The Examu ex-BOARD was released in 2008 and as Taito’s Type X2 it was based on Windows XP Embedded. Only four games were ever released for the ex-BOARD:
- Arcana Heart 2 (March 2008)
- Suggoi Arcana Heart 2 (October 2008)
- Daemon Bride (July 2009)
- Arcana Heart 3 (December 2009)
A fifth title was planned but never saw the daylight: Monster Ancient Cline.
The rise and fall
Examu pushed the ex-BOARD as their own proprietary arcade platform under the slogan “For the future of arcade games.”. The system had many similarities with Taito’s Type X2 system. On certain points it was more well designed; fanless (quiet), no PSU (quiet), cartridges (instead of hard drives and USB dongles), a well thought through case (easy to work with). The Type X2, released the year before) on the other hand already had better specs than the ex-BOARD.
The ex-BOARD relied on copy protection built into the motherboard (as opposed to Type X2’s dongles). This would sadly become the downfall of the ex-BOARD. The protection was way too weak and with Arcana Heart 3 being cracked within days after initial release Examu decided to retire the ex-BOARD and move future releases to Taito’s Type X2 and NESiCAxLive platform.
Specifications
- CPU: fanless Via C7 NanoBGA2 (X86)
- Chipset: Via CN700, VT8237R Plus
- Memory: 1GB DDR2 SDRAM (with VRAM sharing)
- Video: Integrated S3 UniChrome Pro AGP graphics with MPEG-2 decoding acceleration
- Audio: VIA VT1618Cidec 192kHz/32bit 8 channel AC’97
- Network: 10 or 100 Mbit/s Ethernet
- Video I/O: JAMMA, 2 x VGA, composite and S-video
- Sound I/O: JAMMA and 2 x stereo (RCA)
- Input: JAMMA (joysticks and buttons 1 – 4) plus buttons 5 and 6 via separate molex connector
- USB: Two USB 2.0 ports
- Power: JAMMA supply 12V 5A or special power supply adaptor with AC 100-240 V, 50/60Â Hz, 1.7 A
- Size: 317.8 mm x 250mm x 104.2mm
- Weight: 4Â kg
- Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Embedded
- Flash Disk: 512MB/1GB/2GB
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