I took my CopyNES out of storage to try to see if I could dump some Famicom and NES cartridges with it. Unfortunately, when I use the Test function in Bootgod's software, it can't establish communication. I did have the CopyNES turned on during the test, and I am using the original DB-25 cable provided by Kevin. I tried all four parallel port settings in the BIOS (SPP, EPP, ECP, EPP+ECP) and none of them worked. What is the next step in troubleshooting?
That sucks to hear :/ My CopyNES has started to act a little flakey the past couple weeks as well. What seems to fix it for me is re-seating the copynes board or just playing with it. If you have the top off, you can get your fingers underneath the copynes board and play with it a little.
The DB-25 cable can be fussy too, try and make sure it doesn't run along with other cords, it must be a shielding issue. This usually won't cause it to stop working completely though, more so it just causes random stalls during dumping.
Did your unit work before you put it in storage? If so, are you using it with the same PC as before?
Also, from what I've heard (and I had one like this as well), the port chip (6522 i think) has been DOA. If you happen to have a C64 disk drive around, you could pull one out and try replacing the copnes one with it.
I had some trouble with it before it was packed away, but I wrote that off to problems with the DOS client. No, I haven't used it on this computer before.
I opened the case and checked the ribbon cable going from the board to the DB-25 connector; it seemed solid. Getting to the board itself would require removing the cartridge connector. (Incidentally, I replaced that with a new MCM connector right before having it modded, so there shouldn't be any problems on that front.)
I have no idea why the 6522 would have blown out. I suppose if it was that, I could pull one from a 1541 floppy drive, or just buy one on-line for a couple of bucks. Is it socketed, though? I don't really feel like doing soldering on the board.
Yeah you basically have to take the whole damn thing apart to detach the copynes pcb :/ The 6522 is socketed, so if you have one around it'd be an easy thing to check.
Do you happen the know the motherboard model in your PC?
I don't recall the exact model (and the original packaging is buried somewhere or thrown away), but I do know that my motherboard has a SiS 648 chipset. The parallel port is part of the "Super I/O" section of that chipset, according to the BIOS, which I think is pretty standard for modern boards (no one uses discrete components any more for this). It's running a Pentium 4 Willamette 1.8GHz @ 2.4GHz.
Hmm I don't think I've ever used that chipset before, so I couldn't tell you from experience if it should work or not