Master ED on Jap SMS and gender adaptor at smspower = NO GAMES WORK

But all the JAP games I tried on the JAP SMS were over the Exp port thru MasterED and GenderAdapter -> the games do work from a US cart plug and apparently don't need the extra signals available on the JAP SMS cart (RAS/CAS and a bunch of other RAM related timing signals). After my mod (so exp is cart) a bunch of a few remaining games work as well (Rastan etc...). All SG1000 I tried thru MasterED and GenderAdapter also work fine (only issue is with Basic Level IIB for SC3000 which has extra RAM but this is SMS not Mark III with keyboard support so I say it does not matter anyway). My point being none of the JAP SMS games requires the extra signals in the cart slot as they work from Exp (or exp + mod).

You are right direct connection cannot be done, although I venture that finding the signals over the board and build a compat port is not impossible, at this point is just not worthy, we are realling talking about 10-15 signals if that and given they are not used by games (as I proved with my tests) it should be almost a no brainer to build such an adapter (as long as we limit it to JAP SMS games only). Check the MasterED, it doesn't use a bunch of US cart signals either, and that can only mean they are not that important (although nobody claims 100% compat).

Anyway as with any adapter 100% one way or the other may not be possible. Also for US SMS you need a BIOS replacement because JAP SMS games do not have the header required to pass protection checks so even if the adaptor is electrically possible you'd still need a modded BIOS to bypass checks. (proof of that are the fact that card games [not cart] don't work on US because of protection and nothing else).

 

Running JAP games from a US shaped cart doesn't tell us much. We already know some later games had identical program code in both countries.

On that note Cloud Master is interesting. It's a game that supports detection of Japanese hardware to change language, not released in Japan.

 

Had the time to go thru the whole GoodSet and the results are pretty awesome.
I am running MasterED OS v6 (jap-tst) on a JAP SMS modified (pin 13 Exp = B10 Cart) and using GenderAdapter.
Only when I had issues I tried to move the MasterED on a US SMS to double check (although I did some spot check also on working titles)

I only found the following issues:
Walter Payton Football -> purple screen, it works on US SMS with OS v6
Wanted -> brown screen, it works on US SMS with OS v6 [this is a light gun game]
Spacegun -> no boot same issue on US SMS with OS v6
Prince Of Persia -> music loop, on US SMS music ends but screen stays black, need to press Reset once and it works (No Reset on JAP SMS), same issues US SMS with OS v5 and OS v6 so it is not v6 specific problem
Back to the Future III -> no boot, same on US SMS with OS v6
James Bond -> messed up grafx, same on US SMS with OS v5 and v6 so it is not a v6 only problem
Asterix Great Rescue -> no boot, same on US SMS with OS v5 and v6 so it is not a v6 only problem
Cosmic Spacehead -> garbled grafx, same on US SMS with OS v5 and v6 so it is not a v6 only problem
Fantastic Dizzy -> garbled grafx + crash, same on US SMS with OS v5 and v6 so it is not a v6 only problem
New Zealand Story -> garbled grafx, same on US SMS with OS v5 and v6 so it is not a v6 only problem

Everything else worked.
So except the first 2 (WP Football and Wanted) eveything else behaves the same on JAP and US SMS so OS v6 seems a success to me.
Those 2 maybe related to JAP SMS<->US SMS incompat and not to MasterED OS.
I do not know how many games work without the Ext pin13->B10 Cart fix on JAP SMS + GenderAdapter + MasterED OS v6, the majority works but some do not (notably Rastan and OutRun, but I found 1 in 10 or 15 to not boot). I think it is because the games were coded assuming to run from cartridge so it is not the fault of MasterED.

Probably KRIKzz wants to do more tests before releasing OS v6 officially. i spot check a few games that worked on JJAP SMS with OS v6 over the US SMS with OS v6 to make sure v6 didn't break working things, so it looks like leaving port 0x3E and mem 0xC000 alone was a good fix.

 

Bock at SMSpower gave some answer on roughly half of the games that don't work on JAP SMS + GenderAdapter + Ext pin13->B10 Cart fix + MasterED OSv6 and it seems it has nothing to do with OSv6, which is good news.

Check it out:
http://www.smspower.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=73791#73791