Az
08-02-2010, 01:55 AM
So I pick up a copy of Shin Samurai Spirits: Haohmaru Jigokuhen (Samurai Shodown II) for Mega Drive. Plop it into my Genesis and within about 2 minutes the cart crashes, complete with freezing along with garbage letters and numbers across the top portion of the screen. Strangely enough, the BGM still played.
I reset the console, black screen. Removed the cart, black screen. Cleaned everything, prayed, etc, still a black screen. I even tried the game on my Nomad and got nothing. Out of about 2 dozen tries I managed to get a blue screen on bootup, but other than that, nothing.
So, figuring the cart is garbage anyway, I decide to inspect the PCB. Being a pirate globtop job there are no components to really inspect, but I do check out the traces to make sure nothing has gone haywire.
A brief search yielded no results for a ROM image, so I figured I had nothing to lose by trying to dump the cart myself. I slapped it into my Double Pro Fighter and amazingly enough the cartridge was recognized and ROM dumped without hitch! I was able to load it on both my DPF and Everdrive Cart without problems.
So I went back and tried something else, loading and playing from the cartridge with the DPF hooked up, and that worked also!? Then I tried the cart with a Mega Key II adapter (works), a Pro Action Replay 1 & 2 (works), and a Game Genie (doesn't work).
What sort of error would allow the cart to boot when ran through one of those devices but not straight into the console? I realize "lol pirate cart" but there has to be a technical reason behind this strangeness, especially being that the cart worked briefly before it crashed without requiring any additional hardware.
I reset the console, black screen. Removed the cart, black screen. Cleaned everything, prayed, etc, still a black screen. I even tried the game on my Nomad and got nothing. Out of about 2 dozen tries I managed to get a blue screen on bootup, but other than that, nothing.
So, figuring the cart is garbage anyway, I decide to inspect the PCB. Being a pirate globtop job there are no components to really inspect, but I do check out the traces to make sure nothing has gone haywire.
A brief search yielded no results for a ROM image, so I figured I had nothing to lose by trying to dump the cart myself. I slapped it into my Double Pro Fighter and amazingly enough the cartridge was recognized and ROM dumped without hitch! I was able to load it on both my DPF and Everdrive Cart without problems.
So I went back and tried something else, loading and playing from the cartridge with the DPF hooked up, and that worked also!? Then I tried the cart with a Mega Key II adapter (works), a Pro Action Replay 1 & 2 (works), and a Game Genie (doesn't work).
What sort of error would allow the cart to boot when ran through one of those devices but not straight into the console? I realize "lol pirate cart" but there has to be a technical reason behind this strangeness, especially being that the cart worked briefly before it crashed without requiring any additional hardware.