So, I have a Japanese version of Kirby Super Star (AKA Deluxe/Fun Pack), and I was thinking of soldering an english version in parallel to it.
So, I open the cart, and I'm surprised to find a a 44 pin TSOP.
Does anyone have the pinout for this?
Not 100% but it might be a standard pinout. I recall Star Ocean I believe had a standard pinout and non-dip package. You could try searching around for a pinout. Maybe romlab has something but I don't know.
http://nintendoallstars.w.interia.pl/romlab/so4044.gif
That is a 16bit ROM, replaceable with a 29L3211 with a voltage stepdown to 3.3v or a 27C322 with significant rewiring needed to adapt a DIP to SOC packaging.
Pretty much all of the special chip carts (except for DSPx games) use SOC ROMs.
sounds simple enough.
Just lift the VCC pin on the replacement chip and solder a couple of diodes in series to get a 1.4v drop?
Or should I use an 85ish ohm resistor?
At least I think 85 would drop the voltage.
What's the amperage of the current in an SNES cart?
I'd be interested to know how you get on. Some guy has done this already and his repros are shown here:
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthr ... ost1900528
it's kinda small, but I think he just wired the /WE to BYTE to either a diode or a resistor, and right into that ... voltage regulator?
He may have just soldered directly to VCC. Too small to tell.
I can barely read it, looks to be AMS1117, datasheets says its a 800ma low voltage dropout regulator.
And it in fact switches the voltage from 5v to 3.3v
tab on the back is definitely power out.
so, likely, it's a simple job.
lift pins 1, 23, and 33, wire the back tab of the power regulator to them, the rest is a 1:1 solder.
BuyIC has a bunch of those MX29L3211 chips, I'll see if they can't burn one for me and test it out next month.
Ive actually been in communication with Kogami lately in regards to those specific repros, so this question popped up right in the middle of that.
I am working out the particulars, but I will have some more information once I work out how to program these 3211s
Will these work for these repros:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... ink:top:en ?
As for programing the 29l3211s you can buy them for $2.5 each from BuyICNow and they can program them for you so you don't have to bother with an adapter unless of course you want to.
those AMS1117s are the same ones Kogami used, so I don't see why not.
The datasheet will tell you which pin is ground and which is 5V+ in, the large tab on the back is 3.3V+.
You can also use a big-ass 27c322
while we're on the subject of Kirby and SA1 games...
I know the SA-1 chips are customized to each title, but is it possible to, say, play Kirby 3 off the Kirby Super Star SA1?
There is a possibility they both use the same hardware setup.
Where did you hear that? The SA-1 chips are all the same except for there is an NTSC and PAL version maybe. Ofcourse you can swap games on them.
Like Mottzilla is saying, they're all compatible as they use the same co-processor chip. I have made a SA1 test cart in the past and it play pretty much any SA1 game. I'm saying pretty much because the one thing that differ between cart is the RAM size and wether or not the game use battery backup save feature. You can always add battery backup though. If you take a game like the SA1 Pebble Beach game, you'll be able to play almost any game except for this one specific japanese tactical war game that use an obcene ammount of RAM.
Edit: the game I was referring to is Daisenryaku Expert WWII: War in Europe
If all SA-1s are the same, why can't we just stick them in a flash cart like the Super Everdrive then?
pfft.
Because you'd have to destroy a SA-1 game for every single flash cart. Secondly the SA-1 is a 128 pin surface mount IC. Removing and resoldering it onto another pcb is not easy. Next you'd have to design a new flash cart pcb with enough physical room to install a SA-1 and then add circuitry to enable and disable it as needed.
It IS technically possibly to add SA-1 to a flash cart in this manner but it is not really a good idea. Technically you could make a device and include actual Super FX, Cx4, SA-1, SDD-1, SPC7110, etc. chips inside and have circuitry to use each one if someone really wanted to do so. But it would be extremely costly. It would be cheaper for you to buy all the games.
And always realize this, if it were so easy, don't you think someone would have done it already?
Laughing at the thought of that hypothetical flash cart that would probably be as big as 2 Sega 32X on top of each other
And I also like the derisory ''pfft''
I never said it would be easy.
But just imagine the possibilities for the SHEER POWER of a 6-in-1 devcart with access to all those add-on chips.
SuperFX-2
CX4
SA-1
DSP
SPC7110
and SDD-1
Stronger than the PS3!
pfft.
For new development, I'd say just put a smartphone SoC on there and call it a day.
So, back on topic.
After a little research, it looks like he's soldering those voltage regulators to the C4 surface mount capacitor to get voltage, cutting the middle pin, and soldering the ground pin to any nearby convenient point.
From there, it's exactly as I said before, solder the chip as a drop in replacement after lifting pins 1, 23, and 33, wire the back tab of the power regulator to them to give it 3.3 volts.
It's ridiculously simple.
It is stupid simple, but I wrote up a tutorial for it anyways documenting my first SO44 ROM replacement.
http://retrohacker.info/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=20