Any experience with making Earthbound Zero repro?

Hello all,

I'm trying to put together an earthbound zero for my personal collection, but I've hit a bit of a wall. I'm using Techmo basketball for my donor, D27C2001-D EPROMs and a GQ-4X programmer.
The problem is that the GQ-4X won't program the chip. Does anybody have any experience with this chip?

Thanks in advance,
- John

EDIT: Rarthbound Zero?!?!? Sorry guys, I meant Earthbound Zero

 

Fixed your title

 

wow it has been a while. This was one of my first attempt at repro cart. I used Base Wars as donor cart (there were around 50 at a local pawn shop at the time) and a pair of EPROM using Needhams Emp-10 programmer. Don't bother looking for this programmer, this was back when desktop still used ISA slots, emp-10 used ISA board to connector to the programmer.

I don't know why your programmer is not working. It could be: you selected the wrong chip type, the EPROM chip you're using is wrong type, you have the chip in wrong, the EPROM is not erased, or the ROM image wasn't done right. If you have the .nes ROM, you need to delete the 16 byte header and split the rest into correct PRG and CHR size, I believe both are 2Mbit (256KB) so if the file size is not exactly 256KB, something went wrong with your split and could be causing problem.

PS don't ask me to make one, it has been around 15 years since I made it using the original info from Kevtris back when USENET was still the place to go to.

 

I'm using the original earthbound prototype rom dump. I removed the header and split the file into two 256kb files. Maybe I should try another rom, hmmm.

Thanks!

 

This doesn't add much to the discussion but Earthbound Zero got an official release on the Wii U Virtual Console last month as Earthbound Beginnings.

 

I know, I played it a little, but I wanted to make the cart because I'm a hobbyist.

But thank you

 

The error reads:

"Write failed, Address= 0x000000, Buffer=0x00, Device=0xFF"

Would anyone recommend a different chip maybe? I got the D27C2001D-15 from another tutorial. Even better, does anyone have a guide to explain EPROM sizes? So I can find an alternate.

 

The device is supposed to have a FF's for blank state. It looks to me the programmer was trying to write 00 in the first byte and couldn't get it written. Like maybe it's not setting the chip into programming mode? I used to see this on EPROM burner when I derp and set for 12.5v programming on EPROM that required 25v. It always failed at wrong voltage.

Check that your programmer is set correctly for the chip and make sure it's using correct program voltage.

It's also possible you have a bad chip. Get a different chip to program with.

 

My programmer is set to program. I plugged in my 12v power source and still nothing. I have 4 chips and they all fail, could they all be bad? Maybe, but I don't want to burn more money finding out.

Is there another chip you would recommend?

 

No idea then. Maybe you have a bad programmer? I haven't used any EPROM programmer since the old parallel port Willhems.

 

It programs 27C801 and other chips fine. I think it might be a bad batch of chips. I just ordered some 27C020 and 27C2001, hopefully those will work.

 

I used some 27C020 chips and they worked great, must have been a bad batch of chips.