Guys, I managed to bag a Super Wild Card SMS3201 for a great price, but got sick of unreliable floppies pretty fast, so I decided to have a play with the parallel port on the back. This is on version 2.6CC... First the PC - I am running Windows7 and had to buy a parallel port PCI card as there is no port natively on my PC motherboard. This has a 25 pin socket on the back. I have windows recognising the card, and have the printer port as LPT1 and the PCI EPP/ECP Parallel Port as LPT3 (communications on COM1, but I assume we are not using that). I tried to use SNESTL12, but this just crashed, I have since found a program called RBDU200, which seems to do something, but I have no idea how I go about running the game on the Wild Card, as there does not seem to be an option to do anything other than load a game from floppy! I have the port set to LPT3, as this seems to be the only way to transfer the rom (when it is set to LPT1 it puts up an error box stating 'LPT read timeout. The backup device is not responding. Make sure it is connected and the Super NES is turned on'. When I set it to LPT3 and click 'upload ROM' it runs a number in the bottom corner of the program box (????/whatever the ROM size is', but when I click the play button on the program it does nothing, neither does 'upload and run'. There does not appear to be an option on my SWC to play the transfered game on the backup unit, but why is the parallel port there? Do I need a BIOS upgrade, or is it because I am using a parallel and not a serial cable (box says 'for use with any parallel switchboxes' and is apparently one for one on all 25 pins) Please can anyone help me here! Thanks, Paul
When I played around with this a couple of years ago I had to dig out my retro Pentium 133 to succeed sending roms to play. But it is as you mention, "send and play" should send the rom to the Wildcard and run it automatically. I may be wrong, but I think you need a pure DOS environment to run be more successful with this.
Well, I'm installing Windows XP, as I think ucon64 should be able to make the transfer work (looks like I have the right cable and the card is installed). Does anyone know if my version of the Super Wild Card allows transfer of ROMs in bios 2.6cc, and how do I access the transfer option on the Wild Card (or is it automatic?)
I'm not sure how it works, you may likely just try to send it from the pc while powered on. But yes I'm sure it can take parallel transfers, otherwise it wouldn't have the port. The main things you have to worry about are getting your PC in shape to do transfers and do them well. Windows XP will work if you get UCON64 configured with a PortIO driver I guess. But the ideal platform is an older PC with Windows 98SE. I have an old laptop I used to use for Parallel Port stuff.
This seems to be a pretty common solution - just pick up an old laptop at a garage sale or on ebay/craigslist/gumtree for a pittance and use it as a dedicated machine for the copier.
Guys, I have two cables here, one is a crossover, the other is a parallel which is suitable for switchboxes etc. Apparently this one is the right one for the SWC, not the crossover. I think the problem is Win7, as I can't get the portIO thing to work properly (ucon has error with the transfer!). I tried to install XP, and that buggered up my Win7 install, but I managed to get it all working again. I am going to give it a miss tonight as I am tired with messing with this thing, but tomorrow will fresh install XP on a spare drive and see what happens! I would do Win98, but that does not seem to boot from CD! As has been pointed out, a laptop or old desktop would be fine, but with the exception of eBay car boot sales in the UK are finishing now. I guess I will figure it out over the next few days, expect some more questions. One big thing - What is the Wild Card supposed to do when I transfer the data? There is no icon on the menu for data transfer... When it's working, should I run the transfer and the Wild Card just runs the game from the main menu? Does anyone know...? Thanks, Paul
OK, It seems I have now managed to get a PortIO driver working in Windows7, and I have reverted to ucon64 to send the ROM to the Wild Card. If I do not specify the port, the program hangs (defaults to port=0x378). If I do the command line 'ucon64 --xswc --port=0x379 romname.swc then I get a green bar with the rom seemingly transmitting, but nothing happens on the Wild Card side of things, it just sits there, and as I said before there is no option to run a game from anything other than disk. I tried turning the SNES off incase it runs when you switch back on, but nothing. I had to remove the battery in the Wild Card as it had leaked, but this is only for SRAM saves anyway, right? What do I do now to make this work?!
Sorry guys, me again. I have made a discovery... My motherboard has pins for LPT and COM, but I don't have the header to put on it (yet), I figured this as I went into the bios and there were setting options for them, they were both enabled, but I have disabled them for now. I can't believe I was so stupid to not know this! Anyway, the PCI card is all that shows in Windows now, and is set to LPT3, it is in device manager as PCI EPP/ECP Parallel Port, although I still cannot transmit any rom with either SNES tool (set to printer port 3), or UCON64 (--port=0x379), these both look like they are transfering the file, but when at 100% nothing happens on the Wild Card. Is this because the port, outside of being on a PCI card is set as EPP/ECP, as in the bios I can set to SPP (or similar), which is standard port rather then enhanced. As this is old tech, do I need to set below ECP? I guess now until I can get the header plug for the parallel cable and fix to the motherboard, then mess with the bios there is little point playing with this PCI card. What do you lot think? Thanks, Paul
Guys, ** SUCCESS! GOT IT WORKING IN WINDOWS 7! ** Acheived by plugging the parallel port header into the socket on the motherboard, and runing the lead directly through this. Configured as LPT1 and I removed the parallel PCI card. I am running a program called User Port (to be more specific, I have put a file called userport.sys into the windows/system32/drivers folder) that runs at startup. I also have io.dll and userport.sys in the users/paul folder where ucon64 puts it's config file. I then use ucon64 with the --xswc --port=0x378 options and it sent the rom to the copier first attempt! Since using uf-FOX I can also transfer files using this frontend! So it is possible to do a parallel transfer in Windows 7, but not using a PCI card! Now all I need to do is figure out the fact that the wild card is retaining the ROM (or displays a black screen) when I switch the Wild Card off. I have to unplug the parallel cable from the wild card to get rid of the ROM file! I saw a post telling me to remove pins 12, 14, 15 & 16 on the parallel cable, but this did not work! Anyone know how to fix this? Thanks, Paul
OK, this ROM storing at power off at the SNES end gets stranger! I have two NTSC SNES, an original, and a Jr (which I have connected as I have a lack of space!) I also RGB modded the Jr and the RGB output is miles better then the original, so another reason to prefer to use that one. Where am I going with this? Well, with the pins removed on my parallel cable (as shown in the post further up), the SNES Jr stores the ROM after power off, and will only loose it if I unplug the parallel cable, or I switch off the PC. However, with the original SNES, it looses the ROM when I switch the console off! What is that all about? If anyone knows what other pins I need to remove from the parallel cable to make it loose the ROM at power off with my Jr, I would appreciate it! Thanks, Paul Oh yeah - although I got it working in Win7, I picked up a Win98 for less than the price of the parallel cable at a boot sale today, so I now have a dedicated SNES PC!
Just something worth mentioning as I was going to replace my crappy AMD with my normal (though as of lately unused) PC; USB -> Parallel. NO NO. They only allow printing, and you're lucky if that even works, made my HP laserjet 5 show 'Recieving data' for 5 seconds then did nothing, an absolute pile of junk. I was thinking of getting a PCMCIA -> Parallel one, though they're £30... As I've already got a PCI -> PCMCIA card... But for now I'll just stick with the USB -> Floppy emulator, which for anyone that's reading, is a damn great replacement, though if you get one, get the one with 99 or 100 virtual floppies as having only 1 floppy per USB is a bit annoying.
Paul, I forgot to thank you for starting this thread as it has aided my interest in the subject :thumbsup: As to removing pins in the parallel cable to allow the SWC to reset properly between ROM loads, I have no solution... well, no happy solution. I've experimented with an original US SNES, original Super Famicom, and a Super Famicom Jr. As has probably been posted elsewhere, here are the necessary pins: [ Pin, Name, Function, Direction ] 1. Strobe - Control, either way from/to PC/SWC 2. Data 0 - Data, from PC to SWC 3. Data 1 - Data, from PC to SWC 4. Data 2 - Data, from PC to SWC 5. Data 3 - Data, from PC to SWC 6. Data 4 - Data, from PC to SWC 7. Data 5 - Data, from PC to SWC 8. Data 6 - Data, from PC to SWC 9. Data 7 - Data, from PC to SWC 10. Acknowledge - Status, from SWC to PC 11. Busy - Status, from SWC to PC XX 13. Select - Status, from SWC to PC XX 25. Ground - Logic Ground, shared by SWC & PC After playing with 3 models of Nintendo hardware, the only way I've been able to get any of them to properly come up w/ the SWC between ROM loads is by disconnecting Strobe, Data bits, and Ground (did this using a handy breakout box which has a switch for every pin, allowing you to enable/disable signals as you please). I tried pairing that down, but no combination will work for me other than the one stated. As much as this combination worked consistently on all 3 system models, that's 10 signals out of 13 that must be interrupted. 10 pole switches do exist, but they are quite long and would not fit inside of a DB25 hood. In short, your best bet may be an A/B switchbox for your DB25 cable where one channel is connected to your PC and the other to nothing. Just switch to nothing between ROM loads. -ud
I've started using this program and it works great for the SWC DX2. I convert my roms with Ucon64 and upload with this program. I can power off the SWC and power back on and load a new rom without unplugging the parallel cable. The program will convert the roms or sram to SWC format as it transfers, but I had already used Ucon64 to do this. The best part about this program, for me anyways, is that it can transfer the rom into DRAM and then give you the option to start with real-time save option. Ucon64 doesn't do that, it transfers and autoplays.
