Master System II ROM transplant Greetings! I have a busted old Master System II, and a couple of Master System cartridges that are doubles. Which chip on the MS2 motherboard contains Alex Kidd? I wonder if it's possible to transplant that chip into a cardridge, so that I can play the game on my MS1?
Well, I thought "Bugger it, I'll try it" and no dice. It shows the MS1 Sega logo with the sound, then the plain Sega logo you see when you power up the MS2, then goes back to the MS1 logo again, in a loop. Oh well. Now we know! :S
I know the game is in the BIOS, that's the idea. But I think I understand why it's happening. The code in my franken-cartridge is designed to run with /CE0 pulled low, so the system plays the game from the internal BIOS chip. But, since in this case, the code is running from the cartridge slot, once /CE0 is pulled low, and the /CE3 goes high, the cartridge stops talking to the CPU, and it freaks out and resets. I could modify my MS1, to reroute /CE0 to the cartridge slot, but I suspect it's less faffing about to just get myself an Alex Kidd cartridge.
Sorry about that..... How about mountibg both bios's into one console and selecting either or via switch.
I have given it a go before and it worked fine, allthough that console had other issue's. It would run fine but then slow down (video and music) until the console froze, I could never work it out. I thought it may have been due to the "dual BIOS'es" but even having just the one BIOS fitted it did the same thing (as well as carts). Unfortunately in a clean up, I just binned it without thinking (a lot went that day, rough Sega cases, various damaged boards, 2 x XBOX360's, NDSL etc). The case was fine and I could have used that for another project. I could have even kept the BIOS/ROMS from it, but I didn't. Done some pretty bloody stupid things. Allthough I do have to say, people have given me random shit that is better off in the bin than my cupboard. I got some "repaired" GG boards from someone and I think they thought a mig welder = soldering iron.... It was pretty straight forward, I just mounted them on top of one another (giggle). But I did find that I had to switch both the +5v and GND. Switching just one didn't work properly. There is probably a smarter way to do it, I am sure you will get it going 100%.
I thought it might be better to switch /CE0 rather than the power, since that's how the console does it normally. Just have a SPST with the enable line attached to common, and the poles going to pin 20 of either chip.
The buttons are swapped (1 for punch, 2 for jump) and he has a hamburger instead of an onigiri. Otherwise the same, IIRC.
That is awesome congrats. I know some of the later Master Systems had Sonic and apparantly Hang on as the built in game. I spose you could have 2 or more built in games plus the secret Original MS games as well. The Ultimate Master System lol!
That's great it worked that way! I see yours has Hang On + Safari Hunt, that's the key as the SMS mentioned above had the same and I was heaps keen to have effectively 3 games built in, bloody shame it didn't work that way. Should have kept the bloody BIOS's! Have you any Card games? Would these boot if the SMS2 bios is selected?
Unfortunately I don't have any, but according to this they should still work: http://www.smspower.org/Development/BIOSes#FeatureOverview
