573in1 is a full-featured homebrew maintenance and troubleshooting tool, game installer and BIOS ROM replacement for arcade games based on Konami's System 573 PCB, such as earlier versions of Dance Dance Revolution and other Bemani rhythm games from the same era. It currently allows for:
- dumping, erasing and writing binary images to the onboard flash memory, PCMCIA flash cards and RTC RAM;
- dumping security cartridge EEPROMs and editing the serial number stored in them in order to reinstall a game on a different system;
- repurposing security cartridges for use with any game that uses the same cartridge type;
- browsing the CD-ROM, or any connected IDE hard drive or CF card, and launching System 573 and PS1 executables.
A secondary - but no less important - purpose of this project is to serve as a testbed for System 573 reverse engineering and documentation efforts, by providing an extensive ready-to-go user interface and hardware abstraction library with (hopefully) easily readable code. The project may potentially be expanded to support other similar PS1-based arcade PCBs in the future.
The latest version of 573in1 can be found on the releases page, accessible through the GitHub sidebar. Each release is available in three different formats:
- as a CD-ROM image bootable on any 573 equipped with a compatible IDE optical drive, including ones fitted with BIOS mod boards and similar modifications;
- as a BIOS ROM image, allowing the system to boot directly into the 573in1 main menu (even with no drives connected) and optionally launch a game or custom executable automatically;
- as a standalone 573 executable file for advanced users.
See the documentation for more information and usage instructions. Reading the documentation before proceeding is highly recommended.
While 573in1 has reached a point where it is fully functional and usable, it is still a work-in-progress project with several features planned but not yet implemented. The following tasks are planned for future releases, from highest to lowest priority:
- Migrating the current game list format (
data/x76f041.dbanddata/zs01.db) to a new single-file format, adding new fields and providing an updated Python script to generate it fromdata/games.json. - Adding support for installing games that write installation metadata and a hash of the system's ID to the internal flash memory. This will require adding new data to the game list (see above) and reverse engineering all flash header formats used by games.
- Fixing a bunch of stability bugs, such as the executable loader occasionally crashing or the filesystem drivers not being thread safe (resulting in filesystem corruption if e.g. a screenshot is taken while dumping data to the hard drive).
- Adding support for installing arbitrary executables directly to the internal flash or a PCMCIA card, allowing the 573 BIOS to boot them automatically even with no CD-ROM drive present.
- Cleaning up the codebase, which currently contains many bad practices.
- Adding support for JVS bus scanning and using JVS I/O boards in place of the JAMMA button inputs.
- Adding UTF-8 support to the font and text rendering code. This is a rather low priority feature, but it would allow 573in1 to be translated to other languages.
Pull requests are welcome. If you wish to add functionality feel free to do so, however please stick to the following guidelines:
- Do not include any code lifted as-is or minimally modified from a game disassembly. Rewritten and properly explained/commented code is fine.
- Do not include any Konami game files or excerpts thereof. If necessary, only include metadata about the files such as hashes, offsets, sizes and so on.
- Store any such metadata as a file in the resource archive (see
resources.json) rather than hardcoding it. If possible, provide a copy of the scripts used to gather the data from the original files in thetoolsdirectory. - Adding a section to the documentation covering usage of the newly added functionality is not required, but would be highly appreciated.
If you have any questions or doubts, or want to propose new features, feel free to reach out to the authors by opening an issue or through one of the Discord servers linked at the end of the page.
573in1 is licensed under the GNU GPLv3. You may freely distribute modified versions as long as you do not relicense them and provide the full source code, attribution and a link back to this repository.
Some files are adapted from other projects (namely, ps1-bare-metal) or third-party libraries and are more permissively licensed as a result. Refer to the license information at the top of each file for more details.
If you are not already familiar with the inner workings of the PS1 and System 573, you may find the following links useful:
More in-depth technical documentation can be found here:
- PlayStation specifications (also includes a 573 section)
- Naoki Saito's System 573 repo
Discuss about 573in1, PS1 homebrew development, Konami arcade hardware and related topics on:
