N64 pirate carts

It's completely incompatible, the PI bus has a very simple burst system probably used nowhere else for ROM. For that specific NAND you'd need a state machine to:

-latch the PI address, then shift it into the NAND.
-edge detect a read, write the command for a page read, read until you get to the desired word, and latch the word for PI all before the read cycle is up. PI access doesn't need to be page aligned so this can get tricky, depending on the timing constraints you may have to predict/cache NAND data.

You'd need a CPLD no doubt.

 

Ok, so I'm needing to read up on the PI bus more then. Thanks for the info.

 

Probably not really, the PI bus is dead simple, you should read up on computer control buses and word addressed memory vs page addressed/block memory.

 

Another important reason NAND isn't feasible is that any given NAND memory will have bad blocks when it's brand new, and develop more over time. This means you will need a microcontroller to map out the bad blocks and avoid them (and handle copying the data over when a block goes bad). CF and SD cards have controllers that handle this automatically. Unfortunately this makes them unsuitable to read from directly for the N64, the latency is too high.

NOR memory doesn't have this issue, all memory locations are guaranteed valid and never go bad (at least for a few thousand erases or more) and of course it is a lot more expensive and limited in size.

 

There was a somewhat famous cart in Brazil called Ronaldinho Soccer (or something like that). As far as I know, it's based on ISS64, but the menus are translated to Portuguese and it seems that the team roster is composed of Brazilian teams. I don't have much information to share, unfortunately, and one copy is VERY hard to find nowadays. A guy offered me one a couple of years ago for something like 20 dollars and I refused... too bad.

 

We never thought that hacks could become valuable in the future.
That's too bad, honestly. :banghead:

 

More N64 pirate junk

http://www.nesworld.com/n64piratecarts.php

 

I've got a similar GBA pirate pokemon firered cartridge, one chip inside and 2 globs.
Are those carts reprogrammable or what? I'd be interested in finding out what's actually under the glob epoxy

 

Have you happen to hear about the Super Smash Bros. Pirate version? with characters knocked out Blood, some stage changes (I think) & Master Hand having gore-y bloody hooks &/or chains around.

 

I picked up this DN64 cart up a few weeks ago. It doesn't want to work on my PAL N64, and I don't have another region to check with. I can't find anything about this cart online and thought it might be interesting to share

 

Nice fine Jd99, Not seen the duke Nukem before. You'll need a import adaptor to play it on you pal n64