run until now.
The first two versions run in MAME and CD-i Emulator, so you can try them yourself (without the hassle of a MCU board. But that was not the case with version 3 and 4.
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Team Europe about the protection: "Harmony got the Version 1 and 2 fully working, by hacking/patching the copy protection and without a dump of the MCU! Version 3 and 4 are bootable, but crash after you press START.So we tought, that the copy protections from version 3 and 4 are more complex and the game needs some other values from the MCU to get it fully working... 6 years fast forward....CAPS0ff is doing fantastic work with decapping MCU's and other stuff! And i nearly look daily on their blog to see if new magic happened! But i was also fascinated about the work they have done with the D8751 MCU's, and how it was possible to de-secure the lock bit! I got so fascinated that i had to try it myself, as i have a couple of D8751's for the Version 4 here. So basically no big deal if one get's broken. So i heated the top of the chip at about 330° for about 20 seconds, and used a flat screwdriver to remove the top of the chip. Before I could erase the lock bit, i had to cover the eprom part with something, i did not have professional uv opaque material (like CAPS0ff), so i used electrical tape which i cut to the correct size. thx to the blog of CAPS0ff i basically knew were the lock bit is located... so the chip was now ready for the uv eraser! 15 minutes later i tried dumping it and voila i got consistent reads! --> and yes, the chip was locked before, only giving FF's when reading..."
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They made a modified MCU board so you can turn almost every CD-i player into an arcade machine.
And Retrostuff.org got one and tried it here.
Inside the Quizard arcade machine you can find a CD-i 210 player:
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[Thanks, Team Europe, Retrostuff.org, Harmonious Code (Harmony), CAPSOff]
The first two versions run in MAME and CD-i Emulator, so you can try them yourself (without the hassle of a MCU board. But that was not the case with version 3 and 4.
These Quizard CD-i discs were pressed in 1998! That means in 1998 the Arcades were still supported by this CD-i technology.
Above: Quizard 2
Above: Quizard 3
Above: Quizard 4
Team Europe about the protection: "Harmony got the Version 1 and 2 fully working, by hacking/patching the copy protection and without a dump of the MCU! Version 3 and 4 are bootable, but crash after you press START.So we tought, that the copy protections from version 3 and 4 are more complex and the game needs some other values from the MCU to get it fully working... 6 years fast forward....CAPS0ff is doing fantastic work with decapping MCU's and other stuff! And i nearly look daily on their blog to see if new magic happened! But i was also fascinated about the work they have done with the D8751 MCU's, and how it was possible to de-secure the lock bit! I got so fascinated that i had to try it myself, as i have a couple of D8751's for the Version 4 here. So basically no big deal if one get's broken. So i heated the top of the chip at about 330° for about 20 seconds, and used a flat screwdriver to remove the top of the chip. Before I could erase the lock bit, i had to cover the eprom part with something, i did not have professional uv opaque material (like CAPS0ff), so i used electrical tape which i cut to the correct size. thx to the blog of CAPS0ff i basically knew were the lock bit is located... so the chip was now ready for the uv eraser! 15 minutes later i tried dumping it and voila i got consistent reads! --> and yes, the chip was locked before, only giving FF's when reading..."
They made a modified MCU board so you can turn almost every CD-i player into an arcade machine.
And Retrostuff.org got one and tried it here.
Inside the Quizard arcade machine you can find a CD-i 210 player:
There are several versions of the Quizard cabinets. Here you'll find the first version and the third version:
