Super castlevania IV cart has stopped working

Thanks man, that's saved me a whole lot of time opening up loads of carts. UN squadron is the only matching cart that I have.

Is it ok to desolder the mask rom with just a regular soldering iron? I found a video on YouTube of somebody desoldering one and he was using hot air.

 

1A0N is the most common board type, and comes on pretty much all the crappiest sports titles i.e super soccer, super tennis super scope 6 etc, basically any 1A0N board will do, the -xx is the revision of the board

here is every compatible game
http://jensma.de/snes__/index.php?search=8668

 

Thanks that's good to know as I've got a super scope 6 cart that I've never used and probably never will.

Do you know if these chips are heat sensitive/easy to fry with a soldering iron?

 

well i would try to avoid excessive heat, but yeah the heatgun method *should* be ok, but a soldering pump or soldering braid would be less stressful on the chip and board, if you do end up going the heatgun way, remove the cap with a normal soldering iron before doing it to avoid having that pop during the process

 

Just put the chip into a super scope 6 board and I've still got the black screen of hatred.



Is the super scope 6 board definitely compatible? I've noticed that some of the traces on the ss6 board lead to empty holes through the pcb, these same holes on the sc4 board are filled in with solder which then go to the edge connector on the other side of the board.

 

yeah all 1A0N boards would be compatible with a 8 mega bit rom, i think its just from 1A0N-10 they added support for 36pin maskroms, but the board is still backwards compatible with 32 pin maskroms

so yeah seems the rom chip is dead (but please wait for a second opinion, i wouldn't want you to to bin it and it turns out i got something mixed up )

 

Before you desoldered it a better idea would have been to try dumping it with a backup device. Since you removed the MaskROM you can't rule out that it was damaged by your transplant operation. And yes excessive heat could kill a MaskROM. But if you didn't struggle desoldering it or soldering it into the new board it probably would have been ok.

If you have access to one of the great many backup devices to read the cartridge from the edge connector that could still tell you more about what is going on. Assuming you soldered it correctly onto the new board you might get something from it. The data you get could tell you if there is an issue with address lines, data lines, or the whole chip. You could also wire up an adapter for an eprom programmer to read it as if it were a 27C801 EPROM.

 

I was about to recommend the same thing. You could have used a backup device to see if the card is readable or not, and if so, you could have hashed the results to see if they match any known verified dumps.

 

That kind of assumes that he owns a backup device, which most people do not. He could have bought one, but assuming he didn't kill the mask rom in the desoldering/soldering process, then he saved himself the expense. I do agree that is the best and safest way to go but just not super practical for most.

 

Nope, I don't own a backup device unfortunately. It de soldered quite easily so I don't think I killed it but I suppose we'll never know for sure.

This is the first cart that's died on me like this, bit of a shock really. To be expected from floppy discs and cassette software although the I've got plenty of amstrad cassettes that are 30 years old and still work perfectly. Just never expected any of my carts to stop working so soon.

 

Do you have anyone locally that could dump and verify the game for you? The postage shouldn't be too much for such a small item and then you would know for sure if it is the mask rom

 

Couldn't you also test the super scope 6 rom on the supposedly faulty board? And rule the original board being faulty.

 

A few notes on checking continuity: sometimes you can be deceived. I've had a few cases where the solder pad detached from the board and appeared to be okay, and when checking continuity I had pressed it against the trace, momentarily giving continuity.

My go-to is reflow all pins. If there is a popped off solder pad then it might reveal itself there. The solder will bubble up to the center of the pin instead of flowing on the solder pad. You can also lightly press each pin and look for loose connections.

Nearly every bad cart I've fixed has come down to bad traces or detached solder pads. I don't think I've ever encountered a bad cap or chip in a cartridge.

 

A couple of the solder pads came off the scv4 board, how do I go about fixing missing pads and bad traces?

 

Photos?
Just follow where the lifted traces go and see if you can find an alternative point to solder. I would probably just get another donor so it's all perfect considering the game