Light Output on Hyper Bishi Bashi Champ for Konami System 573

Last week I posted an article on getting light output from Salary Man Champ on Konami System 573, I suggest you read that first. Much to my chagrin the shift-register circuit I used there didn’t work with Hyper Bishi Bashi Champ. Through pictures I found online it seems that the 2 Player Hyper Bishi Bashi champ cart, while using the same light output pinout and having the same outward appearance and a very similar looking cartridge PCB actually used a very different light output circuit. Rather than a pair of shift-Registers it uses a pair of 74LS175 D-Type Flip Flops.

Here are some photos of the HBBC 2P cart (courtesy of nem on Arcade-Projects.com)

Not having this cart in my possession I studied the traces in the pictures above for a while, unfortunately most of the traces to the Flip flops are hidden under the chips, so I had to make some educated guesses as to which pins were used for what.

Both FlipFlops are wired in parallel with the exception of the clock pin which has a unique connection for each chip. Interestingly the clock pins on one of the FlipFlops is shared with the security chip. This wiring is extremely inefficient as it uses 7 data lines to control up to 8 lights, of which only 6 are used. they could have done away with the flip flips altogether and simply used one data line per lamp and saved on component costs. By comparison the Salary Man Champ circuit is much more effecient in that it only uses 3 data lines to control up to 16 lamps (though again only 6 are used). My theory is that this Hyper Bishi Bashi Champ light circuit is a paired down version of the circuit used in the 3 Player variants of the game, as adding a 3rd player would only require the addition of 1 more clock wire to control a 3rd Flip Flop for a total of 8 data lines controlling up to 12 lamps, still not as good as Salary Man Champ but at least it’s not using more data lines than outputs.

It turns out my guess work was very good as I got all of the inputs right on my first try and only had to adjust the output mapping. The file pinout for the FlipFlops is as follows:

LS175 Left (P1)
1 – CLR -> Edge 7 (both)
2 – Q1 -> (unused lamp output)
3 – Q1′
4 – D1 -> Edge 13 (both)
5 – D2 -> Edge 15 (both)
6 – Q2′
7 – Q2 -> P1 Blue Lamp Out
8 – GND -> Edge 1 (both)
9 – CLK -> Edge 17 (& security chip)
10- Q3 -> P1 Green Lamp Out
11- Q3′
12- D3 -> Edge 16 (both)
13- D4 -> Edge 14 (both)
14- Q4′
15- Q4 -> P1 Red Lamp Out
16- +5V -> Edge 22 (both)

LS175 Right (P2)
1 – CLR -> Edge 7 (both)
2 – Q1 -> (unused lamp output)
3 – Q1′
4 – D1 -> Edge 13 (both)
5 – D2 -> Edge 15 (both)
6 – Q2′
7 – Q2 -> P1 Blue Lamp Out
8 – GND -> Edge 1 (both)
9 – CLK -> Edge 20
10- Q3 -> P1 Green Lamp Out
11- Q3′
12- D3 -> Edge 16 (both)
13- D4 -> Edge 14 (both)
14- Q4′
15- Q4 -> P1 Red Lamp Out
16- +5V -> Edge 22 (both)

With so many data lines, implementing this can get messy:

But it works!

JVS Outputs

I also setup a test rig to see if Light output works over JVS as that would be a lot simpler implimentation, and while the inputs work great over JVS sadly it seems that light output does not. I did only test Hyper Bishi Bashi Champ, so it’s possible that other games DO support light output over JVS, but it would seem that a cart with the D-Type FlipFlops as described above is the only way to get light output from HBBC.