32X carts

IceDigger

Founder
Staff member
Are 32X carts completely pin-compatible to genesis carts? how do they identify as 32X carts, I assume by having a grounded pin (similar to the way the SMS adapter works for setting the genesis to SMS mode), if so, which one?
 
Well, you might be able to use a bit of deductive reasoning here... what happens when a 32x cart is put into a Genesis without a 32x?
 
Well, doesn't it work to plug a Genesis cart into the 32X cart slot and have it run normally? If so, then I bet the pinout is identical, at least for RAM/ROM access. I think 32X games are identified by having a different system signature in the cartridge header, something like SEGA GENESIS 32X rather than SEGA MEGA DRIVE or SEGA GENESIS. The 32X BIOS probably detects this and boots the cartridge differently.
 
I tried burning a 32X game to one of my eprom carts, and it fails to load.. simply black screen.
 
I used a 24 mbit rom, padded to 32, on my second eprom cart, and it worked with blackthorne.. so I guess the rom was prolly bad, or the first eprom cart is lacking a needed pin.
 
sort of.

I actually had someone send me some genesis bootlegs from brazil, and replaced the eproms with sockets, plus rewired them to work for up to 32 mbit (ex-cyber helped me quite a bit with the latter).

if you can get any of those carts, look for the ones that use 4 eproms for the game.. those can be configured for up to 32 mbit, using 27c8001/27c080/27c801 eproms (or 4001/040 for up to 16 mbit).

they'll work without modification for 32x games too.

something similar applies for SMS too, btw.. you can use a monopoly cart to convert it to use a 4001 eprom, including sram (phantasy star, baby!).. mike G sent me the info on rewiring those, and it works great.
 
oh yeah.. almost forgot.

you need an eprom burner of course, and some tools Eidolon wrote to convert a .bin genny rom to the right format.. you have to dump the original game eproms first to find out how the rom parts are ordered, then use eidolon's tool to split a rom properly, and burn the parts in the same order as the original rom from the old eproms.
 
I do have two of those carts.... containing Spiderman and fantasy now... will attempt that when I get access to an eprom writter.... not in the near future since I am out of school now.

Thanks for all the info, will go to Eidolon's site to get more info on the subject.
 
the tools aren't available on his page, and a readme doesn't exist for them either.. he had written them for me :p

I can send them to you, of course.

btw, it should be possible to use flashroms (there's nearly pin compatible ones), but they're much more expensive and I haven't seen 8 mbit ones, just 4 mbit.
 
yeah, it was called cartsomething.. but never went beyond the writer/reader part, the carts were never created, it was basically only good for dumping.

you should be able to build a small eprom burner yourself, btw.. doesn't seem THAT complicated, and there's a bunch of cheap ones for these basic eproms too.
 
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