Nemesis wrote:As things stand today, I don't have the money anyway. I'm now married with a mortgage and a baby on the way. $90 sounds like a fortune now. lol
Ohh, you poor guy, I feel sorry for you
Good luck!
)
Well first I thought that MEFAS is in UK or somewhere near, yet then I found out they are in US, so I knew that postage will be a mess (and so I moaned about being in europe). I thought you are in US, but ok whatever.
There's also a post-soviet (but enough advanced) chip decapping facility here in baltic states, yet I cannot find any info on them any more. Don't remember name of the company and it doesn't google up in any way. Also have no idea about prices there, I think it might be 1000$ instead of 90$ and using more destructive methods.
Ok, anyways then the idea from what we have there is getting pretty clear:
1. We have to
decap YM2612 and VDP (and could also add the other PQ packaged chip from megadrive1 that has the ROM and logic)
2. We have to do the decapping where we know it's cheap and high quality (decapped chips will remain functional!) -
in MEFAS, so we have to
arrange a guy in US via a team effort (there is likely to be somebody from US in this forum..?)
3. We have to get chip photos from MEFAS tools, that is -
order high resolution images from them. When we get the decapped chips back, we have to keep them in excellent conditions (controlled moisture, no UV, no mechanical stress) and might someday try to do our own pictures as well, whoever will get the most suitable tools for that.
4. We could try to
arrange the money for this great cause via some donations or just somebody (or maybe me) will get
5. Maybe
Nemesis could provide the chips for decapping, I can smoothlly desolder the large PQ-s from some megadrive mainboard if provided with one.
6. If money is provided from one person, that person becomes the holder of the saint decapped chips as well as gets credited on all images. (a bonus or something)
7. We don't know what we would get from the images, but
at least these images are likely to be a tremendously delicious food for brain for a prolonged period of time, as well as an object for aestetical pleasure.
8. If nobody else will want to capture various rom contents from images, I will do it.
At least we've got a plan of some kind