Wow, can't believe we got kicked out of TEA for talking cool ON-topic stuff like reverse-engineering a vintage Electronics CAD tool dongle and making our own.... if that is OT then what is ON topic ?
I give up on TEA, I don't belong there....
I am really not in the mood for anything EE related now, I am completely pissed !
Regardless.... thanks to DC1MC, I now know it's not worth pursuing anyway, as technically WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY over my head as a modest simple stuff hobbyist !!!
Unless I can find a cracked version ready to go on the web, I won't bother....
PCprogrammer if you do find your cracked copy, post it here of course !
I tried to Google that chip and other than the satisfaction that it is NOT a proprietary chip, but an off the shelf one.... the joy soon disappeared when I realized there was no datasheet to be found, and that it was a fancy dedicated "Security" chip, not just some EPROM with some code in it as I stupidly thought it might be !
After some Googling, the best I could come up with, is this page :
https://www.arcade-projects.com/threads/lets-repo-a-cat702-security-chip.11590/A site dedicated to retro arcade games. Apparently some arcade games used that security chip as well, so those guys too were trying to "crack" it....