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CP System II
1993 arcade system board From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The CP System II (CPシステムII, CP shisutemu 2), also known as Capcom Play System 2[2] or CPS-2, is an arcade system board that was the successor to Capcom's CP System, CP System Dash and Capcom Power System Changer arcade hardware. It was first used in 1993 for Super Street Fighter II and was succeeded by the CP System III hardware in 1996, of which the CPS-2 would outlive by over four years. New releases for the system were produced until the end of 2003, ending with Hyper Street Fighter II. Technical support for the CPS-2 ended on February 28, 2019.[3]
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Like its predecessor, games can be exchanged without altering the core hardware. The CP System II uses separate daughterboards enclosed in plastic cases to store the games on, which is then placed onto the main board for it to be played. Unlike its predecessor, however, games are encrypted, and must be decrypted via a decryption key stored on the main board's battery to run them.
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Capcom announced the development of the CP System II (or CPS-2) in 1990. They had planned to complete and release the CP System II hardware in 18 months. They also originally had plans for the system to be capable of 3D graphics.[4]
The earlier Capcom system board, the original CP System (or CPS-1), while successful, was very vulnerable to bootleggers making unauthorized copies of games. In order to rectify the situation, Capcom took the CP System hardware (with QSound) with minimal changes and employed encryption on the program ROMs to prevent software piracy. Due to the encryption, the system was never bootlegged until unencrypted program data became available.[citation needed]
The CP System II consists of two separate parts; the A board, which connects to the JAMMA harness and contains components common between all CP System II games, and the B board, which contains the game itself. The relationship between the A and B board is very similar to that between a home video game console and cartridge. CP System II A and B boards are color-coded by region, and each board can only be used with its same-colored mate. The exception to this is that the blue and green boards can be used together.[citation needed]
The B boards hold battery-backed memory containing decryption keys needed for the games to run. As time passes, these batteries lose their charge and the games stop functioning, because the CPU cannot execute any code without the decryption keys. This is generally referred to as a "suicide battery". It is possible to bypass the original battery and swap it out with a new one[5] in-circuit, but this must be done before the original falls below 2V or the keys will be lost. Consequently, the board would just simply die, even if used legally it would not play after a finite amount of time unless a fee was paid to Capcom to replace it.
Due to the heavy encryption, it was believed for a long time that CP System II emulation was next to impossible. However, in January 2001, the CPS-2 Shock group[6] was able to obtain unencrypted program data by hacking into the hardware, which they distributed as XOR difference tables to produce the unencrypted data from the original ROM images, making emulation possible, as well as restoring cartridges that had been erased because of the suicide system.
In January 2007, the encryption method was fully reverse-engineered by Andreas Naive (Archived 2013-07-02 at the Wayback Machine[7]) and Nicola Salmoria. It has been determined that the encryption employs two four-round Feistel ciphers with a 64-bit key.[8][9] The algorithm was thereafter implemented in this state for all known CPS-2 games in MAME.
In April 2016, Eduardo Cruz, Artemio Urbina and Ian Court announced the successful reverse engineering of Capcom's CP System II security programming, enabling the clean "de-suicide" and restoration of any dead games without hardware modifications.[10][11]
Capcom ceased manufacturing the CP System II hardware on December 22, 2003, with Hyper Street Fighter II being the final game released for the hardware. Capcom ended most of the technical support for the hardware and its games on March 31, 2015.[12] Battery replacements ended on February 28, 2019,[3] ending all official support of the CP System II hardware and software.
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Region colors
Technical specifications
- CPU:[13]
- Capcom custom chipset:[13]
- GPU: CPS-A & CPS-B Graphics Processors @ 16 MHz (same as CPS-1)
- Sound chip: Lucent DL-1425 Q1 QSound DSP16A Processor @ 4 MHz
- DRAM Refresh Controller: DL-2227
- I/O Controller: DL-1123
- Display:
- Colors:
- RAM: 1328 KB (1 MB FPM DRAM, 304 KB SRAM)
- Maximum ROM capacity: 322 Mbit[1] (40.25 MB)
- Dimensions (A+B board pair): 40 x 27 x 8 cm
List of games (42 games)
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External links
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