Link: http://members.iinet.net.au/~lantra9jp1/gurudumps/decap/ // Archive: https://web.archive.org/save/http://members.iinet.net.au/~lantra9jp1/gurudumps/decap/

Allegedly a guy who was working on some chips to use with the MAME emulator made off with some chips, and hasn't been heard from since 2011. Fast forward to now the a MAME dev(s?) has released the persons information onto the web (name, and workplace).

/u/byuu says:

Yes, it sucks that he got out of the game and moved on to something new, but he was charging us $250 to do work that would cost $50,000 or more per chip at the very cheapest from anywhere else. Again, not exaggerating. Many of us have approached various companies trying to find the best price on extracting the DSP-1 ROM data, and $50,000 was the best we could find.

Starting a witch hunt because he didn't return a few MCUs (that he probably already decapped) seems really disrespectful in light of all the work the guy did for us.

But ... I can't say I'm surprised. This seems to be how the MAME team operates. They treat me the same way now that I'm no longer actively helping them.

EDIT: also, we tried all of the cheap methods of home decapping on these chips already. neviksti put in a lot of effort trying to stain the ROMs to no avail, etc. This needed really professional equipment.

Wow.

Context:

• MAME - http://www.emulator-zone.com/doc.php/arcade/mame.html
• Emulation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emulator

Note to Moderators: I'm not sure whether you want to keep the links in, or get rid of them since they have semi-sensitive information. I'll leave that at your discretion.