Flashing SNES Carts

[Frag Mortuus]

Hey Guys,

I wonder if anyone knows what is involved in flashing custom ROMs onto SNES carts. I would love to have the ability to play Seiken Densetsu 3 (Secret of Mana 2) as well as games like Terranigma, Star Fox 2, and Bahamut Lagoon in English on my SNES.

I know it can be done because I've seen these reproductions for sale on the internet for an astronomical amount of money. So, what would I need to do it? Any ideas?

Thanks!!!!

[Frag Mortuus]

http://snesdev.romhack.de/

I found this page....has anyone on here ever done this?

[ice445]

You need some rather expensive equipment, like an EEPROM flasher. It's probably worth just emulating the games.

[Frerix]

This is the very reason I bought a Super Everdrive!
I didn't want to use emulation either, so an Everdrive was the only cheap way to play translations on their original hardware.

You could also pick the SD2SNES or SNES PowerPak (depending on your budget)

[bacteria]

Some modders can make such repro carts, with asking them - ones that come to mind are Ziggy587, Drakon, Doug.

If you want more than one of any of the carts though, probably cheaper to get the Everdrive as it's probably about the same price as getting two repro carts.

[Tildius Maximus]

i really enjoy the quality of the repros that the guy from ocdreproductions.com makes. he is really good about answering emails and has a pretty quick turnaround time on shipping your order. anywhere you get them though, expect most to cost around 50 or 60 dollars. so if budget is an issue, i would go with the super everdrive.

[Ziggy]

Some modders can make such repro carts, with asking them - ones that come to mind are Ziggy587, Drakon, Doug.

If you want more than one of any of the carts though, probably cheaper to get the Everdrive as it's probably about the same price as getting two repro carts.

Bac, it's much appreciated that you mentioned me by name, but I no longer make repro carts. I'll use this as an opportunity to tell why, as well as give my two cents to Frag Mortuus...

I'm not gonna sit here and pretend like I'm some great noble person above the rest of you, but the main reason why I stopped making repros (and urge everyone to consider this) is the ethics/morals I have for video games. Making a repro cart means the sacrifice of an authentic video game cart. I'm all about preserving video games and consoles, so I can't very well in good conscience make or even support these repro carts anymore. I'll just make this short and sweet and leave it at that.

My advice to you, Frag Mortuus, is to get a flash cart. A few people have suggested this already. Let me put it to you this way: The average cost of a SNES repro, as the ones you have mentioned, is $50-60. So if you wanted to get Seiken Densetsu 3, Bahamut Lagoon, and Terranigma, that would cost you about $150-180. For that price, you can easily get a flash cart (and potentially have some money left over). So economically, a flash cart is a better choice. Not only will you be able to play the three games you want to right now, but you'll be able to play many more games as well. Also, if a translation patch ever gets updated, you'll be able to update to the new version with no problem. This is not true with repro carts. And of course, you wont be destroying any games to play the ones you want to.

We're lucky enough to have a few SNES flash carts available for us right now, and I'm sure we'll be getting new and better ones as times goes on. There's four main SNES flash carts available right now, as far as I know. I wrote up some info on them here, if you're interested. In short, they range from just $60 to about $200. Please note about the linked thread: The title of each flash cart is a link to the website for it, and the Sd2Snes has been released since the time I posted the info.

[Frag Mortuus]

Ok, new direction.

It seems like the reason why this is such a hard process is that there has to be new chips soldered to the boards and all that. So, how hard would it be to take a Japanese SFC cart and flash the English translated ROM to the cart? Seeing how the cart is built to hold the game in question, that takes out a huge piece of the puzzle, which is making a cart big enough to hold the new ROM.

Example: Take a SFC Seiken Densetsu 3 cart a flash the translated Secret of Mana 2 ROM onto it.

I know that I'm simplifying this process too much, but I think that would decrease the amount of work needed.

[Hobie-wan]

That's the thing. The chips in the cart can't have the information changed on them. So you have to buy chips that you can write the information to that are compatible. Then you have to have the hardware to plug those chips into and connect to your PC to send the information to them. Then you have to solder the chips on the board. However you might not have chips with the exact right pinout, so you might have to bend up certain legs and use small wires to reroute things to the appropriate place on the board.

[Ziggy]

Ok, new direction.

It seems like the reason why this is such a hard process is that there has to be new chips soldered to the boards and all that. So, how hard would it be to take a Japanese SFC cart and flash the English translated ROM to the cart? Seeing how the cart is built to hold the game in question, that takes out a huge piece of the puzzle, which is making a cart big enough to hold the new ROM.

Example: Take a SFC Seiken Densetsu 3 cart a flash the translated Secret of Mana 2 ROM onto it.

I know that I'm simplifying this process too much, but I think that would decrease the amount of work needed.

It actually would not decrease the amount of work. It'd be the same amount of work either way. Putting SoM2 on a Seiken Densetsu 3 cart would be the same exact work as putting SoM2 on an NHL 95 (donor) cart. There's no difference at all. You'd still have to remove the original mask ROM and replace (solder) it with new memory that you programmed the translated ROM onto. If you had the PCBs from a NHL 95 and Sieken Densetsu 3 cart, you wouldn't be able to tell them apart.

So as far as the work goes, no difference. But as far as the ethics go, big difference. Putting a translated game onto its own SFC cart (like SoM2 on a SD3 cart) means you don't have to use a donor cart, which means you didn't have to destroy a game to make the one you wanted. I also find translated SFC "repros" to be more collectible since they have their original and official cart label, as oppose to a less than stellar home made label.

But yeah, the same amount of work has to be done either way.