Cartridges
Atomiswave games came on cartridges that plug into a connector on the underside of the main board. There were three production designs, each with a protection chip stamped with the game's code.
Type 1: AM3AGB-04 (2002)
The original cartridge. The main program sits in a 64-Mbit Fujitsu flash ROM, and graphics and sound in up to eight 128-Mbit mask ROMs. A Xilinx XC9536 CPLD, stamped with the game's code, handles protection. Codes ending in F01 are the protection chip; M01 codes are the mask ROMs.
| Game | Protection chip | Mask ROMs |
|---|---|---|
| Sports Shooting USA | AX0101F01 | 4 |
| Dolphin Blue | AX0401F01 | 5 |
| Maximum Speed | AX0501F01 | 5 |
| Demolish Fist | AX0601F01 | 7 |
| Guilty Gear X ver. 1.5 | AX0801F01 | 7 |
| Guilty Gear Isuka | AX1201F01 | 8 |
| Knights of Valour: The Seven Spirits | AX1301F01 | 7 |
| Salaryman Kintaro | AX1401F01 | 7 |
| Ranger Mission | AX1601F01 | 5 |
| Faster Than Speed | AX1701F01 | 6 |
| The Rumble Fish | AX1801F01 | 7 |
| Fist of the North Star | AX1901F01 | 7 |
| Victory Furlong | AX2001F01 | 7 |
| KOF NEOWAVE | AX2201F01 | 6 |
| Extreme Hunting | AX2401F01 | 6 |
AW-NET games are in bold.
Type 2: AM3ALW-02 (2005)
A redesign for bigger games, using 256-Mbit mask ROMs and a Xilinx XCR3128XL CPLD.
| Game | Protection chip | Mask ROMs |
|---|---|---|
| Samurai Shodown VI | AX2901F01 | 7 |
| Metal Slug 6 | AX3001F01 | 4 |
| The King of Fighters XI | AX3201F01 | 7 |
| NeoGeo Battle Coliseum | AX3301F01 | 7 |
| The Rumble Fish 2 | AX3401F01 | 5 |
Type 3: Sega 171-8355A
Made by Sega after it took over Sammy's arcade business. It uses 128-Mbit flash ROMs instead of mask ROMs, and every known game on it shares the same protection key. Games: Extreme Hunting 2 Tournament Edition, Dirty Pigskin Football, Sega Bass Fishing Challenge, Sega Clay Challenge, Animal Basket, Block Pong-Pong, WaiWai Drive, and a later release of Faster Than Speed.
Development cartridges
A flash-based development board, "SYSTEMX 3MODE FLASH", plugs in through an adapter. Prototypes of both Rumble Fish games and the unreleased Sushi Bar have been read from these. Prototypes of Chase 1929, Force Five and Kenju are known to exist.
The customer ID
Cartridges of games with AW-NET features, such as NeoGeo Battle Coliseum and KOF NEOWAVE, carry a customer ID at ROM offset 0x7FE000: eight bytes of data followed by a two-byte checksum (a simple sum of the bytes), unencrypted. The board shows it on the Network Settings screen.
On Japanese cartridges each one is different, which is why ROM dumps of two Japanese copies of the same game differ by a few bytes. On English-language cartridges the area is blank (all FF), and the network features aren't used.
The number belongs to the cartridge. It has nothing to do with the access code on an AW card or a member's AWID.