Ive been casually looking for one of these things for nearly a year now messaging the owner every time one is listed on the Ebay in my country but to no avail
Does anybody know or have an idea numbers wise how rare these things are and if anybody has ever found one outside the Us?
Also, if i become desperate and resort to doing a conversion whats better, Tk or Ts rom? Does the battery from Tkrom work as is? or does it need rewiring? AND for the last of my annoying questions
how on earth do you go about fabricating the missing pin?
EDIT: Ok ive managed to track down a few of the full pined mario's so now i just need the 2nd doner for the ram. Do all the nes games that use ram have 8kb ? or do some have higher or lower? And whats a cheap common cart (Euro release) that has has 1-2 8kb ram chips?
Thanks
The first person I asked who had two SMB2s said one of them was full-pinned. But he wanted to sell me three common NES games for $20. I tried haggling it down & he said "forget it."
I gave up looking in my home country and decided to start asking people on Ebay Us and surprised how many i found. There not that rare at all, infact one seller replied telling me a way you can tell if they are full pinned by the label! Im not sure how accurate it is but i will find out soon enough when they arrive in the mail.
Well seeing how many billion people mention it at this rate they'll all be turned into FF3 carts shortly. (which is not completely a bad thing considering how good FF3 is (but the last dungeon is HARD) even if we here don't support people making repros)
Bregalad wrote:
Well seeing how many billion people mention it at this rate they'll all be turned into FF3 carts shortly. (which is not completely a bad thing considering how good FF3 is (but the last dungeon is HARD) even if we here don't support people making repros)
Hey Bregalad, i was reading over some previous threads and you seem to be the go-to guy about adding batterys to Tsrom and other non battery carts. Seeing as you posted could i ask you if this is right?
http://nintendoallstars.w.interia.pl/romlab/msram.htm
Thanks
By full-pin, are you talking about the full set of pins on the cartridge connector? I have one of those. Bootgod's site doesn't even have a scan of a US SMB2 cartridge that doesn't have the full pins.
NO this site is NOT right if you do it like they say your chip will be constantly powered by the battery and never by the main supply and this is BAD BAD BAD !!
To have it done right you need 2 diodes, one from the main power supply, and one from the battery, each going in series with a ~1k resistor.
Bregalad wrote:
NO this site is NOT right if you do it like they say your chip will be constantly powered by the battery and never by the main supply and this is BAD BAD BAD !!
To have it done right you need 2 diodes, one from the main power supply, and one from the battery, each going in series with a ~1k resistor.
Excuse my ignorance but whats so bad about it running from a battery all the time? Does it just drain faster?
Edit: Never mind. Did some reading. So basically it should be like this
Battery+-----(diode)----------Sram bent/cut power pin---------(diode)------Power pad/trace on board
?
Yeah there is a few things that are bad : When the cart will be plugged in a powered UP NES, the data and adress lines on the SRAM chip will toggle between 0V and 5V levels. Since the VCC pin will have a ~3V voltage, it will be a bad thing. There is usually diodes connected between input pins towards the VCC pin, so this will effectively force the VCC to ~4.3V, and might drop even lower if the chip is active and draws current.
So this circuit sort of RELIES on those internal diodes - but there is no guarantee all SRAM chips have them. In fact it'd be perfectly possible that they aren't present, and that will damage/fry the chip.
Drawing current from the adress/data/control lines instead of VCC is BAD because not only the traces on the circuit are thin and weren't designed to draw any current, but all the current drawn will be drawn trough the CPU that is inside the NES that wasn't deisnged for that and this is BAD.
Another bad thing is that as soon as all your data and adress lines will have 0V level (for example if you write to $6000 that will happen), the chip's voltage will suddently drop to battery's 3V and this is BAD.
So you'd better want a reliable power supply that makes sure the chip is always powered by the 5V power supply and that slowly drops to 3V when the power is off (that's why it's a good idea to add a >1uF capacity in parallel with the VCC pin : it will ensure slow transitions from 5V to 3V and reduce risk to loose saves.
So short answer : if you do it like ROMlab does, SRAM operation will be unstable, read/writes to/from it won't always work, and both the CPU in the NES and the SRAM in your cart might even overheat due to current being drawn in Adress/data/control lines instead of power supply.
Ok, thanks so much for taking the time to write all that up. Had you not, i probably would have gone ahead and used the romlab diagram and ruined my game and nes!
So with the resistors in parallel now it would go
Gnd----Battery------Diode----------Sram-----------Diode------------Main power
..................................|--1k resistor--|--1k resistor--|
(the dots are to keep the resistors in the middle, without them then just go the left)
?
The first resistor comes in series with the diode between the battery + and the RAM VCC (it electrically doesn't matter in which order the diore and the resistor are).
There was a second resistor but to be honnest I really can't remember where it was placed. You should look at a Nintendo circuit to know for sure.
I'm also pretty sure a third resistor is necessary to ground /OE of the SRAM. At least for the MMC1 it was necessary, but maybe the MMC3 has an internal pull-down I'm not sure.
Also be sure to place the diodes with correct polarity (cathode = where the dash it = side of the VRAM VCC).
Allright, thanks for all your help. I will do some comparisons between Tk and Ts rom and then experiment until i get it right.
Ok, i hate to ask another question and drive this thread even FURTHER off topic but i thought its better than cluttering the board with a new one. I dont know how appropriate this question is so if you've got the answer its probably best to send me a pm.
While i wait for my Mario 2's to arrive for ff3 i thought id knock up and play a ff2 to pass the time. I used the ff2 lost translation on a zelda cart and when i boot it up i get the blue screen and a bunch of garbled text scrolls across and then it freezes.
I know the prototype rom would probably work but the translation is terrible. So if anybody knows if theres a good english translation that works on the hardware please let me know.
SnesGuy wrote:
I used the ff2 lost translation on a zelda cart and when i boot it up i get the blue screen and a bunch of garbled text scrolls across and then it freezes.
That translation was made before we understood a lot of things about the PPU. I don't recall exactly what's wrong with it, just that it does Bad Things.
The official prototype is probably your best bet, unfortunately. :\
BMF54123 wrote:
SnesGuy wrote:
I used the ff2 lost translation on a zelda cart and when i boot it up i get the blue screen and a bunch of garbled text scrolls across and then it freezes.
That translation was made before we understood a lot of things about the PPU. I don't recall exactly what's wrong with it, just that it does Bad Things.
The official prototype is probably your best bet, unfortunately. :\
Damn, thats what i was expecting. Is there a good/accurate 1:1 Nes emulator that will only play what the Nes can so i can test the roms before i burn? Nestopia will run anything no matter how bad it is.
BMF54123 wrote:
Ok thanks, i tried using it with the rom i burnt though and while it still froze the text wasn't all garbled like it was on my nes.....
Il try a few more roms and if no go then i will just play the good translation on an emu. Id rather use a emu than put up with the appalling proto translation on the actual hardware.
There is a few patches on
http://www.romhacking.net that will fix it I belive. (there was a thread about it some time ago so if you use search you might find the details about what went wrong when they coded the intro).
If you want to play FF2, I seriously recommend you play the "Demonic Panemodium" patch from romhacking.net, because the original games really suffers from terrible flaws that makes it unplayable : At first the game is quite good but after a while there is HUGE gaps in strenght of enemies each time you make progress, the item inventory is VERY limited (and key-items quickly take a hell of the low space availalble), and you'll find youself having to go trough a dungeon of 8 floors with frequent battles with enemies who have a 1/2 change to poison/blind your party members, when you can only carry ~10 eyedrops/anditotes/potion ALLTOGETHER.
Because of the huge gaps between enemies strenght, and the lack of a true EXP system, the "weak" enemies will never make your characters progress anymore (they might even REGRESS), and the "strong" enemies will wipe them out in an instant.
Now seriously FF1 and FF3 are really THE games to play on NES. I don't quite like FF2, altough they were good ideas in it they were poorly executed. It's only pros is that it is one of the first games ever made that had a "true" storyline, but to be honest it's not that good. (WARNING PARTIAL SPOILERS FOLLOW) it's basically everyone dying until the 4 party members are the only humans still living in the world, and then they kick the big bad villain ass.
All those problems were fixed in remakes, and I think the hack partially fixes them as well (but it won't give you an unlimited inventory for example).
When you have a finished working FF3 if you could post pics and schematics it would be very helpful. Thanks in advance.
Well, i had a crack at it yesterday. First i used kogami's plans....Blue garbled screen. 2nd used the other plans on the main site...worked perfectly but kept freezing after like 10seconds of turning it on.
I kept playing with it trying to get it to work and broke one of the nes's connectors
(I think because i solderered the wire too far down pin 56)
Ive ordered a new connector and hopefully it should work without further modification.
Il post pics of the second one i make for you as this one has many unnecessary wires( from using 2 different sets of plans) and is very ugly and confusing to look at.
Well, my new connector arrived today and ff3 worked first try
What a relief. Now all i have to do is get the battery working:(
save didn't work. I beat that land turtle for nothing
Ive got the battery in a little round holder. Ive got gnd going staight to pin 14 and have the postive going to >>Diode>>Resistor>> pin 28. I didn't bend up pin 28 and left it connected to the board. Was that my problem? Also the ring on the diode was facing towards pin 28 so im pretty sure the polarity is correct.
Edit : Decently NOT lifting pin 28. I tried that and there is no sound and the graphics are all garbled
Ok, Scrap the post above. I removed the resistor and it now can hold a save.
Unless there is something really bad about doing it this way i will probably just leave it. Anybody?
SnesGuy wrote:
Ok, Scrap the post above. I removed the resistor and it now can hold a save.
Unless there is something really bad about doing it this way i will probably just leave it. Anybody?
Cool that you got it working, lets see some pics and a rundown of the wirejob you did please
Ok, well i eventually ended up losing my saves and decieded to wire up the battery properly with the capacitors and resistors etc
I would post pics now but im pretty close to the end (Its a huuuuuge game for the nes) and it took me ages to get it working properly on my nes due to the crappy connector. If i took it out of the cart slot now id never get it working again.
Im going to make a second one tommorow and il post some pics for you then
Also, for those who have played it before, is it normal for there to be a bunch of garbled blue mess above the world map when you use the magic "sight"? Im thinking its because im playing it on a pal nes
You should use v1.2 of my PAL fix IPS patch (available on romhacking.net). If you used v1.0 (or nothing at all) I didn't fix the raster effect on the world map.
Bregalad wrote:
You should use v1.2 of my PAL fix IPS patch (available on romhacking.net). If you used v1.0 (or nothing at all) I didn't fix the raster effect on the world map.
Doh! Oh well, good thing im making another one. Are there any other glitches other than that? The version im using had "not for sale" and "not for use in nesticle" right at the start.
Those messages were made by the japanese->english translators, not me. My patch just changes some timed code, and the pitch table of the music. (I also tweaked the scrolling updates in v1.2).
I don't think it has any glitches left, although sometimes I sometimes saw glitches during summons, I don't know if this is a PAL/NTSC issue. Nothing that makes the game un-playable though.
Bregalad wrote:
Those messages were made by the japanese->english translators, not me. My patch just changes some timed code, and the pitch table of the music. (I also tweaked the scrolling updates in v1.2).
Yes, i knew you didn't do that. What i didn't know was what version of the rom i was using. I thought the messages at the start might have provided clues. It probably doesn't matter though.
Bregalad wrote:
I don't think it has any glitches left, although sometimes I sometimes saw glitches during summons, I don't know if this is a PAL/NTSC issue. Nothing that makes the game un-playable though.
Ok great, thanks again for your help
Il go give your patch a go.
Sorry there is no way to know which version it is. Just download a clean FF3 ROM and apply v1.2 patch and it'll be fine.
Bregalad wrote:
Sorry there is no way to know which version it is. Just download a clean FF3 ROM and apply v1.2 patch and it'll be fine.
Clean as in the original japanese dump?
Well, when i went today to make my second ff3 and prepared the rom with the pal patch and compared it to my first one it was smaller by .200kb....Yup i used an overdump the first time*face palm*
I sorta got side tracked half way through so its only a 1/3 finished, but i did promise picies so here is my retarded first born and its lil bro
Any chance of a better pic\diagram? I can't see jack on that pic aside from a rats nest of wires.
TKROM -> TNROM conversion (mapper 4):
PRG socket:
Bend up pins 1, 2, 24, 30 and 31 (or cut tracks 2, 24, 30 and 31)
Solder pin 2 to hole 24 (A16)
Solder pin 24 to GND (OE)
Solder pin 30 to hole 1 (A17)
Solder pin 31 to hole 2 (A18)
CHR RAM conversion:
Seat the RAM chip 2 pins back (pin 1 of RAM is pin 3 of socket)
cut track to hole 3, 22, 24, 28 and 29
Solder pin 1 to hole 30 (+5V)
Solder pin 20 to hole 31 (CE or CHR /A13)
Solder pin 22 to hole 2 (OE or CHR /RD)
Solder pin 26 to hole 28 (+5V or RESET)
Solder pin 27 to NES pin 56 (CHR /WR), you will probably need to glue in the missing tab on the PC board that goes into the NES, I used a thin piece of metal and super glued it, then sanded it with fine sand paper
SnesGuy wrote:
TKROM -> TNROM conversion (mapper 4):
PRG socket:
Bend up pins 1, 2, 24, 30 and 31 (or cut tracks 2, 24, 30 and 31)
I already know the pinout and how to make FF3 I just wanted to see some nice clean pics finally posted for a visual "how to" so when noobs ask they can just be pointed to a thread like the diagrams I made up for expanding the CHR size on a CNROM for making the penasian titles and the diagram I did for making MMC3 carts.
You dont need a full pin SMB2 to make a FFIII, you can use a standard TKROM and add a pin (takes about 20 seconds)
I have a full-pin SMB2 that I'll let go for a fair price (whatever that is)....
Tormenter wrote:
You dont need a full pin SMB2 to make a FFIII, you can use a standard TKROM and add a pin (takes about 20 seconds)
how do u add a pin, i have only 1 full pin smb2 and i wouldnt mind practicing on a regular tkrom cart first
I think someone mentioned successfully gluing a thin piece of metal to the board... I can't see how this would work well though.
drk414 also mentionned that method in his EPROM rewiring document years ago. I even remember seeing pictures of the board with a pin added. It's definitely possible - but yet for some reason the rumor that a full-pin cart is needed took the main stream of boot leggers.
I actually removed an edge connector pin from an old motherboard for an ISA slot, straighted it and superglued it to the TKROM PCB.
Here are some pictures of the cart I made:
Final TKROM PCB:
<dead links>
The traces to cut:
<dead links>
drk421 wrote:
I actually removed an edge connector pin from an old motherboard for an ISA slot, straighted it and superglued it to the TKROM PCB.
Definitely the way I will go with this, since I do not have any diodes left and I have a couple of extra kirby's adventure carts lol
Bregalad wrote:
drk414 also mentionned that method in his EPROM rewiring document years ago. I even remember seeing pictures of the board with a pin added. It's definitely possible - but yet for some reason the rumor that a full-pin cart is needed took the main stream of boot leggers.
Anything is possible, but if you want a PCB that will work after 100+ insertions (especially with one of those new front loader slots that put the grip of death on the PCB) than a full-pin cart is the only way to go.
Those pins are not glued during production, they are actually part of the PCB and etched out, hence the best and only method I recommend of reproducing FF3j.
So whats the final verdict on the correct parts and order to use them to add the battery please? I know this is a nero-dump but I got some extra pcbs without batteries I'd like to use for some FF3 greatness
It might be simpler than you think of...
On a TL1ROM to TNROM conversion I just had to add pin 56 using a stripe of copper taken from some scrapped board ...
Because the SRAM is already 28 pin and the board only takes 28 pin chips, I decided on making it into a TGROM/TNROM compatible board.
I used an 62256 chip instead of 6264 so the only pins I needed to mod was 1 (A14) and 27 (/WE). /CS and /OE were re-routed at the 74LS32 (which was removed) place by connecting pins 2 and 3 of the removed 74LS32 together. Pin 1 was connected to the trace that goes to pin 22 of the CHR chip and trace for pin 1 of MMC3 (CHR A16) was cut. This resulted on all 32KB of the SRAM being visible for the PPU through the CHR banking mechanism of the MMC3 chip. Non standard I know, but I don't think it would hurt any game ... And I ended with a very clean layout.
An 6264 SRAM was soldered behind the PRG ROM connector (this is a DEV cart, not a game repro so it's socketed) and proper connections were made for the MMC3 chip pins. This is non backed up WRAM configuration similar to that of the TKROM board.
Actually you can use ANY board with the mapper chip you need. No need to hunt down some rare kind of cartridge. This cartridge in particular was a broken copy of Double Dragon 2 (PRG ROM was fried, getting hyper HOT) and because it was slightly useless for making a devcart (no room for CHRROM socket) I decided to turn into CHRRAM type.
l_oliveira wrote:
I used an 62256 chip instead of 6264 [...] This resulted on all 32KB of the SRAM being visible for the PPU through the CHR banking mechanism of the MMC3 chip. Non standard I know
Non-standard? Yes. Awesomely flexible combination of the best of both worlds (CHR RAM and MMC3 tile bank animation)? Fâââ YEAH. But of course you'll need an emulator supporting NES 2.0's expanded CHR RAM to make it work.
tepples wrote:
But of course you'll need an emulator supporting NES 2.0's expanded CHR RAM to make it work.
That's why I prefer the real thing ...
For what it's worth I've used these:
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3964901&CAWELAID=468196883
To add that trace to a board with success. It's not a great option though at $20 and the pen dried out after a few months after opening. So it was a one time deal. Far from preferred but an option none the less.
tepples wrote:
But of course you'll need an emulator supporting NES 2.0's expanded CHR RAM to make it work.
The NESDEV1 will support this also but with 256/512KB of CHR RAM. If I'm not mistaken Member's 8T-ROM board also supports at 32KB.
An personal comment about ROMLABS "Mobile SRAM" module after I read through this thread:
I had an loud laugh when I saw that on ROMLABS. I know that there's real products which operate like that (for example the DALLAS Timekeeper series of real-time clock chips has one of them match the 6264 SRAM pinout and simulates perfectly that chip while adding RTC function) but ROMLABS circuit is completely devoid of logic because the simple act of disconnecting it from the game board circuit would cause the data to corrupt as there's no method to disable the chip when the main power is off. The data stored on the RAM chip would be damaged from simply a person touching the pins as the chip would be powered on and have it's pins floating. Not good at all.
Even for a chip with two CS pins.
A lot of things being shown on ROMLABS only work due to sheer luck.