Zig's SNES Repros

[bacteria]

Sounds like a bit of a con. They probably make their items appear cheaper then add it to the "postage" charge. Personally, I don't do business with people who can't tell me up front what the total price is before I decide (exactly for the reason you encountered); if they make an error afterwards, then that is their issue not mine!

[Joshie]

It seems you are pouring too much money into each repro with the methods you are using... but if you are inclined to go with 29f032 in tsop form, I can hand you a few tips.

First, make a cart with a socket that matches your programmer's tsop top adapter that has the socket. I used ide ribbon cable (the kind for hd's) since it has 2 rows of 20 and is perfect for this task, and was free since it was laying around for me. Wire it to where the maskrom goes. Then after you program, you can take the top adapter with the tsop chip and confirm it working on the real hardware, so you can be sure it is a soldering problem.

As far as soldering the buggers go, I tin the bottom of the pins with solder before i even put it on the board, suspended upside down so there is no chance of shorting them. Then I put it on the board, take a clean tip, and just heat the pins. This works almost all the time with minimum heat to the chip (just touch the pin with the clean tip). Of course, it has a very small chance of shorting still but this is your best bet, no need for extra process and materials.

(Yes, I registered just to post this, hi Racketboy community)

*Edit: another low budget tip: Get a 9 volt battery, a resistor, and an LED. positive > resistor > led > wire with open end. Connect the negative terminal to another wire. Touch the two wires to the dip pads on your tsop to dip pcb that represent adjacent pins on the tsop chip. This is a quick way to tell if you have a short between pins (it will light up since the short completes the circuit). Of course, do this before you solder this onto the main cart pcb

[Ziggy]

Sounds like a bit of a con. They probably make their items appear cheaper then add it to the "postage" charge. Personally, I don't do business with people who can't tell me up front what the total price is before I decide (exactly for the reason you encountered); if they make an error afterwards, then that is their issue not mine!

Yeah, that really sucks. I know they mostly cater to large industrial companies, so the little guy ends up getting screwed. My friend clued me in to them, as I said, he knew of them from his intern. But after I saw a TV ad, I figured they might be a great place to order from. In the end, that might be the first and last order I give them.

[Joshie]

Have you used TSOP40-SNES DIP adapters before? If so, I think I have a few questions for you.

Nah, I just used a standard tsop test board to wire to the cart. I decided I'd make an pcb adapter if I was going to go with that chip, but it proved to be too costly/annoying.

Not too sure what you mean. Which methods are we talking about? Do you mean the flux? One bottle of flux should last a few hundred repros being that only a few eye drops are used on each one. I think your confusing one-time costs with per-cart cost.

I was referring to the tsop to snes dip adapters and the memory you were using

After searching the Internet for a while, I found that a lot of people have different, and sometimes only slightly different, methods for soldering the chip. I wouldn't really say that using flux is an unneeded process and material. It only takes a second to put a drop of flux down. And liquid flux is something I need anyway as I do a lot of soldering outside of repros.

Sorry, it wasn't the flux i was on about. I was rushing when I typed this. I meant to preapply the solder to the pins before resting it on the board.

I understand the diagnostic, and it sounds like another great idea, but I don't know what you mean by "adjacent pins on the tsop." Which pins am I touching the NEG and POS to?

The dip pins that represent adjacent tsop pins on your adapter. Like, tsop pin 1 is dip pin 32 (my memory serves me), and pin 2 is dip pin 4, so you would touch the positive to 32 and negative to 4, to see if those tsop pins were shorted.

[Ziggy]

Oh, I know exactly what you mean. That's a great idea, and I have all that junk lying around. Thanks for the tip.

[Ziggy]

Some news in my little world of repros....

I got the *method working!!









But in other news...

I found out it's VERY easy making Genesis repros, they're probably the easiest repros you can make lol. I'm gonna have to make one, I'm thinking about doing a translated Bare Knuckle 3. There's also a nice hack of Mortal Kombat II which adds in the hidden characters as well as the bosses as playable characters, among other things. But other than that, I'm kinda clueless as to what Genesis repros I should make. I was a SNES guy back in the day lol. Does any one have any suggestions?

I also found a site that shows you how to make Gameboy & GB Color repros. And even better, they show you how to turn a Gameboy pak into a flash cart AND how to build a programmer for it! They also show how to make GBA repros.

Is there a (cheap/easy) way to do this for GBA carts?

While I found out how to do it, I definitely wouldn't call it cheap/easy. Cheap, eh, wouldn't cost more to make than any other repro but I'd probably be inclined to charge more to make one because of how easy it is not. I'm also not sure if I have the right equipment to program the necessary flash chips anyway.

[jfe2]

Would it be possible to put some of the Sega Channel releases on cartridges? Such as the American versions of Mega Man: Wily Wars and Alien Soldier?

[Ziggy]

Would it be possible to put some of the Sega Channel releases on cartridges? Such as the American versions of Mega Man: Wily Wars and Alien Soldier?

If the ROMs were released for them, most likely yes.

[Hobie-wan]

Would it be possible to put some of the Sega Channel releases on cartridges? Such as the American versions of Mega Man: Wily Wars and Alien Soldier?

Alien Soldier seems like a good candidate. Depending on the feeling since there wouldn't be any translation, but super expensive games like Gleylancer/Undead Line/Eliminate Down that never came out over here would probably be welcome too.

[Troglodyte]

I'm kinda clueless as to what Genesis repros I should make. I was a SNES guy back in the day lol. Does any one have any suggestions?

Basically any PAL or JPN only Mega Drive games, are what you should make.
Or if there are extremely rare NTSC games, but I'm not sure about those.

I have paid big money to acquire Daze Before Christmas, Mega Man The Willy Wars, Duke Nukem 3D, Nightmare Circus (hasn't arrived yet) and a couple others. I would probably turn around and sell my real copies of some of them, especially if a 50Hz to 60Hz speed correction patch was available for some of these ROMs.