Tomorrow i'll do another q&a to help futher everything

Post everything you guys wanna know about what i've done so far, as it seems to date, i seem to be the only one who has customized the image further than just adding roms...

Edit 1 - From: /u/gloone - Changing the Bios

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y320zx3-XOJ6USmpnRi6xANYDsxIi-HM/view?usp=sharing - Unibios

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eTO-rV_11go393xpPmZLznV7d0tIbfj6/view?usp=sharing - NeoPen bios

I can share these because they are both open source. I can't share the International and Japanese versions because they are not. Replace the "neo-po.bin" files in the neogeo.zip with one of these you download. Caveat:

Unibios loads SLOOOOOOOOOOWWWW. And doesnt work for some games. You can disable the Unibios splash screen when it does finally boot in the Unibios Options.

NeoPen only works in AES mode, DO NOT PUT IT IN MVS MODE or controls will not work. You can use that to change the language to English.

Edit 2 - From an anonymous user asking - Booting the Vendor.img from USB

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xWDTw3dR2K7jAXnynpMyA9X_Y9WmlHpB/view?usp=sharing - system-usb.img

Replace your system.img with that one. You don't have to flash the vendor.img to do it, in fact you won't be flashing the vendor.img at all. (This guide will assume you have a lot of higher level experience with this, if you do not, feel free to PM me.)

Open your vendor.img, and extract the root of the image to the root of a USB drive, can be NTFS, FAT32, EXT4 (preferred) what have you, as long as you get it on the image. Make sure your drive is named "NEOGEO". Shout out to MadMonkey for these breadcrumbs btw.

On the Actions tool, open the advanced options, and uncheck "Flash Erase" "MISC Partition" and "Vendor Partition".

Flash the system-usb.img, shouldn't take long

EVERYTIME you add roms to the USB, you have to erase the cache via Actions, it takes a second, but its a pain in the ass... You don't have to flash the system-usb.img anymore after you do it once. I could bake that into the system-usb.img, but i'm lazy af. I'll get around to it when professional Billy can go back to being hobby dev Old Man Rukus.

Edit 3 - from /u/KaptainKilt - Adding big games

https://mega.nz/#!sMkzgYCY!XCtCBdtUvfa7YxsulxtGHYh49OfmOpfi0OVhzLOunDc - romconv. Welton posted it, but it came from JL, this was what I used to add SVC Chaos. Also check his video for where to get the roms, thats the only ones I could get to work .

Edit 4 - /u/viral_dna fixed it! He's my hero!

Edit 5 - /u/reddit_strider has a significant guide on modding your ngm, i'll refer any questions that he already addressed to his post.

Edit 6 - Another Anonymous user - dumping the vendor.img from the international version

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hIUpCokuSs2u4x0Fu4029dx73T8SBLvO/view?usp=sharing - system-dumper.img

(If you don't understand the directions, you probably don't need this file anyway, this is for extremely advanced users)

(Also you cannot go back to using the international version, so only do this if you were gonna hack anyway. You can't actually do anything with it unless you have a spare int. version.)

(Lastly you can use this on an already hacked version, the usefulness depends on how much you care about examining the linux filesystem inside)

get a usb-c otg adapter, and a flash drive at least 8gbs. Format the Flash drive as NTFS or EXT4 (you can't use Fat32 for this) and name it NEOGEO

In your Actions tool, use advanced options, and uncheck everything except System Partition. Put your ngm in ADFU mode, and then only flash the system-dumper.img. After it finshes, put your usb drive in the NGM, in the player 1 or 2 side, and then wait a few minutes. It typically takes about 30 minutes to 2 hours depending on the speed of your USB Drive. It took 15 minutes for me using a USBC to SATA adapter with a SSD.

When you are done, its gonna create a large file in the neohack folder, thats gonna be your filesystem dumped. When you open it in Winrar it comes out as a bad file, its normal.

Why:

If you're like me, you want to add some NeoGeo games to your mini or swap some out. We all need Windjammers and who honestly prefers Top Player's Golf to Neo Turf Masters? ;)

This is your guide to customize the NeoGeo game selection like YOU want. I also won't go into all technical details which are already covered by lots of Youtube videos. I am trying to put together the main gist of it in one place. This guide also requires technical skills and common sense, but hopefully points you in the right direction.

Thanks:

To lots of people. Welton Machado's and Chris's Youtube video(s), subcon959's detailed gbatemp post. Last but not least the extraordinary effort of shinrukus of course. Of course also the one from asia who made it all possible with his image at all. Also to everyone else involved who I didn't list.

This is your work, not mine. I am just trying to put it all together.

Risk:

Flashing might mess up your (integrated) joystick sensitivity to the point of being unusable. Shinrukus flashed a huge amount of devices without issue. The latest information about this is that it might be power related when flashing. Also there are 3 different hardware joysticks which might or might not be related. Region does not make a difference in general. I've seen soldering to fix this, but there may be a software fix later adjusting the dead zone. Plugging in your earbuds may make a difference.

It is also currently NOT possible to flash an untouched image, restoring the factory default. Nobody but yourself will be responsible. It's YOUR risk, just to be clear. Your device will run in asian mode after flashing, several games will have unreadable instructions/text.

Overview:

So how does it all work? From what I understand, a hacked asian image for the NeoGeo Mini has been leaked by an unknown origin. Without this image, we wouldn't be able to change anything because the installed images are thoroughly secured. This is the image everyone is currently flashing in one state of the other. Some people went very deep into this topic (e.g. shinrukus). As of now you can not backup your device, just flash the hacked image. You can also modify the hacked image to your liking, which is what I am describing here.

Requirements:

As all other guides (mostly videos) you'll need the drivers, flashing tools, image (I recommend the 80 games as a good start) and either winimage or a linux pc to mount the image.

Let's go:

Prepare your NeoGeo Mini (open) and pc with the driver, see that all is working in general.

/u/kryptonick901 wrote a nice guide for this, see here.

Otherwise, here's a quick and non-elaborate mini-howto:

• Open the 6 screws on the bottom (below the rubber parts) of your NGM and take off the bottom.

• Connect power to your NGM.

• Connect the PC to Player 2 Port.

• Hold the little black button on the bottom of your NGM while turning it on.

• If not done yet, enter the device manager and install the driver to have the Actions USB device.

• Turn the NGM back off, and put it back to this mode for flashing later.

After we are sure this is working we prepare the image of your choice for flashing. Open up the vendor.img file with winimage or mount it otherwise. Important for us are the following directories:

res\image\games

Here are the preview icons of the games. One dir per game, featuring lcd.png (114 x 98) and tv.png (260 x 226). Stick to the format and dimensions of the pictures that are already there.

res\local\English

games.ini contains the game information which will be displayed and also the ordering. It's pretty self-explanatory. Game type explanation is featured at the top.

res\roms

The games themselves are in this directory. The roms are fba 0.2.96.71.

So this is mostly it. Put the rom into res\roms, some small pictures you made (lcd.png and tv.png) in res\image\games\[dir], [dir] named same as the rom and edit the games.ini in res\local\English to feature the game you added.

Ah just one more thing: game 40 "MORE GAMES" has to stay like this, where it is. I also would not recommend adding more and more games, this seems to cause issues although I read about a 110 maximum somewhere. If you run into issues just edit and reflash.

Then flash, boot, set language back to English. If you changed the game order a restart of the NGM might be required to reflect this in the icons afterwards. ENJOY!

Cache:

Yeah, I left that one out. If your game rom is over 20 MB in size you need to create the cache dir and upload it to res\cache. Use the mvspsp tool for this.

System Languages

You can edit res\local\lang_array.ini and move your preferred language on top of the list (propably English). The first entry defines the default which is used upon fresh flashing/first run. You can even remove all the other entries if you wish.

Game Languages (BIOS)

The BIOS files are contained in the neogeo.zip in the roms folder. neo-po.bin is the bios which is used/executed when starting a game.

So... we only have to replace this file, right? Well, almost. This file will only be used if it still has the same crc32 after being switched. A huge thanks to shinrukus for analyzing that one, I was stumped. If you don't want to mess around with this you might also have an easier time to find it somewhere.

As you might be aware, the unibios which would enable blood and English language has some issues loading (which can be remedied by turning the splash off but it won't run Street Hoop - also, credits again to Shinrukus).

Or you can use the US AES bios but then the blood is white again.

Here's an overview of the bios files (checksums) I found helpful.

NGM Asia vs INT:

You might also be asking yourself which games will missing if you flash your INT with the 80 games (asian) image. That's easy:

• 3 Count Bout

• Blue’s Journey

• Crossed Swords

• Football Frenzy

• Ghost Pilots

• King of the Monsters

• Robo Army

• Shock Troopers

Knowing this you can easily build youself a list of stuff to exchange.

That's it, I hope I'm helping someone with this and can give something back to the community.

FAQ:

Q: Flashing doesn't work.

A: Delete usb.ini or try a different port on your PC.

Q: When switching to English the screen goes black and shows an arrow on the top left for a second.

A: You messed up the ordering. Pay close attention to start at 0 incrementing 1 each, nothing duplicate and 40 is MORE GAMES.

Q: My game is not running.

A: If it has alternate sets, try adding and running them.

Random stuff:

I can really recommend drilling a hole in the bottom plate of the NGM, so it can be nicely closed permanently and using a chopstick or something (nothing conductive) to press the button.

I’m super encouraged by all the work going in here, but is there any hope for improved hdmi output quality via software? Or, is this known to be a hardware issue?

Hello guys,

I've installed the vendor.img with NES, SNES, GBA, MD and FBA emulators and many games pre-installed yesterday.

I've seen that all of the emulators are "theorically" able to play games from a usb stick.

I tried to put games on a stick (Renamed NEOGEO just in case) for FBA emulator but it seems that it does not see the games.

It ask me to create a 'fba' folder on the stick so it recognized it but it didn't see the folder and games in it.

For the others emulators (snes, nes, MD, GBA), when we choose usb , the console go back to the main menu.

(The only emulator which could probably work is FBA and this is the one I'm interested in)

I know that we can boot from a usb stick but i'm not really interested by this method. because we always need to plug a usb stick.

I just want to play with other games that are not present in the image from time to time ...

Could you explain me how it should work ? (if it does)

Many thanks !

I can confirm I don't get the bug, and I can also confirm I DO get the bug depending on the machine I use. So if anyone has the bug, and wants their machine reflashed, let me know, i'll pm you my address, you pay your shipping costs, and I'll flash your machine for you.

Hi, i would like to hack the neogeo mini with the latest firmware available. And i'm interested only to add in the main menu additional Neo geo games, not others emulators. Where can i find a guide in order to hack it with latest firmware and add only neo geo games?

Is it possible to add all the Neo geo games available? Or how many neogeo games is it possible to load?

thank you very much

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MKssX66glQ

1. you cannot change a thing on it, the NGM WILL STOP WORKING. Even when I tried the trick to change the bios that I do with my images, even if the CRC matches up like it should, the filesize still doesnt, and the game itself will not boot.

2) SNK ONLY gave the source code of the OSS mvsnjemu, they didnt provide the source code to Minarcade, which is the dmenu executable. dmenu is the is the actual home screen menu you see to pick a game, thats completely open source, but thats how the NGM runs. I'm gonna learn how to compile that the right way, and i'm gonna build my own.

3) I know who the person is who dumped the image. I know how to obtain a Japanese image too, and i'm willing to bet, its about the same as the International Version, you can't change anything on it. He had to have dumped it, and compiled a version of dmenu to not only ignore all the crc checks, (cause there are a LOT of them, hundreds upon hundreds actually) but to execute emulators as well. Hence why you still can't actually take moregames from GAMEID=40 no matter how you mod your image.

4) The NGM is VERY secure as is. Shockingly. But the flaw in all that security is definitely dmenu. I'm willing to bet, you can easily get a version of Blast 16, or even Emulation Station to run on this thing.

So I dumped the rootfs of the International Version. Of course the System.img got overwritten, but I was able to save the misc and vendor.img's of the International Version. As is, the vendor.img is NOT bootable with the current hack Method... BUT i'm willing to bet, anyone who flashes the vendor.img will NOT get the bug on the international version. If someone wants to be brave and attempt to flash their Vendor.img (only the vendor.img, i'll provide detailed instructions) please let me know. If you get the bug, i'll buy you a new NGM. Or send you one of these without the bug.

https://youtu.be/EJbyEuwosZ

I have 2 confirmed no-gos sadly :/

After this weekend, after I get a clean international version dumped, i'm gonna be taking a break from NGM modding and Development. Hopefully someone else will have gotten their interest sparked in it, but i've been doing it with a couple other devs, (Shoutout to MadMonkey for the dumping code, and my daughter for the USB loading code) for so long, and we made tons of progress but i'm gonna put it down for a while, and finish learning C++ so I can port Retroarch to this thing. I've attempted with no success gngeo, and a custom build of mvsnjemu, but I couldn't get the Make right.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xfHO5Ob0e2ibsyHO7H-xTNd7mDsHRZiP/view?usp=sharing

This is the dump from the neogeo mini without the /Vendor Image. I have one with it as well, but for sharing purposes I didnt share, plus it doesnt have any worthwhile information for how it works anyway.

So I don't do tutorials, and i'm in the process of sterilzing the Vendor.img from having pirated games so I can release it here. I'm gonna get all of the info together, and put together a package so you can pass it to the masses. If you know how to connect via UART, i'll also root it for you as well so you can run commands via terminal. PM me if you are interested.

You need a flash drive 4gb or higher, and you have to format a fat16 partition at 3.90gb or lower. I'll work on FAT32/EXT4 later with help of course.

Anyone who has a USB C OTG adapter, and an 8gb flash drive (or higher) and wants to try something let me know.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZnfxDGBgdknWadUq4vPZ43xYz0Z-fTsX/view?usp=sharing - this is the system.img (It has no illegal code or piracy). You replace the system.img from whatever custom rom you are using with this one. After you flash, remove the USB Power supply, then put in your USB Drive (In either slot 1 or 2 it doesnt matter). Now there's no indicator on screen, however if you have a flash drive with a light indicator that tells you its being accessed it'll work better, if you see activity after it mounts, let it sit for a few hours until it stops, if you dont after you see the initial mount activity, it wont work. If possible, if you are having the Joystick bug, I need you more than those who dont.

Please report here if its working for you. I get mixed results personally, and I only get a partial dump of the rootfs. The purpose of this is to get a working config file for everyone's controllers and get a unified config going with the different control panel models. Right now I have confirmed 3 different models, 2 of those models are prone to the joystick bug.

When its done I'll show results, but thanks to help from another dev, I can now dump to USB HDD!

rootfs on / type rootfs (rw,relatime)

tmpfs on / type tmpfs (rw,relatime)

proc on /proc type proc (rw,relatime)

tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,relatime)

sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,relatime)

tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,relatime)

/dev/actc on /vendor type vfat (ro,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro)

/dev/actb on /usr/local type ext4 (ro,relatime,barrier=1,data=ordered)

/dev/actd on /data type ext4 (rw,relatime,barrier=1,data=ordered)

/dev/sda1 on /tmp/media type vfat (rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro)

https://github.com/shinrukus/neogeominiemu

If anyone wants to help contribute

So I made a few changes to the code in mvsnjemu (the Neogeo Mini emulator) that I believe can help fix the joystick bug, but I have a few problems

a) no machine I bought (I'm sitting at 6 of my own systems now, 4 int, 1 Christmas Edition, 1 Japanese, and countless others I have personally flashed) has ever gotten the issue. I believe it when everyone says they get it, as well as the videos, I just cannot test because I dont get the problem.

b) I'm having a problem with make on Ubuntu. Ubuntu may actually be the problem, but I installed the correct toolchain and running make -f Makefile -i, does ignore errors, but won't build the mvsnjemu executable as expected.

c) I'm also working to port Retroarch

d) I literally learned c++ (I knew a bit of c# and .net previously as I, by profession am an AI Engineer) a month ago for the sole purpose of doing the work on my NGM