How do I make a reproduction cartridge?

[dr.robbie]

Subject: I'm not sure if I'm in the right place or not...

Okay, my name is Robbie and I'm an NES collector (apparently that's a bad thing in this forum ). I made an NES price guide and rarity list and people seem to like it pretty well...

Anywho, I might be a collector, but I really enjoy NES games. I enjoy taking games apart and putting them back together. I've disassembled a broken NES, fixed it and put it back together (which probably doesn't seem like much here, eh?). I've even destroyed pretty pricey pirated game carts just to see how they work. I might be a dork, but I'm really interested in the system and how it works.

I've been trying to figure out for quite some time now how to put a game ROM onto a cartridge. I've read a few posts and articles and they help, but usually after 2 minutes or so, everything is completely over my head. I don't understand 6502 (?) and I don't understand different mappers, etc. I really would like to understand, but I have almost no coding experience. I guess I'm the Newbie of Newbies .

I guess, if someone could help me, I would like to be guided in the right direction. I've been reading articles off and on for a few months now, and I still don't get it very well. Does anyone know of a guide or step-by-step process on how to put a ROM onto a game cartridge? I know I'll need an eeprom burner and I know I'll need donor carts. I've learned hex if that helps at all and I know how to solder/disolder. Any help would be appreciated. My goal is to someday write my own game and put it on a cart, but I figured this would be a good start.

Thanks.


[Sticky by request of tokumaru]

[atari2600a]

You might take interest in purchasing a PowerPak, if it would satisfy you.

To put a game onto a cart, you would first need to purchase a EPROM/EEPROM programmer which will write to the correct type of ROMs. I never looked into it myself but I'm sure after this post someone will have already said which ROMs you should be looking to purchase, etc. You will need the correct mapper for the ROMs you want, & you might also take interest in purchasing sockets to solder to the boards so you can put multiple ROMs on the same board w/o desoldering.

[tokumaru]

The basic idea is: each game uses a type of board, some boards are more common than others. The donor cart must use the same type of board as the game you want to put in a cart (you can use this table as a reference, but it doesn't have all games). Once you have the board and the programmed chip(s) (for permanent carts you should use EPROMs, but if you plan on reusing the cart, sockets and EEPROMs or FlashROMs would be better), you must desolder the original chips and solder the new ones (or the sockets). The pins on programmable chips have different functions than the original ones, so you have to compare the pinouts and rewire some pins to different holes so that everything matches. The pinouts for Nintendo ROMs can be found on the main NESDEV page, and sites like this one have the pinouts for various programmable chips, just search for the part number.

I have answered this exact question a few times already, to different people. We should really create a sticky with this, because this gets asked a LOT. Anyway, if you use the forum's search function I'm sure you'll find more information about this.

[dr.robbie]

First, thanks for the info from the people who posted. I really didn't think people would reply that quickly.

I've thought about getting a PowerPak, but I would much rather learn for myself how to make a cart. Anyone can put a ROM on a CF card and put it in a cart. I would like to learn how to do it manually.

So, lets say I have ROMs that I want to put on a cart (which I do), an EPROM burner (which I'm getting), and all the chips and such. I know there are two different chips in the NES cart (PRGM and CHAR). How would I burn these separately on each chip from the ROM? Also, I'm looking to buy an EPROM (thanks for the tokumaru - I didn't know EPROM and EEPROM were different) is there a particular one I should get? I would need one that's pretty user friendly, but I would want one that would work with a good number of NES games. I've heard some people mention one, I think it was Willem or something along those lines.

Thanks everyone.

I have answered this exact question a few times already, to different people. We should really create a sticky with this, because this gets asked a LOT. Anyway, if you use the forum's search function I'm sure you'll find more information about this.

Yeah, I was looking at some of those, but most of them were a bit over my head, or became that way after a bit. That's why I posted this one.

[atari2600a]

There should be several programs that will check the ROM's header & split the file into 2 or 3 separate files as needed. (prg, chr, & possibly a separate header file)

The prg & chr are basically raw binaries, obviously.

Also, I can pretty much guarantee, that you NEED to know how to use a simple command line interface to use the programs for both splitting the ROM & writing to the EP/EEPROMS. type cmd.exe into run & get familiar if you haven't already done so!

[MottZilla]

I assure you, the PowerPAK is quite awesome. While true you don't have a separate cartridge for each game, do you really need that many cartridges hanging around? I could understand making reproductions of rare or highly treasured games, but there's certainly plenty of things you'd like to play without building a cartridge for. In the long run the PowerPAK is cheaper.

[tokumaru]

(Most) NES ROM files (the ones ending in .nes) are composed of a 16-byte header, followed by the contents of the PRG-ROM chip, and then the contents of the CHR-ROM chip. There are utilities that will split ROMs, but I can't provide any links becaue I don't use them. If you know the sizes of each chip (Nestopia can give you that information, as well as the board the game uses), you can split the ROm manually using an hex editor.

The header is necessary only for emulation, so you don't need it. Some ROMs do not have any CHR-ROM data, and that means that the original game used a CHR-RAM chip. When recreating this kind of cart, you only have to deal with the PRG-ROM chip, so it's easier.

About the EPROM programmer, the Willem works fine with FlashROMs and EEPROMs when using USB power, and I heard it works fine for EPROMs if you use a power supply. I bought all my chips from this store (although I never tried EPROMs). You are probably interested in the 27CXXX chips.

[griever]

I assure you, the PowerPAK is quite awesome.

It's very comfortable to use PowerPAK but I doubt it's compability: when I burn E(E)PROM's I'm 100% sure that my code is runnin on pure hardware and my code really works. How about PowerPAK? Maybe it's mapper emulation is not perfect...

[tokumaru]

Yeah, the PowerPAK is great if all you wanna do is play games. It's also good for quick tests of your projects, I've been doing this a lot. But since all mappers are emulated, you can't really be sure the program works correctly until you get it working on a board with the actual mapper hardware and wiring. Even if your code doesn't use any mappers, just the boot ROM of the PowerPAK running before it is enough for you to not be sure if it'd work the same on a clean boot.

[dr.robbie]

Wow, thanks for all the replies!

With the Willem - which package do you think would best suit what I would like to do? Would package 4 be the best cause it has the 27cxxxx adapter? or would I not need it? I just want to make sure before I buy one. I also run Vista on my computer (I know, it sucks and I hate it) would this pose a problem?

About the PowerPak - like I said before, I'm a collector. Honestly, I have nearly every game I would every want to play. I want to do this manually - maybe learn some in the process. I do think the PowerPak is awesome and I'm planning on getting one, but this is a separate thing - I just really want to learn how to do this by hand. I love the NES and always wanted to make a game.

Thanks again,
~DrRobbie

[taskforce]

hey,

i recommend using the tniNES software to split your rom files. Here is a link to download the software. It will remove the header, and split the rom into PRG and CHR files. From my experience, this was the easiest and fastest software to use to accomplish this task. Here is a link:

http://www.patriekl.dds.nl/tniNES.html

I purchased a Willem programmer from Ebay relatively cheap and it worked good. Even on my first chip, it worked just fine in my cartridge. This is seller I purchased mine from:

http://stores.ebay.com/EPROM-Programmer ... idZ2QQtZkm

Also, if you want to check out a really basic project with some instructions that has been around for a while, check out Mario Clouds. It gives a basic example of some coding and how to remove/replace chips inside a Mario Bros. cart.

http://beigerecords.com/cory/Things_I_M ... _2005.html

And for using EPROM chips inside NES carts, you may need to do some conversions/rewiring:

http://nesdev.com/NES%20EPROM%20Conversions.txt

Hope this helps!

-B

[log in]

retrousb also sells some chips and carts stuff

i think ill buy a willem

by the way i saw a clip on youtube of some guy ussing a willem and he didn't solder them on but he used ZIF sockets

thats really easy