I don't have the skills to do this project myself, but I would like to make carts for the Sega Genesis (MegaDrive).
I had the two pictured below made for me by a kid overseas. He charged me around us$20 each. The picture is blurry because I just scanned them; my camera can't get good close ups. I think it's a capacitor, resistor, and a chip of some sort. Keep in mind that I know nothing about electronics.
I just emailed him the ROMs and he made the carts. He said it was really easy. Now, I can't easily find him. Anyway. There are a few public domain hacks that I would like on individual carts. Can anyone tackle this project? Of course, you'd need a Genesis or MegaDrive (switchable to NTSC) to test it. And a ROM burner of some sort. I'd pay for time and materials, of course.
That seems like a 16Mbit flash memory chip you got on there.
I could use some of the 16MBit EPROM I just bought for my Amiga triple kickstart device.
alldatasheet says this is dual config 2Mx8/1Mx16 flash chip. It seems to be perfectly pin compatible with the EPROMs I have.
The board with the gold plated edge connector is probably the most difficult part to get right.
How many of these would you need? Please keep in mind that board production facilities charge 55$ just to set up their machine so the more you want, the lower the price per board.
If the price isn't crazy expensive, I'd be interested in some too, as long as it could play the Genesis NHL '98 ROM. I've got an EEPROM burner here which I assume will take the right size EEPROMs.
I want to play some of the hacked Sega NHL games out there, and possibly create my own hacks too.
Jeff: did you know that there is a professionally made Sega Genesis flash cart? I have one. If you're interested, I'll try to find the info.
Yeah, Tototek hooked me up with these. Like I said, I paid around $20 each. I also have a flash cart from Tototek, but it's broken. Can anyone make it for a comparable price or cheaper?
Yeah, I have the Tototek flash cart too. But a cheaper card with a socketed EEPROM would be ideal.
I'm still playing Sega Genesis hockey with friends, and we sometimes have 3 or 4 systems set up at once, and we have to go through all sorts of painful configuration on each cart to handle trades etc. It can take up to an hour *per cart* to get everything right. I'd love to be able to edit the rosters on my PC, then burn them to eeprom.
I know. Tototek. I already have the flash cart. I want a dedicated cart with a permanent rom. Tommy (of Totek) made the two dedicated carts pictured above. I was going to ask him again, and I thought I would just check if anyone closer could do it.
If it helps, I can explain the purpose. I have a 6 slot multi cart changer. I have several public domain roms I would like to use at the same time on the multi-cart changer (I have it mounted in my arcade cabinet and set to rotate carts every 2 minutes). A single flash cart is not exactly what I want.
Jeff-20 wrote:I want a dedicated cart with a permanent rom. Tommy (of Totek) made the two dedicated carts pictured above. I was going to ask him again, and I thought I would just check if anyone closer could do it.
I can do it no problem.
All I need is for you to let me have one I can use as a temporary reference. Don't worry, I'll get it back to you once I'm done.
I need to know how many you want. Also, do you have any cart like that that is faulty so I can experiment with it?
I think some people on the net actually ripped apart old gen carts and just replaced the chips to make new games. That may be a cheaper method than making new boards. The copy right dates on the boards pictured seem to indicate that is how my carts came to be. In that case, I just need new chips and a rom burner that could handle 'em. I could send some random common carts if I know what to look for inside.
Do you have a Genesis to test them?
Of course, there's this guy who made his own reprogrammable cart, but that is far beyond what I need. I just want two of three permenant carts. I think that should be much more simple. I should also point out that my ROMs don't require the ability to save games. There's also a little info about pin layouts here. But this is all outside of my personal ability.
The reprogrammable cart you gave a link to seems to me like a real poor man's solution I wouldn't want to touch.
Instead of using a single 16 bit wide memory chip, he uses two 8 bit wide chips and the data has to be split in some weird way. I assume he did this because he couldn't program memory chips of 40 pins or more.
I don't really need an actual Genesis machine to test the result of my work. If I know what you want to put in the cart and how the data is organized in the memory chip then the likelihood of failure is just about nonexistent.
There are Genesis emulators on the PC which can be used to verify if the code performs well. Once that's done then its just a matter of putting this code at the right place, in the right order and that is why I would need to borrow a working cart from you.
As for the boards, of course, if you have a few Genesis carts to sacrifice, they could do the job instead of producing new PCBs.
The new chips you would need can be 27C400, 27C800, 27C160 or 27C322 depending on the size of the game you want to put in the cart.
These are 40 and 42 pins chips. It takes a pretty good programmer to burn in these... and I have a pretty good programmer...
Oh sorry. I got Tomy in Hong Kong to try it first. Of course, I am still waiting for the item. It was shipped more than a month ago! I think it is caught in customs or something. I want two more. I just tested with Tomy first because he said he could do it for $20 each. I think he already has all the parts he would need to make my carts from other projects he has done.
