Looking for: A Zelda Master Quest (N64) reproduction cart :)

NMorgan · Post by **NMorgan** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 6:01 pm

Hello everybody. I was referred here by somebody who knows how to reproduce NES ROM images to cartridges, but not N64 reproductions. I am looking for somebody to reproduce Zelda Master Quest onto a working cartridge for me! This will be a paying job as I am sure it would require a decent amount of research, work, and brainpower to put together!

Zelda Master Quest is a sequel to Zelda Ocarina of Time with the same overworld but harder dungeons. A valid ROM for Zelda Master Quest was found and is floating around the internet, but the game was not ever released for N64. I am a Zelda fan and would like the ROM reproduced to a cartridge.

I know very little about how to reproduce games onto cartridge format, but I do know enough to know that n64 will be very complicated and probably will require some research and wiring multiple chips together.

Let me know if you can help, or know anybody (not necessarily on this forum) that you think might be able to do this. Thanks!

Nick

ugetab · Post by **ugetab** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 6:26 pm

Not that I have the knowledge for this personally, but I believe the minimum cost would be the price of a Zelda: OOT N64 cart, the price of a compatible programmable ROM chip of sufficient size, and however much someone would request for the use of equipment to flash the ROM, and soldier it to the board in some fashion.

kyuusaku · Post by **kyuusaku** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 8:16 pm

I believe anyone that can do this will write the project off as a waste of time/precious old resources, think it's immoral or just stupid. It's actually even more difficult than you'd imagine because N64 doesn't use normal ROMs. The ROMs have internal logic to latch the multiplexed address/data bus and increment the lowest 8 address bits after access. They also have an internal decoder (I believe any high address bit will work) as does the SRAM that Zelda uses (I don't know how the SRAM is decoded). Zelda is also a 256M game which means it will require a surface mount FlashROM (and access to an extremely expensive device programmer with TSOP adapter) or it will require 8 (!!!!) 27C322 EPROMs making the board like 4x the normal size. To avoid having to figure out the SRAM circuit, the SRAM chip can probably be stolen from an original cart, but besides that (and the CIC) nothing else can be.

You're looking at:

-6-8 logic chips + sacrificed Macronix SRAM ($5 + free SRAM) or CPLD + standard SRAM ($15-20 but allows you to debug logic and decoding)
-custom PCB ($60-100+ depending on size)
-256M 16-bit FlashROM (I don't know where you'll even find a handsolderable one) or 8 x 16-bit EPROM ($50ish)
-for flash you'll need access to a $300ish programmer + $120-300 TSOP56 adapter, for EPROM you'll need access to just a $150 programmer or $50 programmer with $20 adapter.
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Be prepared to pay week or two of professional wages (!!!!), set aside $200 for materials and hope the builder has access to a good programmer.

NMorgan · Post by **NMorgan** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 1:54 am

ugetab wrote:Not that I have the knowledge for this personally, but I believe the minimum cost would be the price of a Zelda: OOT N64 cart, the price of a compatible programmable ROM chip of sufficient size, and however much someone would request for the use of equipment to flash the ROM, and soldier it to the board in some fashion.

I agree that I believe this would be an expensive and relatively time consuming project. Unfortunately I do not have the skillset to do it myself which is why I am turning to people who are more knowledgeable than i am and hopefully they can do it for me!

I would pay in the $150 range for one of these cartridges... which probably would be less than minimum wage for the time/research required, but still a decent chunk of change. I would provide as many other materials as I could too, such as a donor Zelda OoT cartridge and a N64 console to test it on (if it is needed).

kyuusaku wrote:I believe anyone that can do this will write the project off as a waste of time/precious old resources, think it's immoral or just stupid. It's actually even more difficult than you'd imagine because N64 doesn't use normal ROMs. The ROMs have internal logic to latch the multiplexed address/data bus and increment the lowest 8 address bits after access. They also have an internal decoder (I believe any high address bit will work) as does the SRAM that Zelda uses (I don't know how the SRAM is decoded). Zelda is also a 256M game which means it will require a surface mount FlashROM (and access to an extremely expensive device programmer with TSOP adapter) or it will require 8 (!!!!) 27C322 EPROMs making the board like 4x the normal size. To avoid having to figure out the SRAM circuit, the SRAM chip can probably be stolen from an original cart, but besides that (and the CIC) nothing else can be.

You're looking at:

-6-8 logic chips + sacrificed Macronix SRAM ($5 + free SRAM) or CPLD + standard SRAM ($15-20 but allows you to debug logic and decoding)
-custom PCB ($60-100+ depending on size)
-256M 16-bit FlashROM (I don't know where you'll even find a handsolderable one) or 8 x 16-bit EPROM ($50ish)
-for flash you'll need access to a $300ish programmer + $120-300 TSOP56 adapter, for EPROM you'll need access to just a $150 programmer or $50 programmer with $20 adapter.

See, pretty much everything you just said to me is a foreign language!

You seem like you have a pretty good idea how to do this, why don't you just do it for me?

I would seriously provide as much help as I could and would pay for all necessary supplies. Do you have access to the EPROM/FlashROM programmers that would be required for this? I am not concerned too much about price, I just would like to own this on a cartridge.

Also, would it really require a custom PCB? Why can't you can't just use an existing PCB from an original cartridge? Also, let's say you ended up using the 8 27C322 chips, can't you just put them inside the cartridge without soldering them to the board, so that they fit inside a standard n64 cartridge shell?

Post by **tepples** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 5:25 am

NMorgan wrote:See, pretty much everything you just said to me is a foreign language!

Do you know what an "address" and "data" are, and what a "seek" is?

Also, would it really require a custom PCB? Why can't you can't just use an existing PCB from an original cartridge?

The NES, Game Boy, and Super NES have separate sets of pins for addresses and data. The EPROM, EEPROM, and flash chips commonly used for NES reproductions are designed to work with this way of doing things. But the N64, GBA, and DS have an RDRAM-style seek-and-read bus protocol, meaning that the console puts the address on the cart edge and then the cartridge puts data from the ROM on the pins a byte at a time, in order. The cartridge has to remember the address, and then it has to compute the next address every time the console wants another byte, and this takes some extra logic. The mask ROMs used in authentic Game Paks have the logic built in, but if you want to make a reproduction, you'd need to use 7400 chips or a CPLD to do this.

MottZilla · Post by **MottZilla** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 11:19 am

Buy a N64 backup device and call it a day. You'll get to play the game on your N64 system and you also will be able to use your investment to play other N64 games. Otherwise wait what could be forever for a N64 flash cart to be created.

kyuusaku · Post by **kyuusaku** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 1:06 pm

NMorgan wrote:I would pay in the $150 range for one of these cartridges...

That's possibly not even enough for materials.

See, pretty much everything you just said to me is a foreign language! :) You seem like you have a pretty good idea how to do this, why don't you just do it for me? ;)

I feel like I should almost bill you for just these responses heh, there's no way I'd make that cart...

Do you have access to the EPROM/FlashROM programmers that would be required for this?

Nope, but a lot of people do have access to a 16-bit EPROM programmer.

Also, would it really require a custom PCB? Why can't you can't just use an existing PCB from an original cartridge?

Absolutely, because the original PCB only has sockets for 2 vastly incompatible ROMs, the "repro" would need approximately 4 times that much PCB space conservatively, and obviously won't fit inside the case. What you're not getting is that Nintendo/Macronix ROMs have a lot of custom stuff inside, in order to replicate that functionality, you need a lot of extra chips outside of the ROM.

Also, let's say you ended up using the 8 27C322 chips, can't you just put them inside the cartridge without soldering them to the board, so that they fit inside a standard n64 cartridge shell?

Even if fitting it inside the cart was possible, nobody smart would attempt 100 wires (especially bus pins!) floating around in space, it's not going to work.

I have taken a photo which will hopefully illustrate the issue:

The chips inside the tube are interchangeable with the big square chip.

strat · Post by **strat** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:43 pm

If you haven't played it yet, the revamped dungeons are devious.

Jeroen · Post by **Jeroen** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 11:57 am

You know you could just hunt down a zelda the ww bonus disk. Or the legend of zelda limited edition bonus disk with zelda zelda 2 oot oot master quest and majora's mask for gc.

strat · Post by **strat** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 3:55 pm

I don't think the Zelda collection on GC has Master Quest (only the original OOT), unless I missed something (my friend has a copy).

ugetab · Post by **ugetab** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 4:04 pm

It's on a separate OOT + Master Quest disk. I've got a copy. Ebay is the best place for getting one, but ending bid prices and quality fluctuate wildly. Expect somewhere in the range of $25-$60 for a complete package.

strat · Post by **strat** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 4:14 pm

strat · Post by **strat** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 4:17 pm

Incidentally, is any one else amazed that GC is able to emulate N64? I didn't think a 300 mhz processor could do the job.

blargg · Post by **blargg** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 4:54 pm

I doubt it's emulating the N64; most likely, they recompiled the mostly C/C++ code for PowerPC, and rewrote the things that depended on the N64 hardware. I had to stop part way through playing the Master Quest, as the dungeons were just annoying and not near as fun as the original, which I just finished playing through and enjoying. It's great to have a high-resolution update. Of course I'm going to sell my disc and just perhaps get it again in the far future for the Wii virtual console.

Post by **tepples** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 6:40 pm

strat wrote: most likely, they recompiled the mostly C/C++ code for PowerPC

I know Animal Crossing 1 is a port. But do you think all the Nintendo 64 games in Wii Shop Channel are ports too?

Incidentally, is any one else amazed that GC is able to emulate N64? I didn't think a 300 mhz processor could do the job.

Short answer: If UltraHLE could do it...

Longer: The GameCube has a 486 MHz PowerPC G3 CPU emulating a MIPS R4000 series CPU that's roughly as fast as, well, a 486. Connectix did something like this a long time ago with what is now Microsoft Virtual PC, including dynamic recompilation of the emulated system's code into PowerPC code. The N64 has an SGI Reality coprocessor with a GPU ("RDP") and a programmable shader unit ("RSP") used for T&L and audio. But because most games used the stock shader microcode provided by Nintendo, the emulator can high-level-emulate the majority of Reality function. Remember that the emulation doesn't have to be Nintendulator-caliber to sell a game.