Something I'd been waiting for... for ages:
Karnov's MCU was finally dumped! Thanks The Dumping Union / TeamEurope!
For those that don't know, a MCU is basically a full computer on a chip that is protected from being read out... Which is why a lot of games didn't get their MCU dumped until recently. Often times a protection MCU goes beyond simply allowing the game to boot - it also influences the gameplay / levels / level order and in some cases sprites & weapons. The MCU chip sometimes has to be sacrificed to read out the program data, but some are vulnerable to glitching or other nifty ways of recovering the data without breaking the top off / harming the physical chip.
I started emulating it last night, and almost done. It's quite similar hookup to that of DEC8/DEC0.
For extra fun and like dec8, I'm doing it from scratch / without using mame as a reference. Although the code copied and pasted from DEC0 is almost there to begin with..
So far the game is a little different than with the protection "sim" code. While most of the enemies are in their same places, different ones spawn here and there than did previously. It's always a good feeling to get rid of the old sim code for this reason. IMO a game is basically a bootleg quality unless it has the full protection emulated - especially if the protection MCU influences the game. There is the exception - if the game only checks the protection MCU for a challenge/response to boot up, and does nothing else. (f.ex. IREM m72 games).
best regards,
- dink