How do you know what donor carts to use when making your own cart? Such as that you need a zelda cart for Final Fantasy 2. Thanks!
You have to use a cart that has the same (or extremely similar) board. The Bigass NES Mapper list can help some:
http://tuxnes.sourceforge.net/nesmapper.txt
So if you're trying to make a FF2 cart (UNROM), you can use Skate Or Die, Pro Wrestling, Goonies 2, etc.
UNROM can't do SRAM, let alone battery-backed SRAM. Was FF2 really UNROM, or was it SNROM (similar to UNROM but using an MMC1, with its serial register load, instead of the discrete logic)?
Ohmygod, FF2 is SNROM, like Zelda, Damn it !!
It has just been hacked to use mapper 2 (UNROM) for an unknow reason, and that is possible because the games uses only 16kb low bankswitching like UNROM does, and only uses Vertical mirroring.
The "hm-02" corrupted verision of FF2 has just been too much common, and now everyone (including myself before) is beliving that FF2 is UNROM. That's terrible, terrible, terrible !!
I'm finding that a lot of documentation out there is misleading, inaccurate, or wrong. It's sort of frustrating, because there's so much knowledge built up in people's heads, but all of the stuff written down is wrong and it's not being corrected.
wow that is an awesome list. but what does okCHR mean?
rox_midge wrote:
You have to use a cart that has the same (or extremely similar) board. The Bigass NES Mapper list can help some:
http://tuxnes.sourceforge.net/nesmapper.txtSo if you're trying to make a FF2 cart (UNROM), you can use Skate Or Die, Pro Wrestling, Goonies 2, etc.
That's a zero, not the letter 'O'. It means that the cartridge does not have any CHR ROM on the board -- it has "Zero K" of CHR ROM.
"0 KB CHR ROM" means that the game contains 8 KB or more RAM mapped into PPU$0000-$1FFF.
great!! now i know what games to look for. one more question: why do the eproms this guy soldered in do not fit into the cartridge?
http://www.zyx.com/chrisc/solarwarscart.html
Notice that he didn't solder the EPROMs directly to the board (which would be a bad idea anyway) -- he soldered two DIP carriers that he can snap the EPROMs into. However, there's not enough space inside the cartridge to accomodate a carrier and an EPROM, so part of the case needs to be cut away to make room.
so why cant you solder the eprom to the board? what is the best way to get the eprom in there without having to cut the cart?
rox_midge wrote:
Notice that he didn't solder the EPROMs directly to the board (which would be a bad idea anyway) -- he soldered two DIP carriers that he can snap the EPROMs into. However, there's not enough space inside the cartridge to accomodate a carrier and an EPROM, so part of the case needs to be cut away to make room.
coinheaven wrote:
so why cant you solder the eprom to the board?
You can, but then you can't easily remove them should you want to reprogram the cartridge with a different game.
ahhh, i see. i wasnt planning on doing that anyway, so it wont be a problem. ok now eproms, say i want to use Super Mario Bros. 3 for the donor cart, which has 256k PRG / 128k CHR, which type of eproms should i use? if i could have a list of all types (128k PRG, etc) that would be great.
I wouldn't solder the EPROMs directly to the board for fear I'd destroy it in the process. Plus, once it's on there it's not coming back out without work, which makes it hard to burn a new image onto the cart, which is half the fun.
If you don't want to cut up the cart, you might try Mill-Max's Ultra Low Profile DIP sockets:
(huge search string)
They sit about 2mm high, giving you just about 2mm for the EPROM to sit on top of it. That might work, but I've never tried it. Mill-Max will be happy to send you a sample if you want to give it a shot.
coinheaven wrote:
wow that is an awesome list.
Oh my god, it isn't. This list looks very unaccurate. This place seems better :
http://www.parodius.com/~veilleux/boardtable.txt
why does it say Zelda is a SNROM. shouldnt it be a UNROM?
Bregalad wrote:
coinheaven wrote:
wow that is an awesome list.
Oh my god, it isn't. This list looks very unaccurate. This place seems better :
http://www.parodius.com/~veilleux/boardtable.txt
coinheaven wrote:
why does it say Zelda is a SNROM. shouldnt it be a UNROM?
Because Zelda 1
IS SNROM!
WHY!???
Quietust wrote:
coinheaven wrote:
why does it say Zelda is a SNROM. shouldnt it be a UNROM?
Because Zelda 1
IS SNROM!
Because Zelda 1 uses an MMC1, required for it to handle SAVED GAMES; a standard UNROM board is not capable of supporting extra memory at $6000-$7FFF, while an SNROM board is designed exactly for this purpose.
oh ok, so does anybody know how to check for this? i use VirtuaNES memory viewer, but i dont know how to check for it. some games it has numbers like 5A and sometimes there are just FF's all across from $6000 $7fff. any help on this would be great!
Quietust wrote:
Because Zelda 1 uses an MMC1, required for it to handle SAVED GAMES; a standard UNROM board is not capable of supporting extra memory at $6000-$7FFF, while an SNROM board is designed exactly for this purpose.
Well, VirtuaNES has a header viewer where the mapper number is shown. So if it says MMC1, it's MMC1, not UNROM. If it says UNROM, it is most likely a UNROM game, but it can also be a hacked version of a MMC1 game, like FF2 [hM02]. Just see what GoodNES says about your ROM. If it says [hMxx], then you have the wrong mapper.
The memory viewer trick was to know if a game that has not battery has SRAM or not, so you can see if it uses SRAM or not (if it's all $ff, there is no SRAM). Scince both Zelda and FF2 uses battery, this means that there is SRAM anyway.
ok i get it now, if it has a battery then it has to have SRAM, so this would be all the zeros. but if it doesnt then it is all $ff. is that correct? i needed this info because i am checking the games for SRAM that dont have a battery to determine what board they would need. Thanks
Bregalad wrote:
Well, VirtuaNES has a header viewer where the mapper number is shown. So if it says MMC1, it's MMC1, not UNROM. If it says UNROM, it is most likely a UNROM game, but it can also be a hacked version of a MMC1 game, like FF2 [hM02]. Just see what GoodNES says about your ROM. If it says [hMxx], then you have the wrong mapper.
The memory viewer trick was to know if a game that has not battery has SRAM or not, so you can see if it uses SRAM or not (if it's all $ff, there is no SRAM). Scince both Zelda and FF2 uses battery, this means that there is SRAM anyway.
If would not be all zeroes, it would be the data the games writes to the SRAM chip.
The board is identical regardless of if there is battery or not (for example both Kid Icarus and Zelda are SNROM, but only Zelda have a battery, Kid Icarus's slot for battery and two diodes are just empty).