Trouble booting up old SMS carts, any ideas?

Post by **Scooter** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 12:07 am

I recently acquired a NIB Power Base Converter for my Genesis which allows me to play Sega Master System games through my Genesis. Along the way I've also acquired 11 SMS games. Most of the games boot right up but I've got two or three that deal me fits. Every single one of these things will eventually boot up if I remove and install the cart about a million times so it would appear the ROMs are okay but something is getting in the way. I've cleaned the contacts in the Genesis and in the converter and on the carts but nothing seems to help. The pins in the various cart slots seem to be clean and springy and all the contacts on the carts show good wear patterns where the pins in the receiver is making contact.

Once I can get one of these finicky games to boot up it will play all day, but getting it to load up in the first place takes a bunch of insert cart-turn on-turn off-remove cart-replace cart-repeat cycles.

I also have a 32x and Genesis carts load up with or without the 32X and 32X carts all load up just fine (except for my Knuckles Chaotix which now locks up just after the SEGA logo loads up, why does the most expensive one in the collection have to go bad?) and the Sega CD always loads up fine. It just totally baffles me that one SMS cart will load a million times out of a million but if I try one of the trouble makers it will load once out of a million.

Any suggestions would be most welcome.

Post by **lordofduct** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 12:28 am

Because the problem probably doesn't lay in the hardware... but in the cart themselves.

Cartridges have a some what limited life time. Something around 20+ years at best. And it is nearing that day very soon. They just probably heading the way of the dodo, that's all.

For a better idea of what exactly is happening in the cart that is going wrong, what happens when the game doesn't boot? Any funny screens, does it just stay black, does it freeze somewhere?

As for your Knuckles Chaotix... probably corrupt sectors on the PROM. I would LOVE to get into how that little doodad works in there, but really my brain hurts so much today from working that I think I'm gonna smash my brains into this keyboard. Why I choose such a life? I don't know... oh yeah, I'm crazy.

tootles!

Post by **Scooter** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 11:05 am

On the SMS carts all I'm getting is a blank screen, same screen I get if I turn the machine on with no cart inserted at all.

Teh Chaotix cart will load up the Sega logo and do some funky graphics for a second. Then the logo rushes toward the screen which should lead to the main screen for the game itself but it seems to freeze up on the screen with just part of the Sega logo showing and the game screen never appears. No amount of button mashing makes any difference. Pressing the reset on the Genesis sometimes reboots to the logo screen with ultimately the same result with a freeze up at exactly the same point or simply a blank screen.

By the way, this is the first I've ever heard of ROMs having a limited lifespan. Is it a matter of age or a matter of on/off cycles or a matter of hours of use?

Post by **marurun** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 1:33 pm

AFAIK, ROMs are relatively materially stable and should last a damn long time. If all your SMS carts are misbehaving it's more likely the hardware.

Post by **Scooter** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 2:08 pm

marurun wrote:AFAIK, ROMs are relatively materially stable and should last a damn long time. If all your SMS carts are misbehaving it's more likely the hardware.

Well that's just it, it is only certain carts that are acting up. I have other very reliable carts I use to make sure the hardware is still working before I try one of the troublesome ones.

If there is a hardware issue I believe it has to be in the Power Base Converter since the Genesis works fine by itself every time.

I wonder if a cart that doesn't work vs a cart that does work is using pins not used by the known working carts? I could compare them I suppose but I don't know what that knowledge would really gain me.

I still think it has to be a basic connectivity problem somewhere, but where? I've cleaned all the carts and the receivers multiple times though with no improvements.

Post by **lordofduct** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 2:41 pm

I'll stand by my statement... I have a couple SMS carts that do this as well (Shinobi... damn it), they also happen to be the games that have been beaten and thrown around the most through out their lives.

Post by **Scooter** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 3:12 pm

lordofduct wrote:I'll stand by my statement... I have a couple SMS carts that do this as well (Shinobi... damn it), they also happen to be the games that have been beaten and thrown around the most through out their lives.

Of the three games I'm having problems with, Shinobi is one of them. The other two are Zaxxon 3-D and Maze Hunter 3-D. Maybe some ROMs are just less stable?

In the research I've done today I've read that rewriteable ROM has a specific lifespan but I couldn't find any information on regular ROM (called masked ROM) having any specific lifespan. I assume these games have masked ROM since there would never be any reason for the ROM to be updated or changed.

The thing that really bugs me is I can occassionally get each of these games to load up and play just fine. I've had trouble with some used Game Gear games not booting or acting buggy but cleaning the contacts always clears that up. I have yet to have a Game Gear or Genesis cart go bad in all my years of gaming. In fact none of my 32X carts have ever gone bad except for the recent failure of the Chaotix cart and it was working fine a few weeks ago.

I wish I could find another Power Base Converter for a few bucks so I could test out if another one would work better and if not then it must be the cart.

Post by **lordofduct** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 3:35 pm

Scooter wrote:
lordofduct wrote:I'll stand by my statement... I have a couple SMS carts that do this as well (Shinobi... damn it), they also happen to be the games that have been beaten and thrown around the most through out their lives.
Of the three games I'm having problems with, Shinobi is one of them. The other two are Zaxxon 3-D and Maze Hunter 3-D. Maybe some ROMs are just less stable?

In the research I've done today I've read that rewriteable ROM has a specific lifespan but I couldn't find any information on regular ROM (called masked ROM) having any specific lifespan. I assume these games have masked ROM since there would never be any reason for the ROM to be updated or changed.

The thing that really bugs me is I can occassionally get each of these games to load up and play just fine. I've had trouble with some used Game Gear games not booting or acting buggy but cleaning the contacts always clears that up. I have yet to have a Game Gear or Genesis cart go bad in all my years of gaming. In fact none of my 32X carts have ever gone bad except for the recent failure of the Chaotix cart and it was working fine a few weeks ago.

I wish I could find another Power Base Converter for a few bucks so I could test out if another one would work better and if not then it must be the cart.

There are several different kinds of ROMs

masked ROM - these are hard wired at manufacturing, most affordable but can not be rewritten. Their life span if handled properly and not shocked by large currents can be anywheres from 25 to 100 years (hypothetical that is... never actually proven as they were invented in 1956 or something like that)

PROM - a one time programmable ROM, these are just as fast to read as masked ROMs, but are received empty and you burn them only ONCE. These are also sometimes used in games (not sure why!), and have a shorter life span... about 20 to maybe 50 years depending on care.

EPROM, EEPROM and better are all erasable, slow process, and if they were ever used in cartridges I'd be surprised. These things are expensive as all hell.

ROM and PROM are both fairly secure as it uses a series of fuses to represent 1's, and you remove the fuse to represent a 0 across an entire grid (in PROMs the device short circuits the fuse for the bit you want making it pop. Nice and solid process, but even so they are still fuses, and fuses can pop through age, damage, shaking, and many other things. It's just harder then say scratching a CD or rubbing a magnet over an HDD.

It is suggested by many that there is no real data storage device that can be trusted for more then 2 decades, despite the theory behind it being capable of it.

Post by **marurun** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 10:05 pm

I think what it comes down to is manufacturing quality and care. It may be certain SMS carts got a really low cost, low quality run.

Post by **Scooter** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 11:57 pm

Well, they are all Sega brand carts but I've no idea when they were manufactured. Regardless, I can now get them all to boot using a trick told to me on another board. Weird, but I'm just glad they all work.