Hey guys, I recently found a pirate NES cart from the 90's. To my surprise, contrary to the common practice of using CIC stun circuit as most pirate multi-cart of that era did, it seem to be using an IC to replicate the CIC handshake. I saw many pirate cart before but it is the first time I come across this. Anybody ever documented those before?
Here are pictures of it:
http://www.skinnyv.com/img/pirate_f.jpghttp://www.skinnyv.com/img/pirate_b.jpgP.S I'm the one who covered the EPROM windows
Are you sure that CIC isn't pulled from an authentic NES Game Pak with its identifying markings filed off? In the "PassMe" and "PassMe2" era of Nintendo DS homebrew, most boot cards had a slot for an authentic DS game that would run part of the cryptographic handshake, but a few later products (sold just before the "NoPass" era) included an authentic mask ROM with built-in crypto, desoldered from a DS Game Card and soldered onto a PCB with the CPLD circuit on one PCB.
I highly doubt it is salvaged from an official cart. This PCB is from a multi-cart from around the beginning of the 1990's I would say and I do not see how it would have been profitable for them. I also do not think somebody soldered it in afterward because firstly, it would have not booted on most North American system without it since there is no stun circuit anywhere on that PCB's adapter. And secondly, if somebody would have soldered it in, I doubt they would have taken the time to sand off the top of the official Nintendo's CIC and then giving it a nice finish like you see on official IC. But then again the silkscreen layer identify that spot as 6113... Is there some test that would reveal if it's a genuine 6113 (beside decapping) ?
Looks like somebody cloned an official Nintendo adapter, as seen in
early Gyromite carts. Any known way to differentiate between a RABBIT chip and an authentic 6113 without the chip markings? It's either one of those two, or a currently unknown cloning attempt. Does the cart work reliably on a US NES-001 system?
Yeah, it work on my unmodified NES without issue. The more I think about it, the more I think Tepples might be right but I just don't understand how it could have been a profitable thing to do for pirate that are known for cutting corner and producing the cheapest way possible. Also, those peoples were usually in the market for a quick profit and are not known to really do any more than the minimum so why not stick to a stun circuit that only cost the ma few cents at best? There's even the 6113 marking on the pcb, which I find very curious because those pirate pcb rarely have any kind of silk screen or marking on them. Could they possibly have found a load of worthless games back then to salvage the IC from (unlikely IMO)? I'm pretty sure the official CIC was tightly controlled by Nintendo and I don't see how they could have managed to have a plant divert a few thousand of them to create that batch of cart either... I personally have opened and seen load of pirate carts before but never came across that kind of thing, not even in carts that weren't using a famicom to nes adapter and were build straight for the NES system. Anybody ever found something similar?
There were plenty of SNES copiers with CIC clones in them, I'd believe it's possible the NES CIC could have gotten the same treatment. I don't know what they used for pirate NES carts.
SkinnyV wrote:
I personally have opened and seen load of pirate carts before but never came across that kind of thing, not even in carts that weren't using a famicom to nes adapter and were build straight for the NES system. Anybody ever found something similar?
I have a 'rockman5' asian pirate that is the darkwing duck pirate with rockman graphics. I opened it up and suprised to see that there was a similar 60 to 72 pin adapter board. Although they just used little chunks of solder to bridge the connection vice an actual socket. There was a place to drop in what looked like an official CIC but it's empty.
Sounds kinda like I have the cheaper/less complete version of what you've got.
Code:
PRG: up to 4 x 1 MiB ROM
CHR: 8 kiB RAM
No bus conflicts.
Register is cleared on powerup & reset.
REG: $8000-$ffff
fedcba9876543210
A~[1.mpvmPP...PPPPP]
|||||| | ||||
|||||| +-++++- PRG bank (A19-A15)
||||++---------- PRG bank (A21-A20)
+||+------------ mirroring (00=V, 01=H, 10/11=1Sc0)
|+------------- PRG mode (0=32k, 1=16k)
+-------------- PRG bank (A14)
v | $8000-$bfff | $c000-$ffff |
0 PPPPPPPp PPPPPPPp
1 PPPPPPP0 PPPPPPP1