Partner Nintendo 64

Hi everyone, I got my partner n64 today, it was just a barbones unit, with no software and no docs, but it is working perfectly, and came with a nice little extra.

Anyways, the connection to the cart is just standard IDE, so do you actually need the pci, or ISA card to communicate with the cart or can you communicate with it with the right software and hooking it up to either and external ide card( a pci card for older computers to give them IDE compatibility.), or your motherboard via ide???

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Ha. My friend, if you can find the time to manage it out you are my new super hero .

Jokes apart, are you sure its purely IDE? I have been fiddling around with it too, but didnt take the time to look closer at it. The cart has a RAM stick inside, an ALTERA ASIC and a CIC (obviously). Check the pictures here :
http://www.yntproject.net/index.php?section=64dd

and maybe you would like to have a look at the n64 -> kmc n64 mod guide too :
http://www.yntproject.net/HOWTO-KMC_N64.htm

I don't know of any unofficial software that would work with it, but if its IDE, could it be that an adapted driver would do the job? Remember, it would have to be bidirectional.

I have been thinking about sacrifying one of the two partners I have to reverse engineer it, but i cant untill i get a ISA / PC card i can sacrifice with

 

I don't think it's IDE. I've been toying with the idea of r.e. the card but I'm not that skilled when it comes to electronics, only know the basics..

as can be seen here
http://assembler.roarvgm.com/Nintendo_64_developer_kit/PartnerCard/partnercard.html

the card uses a FPGA (altera flex epf8282alc84-4) most FPGAs needs to be configured on start-up through external memory (this is that sort according to the docs http://www.digchip.com/datasheets/parts/datasheet/033/EPF8282ALC84-4.php). I havn't really confirmed this but I suspect that IC10 on the board is the EPROM containing the firmware, so if it was ripped and r.e.:ed we would have good understanding of the card and then someone with enough knowledge in electronics could maybe put together something similar.

this is very likely just an oversimplification of it ^_^;;

 

Wow !
Great information! Thanks babu, so there is another chip we could try to dump..

 

just note that none of my "info" is confirmed

 

Hi people

Thaks for the swift replaies, and we have to get a chat sometime on MSN as well Kammedo, I have already talked to Barcode.

Anyway, I run my own pc business and I am a pc engineer, and as far as i can tell the connection is just a standard 40 pin IDE connection. I have even inserted an IDE cable into the cartridge. Now obviously without the document's I can't be 100 percent definite if it then uses another form of comms with the card through the ide channel, perhaps using the pins differently, but I am in no doubt that a standard 40 pin IDE cable fits perfectly, and would be adequate to send to the card over. as like ide pins 1 and 40 are on the same line as IDE.

 

Just because a a scissor fits in the wall socket doesn't make it a scissor holder

But if it works, more power to you. Just saying that I personally wouldn't risk frying the cart by plugging it in directly in the ide connector of the mb.

 

No neither would I, don't get me wrong, I am not going to try it , I just wondered if anyone had the documentation on how the card works, and there is no way I would just plug it into a mb or anything else without being sure. All I was saying is that from an enginneres perspective, it is exactly the same as IDE, cable wise, thats all. How the pinout works is the crucial part and without documentation, I won't be plugging it into anything apart from a pci/isa partner card should I obtain one.

From opening it up though, it looks as though it either uses this ide , or IDE like connection to communicate with the altera chip, and then write to the onboard memroy that is installed.

A reverse engineering project on the cartridge would be nice, as it would enable us to use newer pc's and a newer bi directional driver, and card o use on more up to date pc systems.

However without documentation, I can't contribute to the project....YET!!!

BTW, thanks for all your replies, and thanks alot for the info babu, I really appreciate it.

EDIT: After reading the dcumentation on that page, although the cable is the same as IDE, I am now almost certain, it uses a similar system but the I/O(input/ OUTPUT) configuration for the Altera system could be completely different, though I definetly think that if we got the pin configuration then I could make up a board that could communicate with the system through a more modern driver based on the older drivers for the orignal card.

 

Didn't think you would either
Anyway. If you got any experience with FPGAs then maybe you could try getting the "firmware" for it on the cartridge, should be an EPROM somewhere on it too, I belive:
http://assembler.roarvgm.com/Nintendo_64_developer_kit/PartnerInside/partnerinside.html

Havn't opened up mine yet so that above image is the the only one I've seen of the inside.

It's either that way or logg the communiction between the cart and the isa card and try to figure it out that way.

 

Or simply reverse-engineer the debugger dll. Which should get a more close insight on how the debugger uses the cart.

 

You can't reverse engineer a FPGA by any other way than blackboxing it since NOBODY but Altera can derive logic from it's configuration SEEPROM. Really it'd be a complete waste of time to further think about REing the card since nobody would want rebuild it in the first place, especially not when it requires a 10+ year discontinued FPGA.

I also guarantee it has a proprietary interface which just happens to use an 40 pin ribbon cable, it has absolutely nothing to do with IDE. My guess is that the interface only provides direct access to Partner's FPGA registers and all PC-N64 communication (inc debugging) is done INDIRECTLY through memory mapped "dual port" (really just vanilla registers) memory. The only reason why such a huge FPGA is used is because it arbitrates access to everything.

 

So maybe reverse engineering the DLL would make more sense?

 

Why RE at all if you have the original software? Or is the point to make a new PC card?

 

No. Just to waste more of my life's time , and see if this may lead somewhere!
In the mean time i can use the original software, of course!

 

I think it was mainly to find a way for all those that have a Partner 64 + cart but no interface card to use their hw.
But it sounds from your previous post that it would be a pain in the ass to do. So it would probably be better to just drop it, and if similar debugging hw is needed then create something new for the N64 instead.

 

Well kammedo if you want to waste time REing, definitely only do the PC card and for the love of god, don't sacrifice it. I only sacrifice when I'm pulling apart an item that is in DISCRETE parts so I'm certain I have the circuit and even then I'm mad that I sacrificed it.

babu, if people have a Partner cart but no PC card, they're crazy not to just wait and buy the second piece... Since the Partner setup was built over numerous man-years, it will approach impossible for enthusiasts to reverse anything useful within their attention span. Creating something new is definitely the way to go, but unless you intimately understand how to repeat the abilities of the Partner such as a Win32 GUI, even that won't be practical. The real benefit of the Partner is all the software Nintendo has already provided in order to be immediately productive.

If someone does want to build a homebrew version really I can think of two essential parts to the Partner: the ROM emulator and the interrupt device to trigger PC control. There are already two 3rd party devices which do this: The V64 Jr and Gameshark, so I'd look to them for inspiration. Many people have even started their own homebrew N64 debuggers for various hardware inc. Gameshark so there are resources out there, everything just needs to be pulled together into a single device.

 

Absolutely fantastic posts calpis, and thanks for all your input, it sounds as though the reverse engineering of the card and building a new one would be simply impossible without the documents for actually building the card in the first place.

I think what I will do is just wait until someone is selling one of their cards due to having maybe both versions, say they have a pci/ isa card and want to get rid of the one they do not need.

If anyone out there is in this position ,please contact me, as i would like to do some actual programming with the device. I am prettty positive i can get a source for the software, so just the card will suffice.

Anyway thanks for all your input and help guys, and if anyone comes across reverse engineering documents, from people like Bung, then please post.

 

Documents from Bung - ha! That would be a lovely find..

 

I'm sure Bung didn't have any "documents" since they didn't even attempt to write any programs for consoles other than FC, SFC and later GBC. Also, all of their products are 100% logic or for the few embedded systems, also 6502 based.

If you're interested in the V64 Jr's logic, a great introduction would be the PV-Backup homebrew V64 Jr.

 

The heck - hey calpis, why dont you put a nice site up with all this information? Im sure it could be totally usefull!