Can you make/get SNES CIC & MAD-1 chips or clones?

A place that you can discuss reproduction of classic titles or "licensed-for-reproduction" homebrew for personal use.

Moderators: B00daW, Moderators

Forum rules
1. NO BLATANT PIRACY. This includes reproducing homebrew less than 10 years old, with the exception of free software.
2. No advertising your reproductions, with the exception of free software.
3. Be nice. See RFC 1855 if you aren't sure what this means.
Post Reply
Xenrid
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Feb 09, 2022 1:45 pm

Can you make/get SNES CIC & MAD-1 chips or clones?

Post by Xenrid »

Hello,

Sorry if I should have posted this in the Newbie section but I'm guessing this is the right place. I thought learning to make a few carts of translated and homebrew SNES games for myself may be a fun project. I don't like the idea of destroying an existing cart so I purchased 4 HiROM PCBs like the ones available at vgcables.com without knowing much of anything. Now that I've done a little bit of research, I see that these appear to be patterned after an original cart PCB and are maybe only really useful for transplanting chips from an existing game with a damaged PCB. Is there a way to obtain original/clone CIC and MAD-1 chips without pulling them from an existing cart? I've seen tutorials for creating a SuperCIC at places like mousebitlabs, but the chips used have a totally different pinout so I'm not sure how I would modify the process to make it work with the CIC pinout on these PCBs. Is there a way I can flash pin compatible clones of the CIC & MAD-1 chips, or somewhere I can obtain originals or clones? I've seen the original N64 CIC chips for sale, but I can't seem to find SNES ones?

I currently have a super cheap SP200SE programmer lying in my project bin. I'd like to get a TOP3000 eventually, but I'm curious if the SP200SE would be capable of flashing any cart compatible ROM chips, since it's what I have right now. Anybody know anything about them?

Eventually I intend to grab an INLretro and some of their flash carts after I'm done (or done failing) with the HiROM PCBs I purchased. Does anybody have info on how open the INLretro is intended to be in the end? I see some inexpensive Genesis/Megadrive flash carts out there, as well as alternate NES & SNES offerings and N64 flash carts from other distributors. I also have an ancient Doctor GB multi flash cart, for which I seem to recall the developer of the parallel port Gameboy Xchanger flashing tool software refused to update it to work with Windows XP because Microsoft had done something to break compatibility. I wouldn't mind being able to flash something to that again. Anybody know if the INLretro should be capable and open enough to work with some of those in the future, or more likely to just write to INL flashcarts and only ever dump from the other connectors?

Thanks for any help or advice!
User avatar
olddb
Posts: 188
Joined: Thu Oct 26, 2017 12:29 pm
Contact:

Re: Can you make/get SNES CIC & MAD-1 chips or clones?

Post by olddb »

There's are at least one clone of the CIC: the PIC12F629.

As for the MAD chip, I believe it can be replaced by a 74LS139 or 74HC139 for address decoding.

viewtopic.php?p=275634
https://wiki.nesdev.org/w/index.php/74139

Check:

https://www.muramasaentertainment.com/p ... -sfc-pcbs/

https://www.tindie.com/products/mrTenta ... own-carts/

https://www.second-dimension.com/store/snes-lorom-pcb
...
Xenrid
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Feb 09, 2022 1:45 pm

Re: Can you make/get SNES CIC & MAD-1 chips or clones?

Post by Xenrid »

Thank you for the helpful info olddb!

I had seen info on flashing a PIC12F629 into a SuperCIC, but the different pinout left me confused about how to solder to the standard CIC socket on the PCBs I have: https://www.vgcables.com/product/snes-r ... cartridge/
Image

Luckily, I found info and a nice diagram here: http://www.dbwbp.com/index.php/10-elect ... h-supercic
Image

Now I just need to find suitable SRAM and ROM chips, and make sure I have something appropriate to flash with. Then, of course, there will the dozen other issues I have because I'm totally new to this and have no clue what I'm doing.

EDIT:
I found a PCB to adapt a SOIC/SOP PIC12F629 SuperCIC to the standard DIP CIC pinout:
https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/9kwmLQSN V3 - Requires a 100nf SMD capacitor between VCC & GND, but I'm not sure what it's for.
https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/9lWSX76F V3.2 - Requires some additional SMD components. I can't find a list or any documentation on what has been changed vs the V3 version, but it looks like it's just set up to enable pair mode, so I don't think it's useful unless the console has a SuperCIC lock installed and you want to switch between PAL and NTSC.

Here is a video of someone soldering the V3: https://youtu.be/A8YHOXOXUlI

The PIC12F629 chips I have are DIP, so I can't use these adapters. Has anybody seen a similar adapter for DIP-8 chips?
Post Reply