Someday I really want to write some nicely formatted docs on all the boards currently in the DB. Something similar to kevtris's site and everynes docs, the latter seems to have a lot of errors. Anyways, until then, here are some more messy notes I take as I run into new stuff. Maybe helpful to some.
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Nintendo:
HVC-UN1ROM-01: At first I just figured this was going to work just like UNROM but with maybe a 64KB ROM instead of 128K, but that is not the case. D0 and D1 are not used for some reason, instead D2-D4 are used. Turns out this behavior was implemented as INES mapper 94, I never found any references to the actual board name though. Most likely was done to help thwart piracy. Was found in Japan version of Captain Commando.
NES-TBROM-01: This is not from one of my carts, but I figured I should mention it because it was previously unknown. Was found in the PAL version of Tecmo World Cup Soccer. Basically MMC3 equivelent of SBROM.
I also ran into a different version of Seicross which uses CNROM w/ diodes & 8K CHR instead of NROM.
Bandai:
There are a number of Bandai boards with japanese characters in the name, I need someone to transliterate them if possible.
JUMP-A | BANDAI-FCG-2 | 153: Yet another Famicom Jump pcb variant, this one has PRG split into 2 ROMs and a 74HC139 to hook them together. Combined ROM data matches single-chip versions.
Taito:
ARKANOID2 | TAITO-74*161/161/32 | 152: Oddly enough, it functions exactly like Bandai's board that also uses that hardware.
J9100287A | TAITO-TC0190FMC+PAL16R4 | 48: Has Taito's TC0190FMC and a PAL16R4, which is IRQ related?? I've seen references to a TC0350 and a TC0190V, the latter is currently associated with INES 48, but I have yet to see either of these.
Irem:
LROG017 | IREM-74*161/161/21/138 | 77: Apparently only used by Napoleon Senki. Pretty unique board in the way it functions with VROM/VRAM. EDIT: Current docs are correct, register usage is bits 0-1 select 32K PRG and bits 4-7 select 2K VROM
IREM-I-IM | IREM-BNROM | 34: Used in Japan version of Deadly Towers, works identical to NES-BNROM.
FC-00-016 | IREM-G101 | 32: Nothing in particular to say about this, just making note as it's the first G-101 I've come across.
Sunsoft:
SUNSOFT-3 | SUNSOFT-2 | 89: In order to be confusing, printed board name is SUNSOFT-3, but I'll call it SUNSOFT-2 because thats the mapper it uses. This is another case were docs I looked at were wrong. Correct register usage is:
bits 0-2: lower 3 bits of 8K VROM bank
bit 3: nametable select (uses single-screen)
bits 4-6: 16K PRG bank
bit 7: upper bit of 8K VROM bank
While Mito Kouman is the only game known to use this board, the board itself also supports hardwired H or V mirroring.
NTB-ROM-PCB | SUNSOFT-4 | 68: Wow this is a weird one, used in a "daul-cart" baseball game. There is a slot in the main cart to plugin a smaller cart. Unfortunately I don't have whatever was supposed to plug into it I think I still have it figured out though. To start off, it uses the Sunsoft-4 and also has 8K of battery-backed WRAM. PRG bank select is controled by register F000h with the following format:
---WRPPP where W = WRAM enable (0=off,1=on), R = ROM select (0=minicart rom,1=internal rom), and PPP is the 16K bank number of the selected rom. In a normal Sunsoft-4 cart, I would guess that R would just act as the upper-bit of normal bank select. When the mini-cart is not present, reading with that ROM selected results in open bus.
Jaleco:
I'm torn on how to classify these Jaleco boards. Recently I switched them all to be based on their exact names (JALECO-JF-xx), but this results in quite a bit of redundancy. Before they were based on their components, which removes all redundancy, but then you have names like JALECO-JF-<big list of discrete parts> which is rather ugly (many other boards are still defined this way). Anyways, only one "new" Jaleco board this time around:
JF-17 | JALECO-JF-17 | 72: This is pretty much exactly like INES 92 except this one maps 16K PRG banks into $8000 instead of $C000 like m92 does.
Another interesting thing I ran into was a revision of JF-13 PRG ROM. The original comes in a black cart and the revised one in a red cart. The original ROM pre-dates the revision by only 4 weeks.
Also just like to say again how bummed I am that the digital data on the speech synth chips used in many Jaleco games cannot be read!
Namco:
In previous notes I mentioned the odd behavior of the way PRG banking works in the game Youkai Douchuuki. The board in the one refered to uses 111F0S. To elaborate: It has a 128K PRG ROM, lets say there is a lower 64K and an upper 64K. Bank size is 8K. If you cycle thru each bank all the way thru to its max of 512K, and then break that into 64K pieces, it looks like this: LLLULLLU instead of LULULULU like you'd expect. I bring this up again because I dumped another one of these carts, this time using an epoxy board (60-14), and this one works the "normal" way... ROM data is the same too!
I also came across a few more of the oddball boards like Quinty (NAMCO-3443):
NAMCO-3433 | 88: Exactly like 3443 except has H mirroring instead of V.
NAMCO-3446 | 76: Similar to other 2, but CHR banking is setup a bit differently.
Seta:
Although a simple NROM game, it took me a bit of searching to figure out what the hell this was. This is the first Seta cart I've come across. They didn't publish too many games and I think they may have switched over to "official" carts at some point. Has a pretty funny back label with a "Do not feed to alligators" icon.
P3-020 | SETA-NROM-128 | 0: Nothing special, based on name, perhaps made by same mfg as some Taito boards.
--------->
Nintendo:
HVC-UN1ROM-01: At first I just figured this was going to work just like UNROM but with maybe a 64KB ROM instead of 128K, but that is not the case. D0 and D1 are not used for some reason, instead D2-D4 are used. Turns out this behavior was implemented as INES mapper 94, I never found any references to the actual board name though. Most likely was done to help thwart piracy. Was found in Japan version of Captain Commando.
NES-TBROM-01: This is not from one of my carts, but I figured I should mention it because it was previously unknown. Was found in the PAL version of Tecmo World Cup Soccer. Basically MMC3 equivelent of SBROM.
I also ran into a different version of Seicross which uses CNROM w/ diodes & 8K CHR instead of NROM.
Bandai:
There are a number of Bandai boards with japanese characters in the name, I need someone to transliterate them if possible.
JUMP-A | BANDAI-FCG-2 | 153: Yet another Famicom Jump pcb variant, this one has PRG split into 2 ROMs and a 74HC139 to hook them together. Combined ROM data matches single-chip versions.
Taito:
ARKANOID2 | TAITO-74*161/161/32 | 152: Oddly enough, it functions exactly like Bandai's board that also uses that hardware.
J9100287A | TAITO-TC0190FMC+PAL16R4 | 48: Has Taito's TC0190FMC and a PAL16R4, which is IRQ related?? I've seen references to a TC0350 and a TC0190V, the latter is currently associated with INES 48, but I have yet to see either of these.
Irem:
LROG017 | IREM-74*161/161/21/138 | 77: Apparently only used by Napoleon Senki. Pretty unique board in the way it functions with VROM/VRAM. EDIT: Current docs are correct, register usage is bits 0-1 select 32K PRG and bits 4-7 select 2K VROM
IREM-I-IM | IREM-BNROM | 34: Used in Japan version of Deadly Towers, works identical to NES-BNROM.
FC-00-016 | IREM-G101 | 32: Nothing in particular to say about this, just making note as it's the first G-101 I've come across.
Sunsoft:
SUNSOFT-3 | SUNSOFT-2 | 89: In order to be confusing, printed board name is SUNSOFT-3, but I'll call it SUNSOFT-2 because thats the mapper it uses. This is another case were docs I looked at were wrong. Correct register usage is:
bits 0-2: lower 3 bits of 8K VROM bank
bit 3: nametable select (uses single-screen)
bits 4-6: 16K PRG bank
bit 7: upper bit of 8K VROM bank
While Mito Kouman is the only game known to use this board, the board itself also supports hardwired H or V mirroring.
NTB-ROM-PCB | SUNSOFT-4 | 68: Wow this is a weird one, used in a "daul-cart" baseball game. There is a slot in the main cart to plugin a smaller cart. Unfortunately I don't have whatever was supposed to plug into it I think I still have it figured out though. To start off, it uses the Sunsoft-4 and also has 8K of battery-backed WRAM. PRG bank select is controled by register F000h with the following format:
---WRPPP where W = WRAM enable (0=off,1=on), R = ROM select (0=minicart rom,1=internal rom), and PPP is the 16K bank number of the selected rom. In a normal Sunsoft-4 cart, I would guess that R would just act as the upper-bit of normal bank select. When the mini-cart is not present, reading with that ROM selected results in open bus.
Jaleco:
I'm torn on how to classify these Jaleco boards. Recently I switched them all to be based on their exact names (JALECO-JF-xx), but this results in quite a bit of redundancy. Before they were based on their components, which removes all redundancy, but then you have names like JALECO-JF-<big list of discrete parts> which is rather ugly (many other boards are still defined this way). Anyways, only one "new" Jaleco board this time around:
JF-17 | JALECO-JF-17 | 72: This is pretty much exactly like INES 92 except this one maps 16K PRG banks into $8000 instead of $C000 like m92 does.
Another interesting thing I ran into was a revision of JF-13 PRG ROM. The original comes in a black cart and the revised one in a red cart. The original ROM pre-dates the revision by only 4 weeks.
Also just like to say again how bummed I am that the digital data on the speech synth chips used in many Jaleco games cannot be read!
Namco:
In previous notes I mentioned the odd behavior of the way PRG banking works in the game Youkai Douchuuki. The board in the one refered to uses 111F0S. To elaborate: It has a 128K PRG ROM, lets say there is a lower 64K and an upper 64K. Bank size is 8K. If you cycle thru each bank all the way thru to its max of 512K, and then break that into 64K pieces, it looks like this: LLLULLLU instead of LULULULU like you'd expect. I bring this up again because I dumped another one of these carts, this time using an epoxy board (60-14), and this one works the "normal" way... ROM data is the same too!
I also came across a few more of the oddball boards like Quinty (NAMCO-3443):
NAMCO-3433 | 88: Exactly like 3443 except has H mirroring instead of V.
NAMCO-3446 | 76: Similar to other 2, but CHR banking is setup a bit differently.
Seta:
Although a simple NROM game, it took me a bit of searching to figure out what the hell this was. This is the first Seta cart I've come across. They didn't publish too many games and I think they may have switched over to "official" carts at some point. Has a pretty funny back label with a "Do not feed to alligators" icon.
P3-020 | SETA-NROM-128 | 0: Nothing special, based on name, perhaps made by same mfg as some Taito boards.