I'm currently working on a n64 redesign and I am wondering is their any possible way to make an n64 region free? I asked this on the Ben Heck forums and nobody could give me an answer. so dose any body know of any way to mod a pal n64 to accept nstc games? It would be a big help
Pretty sure that schematic doesnt switch enough lines. Need to switch more than that, else you have issues with something (the pad?)
All you should need to switch is the CIC output data line, everything else can be kept in parallel (well you shouldn't connect the secondary PIF's CIC clock, or the controller or EEPROM stuff so they don't conflict). Switching VDD like that isn't a good idea at all, and it's completely unnecessary to switch inputs, clock outputs or reset (which is probably open drain).
If you want it to work I'd imagine they are but I'd wager Calpis is right. Damn diagram looks like it was made with a Light-Brite.
I know this is an old thread, but I was thinking on doing this mod, since I have a dead Pal console. wouldn't it be easier to piggy back the chip & just disconnect the voltage pin for what ever chip you need? means one switch.
If it was that simple, we wouldn't be talking about switching 9 pins. Sure, it will be easier - but it won't work.
Why not? I assume the chip needs power to function, otherwise it wouldn't have the 3.3v pin. I find it hard to believe that making an elaborate contraption to switch 5/9 pins is the only way, essentially your piggy backing the pins anyways & swapping the voltages to the new chip. if you piggy back the chip & disable its power it's essentially becomes a non existent chip as far as the system can see & visa versa for the mounted chip. What I'm suggesting is basically the equivalent of a chip swap, without the swap. i understand swapping the hole chips will effect Audio.
Because of this part. Just removing voltage pin doesn't disable it. It leeches power via the other pins and interrupts the other chip. This is why chips have a chip enable (CE) pin, rather than just stopping power when they share a bus. Since these chips aren't supposed to coexist with another one on the same bus, they aren't designed to be disableable/switchable.
Lack of indepth electronics knowledge is your flaw here. On top of what Bad_ad84 said I wouldn't be shocked if the extra chip couldn't potentially ship out some extra data interrupting the flow of things.
Guilty, in the indepth electronics knowledge part. i assumed because its possible on the dreamcast bios, it would have been possible here & would have made everyone's life a hell of a lot easier.
On the dreamcast bios, you do not disconnect the power, you toggle the chip enable pin on both chips (one off, one on and then the other way)
Sorry, I have no technical advice to offer (I don't know anything about the N64's internals), but if you use an Everdrive 64 to load the games, then the N64 is region free.
Actually, it still has a region. The Everdrive falsifies the region code that would have been returned by the console, and it passes this when it reboots from the menu to a copy of PIFram, to the bootstrap, then to ROM. There are only two contributions from the CIC, the first being the seed value for checksums and the second being specific to Banjo Tooie. A universal boot cart would allow you to run any particular ROM on any given console, but it looks like they're more interested in actually falsifying the region code returned by the console. It's not 100% the mechanism for this is known though.
