Dumping ROMs From Development Hardware

SG EADIE()EA19.USGMNmntr()91WsenTcnlge,nSGMNmntr()91WsenTcnlge,nG K00 0 plus
EAMG RV CSG 91AGEAO oio c19 etr ehooisIcEAO oio c19 etr ehooisIcMM-00-0 equals
SEGA MEGADRIVE(C) SEGA 1991.AUGSEGAMON monitor(c)1991 WesternTechnologies, ...etc

Anyone care to point me in the right direction for how I go about splicing two ROMs so they interlace together?
I only ask as I just got an EEPROM programmer device today and was able to dump, erase and flash a 486 BIOS.
I am very happy with myself and hope it is the beginning of exciting things! :encouragement:

However, given it's quite late here and I last woke up from sleep 36 hours ago, any pointers for someone new to the field?
I've purchased this to dump the Aiwa Mega-CD BIOS from the Game Unit section also.
Thanks for any help in advance as always!

 

Can you compile/use a C command line app?

 

I can learn if you point me in the right direction :smile-new:
I've got some prototype cartridges with 4 / 8 separate EEPROMs on it, how would one go about getting them all together as a single.
I haven't done much research into it as of yet as work is eating all my spare time up, but any hints or shoves in the right direction would be great!

 

OK, here's a (Windows) program that will do it for you:

View attachment interleave.zip


Unzip the program, open a command line and navigate to the directory (plenty of tutorials online).

Pretend your two ROM dumps are named "low.bin" and "high.bin", to join them you'd type "interleave low.bin high.bin output.bin" where output.bin is your specified output.

There is 0 error handling so use it correctly. If you don't the program will hang or crash and you'll probably have to force quit it.

Any file names with spaces or special characters will need to be enclosed in quotes. The easiest way to get the filename right is to type the first letter of the file, then tab to complete.

If your prototype has 4+ ROMs you'll have to interleave each set of ROMs separately, then append the second set to the first. You can append using a hex editor, or you can use "copy /b low_set.bin+high_set.bin combined.bin".

 

Absolutely fantastic! Thanks for the details, looks like it worked as well as can be! Those first few lines are now readable;

SEGA MEGA DRIVE (C)SEGA 1991.AUGSEGAMON monitor (c)1991 Western Technologies,IncSEGAMON monitor (c)1991 Western Technologies,IncGM MK-0000 -00J
SEGAMON MONITOR CP VERSION 3.00 C– RAM SIZE[ MBITS

Here's some links to the dump itself, anyone got any ideas what I've actually dumped?
Link 1
Link 2

Oh well, either way that was two of the chips off one of the dev boards. The rest of the chips look like RAM of some sort.
Will need to have a look on the weekend when I'm at home.
I'll give the EEPROMs a good old fashioned dump on the weekend too and see if they splice together as easily! :biggrin-new:
Thanks again Calpis for taking the time to help.

 

x

 

Hahaha, pretty much. Was more or less just me testing out the EEPROM programmer to see if it worked.
These were two chips labelled MONROM0 and MONROM1, as good as any to start with I suppose.
The solder points on the back of the dev board are so soft and smooth.
It has a SEGA asset tag barcode thing on it too. I don't think I have any photos as of yet.
There's a SCSI-looking type connector on the rear of the card too.

 

Its a centronics (parallel port) connector

I guess the board looks like this (maybe without the daughter board)

 

Para-who? Yep that's the board by the looks - no flash looking daughterboard though...
What did this card do and what does that daughterboard do?
The back of the board is so nice to touch...The PCB is velvety... :wink-new:

 

There's some generic "SEGA" screen art in that ROM:

 

Past cool! How'd you whip that up?

 

Any tile editor with gen/md support can view the art.

 

Perfect! Thanks! I learn something every day! Today I learnt two things though... NVidia TNT2 cards never seem to die and tile editors on ROMS = fun! :encouragement:
I might try dumping and joining my Monopoly prototype and see if it works in an emulator right now!

Edit: Soldered down chips... where are the sockets! I'll do some others then!

Here's one from a Code Monkeys Mega Drive Dev Cart then;
- Link 1
- Link 2

Another from a Code Monkeys Mega CD attachment;
- Link 1
- Link 2

If anyone finds something cool let us know! :biggrin-new:

More Edit: I tried joining the eight EEPROM chips into one file... it's attached, but doesn't seem to do anything in emulators. Any ideas?
- Link 1
- Link 2

 

The NHL Hokey ROM might be incomplete, or just a very early version (or maybe there was a joining error? I don't know). The final game is 2 MB while this is just 1 MB. A file compare shows a lot differences (seems like almost nothing matches the final).

It does spit out an error message if you don't have the emulator set to USA NSTC.

Thanks for sharing these. Things like this always are interesting to me.

 

If it's incomplete it must be an error on my end!
The actual cartridge itself does work and I suppose I could dump it through a Sega Mega CD... but I was curious if I could work it out.
I'll try dumping it another way, another day!
Thanks for your help! :smile-new:

 

The daughter board is memory expansion, and combined with some software you can send data to it and use a realtime monitor program to find bugs and stuff.
I was never able to use mine because it doesn't respond to any communication, and now my new pc doesn't have a parallel port anymore.

If you want the software to test your card let me know, you only have to obtain a centronics (old printer) cable.

 

It should be interesting to see if it does anything. I'll report back here when I do find out if it does do anything at all. I won't have a chance to check it for a while yet though. Fingers crossed anyway! Thanks! :smile-new: