Star Fox 2 Repro Cart Crashes

I finally finished my Star Fox 2 cart. It's different than the one in this thread, a different attempt anyway. Things turned out much better.

The game worked for a while. I was able to finish the Normal mode. The next time I played it, I played Hard Mode, and was able to play for a little over an hour, when the game crashed. Ever since then, the game seems to have gotten progressively worse. I was able to play for about a half hour before crashing in the next session.

After each crash, the game crashes within a very short period again upon a reset. It seems to work better after the game has had some time to cool down, but the game lasts for about 4 minutes when it's fresh at this point.

After each such crash, all the saved records (if any) on the cart are deleted.

So any advice is appreciated. Afraid I just got a bad Stunt Race FX cart, but any ideas to fix this one would be great. Thanks in advance, everyone. And now, the pics...

 

Just the obvious tips. Have you double checked your soldier points? Made sure nothing is touching?

 

Forgot to mention an important point.. After each crash, all the saved records on the cart are deleted. The new battery I ordered from Amazon was holding scores otherwise.

I checked my solder points with a multimeter to make sure the neighboring pins weren't making a connection. I will check again.

 

Try reflowing everything with flux.

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm still working on this. I did use flux the first time, but I think reflowing is a good idea to try next.

I checked the solder points. I rewired pin 16. I removed the battery. No change.

Is it really much of a possibility that the game could work for over an hour with some of the pins wired incorrectly?

I'm afraid I'll have to get another cart and start over.

 

Wired incorrectly? Not possible. Wired poorly? Sure, that could cause Intermittent issues.

 

I got a new Stunt Race FX cart and started over, using my same ROM chip. This one went even more smoothly, and I've had no problems with it so far. Just finished Hard mode.

Thanks to all who gave advice.

I'm afraid I just had the bad luck of getting a bad Stunt Race FX cart before, or something I did messed it up. I never tested that cart for more than a few minutes, so who knows if it even played Stunt Race FX well.

 

wow at amount of cables

 

Necro bump.

I made a video that features this cart where I open it up. Thanks again to all who helped me in this thread and the other one way back then.

 

Just because this topic is alive. Thes SNES classic gave me the push to build the star fox 2 repo. I built a small QSB so there shouldn't be wires anywhere.



https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/x6CvSZ2k
I will be wiring this into the Stunt Racer FX Cart with M27C801-100N1 32TSOP Chip.

All of this is untested, as I havn't gotten my boards from osh park or the TSOP chips in.

 

Damn man, that's nice. Where were you with this three years ago?

I'm planning to update the rom on my cart after the one from the SNES Mini drops.

 

TheRealPhoenix made an adapter board for the larger through hole 27C801 EPROMs if anyone happens to have those on hand and doesn't want to wire it manually: https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/JSVJHBhz He also made a overclocking crystal adapter: https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/5Qb0IuYp

If you're starting from scratch and have the programmer adapter, I would definitely try citrus300psi's TSOP adapter first though.

But yeah...I'm putting building anything of the sort off until the SNES CE gets hacked and we have a true final ROM. Fingers crossed that this actually happens!

 

Id love a repro with all the various revisions in one cart, if it can be squeezed.

 

RetroCircuts makes a repro with SF, SF Competition, and the currently circulating English translated SF2 on one cart: https://www.retrocircuits.com/product/starfox-legacy/

They also make a SuperFX all-in-one cart with the Star Fox games included: https://www.retrocircuits.com/product/super-fx-all-in-one/

They have nice on screen selection menus and are built from a new custom PCB. A little pricey, but worth it in my opinion.

 

Nice, that isn't too bad actually. Just need them to throw in the earlier SF2 roms and Id be happy.

 

I assume they are still gutting super-fx carts for the super-fx chip though? I've not seen anyone reproduce it in an fpga yet (unless i missed it?)

 

That's correct. However, they use a completely custom PCB and just extract the Super-FX chip from the donor cart (as far as I can tell). I haven't really looked into it much, but it seems the multi-carts have a custom menu ROM that causes a bank switch to access the game you want to play. This way, you get a completely wire free cart (better reliability) and they can pull Super-FX chips from any of the games that contain them. Sans a full FPGA core, it's the best conceivable solution to me.

 

You can also do it yourself with an adapter board and a 29F032 eeprom. There's 4MB so you can fit 4 star fox games on there.

I still have a _few_ adapters left.. You can mount a pic on it and hook it up to the reset button to switch to the next game.

 

Did the pcb work and is there any other tsop that can be used? I ask because this tsop appears to be no longer manufactured( I'm thinking in terms for when the supply dries up).

 

There's loads of different chips that can be used. Just a matter of making and adapter to adjust for the pinout