nesdev.org

As many people here probably know, I host a PCB archive on SNES Central. I have been told this has been of use to developers, and I am happy to keep adding to this archive. This year, I've (slowly) been adding PCB scans of every US SNES game, predominantly from byuu's scans, but also my own.

My interest in PCBs is less on the development end, but rather on the timing of manufacturing. I am currently writing up an article on the 25th anniversary of the Super NES, and I am trying to find the oldest manufactured Super Mario World cart, which will give an indication of when the system was being prepared for launch. If anyone has a PCB scan with a manufacturing date of the ROM chip that I don't have a scan of, I would be very appreciative of a scan.

I'm not specifically soliciting for scans other than Super Mario World right now (since I still have several hundred to go through right now). At some point, I will be on the look out for games that use variant PCBs. If there is anything I can do to make the archive more informative for developers, I am open to suggestions.

I have a SMW with a date code of 9132 (PCB SHVC-1A1B-04) — is that meaningfully different from the 9147 date code you already have? (If so, what dpi of scan do you want?)

It basically looks identical to the 9132-dated copy of F-Zero you already have except that it's a 0.6" SRAM and the p/n for the ROM is SNS-MW-0.

The date code just tells you when it was manufactured, which is what I am after at the moment. Your copy is definitely earlier than the oldest one I have on the site, and probably is a launch copy (since it was manufactured several weeks before the console was launched).

The scan just needs to be good enough that the numbers on the chips are readable. I usually scan everything at 300 DPI and resize to 650 pixels wide after cropping (which is close to 150 DPI).

Sent scan in PM.

Part numbers and date codes:
Mask ROM: 32-pin 0.6" DIP / [Fujitsu Semiconductor] JAPAN / SNS-MW-0 / 6A8 BK / 9132 T53
SRAM: 24-pin 0.6" DIP / GoldStar / GM76C28-10 / 9128 KOREA
Memory map: 16-pin 0.3" DIP / [Fujitsu Semiconductor] MB74LS139 / MALAYSIA 9048 F06
CIC: 16-pin 0.3" DIP / D411 / © 1990 Nintendo / C128 0 3B
battery: printed "91-07"

I'm getting close to finishing adding PCB scans for every US SNES game. I have a bit of a headscratcher with this one:



The above game has a Ricoh RP538000G MASKROM chip on it, but I am unfamiliar with the format they used for the date code. As far as I can tell, the "4EB" should be the date code, but I have not been successful in finding information on how that translates to an exact week number. Anyone have any ideas?

(p.s. your image is hosted on "localhost"; that won't work)

http://www.datamath.org/Datecodes.htm says that maybe "4EB" is "4th week of may of 1981" ?? or maybe 1991?

Whoops, I had edited my post and linked off my local website. It should be fixed.

I'm pretty sure that the format is different than the Hitachi chip format that is listed on that site. Someone else pointed out that "0128" could be a month/day format, but I found another chip that invalidates that idea.

After looking at this NES board with a 3-character date code that Fisher posted, maybe the parsing is

4EB - 4=1994 E=May B=11
→ compare CIC 9418 = 1994 May 1-7

4LB - 4=1994 L=December B=11
→ compare CIC 9446 = 1994 November 13-19

9H4 - 9=1989 H=August 4=4
9G5 - 9=1989 G=July 5=5
→ compare MMC3 8913 = 1989 March 26-April 1
→ and CIC 8934 = 1989 August 20-26

maybe?? hard to decide whether the last character range is 1-9a-v or a-z0-4 or something even messier (perhaps skipping i and o)

A good hypothesis.


BTW, I have completed adding all of byuu's scans, so every US game has a corresponding PCB scan on SNES Central. I've made a submissions guideline page, if people have a variant that is not on the site.