Snes cart mod pcb: make your own repo easy.

Hi guys,
been reading posts but haven't posted anything in a while. I made a pcb that marries to a Snes standard hi-rom or Lo-rom cart. It marries to the existing mask rom pins on the back side so no mask rom removal necessary. It uses the cheap (and massive) 27c322's and 27c160 EPROMs. Here's a loooong video on how it assembles together.
http://youtu.be/5SlZTrWcLw4

I had posted this project on the Nintendo Age -Brewery forum but hadn't really branched out beyond that. Here's the post:

http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=22&threadid=123803&StartRow=21

Anyways, it's a versatile little pcb. If anyone is interested in this, PM me your email and I'll forward you the iinstruction manual.
In a nut shell, I've made:
Crimson Echos. (6mb ExHirom)
Tales of Phantasia. (6mb ExHirom)
Super demo world (6mb ExHirom)
Terranigma
bs Zelda AST
secret of mana 2
and a bunch of others...

its multigame capable with multi-saves.
thanks for reading.

 

Hi Mark,

your pcb look awesome and the different posibilities are not countable, but i would like to know... how expensive is 1 pcb? How could you built a 4x4mb version of Zelda AST?! Because you need 4x4MB (4x 27c322) but your pcb has only place for 2 Eproms?!

On your youtube channel you show a video from zelda ast as 4 mb version.

Thanks

red

 

You have to stack the roms to get 4 roms but the problem with that is 4 roms won't fit without shaving the cart shell. 3 roms will fit fine but the 4th is just a hair too tall. If you could manage to find some of the 27c322 OTP (one time programmable rom) roms, they are thinner and would fit. When someone wants the 4 x 4mb AST, I use 3 of the 27c322 roms and the 4th is a tsop adapter rom.

boards are $15 each. I have 70 remaining (from 200). If you want the smaller 2mb x4 AST, that version fits perfect.


send me your email and I'll send you the instructions. It's loaded with good info and pics.


mark

 

I saw the video and is pretty nice, I'm dumb about this thing of roms and repros, but If I just want to make a repro for a game like terranigma, tales of phantasia, etc, games with a translated patch I still need the right donor? What about star ocean can I use this to make one too if I got the roms burned?

 

cool

 

Right, you still need the correct "Hi rom" (1J3M) or "Lo rom" (1A3M) donors. Star ocean is possible using a hi rom donor. But the roms you would need are not available on the net.

 

What we need is to move 100% away from needing any donors. For one destroying old carts is a sin and two using old parts is a bad idea in general. You wouldn't want grandpa's heart for a transplant would you?

 

I don't really understand why one would use this PCB. Are 27c322 eproms more reliable than 29F032 flashroms? Or is everybody just scared of smd soldering?

Sure the 27c322's are cheaper than the 29F032. But you need a more expensive eprom burner(or an also expensive adapter for your cheap willem) while you can flash the 29F032's with an $5 Atmega8515.

Also while the 27c322 are cheaper, the cost of this extra pcb sure will be more that the additional $5 of a 29F032. And you can easily fit two 29F032's in a cart if you use something like a BJ3M donor pcb e.g. a japanese Final Fantasy 6 which is like $5 shipped.

Like Ape said, if you make a pcb it should be a complete replacement of the donor.
You could start with the pcb files from the SD2SNES project to get the edge connector and then just exchange the parts in the CAD program to make it a repro pcb instead of a flash cart.

I'm not that into reproductions myself though, the only thing I build was a Tales of Phantasia and a Chrono Trigger Crimson Echoes since they didn't fit on my 32M Super Ufo I had at that time. So it's possible that I am missing the point here.

 

It's already been done and the cost is reasonable too:

http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=10088

 

I totally agree with APE but there's 2 majors problems:

1) MAD-1/MAD-R/MAD-2 are still necessary since there's no equivalent yet,
2) Some carts need special chips (SA-1, SDD-1, Super FX, RTC) and even if there's some hack like the one for Star Ocean to get rid of them, I don't think you could get rid of the Super FX for Starfox2.

 

True that some games can't be made to work till there is a work around for these chips but for the 97% of the other games it's a good deal.

 

Well, the reason I made the pcb was for my own uses (and I have a ton of sports donors laying around). Then I decided to sell them to help recover the costs. The 27c322 are about $1.50 .... The buy-ic adapters are what.... $10ish each. $20 for a tales of P.... Which is about the same $$ for a $15 pcb and 2 EPROMs. Programmer adapters are a one time purchase (investment). No doubt, the INL repo board is a neat pcb, but it's not perfect. Several people have had issues with it and got their repo running with my set up. Here's the difference. My adapter can have the EPROMs socketed. Hence, if you mess up, you can pull the roms and reprogram. My setup also does multigames. 2, 4, and 8 game multigames and with the right donor, it will also retain the different games's SRAM data. It will even do Star Ocean. So it's a bit more functionable than other adapters. I even mated this adapter to a Mario Kart and made a 4 in 1 Mario Kart with a socket to remove the EPROM if you want to test/play other hacks.
it completely sucks to get the 29F032 flash rom programmed and soldered in only to find out it doesn't work. I do make those too by the way -- the tsop adapters....but the 27c322's are so cheap!

And the Mad1 isn't really a mystery anymore. A simple 74LS139 can replace the MAD1 decoder. The only other thing the mad1 does is provide battery backup for the SRAM.

this is the tsop adapter I make (below pics). I made them to attach to the existing back side pins of the mask rom so you don't have to remove the mask rom! The jumpers are only used when mounted on a 2 rom cart like this BJ3M.
i program them using this spring loaded pins adapter so I don't have to mount header pins to the pcb (although you can use headers if you want).

 

And as for the FX games, there's this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb99wXsS7_s&sns=em
The emulation of the FX chip is still a long long way off.