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Thread: ROM to Cart?

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    Strawberry (Level 2) Necrosaro420's Avatar
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    Default ROM to Cart?

    skjd

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    Default Re: ROM to Cart?

    Quote Originally Posted by Necrosaro420
    make sure original game and the cart im puting it on is the same format/kind
    This is more tricky than it sounds. Especially if you're talking about NES games... Have you ever heard emulators refer to "mappers"? Each mapper is essentially a different cartridge layout, and there are dozens (if not hundreds) of different ones. Keep in mind too that some cartridges have special chips in them... like the NES games with battery back-up, or the MMC cartridges. Replacing the ROMS will still work on cartridges like this I imagine, but you'll have to make sure not to remove anything important.

    Depending on the system, or on the type of cartridge, it might be tough to find exactly the right type of EEPROMs as well. Take the INTV for example... Mattel used an exceptionally goofy type of ROM chip for their cartridges, and homebrew programmers have had a really tough time with them.

    then wire it in and its ready to go?
    That's a bit of an oversimplification. The vast majority of cartridges have the chips soldered into them. You can desolder them, but you'll have to be fairly handy with a soldering iron to do this without completely wrecking the board. If you really do want to do this properly, you'll definitely want to remove the chip(s) and install a socket(s) so that you can insert and remove future chips without the need for soldering. Also, some newer systems (and especially handhelds) use surface-mount chips, which are a lot harder to deal with. Unless you're REALLY good with a soldering iron, abandon all hope when you find these.

    To be honest, unless you want to do some homebrew work, or get into the reproduction business, it's probably not worth the trouble. For the price you'll end up paying for an EEPROM programmer, blank chips, and some spare carts to cannibalize, you could probably have bought the actual cartridges you wanted in the first place... and with all the time you'll end up spending modifying the cartridges and burning the EEPROM, you could have just played the game in an emulator instead.

    --Zero

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    Default

    my question is, what about doing this with the same game you're putting the rom into. Like say Final Fantasy 2 SNES. What if you want a better translation? So you throw in one of the hacked roms and sac a FF2 cart which has essentially the same game on it. How possible is that?


    I have a hacked rom I'd love to make into cart form just to see to completion.


    -AG
    -AB+

    Holy crap. It's been a while.

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    Pear (Level 6)
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    Default

    The only thing you could try doing is try to find a copier and than play the rom on acutally hardware. This always isn't the easiest thing to do. Plus also some of those translations and hacks won't work on real hardware as the emulators don't eunlate the hardware correctly. There quite a few translations that I know don't work on the real systems. So even if you did go through this process there's no guarantee that it will work or that the game might lock up on you later which would really stuck for games like RPGs.

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    Default

    aw damn, so my dream of playing the "Terra-Celes-Krista" lesbian love triangle hack of Final Fantasy IV on an actual SNES is a pipe dream, huh?


    -AG
    -AB+

    Holy crap. It's been a while.

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    Red (Level 21) Jorpho's Avatar
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    Default

    Methinks an FF2 cart is far too valuable to cannibalize in such a way anyway.

    I seem to recall that the key to getting patched ROMs to run on a copier is to make sure the checksum is good. You'd probably be able to fix that with SNESTool or maybe even UCON64, but I wouldn't be sure.

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    Great Puma (Level 12) Bratwurst's Avatar
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    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Jorpho
    Methinks an FF2 cart is far too valuable to cannibalize in such a way anyway.
    That, and I'm sure there's a cheaper game that uses the same board and battery backup scheme as FF2 does anyway.

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    Pear (Level 6)
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    Default

    Yea but probably finding another cart like FF2 probably isn't that easy, not that I have ever tried.

    Generally most of the hackers generally don't worry about if the rom has a good checksum or not. Generally you can play most of those translations/hacks on a emulator even with a bad checksum and it's pretty easy to fix. Not sure how that affect playing it on a real system as the only one I have anymore is a Duo for cart based systems.

    You can also fix the checksum if you know what your doing. I knew how to it many years ago but don't remember anymore.

    There's still quite a few of them that won't work even with a good checksum. Unless you have a fairly good understanding of computer programming and or how those hackers reverse engineer, change level data, mofify graphics, dump, translate, and reinsert an english script into a game you probably won't understand.

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    Red (Level 21) Jorpho's Avatar
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    Default

    It isn't necessarily that complicated. If I am not mistaken, there are many ROMs which can be hacked and translated with relatively simple tools that recall barely any knowledge of programming. (Things only get particularly tricky when compressed text or graphics are involved.)

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    Insert Coin (Level 0)
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    Default

    i make FF2 & FF3 nes english carts and snes DQ5 & 6 english carts (very easy)

    examples: FF3 cart i make on modifi KIRBYS ADVENTURE cart

    info:
    http://nintendoallstars.w.interia.pl/romlab/romlab.htm

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    Default

    Tototek.com sells flash carts for Genesis/32X (32X games only work with their 64Mbit cart, not the 32Mbit one), SNES (64Mbit), Game Gear (32Mbit), PCE/TG16 (32Mbit), and SMS (32Mbit). They can't dump original games AFAIK, but you can use them to run backup ROMs or homebrew ROMs. When I can get some money put back, I plan on using one of the Genesis 64Mbit carts as a homebrew development system.

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    Flawless Rawkality Flack's Avatar
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    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by LocalH
    Tototek.com sells flash carts for Genesis/32X (32X games only work with their 64Mbit cart, not the 32Mbit one), SNES (64Mbit), Game Gear (32Mbit), PCE/TG16 (32Mbit), and SMS (32Mbit). They can't dump original games AFAIK, but you can use them to run backup ROMs or homebrew ROMs. When I can get some money put back, I plan on using one of the Genesis 64Mbit carts as a homebrew development system.
    They backup original games just fine. I haven't tried a LOT of games, but all the ones I've tried dumped just fine.

    EDIT: I'm working on 48 hours with not much sleep, please forgive me. I'm thinking of my MGH (MultiGame Hunter) that I've dumped Genesis games with. I don't really remember if I've dumped games with Tototek's card or not. I will pull it out and try it tonight.

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    Default

    I was under the impression that the actual hardware necessary to interface to the writer was actually on the cart PCB itself. If this turns out not to be the case, then I'll probably buy one sooner than I was planning on.

  14. #14
    Pear (Level 6)
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    Default

    SNES copiers are really cheap.. and easily found (I had 3 go through my hands in the last year!)

    They can play almost every SNES games.. and games that require special hardware (e.g. starfox 2) can use starfox 1 as a slave for the missing hardware (FX chip)

    The cheap cost of the copiers, and its availability are the main reasons I've decided not to reproduce SNES games at this time.

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