Q: How do you make a cart?

[Jeffrey]

Suppose I want to make a permenant cart of a demo...

A swedish guy was telling me that I could get a rom burner, pop out a chip in a socketed gen cart, and do it.

Seems to simple. I don't get it. Is there any way to make a cart. Could I use the Totek dock somehow? How did the bootleggers do it back in the day? I am not asking to do anything illegal -- like sell them, etc.! I am just wondering how I could do it for sport.

What kind of chip do I need? Is there an eprom standard for gen? What type of burner do I need and where do you get them?

 

[Arakon]

you simply need to wire up a 16 bit or 2 8 bit eproms to the cart connector. that's all.

no, the tototek flasher can't do anything for that.. it's a totally "brainless" device, simply a wiring adapter from printer port to cart slot.

the easiest way is getting a bootleg cart, since they are already wired for eproms, not maskroms. remove eprom, solder in socket, burn eprom, plug in. if you want to be able to put the cart into a case, skip the socket.

 

[Jeffrey]

ok. I have plenty of bootleg carts to spare. I am going to crack one open tonight for inspection.

But I need to know some basics about eproms:

Can I get them at Radio Shack or something? I assume I can only burn it once so I don't want to mess it up... Is there a standard for size or type of chip I would need? Also, where does one get a burner? Is this serious hardware I should look for on the net?

For example,

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...25&category=162

or this which is now available...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...9&category=1504

 

[ExCyber]

Can I get them at Radio Shack or something?

Or something. You might want to call the local RS and ask them if there's a local place to which they refer people who need parts RS doesn't carry, because they won't have EPROMs.

I assume I can only burn it once so I don't want to mess it up...

If it has a window (ceramic package) it can be erased and rewritten. If not (plastic package), you can only write it once. Ones that can only be written once are called "OTP" (one time programmable).

 

[halo]

Build your own EPROM programmer:

http://www.mikeg2.freeserve.co.uk/eprom/eprom.html

Buy some 27c080 EPROMs. Insert and wire in. Don't know exactly what you can do, but that's the basics.

 

[AntiPasta]

I recall there was this SMS devving guy who actually used an old PC mainboard to flash ROMS... there's this bios flashing program that allows you to write the whole ROM (instead of what AWDflash does), and he mentioned booting with a normal bios chip and then removing it and putting in an empty chip (remember to turn BIOS Shadowing on) and flashing it

 

[Arakon]

that only works for flashroms, not eproms.

 

[AntiPasta]

does it make a difference on the Genesis side?

 

[Arakon]

the wiring is different and you won't find 8 mbit flashroms in DIP.